LP Review: "Roll For Initiative" by Highrider

Roll For Initiative

During my formative years, cartoons and professional wrestling really ate up large swaths of my free time.

When it wasn't time for homework, perhaps the USA Cartoon Cavalcade was on and on Mondays it light straight into The WWF's Monday Night Main Event featuring Bobby The Brain Heenan and Gorilla Monsoon.

There was a genre of cartoons where strangely clad or equipped characters solved crimes without really knowing what they were doing. There was the (culturally insensitively named) Hong Kong Phooey and the master of the genre....

Inspector Gadget.

The ill-fated Mathew Broderick movie aside, this man perfectly exemplified what we're talking about. He "solved" crime after crime and foiled plot after plot. Most of the time, if he did anything useful, it was on accident.

Highrider

Highrider is described as essentially being every single kind of heavy music that can be named.

If they were a Johnny Cash song, they'd be I've Been Everywhere because that's precisely where their music goes.

Logically, there's no way they intended to have this sound.  There are elements of thunder bomb thrash metal, classical, Scandinavian Black metal, and more.

The only conclusion that I can come to is that they're Inspector Gadget. Hence force they'll be known as Darth Vader...wait.. They'll be known as The Inspector Gadget of metal.

This works far better than being the Hong Kong Phooey of metal, because Hong Kong Phooey only really did one thing, martial arts, but Highrider, like Gadget, has many different tools in their arsenal.

Their music goes through a metaphysical transformation while you listen to the album. The first track starts off as a most amazing thrash track and then as the other elements arrive, hardcore, black metal, et al, the song ceases to be a song and becomes several different parts.

It's a lot like when Voltron was broken into five pieces by the evil witch, Hagar.

With each successive track, the sounds grow closer and closer together, until by the end, the brave Space Explorers have become the Legendary Voltron Force.

Highrider will push your musical definitions to the limits. Most likely, they'll be snapped at the end and you'll be better for it.

It's time to pay myself on the back now by not referencing Dungeons & Dragons. Honestly, it's done in the hopes you think I'm cool and not some nerd.

Release: 9/15/17
Genre: Inspector Gadget
Label: The Sign Records
Formats: LP/CD/Digital
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