If you asked anyone in the sold out crowd that filled Sidewinder in downtown Austin last Thursday night, March 30th, when the last time they saw HORSE the Band was, answers ranged anywhere from South by Southwest 2012 to even ten whole years ago. Such is the nature of the elusive California metalcore band who many thought had broken up. Their last offering of new music came in the form of 2009’s Desperate Living and tours have been few and far between. It would have been a fair guess to assume the band members had just gone on to normal lives and abandoned the idea of being a touring or recording group.
Instead, HORSE suddenly became active again earlier this year, teasing a tour and new music. No one really knows why the band went on hiatus or why they’re back, but it’s a welcome surprise in a scene dominated by seriously serious, brutal metal bands. No one knows how to have a party like HORSE, with their irreverent lyrics, stage banter, and Nintendo influenced synth lines.
After all these years, HORSE hasn’t missed a beat. They sound just as tight dusting off classics like “Cutsman” and “Birdo” as they do playing relatively more recent tracks like “Shapeshift.” Just in the last year Austin has seen both Bert McCracken of the Used and Cedric Bixler-Zavala of At the Drive-In perform while employing none of their trademark screams due to age. Front man Nathan Winneke of HORSE hasn’t slowed down a bit, screaming even lines that were originally spoken in some songs.
They haven’t lost that trademark sense of humor either. Winneke was ripping the shoes off of crowd surfers and screaming into them, the whole band was pounding beers on stage, triangle player Ed Edge is still mostly there for the entertainment value of a shirtless man leaping up and down beating on a triangle, and, after performing a ripping cover of Nine Inch Nails’ “March of the Pigs,” Winneke declared that they had written the song.
Selling out Sidewinder without a single new song released since 2009 was no small feat for HORSE, but it goes to show how beloved they are. They played one new song on this tour, called “A Reason to Live,” and have already created shirts for it. Children were spotted in the crowd wearing said shirts. Such is the cult of HORSE. Who knows if this tour is truly the beginning of a new era for HORSE, or just a one off lark. Either way, it was a welcome surprise to see them so sharp almost twenty years since their formation, with or without new material to perform.
