The Guitar Player's Resource
Guitarist Menachem Engel submitted his band Black House's instrumental demo CD-R entitled The No. 559, featuring primarily improvisational style rock. Engel likes to use a lot of effects on his guitar; for example, the delay pedal gets worn out on the opening track "Red Bubbles", while "Winterbreath" starts out with a sucking, swirling, hollowed out sound - with delay added. Tapped licks also make an appearance in "Winterbreath". "Ninetten" is the high-energy metal track that features some of the same rapid picking you'd hear on an Iron Maiden recording - 2:42 of soloing! "The Lot Six Experiments" will shatter cerebrums with double picking, grunge rhythms and all manner of reggaenation. What Black House needs is a composer to step up and organize all these riffs and solos into songs that stick with you - throwing three or four genres into a song may be fun, but it's ends up being more challenging for the listener. But if they keep at it, who knows what might happen?
Black House is basically four kids from Flushing, New York - ages ranging from 14 to 17 - playing instrumental metal, blues, rock, and other stuff. They sometimes have a fifth member for singing. Their influences include the following bands and artists: Metallica, Jimi Hendrix, RFS, Number 12 Looks Like You, Smashing Pumpkins, Slayer, Paul Simon, Meshuggah, Horizontal Orange, Dillinger Escape Plan, Beatles, Cypress Hill, Notorius BIG, Steve Vai, Robert Johnson, Deftones, Joe Satriani, Yngwie J. Malmsteen, and Bob Marley.
The band does not really play live now, and does not have any plans to. Their wall of sound can only be experienced on CD-R - for now.
Menachem Engel
United States
Web site: blackhousemusic.tripod.com