The Angry Host Doom Metal / Co. Monaghan

Biography from Freak Flag Records…

The Angry Host formed in 2005 after we had spent a few months playing covers by the likes of Pentagram, Dust, Necromandus, Groundhogs etc and passing ourselves off as a ‘blues rock/soul band to get gigs. It was deeply amusing to be playing doom to angry farmers in irish country towns.

After a while though, the covers just weren’t giving us the buzz and we started getting our own stuff sorted out. Musically, our influences were all over the place but we all agreed on the darker 70s stuff and Sabbath in particular. We never set out to be a straight up doom outfit. It really was just a bunch of riffs arranged usually under the influence in between listening to a stream of obscure albums coming from The Freak Emporium(RIP) every week. Classic doom like Saint Vitus, The Obsessed, Electric Wizard were also huge influences. Lyrical concerns were largely alcoholism, drugs, self-made misery and men who find out they are part-ape and burn themselves alive on moorland.

In January 2006 we went into Komodo studios to record 9 tracks. We did them live and kept coming back over the coming months when we had cash to add bits and pieces of oddness/overdubs. By the summer the lyrical concerns had become all too real and the Host ground to an ugly, desperate halt. The recording went into sock drawers and other dark recesses in the couple of houses that had a copy and that was that.

Early 2013 I got an email from Gary at Freak Flag Recordings about the possibility of issuing the album on vinyl. I was shocked but told him to go ahead and after help from Alwyn and Darrell at Komodo and being re-mastered by James Plotkin, the coffin lid has finally creaked open.

I’d love to say its on a par with some of the great relics we used to cover but it is what it is. Four young fuckers in a shed in the Irish sticks playing their take on doomy rock. Sometimes sloppy or trying too hard, i can smell cheap wine when I listen to it, but it has heart and a few great moments in there and we’re all still around to hear the needle on the wax. Not angry anymore, just mildly irate

~ Francis (The Angry Host)