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HO-AG | COMPLETE PRESS ARCHIVE
Mel.Opho.Be May 2008Ho-Ag was phenomenal. The instruments blended really well together so that you could appreciate what they were doing individually and as an ensemble. Their experimentation with a wide variety of sounds was especially interesting to hear live. Nothing was over-used, odd harmonies and atonal or chromatic melodies would appear in some songs, heavy distortion in others; the occasional scream here and more linear singing there. Terry DerryBerry (vocalist/electronics) was all over the stage and even whipped out a megaphone for a few songs, but, remarkably, did not come across as obnoxious or pretentious- his stage presence and megaphone-enhanced vocals were just interesting and exciting. This is a band to see live.
The Boston Phoenix May 15, 2008
This track off the brand-new Doctor Cowboy is Ho-Ag at their quintessentialest. Morse codes of unadorned synth, weird eddies of guitar, all sorts of melodic fits and starts, and vocals that swerve between delirious auctioneering and tribal incantation — it’s the musical equivalent of a big cartoon fight cloud rolling down the street.
The All-Music Guide
Boston's Ho-Ag turns in its most varied effort with its third full-length CD, Doctor Cowboy. The band's core sound is still rooted in the punk, new wave, and metal sounds of the ‘70s and early ‘80s, but increasing musical sophistication leads to more involved arrangements, with slower tempos on occasion and more of an emphasis on the imagistic lyrics. New members Kristina Johnson on guitar and Ryan Brown on bass add considerably to the group's chops, with Johnson even pitching in on vocals on "Drawing the Boundaries of the Night" and Brown not only anchoring the sound but also acting as the lead instrumentalist on occasion. Tyler Derryberry continues to add spacey electronic effects, and the band retains an affection for science fiction soundtrack elements. It's all in support of leader Matt Parish, whose voice cuts through no matter what music surrounds it, and even when the vocals have been filtered and processed for an alien effect. There's still plenty of speedy hard rock on Doctor Cowboy, but Ho-Ag is evolving into a more mature outfit here.
The Boston Phoenix April 22, 2008
It's not like either Hallelujah the Hills or Ho-Ag lack for members; and it's not like they're such natural collaborators that they were bound to appear on the same stage eventually. In fact, we're still not quite steady on why the hell HTH & Ho-Ag keep going all Voltron and forming the Hallelujah the Ho-Ag superband. (While we're on the topic, dudes, we hereby suggest that "Ho-Ag The Hills" rolls off the tongue a little more smoothly.) But all that aside, it's for shizzle that this is a formula for getting really fucking loud and weird, which is why we toted the cams up to Great Scott to capture this strange apparition in all its frazzled majesty. The pairing lost none of its spontanaeity by this being the second time they'd joined up, and it having been HTH's second show that day (the first having been a rare family matinee and the same venue). Our audio-recording device said fuck it and died at the beginning of the set, so double thanks to HTH for providing us with a backup track. Whew. What you get above: a standout track from HTH's headline set, drawn from their recent 100-percent-free-online-EP Prepare to Qualify, and a tag-team HTH/Ho-Ag pile-up on Tom Waits' "Rain Dogs," Tom Waits being one thing that intellectual folks-rockers and gonzo spazz-punk behemoths can still agree on. Speaking of which, this is probably a good time to suggest a Scar-Jo/Ho-Ag throwdown. Tell us in the comments which name they should go under: Scar-Ho or Jo-Ag?
HEX Zine May 2008
I pretty much hate any band that describes themselves as some sort of play on electro-dancey-punk'. It's quite offensive and usually shitty. I don't know if Boston's Ho-Ag (who also win the prize for one of the worst possible band names) would describe themselves as such, but they manage not to suck. They're actually quite good. They remind me a lot more of old Dismemberment Plan yet more bizarre, making good use of synth, theremin, quirky riffs, and offbeat vocals. While that sentiment certainly describes much of their older material this new release finds them getting a bit more expansive, longer, slower songs showing off some interesting qualities of the band. Midway through the CD "Drawing the Boundaries Of the Night" exercises this idea and ends up being the best song on the record. Clever riffy interplay is present elsewhere, and the whole ordeal, overall, is an interesting quirky listen. It's nice to mix it up here and there and I certainly dig what Ho-Ag have accomplished on this release.
The Weekly Dig May 14, 2008
This soon-to-be-rated-9-point-something-on-Pitchfork Boston group celebrates a CD release tonight alongside Big Bear, We Versus the Shark and Shore Leave. Already lauded by the Rolling Stone of our generation, we're willing to bet this latest release (called Doctor Cowboy) will put them over the top.
Skyscraper #24, Summer 2007
There are several predictable moves inherent in the type of jerky shock-rock Ho-Ag play. Luckily, the Massachusetts quintet refuses to resort to tricks of the trade that have been used over and over until they no longer hold any value. The Word from Pluto is a scrappy scratch'n'sniff adventure with surreal synths, stabbing planks of guitar, and smooth reels of bassery filling its guts. Whether you can hold this down without upchucking its contents is a fair question, but you'll likely find the journey enthralling. Moods of all shapes and sizes are on display, as are several random diversions that take songs in unexpected directions. As risky as it is to reach for the sun and the sky and the stars, Ho-Ag did just that and wound up recording one of the more invigorating albums of 2006. (Grant Purdum)
Pitchfork October 6, 2006
No points were subtracted for the band name. Just in case you think I've got an agenda, let me air it out for you right here: I like bands that remind me of my other favorite bands. Ho-Ag's latest, The Word From Pluto, has plenty of hip touchstones in their blizzard of sound-- Les Savy Fav, Brainiac, Devo-- but played with bravery, balance, and smarts, carrying with it the feel of basement shows rather than arty detachment. You'd be lucky to find a basement with these guys playing in it. I'm lucky to have come across it.
More on hip: These guys' haircuts are...often inadvisable. More on influence: Put together their CD collections, these five gentlemen probably have the entire Fishbone discography among them. More on why none of that matters: "Paint the Navy" blows out of the gates with metronome-steady rhythms, blaring guitars, and keyboards that seem as if they'll malfunction at any point. "Under the Maps" features greater dynamic leaps, moving from windmill strums to head-bobbing bass and chicken-scratch chords, while singer Mat Parish plays along with whispered croons to megaphone-augmented emoting. "Lemon Juice or Vinegar" makes idle threats over muted guitars and seasick rhythms, but just in case they lost momentum (they didn't), "TDPK" resumes the sputtering chaos where guitars angle, the rhythm section stops and starts, and the synths squeal like pigs getting branded. But for a group that sounds like a science project with a drug stipend, everything's somehow in its right place. It's dance-punk, spazz-rock, rawk-revival, and post-hardcore-- all for a minute at a time at least.
Given that, there's a surprising amount of ebb and flow here, along with generous dollops of melody. No showing off, just demonstrable chops and the desire to write real songs from a more-than-slightly-askew angle. Parish isn't quite the strong personality that the bands name-dropped above have boasted, but he adds coy personality to "Lemon Juice and Vinegar" while still belting out the melodies needed to float the disjointed numbers like "Paint the Navy" and more. A more over-the-top vocalist would only clash with Ho-Ag's controlled chaos.
But as Levar Burton used to tell you in your cereal-and-pajamas days, you don't have to take my word for it. Start with "American Mall" if you get lost, let the keyboards lob you a life preserver while the band spits and seizes around it, and allow momentum-- something The Word From Pluto has in spades-- take you through to "Pinhead", the track that brandishes a 10-ton hook and rocks as hard as any 1970s arena act, except the drummer needs to be sober to pull off the ragged rhythms of the chorus. Some of the most welcome surprises are tacked onto the end of the record ("The Hoodoo Sea" might be the record's best), but you should know by now whether this accessible, prodigious spazz-rock entry isn't for you. If it is, get to work already and find it. -Jason Crock, October 06, 2006
Performer Magazine April 2007
Ho-Ag: Transmitting From Pluto
By Adam Arrigo * Photos by Anthony Tieuli
Fun: A word that gets increasingly shrouded by the business side of music. Regardless of where you end up in the music world — how much or how little relative success you achieve — you started playing music because it was fun. It seems like such a simple concept. Somewhere along the way, though, you realized that you wanted other people to hear your music, and you got sidetracked. Whereas so many bands get caught up in self-promoting themselves to every corner of the planet, hiring promotional companies to proselytize their music for them, using MySpace bots to friend entire geographical populations in one click, Ho-Ag is a band that has always stayed true to at least one idea: Music was meant to be a blast. Even if this band’s breed of noise-infused, sci-fi punk isn’t your idea of a party, one thing is clear: Ho-Ag are really, really good at what they do. Calling Ho-Ag a “local band” would be a disservice: they have toured nationally several times and are on Hello Sir Records — a label out of Athens, Georgia. Still, much of the band’s ethos is a by-product of the local DIY scene in Allston, Mass., where they started making a name for themselves upon forming in 2001. The founding members of Ho-Ag were lead vocalist Matt Parish, guitarist Patrick Kim, bassist Dave Dines and drummer Jonathan Ruhe. This line-up started playing local bars and DIY shows with the help of local bookers like Dan Shea and artists such as Neptune.
“Our sound back then was sludgier — definitely more like The Melvins,” says Parish.
The four-piece played shows at venues like The Midway and O’Brien’s, and embarked on their first tour in 2003, with mixed results.
Eric Meyer (Hallelujah The Hills) replaced Ruhe in 2004 after meeting Parish while they were both playing in The Stairs. Tyler Derryberry, who had grown up with Parish and Kim in Ohio, moved to Boston to join the group on keyboards. Eventually, Nicholas Ward replaced Dines on bass, completing the five-piece that would become the most stable and successful Ho-Ag line-up.
“When Eric and Tyler first joined was when we really hit our stride,” says Parish. “There were a few months where it was a little shaky, but by the summertime, the new five-piece band had really gelled. That’s when a lot of new people were coming out to see us.”
“I feel like the scene really got going at the same time we did,” says Meyer, who attributes a good amount of Ho-Ag’s rise in popularity to the concurrent rise of Allston’s Great Scott as a venue. “They kind of came out of their frat boy problem right at the same time ‘The Plan’ moved there, and it started to be a destination,” says Meyer.
Meyer also cites Ho-Ag’s 2006 Halloween show as a turning point, when Ho-Ag played an entire set as ‘80s new wave luminaries, Devo — a band undoubtedly central to Ho-Ag’s sound and aesthetic philosophy. “After that show, people were onto us,” says Meyer.
“Night Rally and Clickers were responsible for a lot of momentum,” says Parish. “Those two bands were really hands-on about getting people excited. We were lucky enough to benefit from that. We played the HOSS — those shows were just all about getting everybody into it and having fun.”
Anyone who has seen Ho-Ag live can attest to this element of “fun” that the band exudes on stage — perhaps it’s the band’s ability to connect with its audience during shows that has earned them such an immense, devoted following. Ho-Ag, it seems, garnered its fan base purely through word of mouth, playing DIY shows and tours, and ultimately, by not taking themselves too seriously. Rather than sending out promotional materials with standard information, Parish used to assemble 20-page press kits with random collages and no pertinent information on them. Why? “It just seemed like a fun thing to do,” says Parish.
“You don’t need some huge press campaign,” says Parish. “It’s like having a big party house — weird shit happens and people tell their friends about it throughout the week and from then on people think about going to that house because they’ll meet people they know there. I think it’s a lot better to think about shows as parties or social events — at least at this level. Whenever we’re on stage I always try to take inventory on who’s there and just feel like I’m there with everybody — not like we’re just performing for people.”
Parish references one such show at The Abbey Lounge where Ho-Ag’s on-stage histrionics riled the audience into a near mosh-pit state: “People were running all over the place, falling on top of each other, and I was bleeding out of my head.”
“And I broke all my drums,” Meyer adds.
“Dave [Dines] took his shirt off; I broke the amp I was borrowing,” recalls Parish.
“[Ryan] Walsh hit me in the forehead with a beer bottle,” Meyer chimes in.
“That stuff doesn’t have anything to do with strategy,” says Parish.
“It’s just some weird, errant notoriety that you get that travels through local channels and through the internet,” concludes Meyer.
Not only known for their “spirited” live performances, Ho-Ag is also known ubiquitously for on-stage injuries, and the band attests to losing countless pints of blood over the years.
“My hands are pretty messed up right now from a Ho-Ag show; I got blood everywhere,” boasts Meyer. “And then the next night we played at Castle Greyskull and I used someone else’s drum set and got blood all over that too. I felt terrible.”
Parish adds, “A wound like that is no different than looking out into the room and seeing that four people are watching. Either you want to be playing or you don’t.”
Perhaps it’s Ho-Ag’s philosophy of “play like there’s no tomorrow” that makes their live shows so unpredictable and entertaining. The band gets the audience involved in the adrenaline rush of a performance by thrashing with a threatening conviction that suggests the music could explode off the stage and into the crowd at any moment, as evidenced by Tyler Derryberry’s Moog stand teetering at the edge of the stage. Ho-Ag’s sound mirrors their on-stage volatility with its sort of controlled melodic and rhythmic chaos — the songs often descend into noisy clamor, only to emerge unfettered with tight band fills and mathy meters that only a veteran rhythm section could pull off. “We want to make it feel like it’s the last night you have to be doing any of this stuff,” says Parish. “Especially in the beginning, it definitely seemed like ‘This is it, there’s no future, everyone’s here at this show — why should it end?’“
Ho-Ag’s live dynamic translates well to record on 2006’s The Word From Pluto, which was recorded at Machines With Magnets in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. The record was done in mostly live takes — each track functioning as a snapshot of the live versions, which can vary considerably from show to show. While the basic song structures are the same, Meyer’s drum beats and fills are fairly different each time, as well as “the noises coming out of the weird boxes,” says Parish. The variation in drumming probably stems from Meyer’s solid background in jazz, seeing as he graduated from Berklee College of Music. While Meyer plays with “thick sticks on the least jazz-like kit,” the jazz influence can still be heard in subtle phrases and beats.
Thematically, the record deals with alternate realities and discerning what is real and what is illusion. Not surprisingly, the artwork for the record is based entirely on the work of science-fiction writer Phillip K. Dick. One influential work in Ho-Ag’s theology is Exegesis — an eight-thousand-page, one-million word journal that was never published, but is referred to in various biographies and in the seminal Dickian work, VALIS. “It’s sort of Phillip K. Dick’s mixture of insanity, Gnostic Christianity, alternate planes of existence, ego-driven paranoia, etc.,” says Parish.
Presently, Ho-Ag is at a critical juncture in its line-up. Two longtime members, Nicholas Ward and Patrick Kim, recently left the band to concentrate on school. Kim was replaced by Roh Delikat vocalist Kristina Johnson on guitar. Ironically, Ward recently joined Roh Delikat on bass, in what has been referred to as the “Roh-Ag” trade. Both bands share the same practice space and are inextricably linked to one another. “It’s still new and fresh in its infancy,” says Meyer, but the band sees the new line-up as auspicious. The band plans to take the Ho-Ag party on the road in May, still in support of the material from The Word From Pluto, for an exhaustive tour of the East Coast. In terms of new material, Parish already has an entire album’s worth of fresh ideas laid down on various demos.
The awkward part about using “party” as a metaphor to describe the guys (plus one girl) of Ho-Ag is that none of them really exude the party aura as people. “We don’t even like to party that much,” says Meyer, smiling wryly. Ho-Ag is a different kind of party — nothing like the ones attended by the frat types that once inhabited Great Scott before local music took over there. No one has ever been roofied at a Ho-Ag show — at least not to Parish’s knowledge. “My ideal party would be for everyone to take turns looking through a high-powered telescope at faraway stars and realize how little any of us have to gain from exploiting anyone else,” says Parish. “Not that it matters — this civilization is completely unsustainable in the first place and all of this will be like a fairy tale to our grandchildren. They’ll probably romanticize the danger and surprise element of frat boys roaming the streets, getting drunk and networking with future CEOs of ill-fated energy corporations. The Golden Years.”
SLIVER MAGAZINE
Ho-Ag - The Word From Pluto (Hello Sir)
Grade: A-
Never afraid to test the limits of familiar time signatures, these Massachusetts natives fit in nicely with their Hello Sir brethren Cinemechanica: fast as hell and all about precision. Constantly thrashing with a cacophony of seamless riffs, Ho-Ag is relentless with its onslaught of piercing energy. The record incorporates some seriously hot ideas; "Pinhead" is particularly jaunty. There are even moments where the spirit of 80s metal raises its hand for a little attention. However, the vocals are too deep in the mix, leaving the record wanting more lyrical content. "Paint the Navy" brings out the best in the band with a bit more to hold on to and reminds of Les Savy Fav (so of course I love it).
SKRATCH MAGAZINE
HO-AG |THE WORD FROM PLUTO | HELLO SIR RECORDS
Some call this punk. It's as much punk as Paris Hilton is a virgin. The second full-length release from this Boston MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER 3K quintet is one of the most beautiful and original albums ever. I used to think that The Mars Volta was creative until I heard Ho-Ag. Imagine a cross between thrash punk and electronica played by math nerds and science-fiction geeks. All 14 frenzied tracks contribute to an unbelievable onslaught of insanity and something that seems a cross between The Germs and Chick Corea. Screw it. There's no good description here, just an album full of tunes that seem to suck the oxygen out of the air and force you into a deep, dark hole where the only thing you hear as you suffocate is a theremin. -Dug
PERFORMER MAG
Ho-Ag joined their Southern brethren from Hello Sir Records at The Tank. Fresh off their recent release of The Word From Pluto, the five-piece quickly dug in to their powerfully experimental indie-rock thrash, drawing instantaneous cheers from the expectant crowd. Vocalist Matt Parish, whose smirk was partly concealed by the hood of his sweatshirt, growled electrically, pushing along the band's insistent, pounding rhythms. At times it seemed as though there were five shows taking place simultaneously, with each member delivering strong, soaring melodies. The Moog stylings of Tyler Derrberry added a spaced-out flavor to the straightforward, percussive explosions from drummer Eric Meyer. Having completed a nationwide tour and a Halloween show under the guises of Devo prior to their CMJ appearance, Ho-Ag has extended its deafening reach well beyond the boundaries of Boston.
The Spill Magazine
Ho-Ag’s music is best described as pure frenzy. A dissonant mix of distorted guitar, synthetic fuzz, and synthesized beats, it rises, swells, then falls away again, and this characterizes much of the album. Some of it is mildly reminiscent of Mr. Bungle but less symphonic and more punked out. Vocals by Matt Parish are raw, unrehearsed, and unpretentious – and not a little grating at times: even freaky madness can get stale with prolonged exposure, but slower songs like “Lemon Juice and Vinegar” help add diversity to the album’s otherwise break-neck pace.
- James Sandham
Hybrid Magazine September 2006
Right from the get-go I know I am listening to something different. Ho-Ag seamlessly fuses an art-punk sound to a funk jazz math rock to create an immense beast that treads heavy but is inherently beautiful. Sounding like a hybrid of Devo's moog, The Hives' intensity/panache', and The Black Eyes' epileptic take on songwriting, Ho-Ag comes off as creative and original. What impresses me the most about this band are their no-holds-barred attacks on music and convention that contradict themselves by being enjoyable and accessible. Think about it for a second - that's a very hard line to walk - but they succeed with flying colors. Moreover, they manage to fit in so many sly side-references to other genres and bands that, taken as a whole, the album is smarter than any I could think of off the top of my head.
Production has a hard time reining in the influences and styles such that The Word From Pluto takes on a slightly uneven nature. There is so much going on that it just may prove to be an impossibility to give each song the time it deserves. This translates to inventive songs like "Man The Dam" not getting the fine tuning that "Under The Maps" got, because it may not be as commercially viable.
The band itself is beyond talented, bringing a savvy nuance to hammer heavy sections and a precise authority to the calmer passages. Guitars drive the change of the music, throwing so many twists and turns into the melee that it becomes daunting, yet they somehow manage to converge into copasetic harmony lines that feel like epiphanies. Bass holds its own; weaving a solid backbone throughout and occasionally giving a remarkable lead line. Drums are my favorite, although they could drive the faster sections more, they accurately define boundaries of the rest while disappearing completely here and leading counter-intuitive but brilliant lines there. The vocals stick to a uniform pattern but give and take nicely with the ebb and flow of each song. The keyboards may be the most overlooked, but they add such good ambiance that I couldn't imagine this album without them.
While this band may not be for everyone, it is a must have for the rest of us. Especially if you like different, and moreover, different done well. -bishop
Urban Pollution September 2006
Ho-Ag
The Word from Pluto
Rating: 8.0
When a band is labeled art-punk, certain things come to be expected from them. Ho-Ag does nothing if not fulfill those expectations with The Word From Pluto. For one, as the album name would suggest, they adhere firmly to the post-apocalyptic space theme. Their sound is a manic crush of sci-fi movie sound effects, sharp attacks of guitar, and hard chugging percussion. Eerie, crashing, and fast, this is the definition of art-punk.
The primary virtue of The Word from Pluto is Ho-Ag’s success at creating a sense of speed, panic, and noise. As simple as is may seem to play loud and fast, many bands actually struggle to get any sense of that across on their records, the music getting lost in nothing more than indistinct static. Ho-Ag, though, seems to have the technique down, as they demonstrate “TDPK.” The guitars attack aggressively, sharp and staccato. The instrumentation stays clean and distinct, barraging the listener with layers of sound. Passages where the instrumentation thins out only makes it that much more ferocious and deafening when everything crashes back in. They employ a similar technique with the tempo, splicing in jarring tempo changes and brief lulls of slower, relaxed instrumentation.
In another track, “Lemon Juice or Vinegar,” they forgo some of the speed to create a foreboding atmospheric sound. The crawling baseline and chanted lyrics coalesce into a hypnotic climax, where “One cup of lemon juice / One cup of vinegar” is repeated and reverberated, pulsating through the listener’s head. At that point, one can almost see the spinning disc, the swinging pendulum.
Despite the intensity of the music, there’s still a bit of irony to it, a tongue-in-cheek attitude. Their liberal use of the theremin throughout the record instantly evokes images of classic Star Trek moments, lending a campy sheen over the darkly surreal lyrics. Whether intentional or not, it adds lightness to what would otherwise be an overdramatic and overly serious record. After all, it’s hard to make intergalactic themed album without at least a little humor.
The Word from Pluto is definitely a success within the genre of art-punk. Their experimentation with harmonies, form, and textures creates as rich coherent mood for the entire album. And, while the discordant harmonies, the off-putting lurches in meter, the anarchic composition almost seem to challenge the listener; in a way, that’s the whole point.
The Weekly Dig August 2006
HO-AG: THE WORD FROM PLUTO
From the first fall-down-the-curvy-back-stairwell notes of "Paint the Navy" to the massive discordant coronary that puts "The Hoodoo Sea" to sleep, Ho-Ag’s second full-length is a bold step (or hard stumble) forward from—well, just about everything. Taking their familiar cues from Devo and Brainiac, they’ve tossed in a couple delightfully unreliable triangulation points for added confusion: sometimes Sun Ra, sometimes All Scars, sometimes Shudder to Think. “Man the Dam”—a reworking of a track from an old split 7-inch with Laughing Light—is like some act of art-rock martyrdom, hijacking the groove from No Doubt’s "Just A Girl" and bravely flying it into a cliff. "Into the River" is like the D. Plan on crystal meth and a hunger strike, with its hysterically dovetailed stopstarts, Matt Parish’s surrealist auctioneering and Tyler Derryberry’s Moogy scrawls, all hooked onto the perfectly preserved skeleton of rock & roll. The pokey jabs of "Stay Home Tonight" open into frenzied jibber-jabber, busted punk chunks and blasts of Patrick Kim’s cruel and unusual guitar treatment. Like its namesake planet, Pluto is about as far as you can get from our plain little world without leaving the solar system entirely—or at least, Pluto was until a couple of weeks ago. Hey, there’s always the third album, right? -Michael Brodeur
Terrascope August, 2006
Treading an altogether spikier path, is the twisted and obtuse guitar noise of HO-AG, whose album "The Word From Pluto" is full of twists and turns, with bags of hardcore energy and a complete disregard for tradition, all of which makes for a damn fine piece of aural confrontation. Reminding me of a full on Hampton Grease Band, the musicians tear through the songs, employing a cut and paste method to composition, the songs stuttering with epileptic energy, which is controlled with some amazingly tight playing, sounding like the Dead Kennedys at full throttle.
The Boston Phoenix September 1, 2006
["Paint the Navy"] It's been documented - with marker, in the girls' stall at the Abbey Lounge no less! - that Locust-y frazzle-punks Ho-Ag are capable of rocking people's faces off. But they've been so busy changing masks and sledge-hammering hyphens to subgenres that their records were more like party favors from a bloody car wreck (or a Birthday Party reunion) than indicators of long-term commitment to any one sonic ideal. This track, from their latest found-sound apocalypse, The Word from Pluto, congeals around circusy keybs and hairpin stunt guitars while frontguy Matt Parish hot-thrashes his way through dissident Wikipedia entries from the ends of time. Grab the MP3, phots and more at thephoenix.com/onthedownload, then check them out at the CD-release party September 2 at Great Scott.
Smother Magazine July 2006
You're exhausted when you're done listening to a Ho-Ag album. Well I shouldn't say it's an album per-say since it's more of a freak experience. But don't get your soap ready—you'll have no desire to cleanse yourself afterwards, this is same feeling you get after shaking your idol's hand only to pinky promise to the world and whoever is listening that you'll never wash that hand again. But yeah, my ears will never be the same. Manic synth pop hooks that are awash in psychedelic hooks are dangled almost sneeringly at panic-inducing time signature changes. Ho-Ag acts like a psychotic frenzy that soaks you in violent sonic chaos but that which warmly snuggles up with brash melodies and catchy bass grooves even as they sharpen the knife. But this band plays for keeper's, simultaneously insisting on being your best friend while ready to calculate how quickly they can destroy your idea of what free-form music is all about. Ho-Ag is Devo's bastard unclaimed almost-aborted fetus and they're pissed that punk ever made it into a Hot Topic. Get this album, right the fuck now. - J-Sin
DT Weekend
The Word from Pluto | Hello Sir Records
A good way to listen to Ho-Ag involves a bicycle. Ride said bicycle to a downtown street with a steep hill, making sure there is an adequate amount of traffic. Attach earphones to a music-playing device (not an iPod, but something with more weight, maybe a laptop or a stereo). Put the stereo or laptop, at full volume, inside of a backpack. Carry a small, easily frightened animal — a squirrel or mongoose, perhaps — on the handlebars. Then, descend down the hill, eyes closed.
That's Ho-Ag in so many words. In fewer words, art punk. Throw some Devo foundations, some Gorch Fock noise, a little Unwound, and a less-dancy version of Bloc Party and enjoy Ho-Ag. The noise is so constant, the guitars so angled and hung out, that the sudden pauses and silences that occur throughout the album are surprising and terrifying.
Enjoy the chaos.
Maximum Ink July 2006
HO-AG The Word from Pluto (Hello Sir Records) Blend together some nutty punks with musical devices (attitude intact), overstressed synthesizers, and plenty of brat on the vocals and somewhere along the way you will spooge out HO-AG. Think Melvins being unleashed on Devo. (8)
AvoidPeril.com May 2006
Ho-Ag, Hallelujah the Hills, Cinemechanica, Shore Leave * Bill’s Bar, Boston *March 25, 2006
A quartet of math-rock bands playing on Landsdowne Street? It was so incongruous, I couldn’t resist.
I made my way through the throng to Bill’s Bar just in time to miss Shore Leave completely. I was disappointed. I like their self-titled album from last year. It mixes indie pop-rock that resembles Versus with harsher/more aggressive fare. I’m still curious how they’ll balance the band’s different aspects live.
“Math rock” generally means weird time signatures and extreme loud/soft dynamics, but before I learned that, I thought math-rock musicians actually plotted mathematical formulas and somehow mapped them to guitar fretboards. (I was a weird kid.) Cinemechanica’s twin guitars remind me of that mental image. Most of their songs feature single-note lines from each guitarist that repeatedly merge with and diverge from each other, with occasional pauses for power chord barrages and hoarse shouted vocals. Other tunes have overtly pretty melodies on top, with weird counter-melodies underneath. They’re like visitors from a planet where the only music was King Crimson’s “21st Century Schizoid Man” and the first Q and Not U record. It’s dense, demanding, heady stuff, and although their new album The Martial Arts is on my year’s best shortlist, I can’t imagine wanting to get drunk to it -- some of their atonal bends are a bit like the aural equivalent of the dreaded “spins.” They were just sloppy enough on the opening number that I could tell they were actual human beings, but they quickly reached a peak of jaw-dropping precision. But not everyone was as impressed as I was. The band hardly engaged the crowd, the music wasn’t exactly welcoming to the uninitiated, and I saw a lot of hipsters standing impassively with their arms crossed. Their loss.
Hallelujah the Hills was the ringer in the bill. The band, fronted by Ryan Walsh (late of the much-ballyhooed Stairs) is about as much math rock as it is alt-country and only slightly more than it’s hardcore -- or, I dunno, space jazz. I have rarely seen an act as willfully eclectic as Hallelujah the Hills. I wasn’t crazy about Walsh’s voice -- he sang with a lot of passion, but some of his melodies seemed to beg for a more mellifluous delivery. But I quickly found myself straining to make out his lyrics, which were full of surreal, quirky, and compelling phrases like “a stillborn Chinese baby talking backwards.” And I was knocked out by many of the songs, which seemed to belong together no matter what genre they adopted. Hallelujah the Hills also displayed a well-honed sense of theater. They spiced up their set with actions that would have been gimmicky if they hadn’t integrated so well with the performance. On their fastest tune, someone rapid-fire flipped pieces of posterboard with lyrics printed on them in time to the music. For the rest of the night people waved them like banners, with “Make it BITTER” a particular favorite.
Hallelujah the Hills share drummer Eric Meyer with Ho-Ag, which facilitated an impressive set transition: the remaining members of Ho-Ag joined Hallelujah the Hills to perform a handful of each other’s songs in a 10-piece big band context, along with a blistering rendition of The Talking Heads’ classic “Electric Guitar.” The bands’ enthusiasm was contagious, and the sound technician kept everything from sliding into sonic mud.
Ho-Ag are a Boston-based act, but my steeped-in-DC-punk brain persists in hearing them as a sort of distillation of the past decade’s worth of post-hardcore/indie rock from the nation’s capital (with a dash of Richmond Virginia punk for good measure). They encompassed the abrupt starts and stops and extreme dynamics that characterize the Dischord stable, the math/prog explorations of Faraquat and The Medications, The Make*Up and latter day Q and Not U’s nods to funk, the herky-jerky retro newwave of Measles Mumps Rubella, the screamo/melodic singing collision of 1905, and some of the tribal intensity of Black Eyes and Pg. 99. Both of Ho-Ag’s vocalists were compelling and charismatic. Meyer would have earned my admiration by simply enduring through the marathon set, but he and bassist Nicholas Ward were a ferocious rhythm team, managing to inject a touch of groove into some unlikely meters. -- Doug Mayo-Welss
Boston's Weekly Dig January 2006
("The 20 records to make you look like you've been paying attention this year") HO-AG | PRAY FOR THE WORMS | [HIVE 35]
A co-worker of mine sneers every time I wear my Ho-Ag shirt: “Those boys are just a bunch of skinny wastoids pretending to be rock stars.” Well … yeah! ‘Cept they aren’t just bizarro Jack Blacks; these hometown homeboys can vamp and write damn good songs that are fully steeped in the horror of the modern world. Ho-Ag call it an EP, but PFTW covers an LP’s worth of sounds, and the record’s 24 minutes blow by as relaxed Americana and ill-tempered New Wave form the foundation for shimmering synths, palm-muted guitars, bells, chant-along vocals and a whole mess of other stuff. Plus, there’s a skeleton on the cover! [DK]
The Boston Phoenix December 2005
Swear on our autographed Nick Cave novel, we emailed Tia the other day, all like, "We should do a Christmas post. Think anyone's got Christmas songs?" Then walked to our mailbox and found a package with a return address that said "Ho Ho Ho-Ag." While the envelope had OTD's name and address on it, we suspect there was a mixup at the mailer-stuffing party: the letter inside was addressed to one M. Brodeur. Oops. (Bro-Bro: they said to tell you they demand "instant holiday classic status" for this. If you want to swap notes, give us a ring.)
Appropriately for a band that's never found a style it couldn't master, destroy, and discard in under three minutes, this is a relatively straightforward but still deeply ominous cover of a really fucked-up 103-year-old song that we normally wouldn't be able to imagine anyone this side of Robert Goulet singing. It's a song you'd sing to your kids only if you wanted to remind them that someday -- relatively soon, cosmically speaking -- they're all gonna die, miserable and alone. Happy holidays!
NOFI Magazine
I've been enjoying this album way too long without having gotten a review done. Perhaps it's because I'm not sure that any of my words can properly convey the sounds coming from this disc or the feelings I get from it. I don't know why, but I get a OINGO BOINGO meets DEERHOOF feel from this band which is weird because they don't really sound like either. Still if you're a fan of either of those bands, I think you'll like this. My favorite tracks are "Invitation To A Beheading", "Bat-Man V. Dracula", and the spastic album closer "Bad Patterns." I hope to hear more from them in 2006 and you know I'll be playing this on No-Fi "Radio."--Chris Beyond
AMP Online
If you're into the psychotic, off-kilter stylings of, say, MELT-BANANA,
this band is worth checking out. They combine noise-rock with eerie
haunted house music spliced with a goofy, nerd kind of vibe. This lil'
EP is sure to give you unsettling dreams--it's basically BEETLEJUICE in
album form.
Punk Unlimited These guys blow me away, not in the oh wow this sounds amazing I am going to burn my friends a copy of it sense. It blows me away in the holy shit, where has this music been all of my life sense.
One of my favorite bands is the late Q And Not U, my only real complaint was they never got crazier than they were on No Kill, No Beep Beep. As a matter of fact they refined their sound more and more with each album, and it was a great direction to go. But, I digress, these guys take the No Kill, No Beep Beep sound of Q And Not U and just go wil with it. This album is as dancable as pretty much anything on the market today ... but it kicks your ass a little too.
The lyrics are weird, but in a good cryptic kind of way. They aren't the lame references to death and all things morbid you'd hear on say an early era Alkaline Trio album. This stuff borders on say Nick Cave and Tom Waits have a party with a post hardcore band.
Pray For Worms is a solid album, but all the tracks stand on their own. I'd have to say that my favorites are Bat-man vs. Dracula and How Long Can You Keep Your Eyes Closed On The Interstate.
This album may not be for everyone, as a matter of fact I will come out and say that this is a very unique listening experience. And as such may turn of people who typically like all thing post hardcore. But, it is certainly an original, well written album. And it does nothing but make me anticipate when these guys will put something new out.
The Boston Phoenix September 2005
Champs of art skronk and noise rock, Ho-Ag are dedicated experimentalists: the band’s
ever-evolving nature ensures that no set or song gets played the same way twice.
Some things are, however, constant: deftly alliterated lyrics about apocalyptic
destruction, jaggedy industrialized guitars, maniacal moog melodies, megaphone.
A match made in heaven if you dig spazzing out, dancing, weird fun.
Northeast Performer Magazine September 2005
Ho-Ag gathers on stage and even their sound check is good. They start
right away, smashing at everyone's eardrum's and performing this sort of
mosh ballet. It's unbelievable that they don't have more casualties with
all the near misses of crashing into one another.
As a band, these guys have an incredible energy
that washes over the crowd and gets everyone involved. They seem to fall
into a trance when the set starts and they just go into song after song.
Matt takes a moment and makes and announcement in regards to his
drummer, calling him the MVP (most valuable percussionist) of the
evening and as the set goes on, you understand why. Anything around him
he would use for percussion, at one point making use of the walls with
an empty bud bottle. Ryan Walsh of the Stairs jumped on stage and
returned the favor to Matt and the guys. A microphone glitch annoyed the
flow of the set for a minute, but was quickly recovered by frontman
Parish-totally pro. This band is very well rounded with the musical
ability, creativity, and true stage presence. -Kerianne Murphy
Northeast Performer Magazine July 2005
When a band is preparing for a cross-country tour, deluging unfamiliar cities with your sound is part of the process in trying to arrange gigs. Clubs get mountains of CDs each day and thus bands usually come up with a pithy genre-encapsulating way to get promoters to even put a disc in a player. Usually when a band lists their influences their actual sound is either a pitch-perfect knock-off or doesn’t sound like they’ve even heard their ancestors before.
For Ho-Ag, the influences got lost in the stew so long ago that reading the trail of press they left in their wake after their recent US tour only cements the notion that they’re impossible to pin down. “We have a kind of unspoken list of things we don’t want to sound like,” singer and guitarist Matt Parish says, “and we just do what we can out of the options that are left. We’ve all been playing similar original stuff long enough that most of the new things we do are reactions to the stuff we’ve done in the past, and enough of that stuff is only from demos or things we’ve done live that it’s not like there are people looking over our shoulder scolding us for stealing ideas from ourselves.”
Formed three years ago in Boston, the band began as a trio, but is now a quintet with Patrick Kim (guitar), Nicolas Ward (bass), Eric Meyer (drums), Tyler Derryberry (synths and vocals), and Parish. Derryberry moved to town and joined his old school friends from Ohio where he had been singing most recently in Rancid Yak Butter Tea Party. An Ohio-sensibility runs through their songs as the hummably spastic sounds and electronic bursts fit a long lineage from Pere Ubu and Devo through Brainiac and Enon. “There are far more weird subcategories of music that you’ve never heard of these days that thousands and thousands of people are into like their life depended on it,” Parish claims. “They don’t care that their absolute hero isn’t like a household name all across the country. No one needs to be a household name to be moderately successful anymore. It just takes some digging.”
In support of diggers around the country that have found Ho-Ag during their excavations, the band toured for five weeks to bring those songs in a form other than an mp3. They’d ventured as far west as Milwaukee back in 2003, but the Pray for Worms US Tour was their first trek that took them to four time zones. The band drove to Los Angeles and back and played 30-odd shows in between. For the band, this is their time to make music. “Day jobs haven’t gotten in the way of anything really,” Parish admits. “The ones that did threaten to get in the way, we quit.”
The tour was in support of Ho-Ag’s new EP, Pray for the Worms, on Hive 35, and Mister Records also released a new split 7” with Laughing Light featuring their song “Man the Dam.” The thought process for the EP adheres to the spastic nature of the band, with abutting songs striking starkly different moods. “We ended up throwing a lot of different ideas into that record and it really has a lot more going on in it than anything else I’ve worked on, no matter what the length,” Parish agrees.
Pray for the Worms is an extended ride on an indoor rollercoaster with a century-old wooden track while a laser light show plays on the ceiling. “Very little of that album was planned at all,” Parish confesses. “Most of the songs were written simultaneously in one week last summer in a rush to get a set together for a show that Eric had to cancel at the last minute. A lot of the charm of that stuff is that there really wasn’t any time to sit around and think about what kind of music we wanted to write or even avoid writing. It was basically just people throwing things together really quickly and not realizing what we had written until later on.” With Meyer out of action during the process, the band set up with irregular instrumentation. “Tyler was playing drums, keyboards and singing all at the same time and I was doubling up guitar and bass parts on a convoluted guitar setup,” Parish recalls. “That had to get adapted to the regular band later on, and it wasn’t until we were rearranging it that we started to understand what was actually going on.”
After the recordings were done, the band had over 50 minutes of music to work with, but decided to offer up only 7 tracks on Pray for the Worms. “The songs on the album just went together a lot better then what might have happened if we jammed anything else onto it,” Parish says. “Not that they were better songs, but they all get along nicely as a whole and putting anything else on there wouldn’t really have fit.” The disc conceptually worked better as an EP as well since “it was originally meant to be kind of a home studio diversion project, a pass-out-to-your-friends kind of thing that we were just doing to occupy ourselves while trying to figure out what the next ‘real’ step for us was,” Parish adds. “Pretty soon we just realized that we were already on to the next step.”
Ho-Ag seems to be a band that’s always taking that next step, but isn’t afraid if that footing includes some slippery terrain. The band formed when Parish was looking for guitar players, Kim moved to Boston, and the two had already been friends and were into a lot of the same music. When Derryberry moved here, he joined up quickly. “Tyler and I had been friends since we were 12,” Parish says. “We have a very close sense of what we want to accomplish with music and are both informed by almost the exact same set of weird influences.”
Meyer drums for the Stairs and he and Parish had a mutual friend in Stairs leader Ryan Walsh. After Parish pinch hit in on bass for a few Stairs shows, when Ho-Ag needed a new drummer, Meyer volunteered. “He has almost no idea who the bands are that we’ve obsessed over for most of our lives,” Parish claims. “When he finally does hear them, he usually hates them, which is cool with us because he can approach things from a completely different point of view than any of us can really imagine.” Ward is the most recent addition to the band on bass. Parish says, “Nicholas we’ve only known for four months and we didn’t realize that we really like him as a friend until after we were on tour with him. Luckily, he turned out to be awesome and is great at making campfires, which is very useful.”
Ho-Ag isn’t a name that comes with any popular connotation, and that ability to be anything carries over to their sound. “Hopefully it comes to you with as little attached meaning as possible,” Parish says. U2 can still conjure images of Francis Gary Powers and not just Bono, but Ho-Ag gives the band the chance to create meaning so ingrained that when you think of Ho-Ag you’ll think only of this quintet. The band isn’t really too concerned with what you think when you watch them either way. “Sometimes people yell and scream because they like the song, sometimes they yell and scream because one of us fell offstage, sometimes they yell and scream because we’re taking a tuning break. Crowds generally make no sense at all to me. Instead of trying to figure them out, we generally just play what songs we feel like playing,” Parish admits. “That decision isn’t that different from deciding what clothes you’re going to wear in the morning.” --Bethany Williams
Northeast Performer Magazine May 2005
There used to be a professional wrestler back in the late ‘80s/ early ‘90s named “The Ultimate Warrior” who would run into the ring a tornado of arms and legs and face paint and so much hair. He’d shake the ring ropes maniacally to work off some initial rage, and would then run his hapless opponent over, a steamroller of muscle, adrenaline, and other chemicals. In Pray for the Worms, Ho-Ag comes running down the ramp like the Tasmanian Devil, but instead of muscled arms and legs, they let loose with a torrent of guitar madness and rhythmic frenzy the likes of which can only come from an entity that is at least partially unhinged.
Pray for the Worms sounds like something that the Joker might listen to on his iPod as he plans his latest trap for Batman. All sorts of menacing sounds and creepy intervals emanate from Ho-Ag as they ply their trade across the six quality tracks on this record. From the fits of anthemic madness on “Golden All Night” to the quietly slick madness of “I Can Hear the Planets,” Ho-Ag’s off-kilter approach is for real. There is no acting, no theatrics on this record, just a lot of musical violence; both physical and mental. There’s also this awesome deadly fat synth sound which really pokes each song along with the figurative electric cattle prod. Their most sinister turn comes in “Bat-Man vs. Dracula,” which asks all kinds of disturbing questions. How many flies are inside of a spider? How many sparrows are inside of a cat? One gets the distinct impression that Ho-Ag has intimate knowledge of these works and will share if you just follow them into this darkened laboratory, thank you very much. Enjoyably sinister, Ho-Ag’s Pray for the Worms is a thrill ride that someone may have gotten decapitated on last year, but it’s still cool enough that it’s worth a ride even if the safety harness latch seems suspect. -C.D. Di Guardia
Tastes Like Chicken May 2005
Our good friend Tyler Derryberry-- formerly of the Rancid Yak Butter Tea Party (RYBTP)-- has moved on to the wild world of the Massachusetts-based Ho-Ag, a slightly more subdued, yet tighter band. Ho-Ag is a multi-layered wall of a billion sounds, crashing and colliding until they crescendo into one huge, sheet-stained, audible orgasm. Every track on this seven-song EP pushes the vibe of the disc into a new realm, taking advantage of every creative opportunity it can. THE GRADE: A -- Wayne Chinsang
Columbus Alive May 5, 2005
Boston’s Ho-Ag returns to town, this time with new member Tyler Derryberry, formerly of the Rancid Yak Butter Tea Party (and a Columbus resident), and with a new record, the seven-song Pray for Worms EP (Hive 35). The EP shows the band has continued to warp and mutate the off-kilter rock found on their previous release, 2003’s Ho-Ag Equals Go At. With Derryberry’s keyboards (and vocals) added to the mix, the now five-piece band drafts strange frameworks for their music. The aural space of cuts like “I Can Hear the Planets” will be at turns sparsely populated by rumbling bass undercurrents and intermittent guitar squawks before being filled with keyboard bleating. Equally informed by latter-day Pere Ubu and newer wave fare like Enon, Ho-Ag blends artful execution with vitriolic get-go. The end result is both arched and playful, capable of summoning both exaltation and confusion, or something somewhere in between. —Stephen Slaybaugh
Denver Westword April 28, 2005
"How many sparrows are inside a cat?/How many cats in a man?/How long can you keep your eyes shut on the interstate?" Boston's adventurous art-punk outfit Ho-Ag asks plenty of screwball questions on its latest EP, Pray for the Worms, but offers little in the way of easy answers (not that there ever were any). Balancing out the eternal mysteries of food chains and reckless driving, however, is the band's tastefully dissonant approach to danceable trash and abstract noise. With diverse instrumentation that squeezes saw blades, mallets, wind chimes and megaphones into a tightly wound panic attack of jostling guitars and sinister Moog, Ho-Ag recalls the herky-jerky spazz of the early B-52's or Brainiacs -- that is, when they're not scoring the quiet soundtrack of a low-budget horror flick. Extending an open invitation to the earth's beheading, Ho-Ag seems as comfortable gigging in a backyard tool shed as at a Christmas-tree farm in the middle of nowhere. This Thursday they invade the 15th Street Tavern, amps blazing, ready to interrogate lovers and fighters alike in the pursuit of life's little imponderables. --John La Briola
Nashville Scene April 7, 2005
Few songs out there right now deliver the ominous and giddy thrills of Bostonian collective Ho-Ag's "Bat-Man vs. Dracula," with its jump-rope-chant-by-way-of-The Cramps vibe. Their expansive sound, in full effect on their recent Pray for the Worms EP, is a gleeful mesh of fuzzy rock, catchy lyrics and dark intent. With Eric Meyer from national treasure The Stairs on drums, the live Ho-Ag experience is brilliance thrashing frenzily on the edge of chaos, one that's been racking up accolades and confounding the unadventurous throughout the country. They play with the Juan Prophet Organization Wednesday, April 13, at Springwater. —Jason Shawhan
Copper Press April 2005
Allegedly an EP, this seven-song EP takes us quite a distance in a scant twenty-some minutes with its frenetic, don't-touch-me-I'm-a-real-live-wire pacing and imaginative, inventive songs such as "Love Them From The Hoodoo Sea" (which calls to mind Reverend Glasseye), or "Golden All Night," which may or may not be the sound of a meth freak-out inside a phone booth at midnight. All the insanity you'd expect from a band that once dressed up as Devo on Halloween night. Hardly too short, but just long enough to convince you that this is one band that's going to demand - and hold - your attention. – Jedd Beaudoin
Baltimore City Paper April 2005
Come around and get cut: Hailing from the explosively schizoid Allston-Brighton corner of Boston’s punk underbelly, Ho-Ag prays for worms at Charm City.
Smother.net April 2005
Ho-Ag / Laughinglight - Split 7" Buy it from InSound Get this on iTunes Ho-Ag writes calculated melodies that are interspersed with imaginative time signatures and half-breaks that will keep even the most avid music writer on the tips of his toes. Some would simply label it genius but that characterization is too ubiquitous for Ho-Ag's frenzied musical nightmare. Laughinglight on the flip side of the vinyl is mathematically chaotic jangles that will leave you befuddled and yet completely ecstatic. If you ever wondered what the mighty General Mike Patton listened to before recording the first two Mr. Bungle albums it might have been this had it been released earlier. Staggering to say the least. - J-Sin
KZSU Stanford University Radio March 2005
What can I say, I'm a sucker for oddball dissonant danceable angular punk rock (yes, that's a lot of adjectives). Think Murder City Devils, Birthday Party, mixed in with some Dischord bands; but despite the influences and similarities, these guys still have their own unique sound. Great strange melodies and fun rhythms, these seven songs definitely leave me wanting to hear more. Demented weirdness with horror movie imagery, and you gotta love the theremin.
THE NOISE BOSTON March 2005
When a band can reference so many influences, yet make something original and unique, it's an accomplishment and a testimony to the vision of its members. The sound of Ho-Ag's February-released CD EP is undeniably their own; it also feels like a sonic love-letter to a slew of experimental music spanning the last four decades and beyond.
"Pray for the Worms" opens with an ominous guitar riff that slinks into a devolved keyboard, then opens up into flat-out aggro pulse on "Invitation to a Beheading." An eerie melodica-based instrumental follows, leading into "Bat-Man v. Dracula," a candidate for the "horror-folk" genre, if such exists. "Golden All Night," the most immediately "catchy" song and perhaps the highlight of the CD, is a warped, cacophonous sing-along that breaks down joyously into red-line distortion. The off-kilter opus "I Can Hear the Planets" recalls the best of the mid-'70s Ohio underground scene, while the last two songs are driving, angular rave-ups leaving you wanting more.
Skewed, clever wordplay winds throughout Pray..., a conundrum of songs both tight and falling apart wonderfully in all the right places. These are five people who know what they're doing, and this CD is the kind of fractured, maniacal freak-skree that makes taking psychiatric medication a moot point. Ho-Ag's latest is a multi-platinum masterpiece in an alternate universe USA where Thomas Pynchon is an omniscient, benevolent despot, and entropy is a virtue. (Chris Pearson)
WHAT'S UP MAGAZINE March 2005
With song titles like "Invitation to a Beheading," "Bat-man v. Dracula," and my personal favorite, "How Long Can You Keep Your Eyes Shut On the Interstate?" I immediately thought these guys showed promise. The disk kicks off with a B-52s vibe, but is soon squashed by an over-driven organ and thick lurid guitar distortion. Totally impressive.
This band is quickly becoming one of the most interesting around town, experimenting with sound textures and dynamics ranging from soft and haunting acoustic melodies to all-out sonic shock, driving your speakers into fits of epileptic proportion. Just when you think you've predicted the direction in which the melody and the beats are bringing you, Ho-Ag pulls out the carpet, and there you are, on your ass. This is their finest work to date. Two hundred and nineteen stars.
THE WEEKLY DIG February 9, 2005
Last Halloween, Ho-Ag dressed up and performed as Devo. They learned the songs, bought bright yellow jumpsuits (the letters HOAG replacing the more traditional DEVO on the breast) and kicked out the spastic jams. Tyler Derryberry, Ho-Ag’s vocalist and keyboardist, explains how this decision partly stemmed from his youth, when he would sit in his room listening to Devo’s music and studying their lyrics, which, he says, “open up into their own world.” There are plenty of connectable dots from Ho-Ag back to Devo: Both bands share high-art production values that violently collide with their mutual taste for the degeneration of modern man. Devo did this by mixing the brash energy and analog warmth of punk rock with the sterilized calm and synthesized serenity of new wave. Ho-Ag takes another step after that and smashes Tom Waits’ bohemian Americana into punk’s dangerous anarchy—and, you know, sometimes a theremin and a Moog sneak their way into the mix.
If this sounds a bit confusing, it’s because it is. Ho-Ag’s songs are, on first listen, musically confounding. I saw Ho-Ag at one of Mass Art’s Iron Pour events not too far back. Outside, amidst faulty microphones; cold, glowing statues; and showers of raining ash and fire (it was an “iron pour,” after all), the boys played a spectacular set of songs filled with covert changes nestled in between noisy improvised ambience, sci-fi B-movie breakdowns, danceable thrash, pure gold punk pop, quiet chimes, fleeting bells and untold numbers of adjectives without nouns. My explanation to those who have not seen the band always ends in “enjoyment…confused enjoyment.”
When I ask Matt Parish, vocals and guitars, about the role of confusion in Ho-Ag’s music, he says he doesn’t really know if confusion is “a valid goal in art.” “There are certain responses,” he continues, “that I think are fun and notable to cause through art—like confusion and feeling like you don't know what’s going on in the song—but eventually someone will figure you out, and once they do, there better be something else that can tie the song down as meaningful and useful.” Parish is right, of course. A confusing work of art is only powerful when there’s a utility to the confusion.
This isn’t to say that Ho-Ag’s songs end in confusion—only that their mashup of sounds begins as such. Eric Meyer, Ho-Ag’s drummer, points to their new EP to show how their songs have become more concrete, both for them and their audience. Titled Pray for the Worms, the EP was recorded and produced by the band in what could be called an additive process. While some members were away, others worked; parts of formerly excluded songs were assigned new purposes to help unify the album; and as personal ideas became more apparent, the rest of the band shifted in accordance. (Patrick Kim, lead guitarist, remembers that as he recorded his part, the other members gasped and exclaimed, “That’s what you’re playing?!”) And then, of course, there was the wall of lyrics.
Derryberry tells me of walking into Parish’s bedroom and seeing the wall covered in sheets of paper and Post-It notes with scribbles of lyrics on them. And as the music began to take shape, the scribbles turned into pictures—Derryberry, who painted the EP’s cover, describes the eventual finalization of the lyrics in terms of visual art: “While you’re painting, you see that you have red in one corner, so you have to put red in another [corner] for balance; in the lyrics, we would look and say, ‘Oh! Here’s something about cars. We need something about cars in this corner, too.’”
The EP, Parish says, is lyrically “about things being destroyed and some people using the destruction as a means of exercising power over other people or things.” In various songs, we see a man frightened to leave his burning building, technology unable to keep folks from killing each other, and the end of the world and how humans weren’t even there to cause it. All this imagery disturbs, but, delivered in almost nursery rhyme meter, ends up calming the listener.
It’s here where I begin to see the subtlety in Ho-Ag’s puzzling music. As their quick left turns from Waits-esque storytelling to Brainiac-style barn-burners and becomes more familiar, a huge and stylized world opens up within their music and the lyrics. In Parish’s words, “I feel like a lot of the art is in the process and results of the process; kind of like architecture, no matter how much you know about how they did it, sometimes you just stare at some ridiculous achievement over and over again.” Ho-Ag stared at Devo, and we get to stare at Ho-Ag.
THE NOISE BOSTON March 2005
Ho-Ag are celebrating three milestones tonight: the release of their new EP, their last show with Dave Dines as their bassist, and their first show with a new bassist, Nicholas Ward. Any one of these would suffice to draw the Ho-Ag faithful; together, they have the room sold out full of screaming lunatics. The band were apparently born to deal with superstardom, as they seem entirely unfazed by the now-familiar chanting of the crowd, by the enthusiastic moshers knocking over pieces of equipment on the stage, by the blood streaming down Matt's face at the end of the set. They synthesize all the elements of all the bands that played tonight: the tunefulness and weirdness, the virtuoso guitars and freaky electronic bleeps and blips, the pretty and the pummeling, the singing and the screaming. The new bassist plays the first half of the set, and then Dave comes on to finish up with them. Both of them are phenomenal, but then everyone in this band is, and needs to be. The music, as written, is so close to being a mess that it wouldn't work if it were performed less than perfectly. It works. (Steve Gisselbrecht)
THE BOSTON PHOENIX November 5, 2004
On the Friday before Halloween, the Providence electro duo Mahi Mahi were the second act to squish onto a tiny plywood platform flanked by buckets of fire in the courtyard of Massachusetts College of Art. As the group's robotic tummy rumbles echoed through the square, a lava-like liquid poured down chutes that ended in jack-o'-lanterns, creating the spectacle of carved pumpkins spitting liquid flame. By that pint, the courtyard resembled an infernal apocalypse: flames shot up from a handful of furnaces stationed around the grassy quad, and students dressed as skeletons scurried about in shielded helmets, safety gloves, and protective suits tending to each blaze. Inside, Robert Pinsky and friends were to read from his translation of Dante's Inferno, but this was MassArt's annual Iron Pour, a student-run spectacle in which art-school metalsmiths cast molten metal into sculptures while local bands provide the background noise.
"There's no adult supervision here," noted one adult spectator who seemed more amused than concerned as sparks rained down on Mahi Mahi keyboardist/vocalist Josh Kemp's white spacesuit. But two firemen materialized during Ho-Ag's set when a cylindrical cupola's bottom collapsed; molten liquid dribbled onto the ground and a thick cloud of white smoke engulfed the band. Fighting not only steam but sound problems, the local art punks covered Devo's "Girl U Want and "Uncontrollable Urge." (The following night, their full-on Devo tribute set sold out O'Brien's in Allston). Just as headliners Fat Day climged onto the makeshift stage, the flames were extinguished--suddenly, everyone smelled like a campfire, and there was barely time left for the band to play.
THE NOISE 11/04
Ho-Ag take us back to the noise. They are not shooting for pretty songs with really good vocals, which is a damn good thing when the PA cuts out completely and we have no vocals at all. (It's an even better thing that they have a megaphone on stage, that they were using to scream into the mics; they just sing through the megaphone until the PA is working again, which has the extra advantage of freeing Matt to wander through the audience.) Ho-Ag's music is loud and jumpy and noisy, with a whole lot of sudden rhythmic breaks and shifts. The guitar parts are jarring, while the keyboard player tends to use these really synthy patches that sound very odd with the rest of the band, and help to balance all the distorted guitar sludge. I like balance. I must also mention the keyboard player's outfit, a torn bit of the top of a Spiderman costume, and tight red briefs. It's ... striking.
THE NOISE August 2004
Ho-Ag start their set in a new configuration they seem to be calling "Ho-Ag Panic Band." The regular drummer is offstage, and the keyboard player is playing a reduced drum kit. They play a few songs this way, and they are, for the most part, punkier and simpler than regular Ho-Ag songs. Not simple, mind you, but simpler. There are some extreme technical difficulties getting all the many PA systems here tonight to talk to one another, and a dead guitar, but Matt soldiers on with a five-stringed six-string. Then their regular drummer takes the stage, and they revert to the high-performance precision brutality of a regular Ho-Ag show. They even sort of sing a bit, and the guitars are gorgeous, with the keyboard adding sweet accents. Best of all, for me at least, there is a two-drummer song, with unison and interplay sections; there's nothing I love like more drums!
THE NOISE 4/04
Ho-Ag are probably not used to being the straightforward, melodic band on the bill, but there it is. They mostly stick to threes and fours, go twelve whole measures without changing the tempo at all, and the vocalist even sings a bit! (Though more often than not, he's shouting the lyrics in an odd sort of nuanced way that I like a lot, especially when the new keyboardist shouts "harmony".) Not that they're really all that straightforward; there are still lots of time and tempo changes, and some crazy-great squealing distortion solos on guitar. The keyboardist adds cute little accents in a sort of beeping, sci-fi, futuristic-in-1980 patch that actually works well here and makes the songs seem a lot more song-like. And he plays a mean theremin, too.
THE WEEKLY DIG 3/23/04
Dear dissonance and noise lover: I would like to invite you to a promisingly loud and lyrically abstract show. Dear talent-appreciating, camouflaged melody hunter, you should come too. Mister Records' Ho-Ag is playing on Tuesday, March 16th at TT the Bears (if you haven't heard that Wolf Eyes is headlining, today is your lucky day). After last year's tour in support of their Ho Ag Equals Go At debut, and after temporarily borrowing another band's drummer (hint: drummers be suave, you might score an audition), Ho-Ag are ready to unleash their chaotic fusion of Melvins, Birthday Party and bipolar tweak effects. In addition, be prepared for a 7" coming out in the spring. This show might just be the equivalent to super fun car-burning riot. Nobody will actually be in the cars, of course, but you still have no excuse for missing it. Big Bear opens. -Astrid Harders
KZSU Stanford University Online November 2003
Now what we have here is some good solid strange rock that goes angular and dissonant, even dark-twangy at times, and uses noise tastefully. Itches my Scratch Acid plus all that's "noisy rock". Goes from the Birthday Party to Swans to Trans Am in a heartbeat. Dig it! (Your Imaginary Friend)
Punk Planet November/December 2003
This is just weird. Mathy sounding rock with lots of weird effects on the guitars and--sometimes--the vocals too. These guys are obviously very talented, and I can definitely see Touch and Go releasing something like this. Strange lyrics about a "brotherhood casserole" and "watermelon roaches." Interesting at least. (Krystle Miller)
The Noise(Boston) October 2003
Ho-Ag just came back from a two week tour and you can hear it--their songs are instinctual to them. Their songs are closely knit and multi-faceted, like four-minute suites, and are so catchy that you walk away singing them although they are like a complex equation. Matt Parish, their singer and lead guitarist, slings his forearm over the mic like he's your next door neighbor just having a chat over the fence and he's not actually singing these sharp, surrealist melodies. Patrick Kim is supposed to be their thythm guitarist, I guess, but he plays effects so they sound like a compromise between keyboards and guitar; they occupy a space that no other sound will fit. Top that off with the rumbling bass of Dave Dines and the drumming finesse of Jon Ruhe and you're never disappointed. Ever. (Donna Parker)
Columbus Alive August 7, 2003
This show pairs two eccentric outfits from Boston, Ho-Ag (which features a couple Ohio ex-pats) and Neptune, who've both released records on the Jamaica Plain-based Mister Records label.
Of the two, Ho-Ag perhaps more closely resembles a traditional rock band, utilizing standard-issue guitars, bass and drums. But the music they make with them is certainly somewhat left-of-field, a jostling blend of skronk noises and warped sounds. On its debut, Ho Ag Equals Go At, the band spews out an off-balance charge of invigorated rock that at once seems primal and modernly demented, the kinda stuff that tastes good and is good for you too.
Neptune, on the other hand, plays instruments as unique as the music they make with them. Guitarist Jason Sanford creates the band's tools out of scrap metal, saw blades, gas tanks, oil drums and bicycle parts. The resulting output, as evidenced on the group's latest, The Ballet of Process, is as jagged and roughshod as one might expect to emanate from such implements, a sharp-edged racket buoyed by Sanford and guitarist/bassist Chris Huggins' caterwauls. --Stephen Slaybaugh
Boston Herald June 15, 2003
HO AG "Equals Go At" (Mister)
PINK AND BROWN "Shame Fantasty II" (Load)
In music, noise can be a double-edged sword. It can charge you up or it can drive you right out the door of the club. Within the world of noise-rock, local grinders Ho Ag and now-defunct Pink And Brown have found a way to balance aggression and emotion by thrashing away with purpose.
Like sonic brothers Lightning Bolt, Pink And Brown forgoes any decipherable vocals on driving compositions with such names as ``Messy Bessy, Get Undressy'' and ``Prison In My Eye.'' The songs barrel straight at you and grab hold as tight as a python. Rarely have guitar and drums packed such a sonic punch.
Ho Ag sculpts and harnesses its sound a bit more, employing a guitar attack reminiscent of the Dead Kennedys' unjustly forgotten axman East Bay Ray. The band is loud as hell, too, but there's a back-and-forth between intense peaks and tension-building valleys.
Lyrically, abstraction wins over linear thought. All the better for Ho Ag. Normalcy is overrated anyway. Ho Ag plays Tuesday at the Middle East, Cambridge. (BRIAN COLEMAN)
Northeast Performer June 2003
"Ho-Ag wins the award for 'Most Ambitious Rock Song' with their tune entitled 'By Rum, By Gum.'" (Ramsey Tantawi)
The Boston Phoenix May 1, 2003
"Yet another schizoid dispatch from Boston's zaniest label, Mr. Records, is unleashed tonight with the release of Ho-Ag's Ho Ag Equals Go at. A frightwig cacophony of thrash skronk, treble squall, and art-punk murder ballad, the disc is hereby recommended to fans of the Birthday Party, Earth A.D.-era Misfits, and the Bulb/Load frag-metal axis." (Carly Carioli)
Wormtown.org December 2002
HOAG "THE METEOR IS A DECOY"
Yo' it's psychedelic. Whaddaya mean psychedelic? Do you mean like the Grateful Dead and Phish - or do you mean like the Velvet Underground or Butthole Surfers? In this case more like VU and BHS. Pretty twisted stuff kids. The opener "3/ 9/ 27" starts with a math rock stop start instrumental ala Shellac, but with crazed distorted vocals along the lines of Iggy Pop. Guitarist/ vocalist Matt Parish is definitely going for the soft whisper into full on bizzaro vocal effects and is able to pull it of with a lo-fi approach, done in the bands basement or practice space I'm guessing. More kindred spirits with Ministry, The Cramps, or GVSB then any pop or psychedelic band.
Musically, the band offers a mix of Talking Heads like minimalism, psychedelic grandiosity along the lines of the Flaming Lips and that's just in the fist song. The band slip into a subtly trippy waltz in "The Big Position" where high strings (mandolins?/ violins?) mix with a stomping boot sounds to give it German beer hall ambiance before it breaks off into a rock and roll ending. Comparisons? Anyone remember the Inflatable Boy Clams? "Montezuma" starts with a subtle high toned, Pink Floyd like beginning with Parrish bringing out a Radiohead like moan. It's a wee bit sedate and at 5 and * minutes, goes on a bit too long.
While the bulk of the record is pretty experimental and more headphone music than party music, rockers like the fast moving "Brainthing" and "No Careful On" liven things up. "No Careful On" gets closest to Wormtown's garage sound, with a galloping rock jam and spazz out vocals. The finale, "Maine" is quiet enough that you'll need to crank your stereo to catch its subtleties and David Byrne like vocalizing. Weirdness is key on this record. HOAG has two kinds of songs, kind of fucked up tunes and really fucked up tunes. It's straight to the Captain PJ bin for these guys. (Phil McNamara)
Punk Planet (November/December 2002)
Ho-Ag: The Meteor Is A Decoy
Noisy, jangly, spastic thud rock. I don't think the Melvins would dig this, but they may think it has promise. What am I doing speaking for the Melvins? (Dana Morse)
The Noise (Boston, September 2002)
HO-AG: The Meteor is a Decoy
Noisy, spaced out art-damaged psychedelic math punk isn't the sound one typically associates with Boston, but fortunately bands like Ho-Ag and their like-minded compatriots Liquor Tricks, Cokedealer, Neptune, Officer May, and Human Shield are creating an Amphetamine Reptile / Alternative Tentacles-inspired scene in town, and they're doing it very well. A standout track from The Meteor... entitled "Brainthing" sounds like In Utero-era Nirvana discovering James Brown's sex beat rhythms while jamming on Ministry's "Jesus Built My Hotrod." The following track, "No Careful On," fuses Anthrax's lighthearted approach to thrash with a funky groove and a Butthole Surfers-style vocal delivery. Trying to pin an accurate description on a sound as singular as Ho-Ag's is an exercise in pointlessness and different things will be heard by different listeners, but fans of the Pere Ubu/ Fantomas/ Captain Beefheart/ Halo of Flies aesthetic and anyone with a musically adventurous ear is highly advised to give this disc a spin. (Mike Baldino)
The Noise (Boston, December 2001)
"This noisy, self-proclaimed "art-trash" four-piece cleverly melds lo-fi punk with slacker attitude, metal grit, amd trippy avant guarde. Picture a garage version of Count Zero mixed with sludge of The Melvins, the vocal madness of the Butthole Surfers, the random bursts of Naked City, and the surf-abilly of 8-Ball Shifter, and you might crack the surface of this band's demon possessor. Ho-Ag is disturbing, yet strangely compelling. Their drummer refers to this kind of music as "pain-in- the-ass-core." Make more soon! E-mail: ho-ag@hotmail.com (Joel Simches)"
