Because the whole point of rock and roll is joy: not the canned joy of the sort we’ll be force fed from now through the end of the Christmas season -- longer, if, as many of us suspect, “War Against Terror” means “War Until My Approval Rating Looks Like My Dad’s Did During the Gulf War” -- but the raw, naked, sexually charged, almost intolerable sort of joy that makes young men take tight corners at high speeds and almost immobilizes the young women riding shotgun in the same cars when the wind laps at their faces. The feedback whines and threatens to roar and the ride cymbal breaks like a freshly crested wave; the chords get more and more impressive for four songs and then we’re gone. Twenty minutes of riding the clutch down a mountain in a rainstorm. Joy. Filthy, raw, earth-scorching joy. Not good times and great oldies. Not special music for special times. Bloody, spittle-spraying joy. This is what Horna finds coursing through their fingers when working on the smaller EP scale. Any bands in other genres that want to play ball should hear what four Finnish guys in leather and corpse makeup came up with when their time was limited. It is a wonder to behold.
