After seven years of sporadic shows, the under-appreciated British ensemble Chrome Hoof has attracted a small, devoted, cult fan base. The group has more than a dozen members who, until recently, performed alongside a blue, twelve-foot-tall mechanical ram while wearing hooded silver robes. After performing at the Tapestry Festival in Wales last year, the band marched up a hill playing acoustic instruments, and then promptly set the horned figure on fire in a pagan effigy.
“The ram got an ego,” joked Milo Smee, the band’s drummer.
There’s nothing sinister behind those silver hoods. The real cultish aspect to Chrome Hoof is how the band’s exotic metal-freak-funk fusion and ritualistic stage show inspires belief in an over-the-top brand of live performance. When the theatricality of rock gets as much attention as the sound, it’s dismissed as gimmicky. Yet as Chrome Hoof attempts to prove with upcoming performances and its recently released album Pre-Emptive False Rapture, there’s nothing wrong with a concept if it’s done right. In this case, that means continually experimenting to find out how grandiose one can get on a small budget.
“It’s like a film rather than a painting,” said Smee of blending the band’s music with choreographed on-stage antics. “Hearing us while seeing the stage show gives you a more complete affect. If you spend more time on the visuals, it gives the audience more to absorb. It makes for a more intense experience.”
The group elicits plenty of Sun Ra comparisons, and there is a fitting amount of fate and cosmic philosophy in the band’s backstory. Chrome Hoof grew out of jam sessions between the Smee brothers: Milo, who plays drums and produces dance music under aliases such as Kruton and 5 Mic Cluster, and Leo, who plays bass for doom-metal group Cathedral. While growing up in a village in Essex, there was a bit of sibling tension that kept them apart early on. But as Milo says, “it seemed ridiculous having a rhythm section at home and not playing.”
When the brothers began jamming together—both coincidentally are left-handed but play right-handed—their musical backgrounds gelled. Milo’s rhythmic pulses and experiments with overlapping time signatures sat comfortably alongside Leo’s dark, heavy riffs. Milo’s interest in exotic topics became a source of inspiration for the group’s warped lyrics.
“Society is so dumbed down at the moment and no one has the time to look up at the skyline and see what’s out there,” he said. “Metaphysics and stuff like that, that’s what interests me—things that warp your mind a little bit. I’m certainly not religious, but I believe there’s more going on than what we see in our day-today-lives.”
Chrome Hoof’s first show was in 2000 in a small town called Hamden. It was a small, simple affair, an unadorned trio working through a few songs. As much as the current stage show seems like a preconceived gimmick, the performance end of the group was an organic reaction to the band’s early circumstances. Lacking a frontman in the beginning, hoods were quickly utilized as costumes to provide good visuals and entertain the crowd.
“Also, if you had those hoods up when equipment went wrong,” said Milo, “it was protection. Half something to hide behind, half visually cool.”
Early gigs, and the few DIY releases that eked out, have won the group some highly regarded fans. DJ/producer Andrew Weatherall has praised them, The Klaxons asked them to open a recent tour, and Sunn O))) requested their presence during the duo’s 2004 US Tour. Pre-Emptive False Rapture, their first album on Southern Records, is the first real document of what the band sounds like.
The group is now comprised of about twenty rotating members, including a string section and horn players, and the sound has become suitably far-flung, bouncing between funky and freaky. Lyrical piano passages sit next to chugging riffs and throaty metal growls from a trio of singers. Frontwoman of sorts Lola Olafisoye, who joined the group a year ago, lends a voice with enough brashness to command attention amidst the on-stage chaos. With a wicked, regal delivery, she’s a fitting high priestess for the processional.
A shotgun wedding of styles, Chrome Hoof plays everything up for full dramatic effect. Many songs grew out of extended jam sessions, so despite being eclectic, the band stays grounded to a solid groove. Dark, moody passages, like the massive synthesized organ chords at the onset of “Circus 9000,” or delicate piano and string motifs give way to rumbling melodies and coarse lyrics. Leo Smee provides uncharacteristically elastic slap bass lines, and an upbeat horn section often launches into fits of squawking. It’s over the top and on beat.
As the band looks toward future shows, where new monks robes and the replacement for the ram will be introduced, it’s appropriate they don’t forget the aspect of their performance that makes them appealing in the first place.
“We’re not deadly serious,” said Milo. “Being serious and having fun aren’t oxymorons, as much as people think they are polar opposites.”
-Patrick Sisson
Chrome Hoof: www.myspace.com/chromehoof
Souther Records: www.southern.net