4 out of 5

Label: Hex Records

Produced by: Various (Haunted Horses); Max Senna (Facet; recorded by)

Didn’t Haunted Horses just put out an album? What is this mystical world that gifts me with a followup so soon after? Ah, okay, it’s some B-sides, I guess that solves that, and who are these Facet cats…?

Answer: Facet – actually ducks, not cats – are a band I clearly should’ve been listening to already, alongside Haunted Horses.

So, yes: this is a split between two heavy duty rockers, with HH’s material honestly a bit of a mixed bag, but the new Facet tracks kill, ante-ing up their post-Quicksand melodic hardcore by not taking the easy out into emo, and instead maintaining the melody but layering even harder punk metal on top. Staying with their side of the LP for a moment, the vocals here have an early Young Widows taint – a shouted earnestness – but an emphasis on keeping the lyrics clear curbs things from being an all-out assault, mirrored by the group’s ability to push and pull on their sound, swaying with aforementioned melody while keeping the pedal on volume. Max Senna’s recording of the material allows this push-pull to do something rare: Facet is never not aggressive, really, but climaxes of songs always achieve an extra level above an established baseline, getting more noise or weight out of thin air. And it’s not just achieved by screaming or layering more guitars, rather playing with tempo smartly, and saving the bursts for when they really matter.

Facet’s lyrics are a great example of balancing vagueness with clear intention; some simple eff yous with poetry – the lyric sheet is short and sweet, and you can make your own story out of some of the lines. That said, it’s maybe a little too vague, with some references seeming like you gotta know who’s being talked about to get it, but, man, it all sounds good when being bellowed atop the band’s riffs.

Over on the Horses’ side, we get an opening track from Dweller sessions, an alternate take from Dead Meat (that sounds… not too alternate to me), and three tracks from around 2022, one of which is an ambient interlude. The Dweller track is a solid one, and maybe a bit less glossy than I found that album to be – it could’ve gone with the ’22 era tracks, so it’s smartly bundled here, but the sequencing fusses with stuff, as the song has the exact same base beat as the followup Dead Meat track, and then that interlude follows, which really just doesn’t fit here, not flowing from or to its bookends, and it’s not significant enough on its own to merit relistens. (It would be better as maybe an intro or outro to an album.) The remaining two songs land hard, though, executing peak industrial menace the way Horses have come to master.

So there are 3 out of 5 HH songs here worth tracking down, but the better end-to-end experience are the Facet tunes on the B-side.