Sugar Horse
Not a Sound in Heaven
FAT DRACULA
Sugar Horse are very much a band of this moment, and not just in the sense that they’re one of a dozen equinely named artists releasing a new album this spring. The quartet feel primed to exceed the buzz they’ve achieved in their native UK nearly as much as their third album Not a Sound in Heaven seems guaranteed to reach an audience beyond the often-sealed doors of metal; the record’s impossibly heavy feel is just as much honed to appeal to the ever-growing shoegaze contingent in a post–private music landscape, while vocalist Ash Tubb’s wails are far from the shrieks and growls that tend to make metal’s crossover success a rarity. Even the soft pink and green shadings on the album cover and the saccharine artist name within them feel strangely inviting of a general audience. If you’ll forgive the pun, they’re truly the dark horses among the herd of “horse” bands once again overtaking release-week playlists.
Which is all to say that the aesthetically pleasing artwork is still quite misleading for one of the doomiest, sludgiest noise-rock records I’ve heard in quite some time, landing somewhere between Gilla Band and Chat Pile if either band could manage to hold it together through the turbulent year 2026 has already proven to be. Like many of the most interesting albums within any subgenre of metal, the band genuinely seems to be convinced that it’s dance music. While it may be their “most pop” record to date, as Tubb put it in the record’s bio, that mostly just translates to the experimental sounds the band incorporates into the mix before distorting them into ugly shapes or drowning them out entirely—just look at the second track, “Secret Speech,” which opens with a distant electronic beat that dares us to turn up the speakers before we’re bludgeoned with a wall of deafening sludge-metal riffs. The cleaner sound heard on this outing in comparison to its predecessors helps to distinguish this sense of contrast, as the 10-minute “History’s Biggest T-Shirt” very nearly begins as a new wave track that suits Tubb’s singing voice and later opens up into an extended passage of ambient sound, with both moments followed by pounding industrial metal and screamo vocals.
Also like many of the most interesting metal albums of our time, Not a Sound in Heaven is primarily fueled by the “great crimes of the American Empire in the 20th century,” per the press materials’ citation of William Blum’s 1995 book on CIA interventionism Killing Hope as a primary influence on opener “Fire Graphics.” Tubb specifically calls out Western media’s core mission to humanize anyone deemed allies and to label our supposed enemies as animals—a point that couldn’t have been more prescient for the album’s release week, as the US President continues to threaten the annihilation of entire civilizations in a moment that will, incidentally, forever mar the reputation of the Easter bunny. Sugar Horse seem to be intervening here themselves with a Trojan-Horse release imploring listeners to push the boundaries of their listening habits at a time when we should all be raising our voices a little more.
