What Hot Water Music has done with Exister is unbelievable. Eight years ago, when they released The New What Next, the band hit an all-time high as songs like “My Little Monkey Wrench,” “Ink And Lead” and “There Are Already Roses” saw their fanbase swell (again – 2002's Caution achieved this feat too) with a mix of new, very excited fans and long-time supporters who returned to the fold proudly. The album was celebrated by the press and the tours on which the band embarked reflected that; they were suddenly lucrative affairs. Everything seemed to be going well and excitement ran high among fans to see what would come next. They waited eagerly to the band to issue their next great new thing…
And they waited…
…And finally they gave up, ruefully. Outside of the odd tour, Hot Water Music seemed to grind to a halt creatively. The band's members picked up side projects; singer/guitarist Chuck Ragan turned to folk music and helped to inspire a renewed interest in the music while guitarist/singer Chris Wollard got into The Draft, bassist Jason Black started in with Senses Fail and drummer George Rebelo joined Against Me! for a while. Time marched on and the possibility of a new Hot Water Music became increasingly remote, until 2011 – seven years after The New What Next came out – when the news came through that HWM was back in the studio.
Fans were elated at the announcement, but they had no idea what to expect. Seven years is a long time, after all, and the band members had gone musically to the four winds so the questions of what this new music would sound like and how much it might reflect the group's downtime were valid.
From the moment “Mainline” saws Exister open, fans will realize how foolish they were to doubt Hot Water Music.
As far as the members of Hot Water Music may have ventured from the band's established sound since the beginning of the band's hiatus, they seem to just smoothly and easily fall back into it here but, even more than that, the sound is presented as though it has been building and churning in the band's members for most of their time away. “Mainline” just explodes to open Exister, and the sound is instantly infectious; the members of Hot Water Music seem to relish in the return as they play loud, hard, fast and like they have something to prove. All four members of the band play like their lives depend on it with the volume cranked right back up to where it should be – at eleven – and Ragan sounding as though he went so far as to gargle with battery acid before the tapes rolled to make sure his bark was just authoritative enough. The results are the most vivid and captivating performance put forward by Hot Water Music since even before The New What Next; it is hard, real, raw and ambitious – and it's only the first track of the album which means the bar is set high.
With the standard set and listeners' attention already held, Hot Water Music just dives nose-first into “Boy You're Gonna Hurt Someone” and “State Of Grace” with the same kind of reckless abandon as that expressed in “Mainline,” just to prove it wasn't a fluke. In each case, Rebelo sets a frenetic tempo which Ragan, Wollard and Black happily run to tackle and, while there are weaker points in the run-time (“Drag My Body” is a little thin which also means it requires a little too busy a bass line and “Take No Prisoners” somehow manages to come off as sounding too earnest for its own good), they aren't really that weak and don't at all threaten to actually detract from the record.
After “Paid In Full” blasts out one last salvo to seal off the album, listeners will be left exhausted to try and sort out what they've just experienced. Some heads might be spinning because there's no chance that anyone could have expected Exister to be as strong as it is; after almost ten years out of circulation, the most that people can normally hope for from a band upon their return (see The Pixies, Sebadoh, fIREHOSE) is that they won't embarrass themselves or somehow diminish the value of their legacy but, with Exister, Hot Water Music has entered a very select community of artists (which also includes Dinosaur Jr., Jello Biafra and Meat Puppets) who have come back as strong or stronger than they were before they left. When fans hear this album, they'll instantly want more – here's hoping it won't take another eight years to get it.
Artist:
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Album:
Exister is out now. Buy it here on Amazon .
