One minute you are listening to the almost casual ways of a prog rock band and the next you are listening to something altogether darker, threatening even, as Bone Haus find all the chords that have sharp edges and squeeze them, most economically, into their album “In Mourning” as if all the songs were designed to make said darkness even darker.
The lyrics. Some might even call them arty but the truth is that they never lack aggression or purpose and they are emoted with the kind of vigour and theatricality that the heaviest of rock bands so often aspire to. The rumble of the city streets indeed gets amplified and, with cascading guitars arranged with near post punk angularity, call and response is the only way to go. Hell, you just have to go with the flow and the flow is sure to get louder. I’m pretty sure that a whole bunch of potential poets were forced to drink vast quantities of Jägermeister before being sacrificed at the altar of Bone Haus with Rain Marie taking on the role of a high priestess in the depravity of that particular post-midnight ceremony.
Loud is, as always, the way to go. This album might be loud but it isn’t rough and ready or actually raucous and, if your heart still beats to the drum of mistakes made whilst under the influence, Bone Haus will likely become the soundtrack to your substance enhanced Saturday night. Maybe you will even find that Rain Marie’s voice possesses the qualities of enchantment that neatly counterpoint the scratchy anguish of amplified guitars as she preaches to the bleeding ears of the lost souls before they are converted into demons of the night.
God knows what this album is actually about. Maybe God does not care for even God must want to go out of an evening and rev His ears up all the way to the red line. This is not simple noise of the loud and brash variety. Bone Haus are solid and loud yet, with their near larceny of the genre expectations neatly counterpointed with the kind of dramatic intensity that makes mascara seem positively manly, they can’t go far wrong. And they don’t. This is brooding music of the shadows that has found its way – no doubt through some dodgy deal with the devil – into the light.