Blackrats King Of Monsters/Horrorbilly For Hire is the Halifax, Nova Scotia band’s SPLATTERHOUSE Records release, combining the psychobilly and rockabilly genres with horror themes in the way that the best bands in this tradition have always done: with commitment to the sound rather than commitment to the aesthetic as an end in itself.
The Band
Blackrats formed in Halifax, Nova Scotia and built their approach on the psychobilly and rockabilly tradition while moving the genre forward on their own terms. Halifax has a long history of producing underground bands who operate outside the major market centers and develop sounds accordingly: less pressure to conform to whatever the current trend is, more room to work out what they actually want to sound like over time. Blackrats are described as keeping their musical sensibilities firmly rooted in the genre while extending it, which means they understood what made psychobilly work before they started adding their own elements to the formula. That order of operations matters.
Blackrats King Of Monsters/Horrorbilly For Hire: The Psychobilly Tradition
Psychobilly combined rockabilly’s instrumentation and rhythmic drive with punk energy and horror imagery starting in the early 1980s. The Cramps were the American axis of this combination. The Meteors developed it in the UK. The tradition has maintained a specific underground scene for forty years because the genre rewards people who take both the rockabilly craft and the horror aesthetic seriously rather than treating either as decoration added to attract attention. SPLATTERHOUSE Records is a label that understands this context and releases specifically for the audience that does too. The name is not accidental.
For Collectors
King Of Monsters/Horrorbilly For Hire on SPLATTERHOUSE is the correct label home for this kind of release. The combination disc format gives collectors both sides of Blackrats’ catalog statement in one place, which is how SPLATTERHOUSE chooses to present material that functions as a double document of what the band does. If you collect psychobilly and horror rockabilly or follow Canadian underground rock from the Atlantic provinces, Blackrats are a band working in this tradition with genuine investment and the catalog to show it. SPLATTERHOUSE’s name is not accidental. The label understands its catalog and its audience, and Blackrats belong in both without reservation or qualification. Forty years into the psychobilly tradition, a band like Blackrats operating at this level demonstrates that the genre’s original logic still holds. SPLATTERHOUSE understood that and pressed accordingly.
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