The Hellhounds are back. Inspired by futuristic art, steampunk, the DADA movement, and noisy blues, ‘Throttlebender NM4’ is the sixth song of the album Gunblade Blues Volume II which had its first half released in 2017.
DANTE HH was hoping to release the whole album by the end of 2017, but fate interfered: the band (originally from Colombia) got booked for a tour in the US during the summer of that same year proving to be successful enough to allow them to move permanently to the country. The band’s roads have taken them from playing famous venues like the Viper Room and the Rainbow bar and grill in Hollywood, backyard parties in East Los Angeles, all the way to towns of northern California like Red Bluff, Redding and Chico to great success. It would be fair to say it’s been a busy time for the band since the last release. However, the time to release the rest of the album has finally come.
First track released as of May of 2018 is the track ‘Throttlebender NM4’. And a fast-paced, mean , unapologetic machine it is. The track, is being referred as the ‘most experimental’ track of the album by the band’s members. ‘It was an old track Gonzo has brought around 2014 to the band all complete in instrumentals’ says Kami lead singer of the band, ‘when we started playing it at the rehearsal room, nobody knew what to call it, so our then bass player Carlos Cortes (who recorded the bass on the album) called it Nascar as it reminded him of the nascar video game of racing cars. And so it was called that as a working title for most of its early existence’.
‘For ‘Throttlebender NM4 I figured I’d use something related to Nascar as to not drift away from the song’s personality’, recounts Kami ‘ so I used the futurists manifesto (19th century art movement that glorified violence, technology and war), a gundam wing script (a japanese animation show about intergalactic robot wars) and a race car manual from the 70s to do the lyrics, I used the cut up method which a lot of artists from the Dada movement to David Bowie used in the past, which is very experimental’. For the video, the band called upon the talents of an old friend and partner in past lyric videos, Oscar Gamboa. ‘The process of making the video lasted about five months.’ says Oscar ‘ we agreed that for this one we’d work on a mix between lyric video and animation. Just as it was with the song where there was a mixture of the elements that inspired the lyrics, and also a mix of techniques where I mixed 3d, 2d and motion graphics. The video’s composition has three storylines in the same universe, but there are no end lines to them and it’s open ended, its but a fragment of what’s going on and its left open for interpretation.’
‘Throttlebender NM4’ is available at all major streaming platforms, and its animated lyric video can be found in the band’s youtube and facebook. Don’t forget to join the Hellhounds headquarters at www.dantehh.com.
