Friday Fhtagn: The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets

For today’s Friday Fhtagn, I wanted to share a band that I’ve just recently discovered, The Darkest of Hillside Thickets.  Characterized as “horror rock”, “geek rock” and even “nerdcore”, they blend jam rock, punk rock and some pretty phenomenal licks into an excellent array of story telling and music in their themed albums.

Purposefully campy and fun, they create conceptual albums that revolve around the stories, places and creatures of the Lovecraft Mythos, they weave their own irreverent and creative sounds that mimic the madness and creative dissonance that the stories themselves evoke.  While this, at first, may sound odd and slightly disturbing, I cannot help but smile through the entire album.

They have three albums out:

“The Great Old Ones“, released in 2004, have tracks such as, Jimmy the Squid, Big Robot Dinosaur and Yog-Sothoth, the guitar heavy tracks really sound like they translate to a live show amazingly well.

Their second album, “Cthulhu Strikes Back” has brilliant, well written and head-bangingly awesome songs like “Yig Snake Daddy” and “Shoggoths Away”, probably two of my favorite tracks.

Their third and latest album, “The Shadow Out of Tim” is probably their best to date, most inspired and most musically mature album so far.  Using their songs as chapters to relay H.P. Lovecraft’s story, “The Shadow Out of Time“, for me the songs that really stand out to me were “Marine Biologist” and “Blackout”.  The epilogue track, “Nyarlathotep” is sang in middle Egyptian, which is just too damn cool.  I’ve just downloaded these songs, and they’re in my collection now.  It’s a fun diversion of music, with just the right amount of edgy, punky, grungy music, well written lyrics and numerous references to Lovecraft’s stories that will make the most well-read Lovecraftian fan-boy squeal with delight.

It’s an absolutely fun experience with guys that are very talented.  I just hope that sometime, I’m lucky enough that they’ll do a show within driving distance in the not too distant future.

Lastly, here’s a video of one of their songs.  How much fun is this?  They’re also on Myspace.  Check them out.

Again, until next week… Ia! Ia!

Friday Fhtagn: The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets