HOLLER HOUSE: LODGE

Music | April 14th, 2016

By Ben Rheault

Don’t ask Holler House for a sheet of lyrics because you are writing a review of their first full-length album, “Lodge.” You will only receive a PDF file of a dozen or so abstract, geometric designs that remind you of those brain-teaser puzzles you used to get from your grandma for Christmas.

Not to say that Garth Blomberg, Mike Novak, Alan Erbach, and Tony Spaaij deem their lyrics unimportant. Instead, they take the approach that the listener should derive meaning from what they can discern for themselves through the layers of feedback and effects without being dictated as to the meaning. The titles themselves are cryptic one word hints. If we’ve learned anything from good art, it is that meaning shouldn’t be too easy to find.

Secrecy and the created visual symbols Holler House employs establish an egalitarian ground zero for what they create. The music is raw, loud, and dynamic. It pulses along, picking up where Fugazi left off as the moral compass for the disaffected.

Coming out of hardcore punk rebelliousness, these gentlemen have cultivated a sound that reflects universal concerns without casting aside the anti-authority punch that draws kids to punk in the first place.

Older and wiser, Holler House brings to the surface the built-up anger that is hidden beneath the thin layer of compliance the vast majority of people in this country are working under. Awash in layers of distortion and the furious howl of lyrics is the cohesive theme of general disgust with pretending to be happy in a system bent on keeping the working classes from achieving the success they deserve. They absorb the cultural climate like a sponge and wring it back out soaked in frustration and feedback. “The rest are left to die counting hours in the day,” a lyric from the track Alone speaks to the sense of frustration many of us feel every day when we punch that clock.

It is a welcome relief to know that there are still people in my peer group that haven’t become complacent. If Bernie Sanders were a post-punk band, he would probably sound something like Holler House. In the band’s own words, “We’re angry, we’re loud, we’re dying, and we refuse to accept the status quo.”

“Lodge,” will be available to the public for purchase and streaming on the Holler House bandcamp page, hollerhouse.bandcamp.com starting this Friday. Then in May they will put together a download package that includes the digital download of the album along with a zine and a patch.

IF YOU GO

The Birthday Suits, Chinchees,What Kingswood Needs, and Holler House

Sat. April 17,10 p.m.

The Aquarium above Dempsey’s 226 Broadway, Fargo

21+

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