Filthy Huns

Filthy Huns

Cursed At Birth

Not Not Fun

The 4th full-length by Elysian Heights motorcycle whisperer Nick Koenigs aka Filthy Huns reimagines the hero's journey as bastard's quest: doomed since day one, condemned to ride or die, forever revving against the long shadow of permanent midnight. Cursed At Birth is a return of sorts to the project's rusted roots, renegade reflections for cracked highways and black hills, wolves howling at cold crescent moons. Its mood fits the year: isolated and estranged, vistas of desolation and plague under darkening skies. Recorded in the garage dust of his Echo Park machinist's shop, the album's six songs channel a headspace of fog-shrouded junkyards, grease-stained chug, ghostrider dub, and ominous engines fuming on the horizon. Music for mystic desert roads, nomads headed nowhere, ragged skull flags flapping in the final twilight.

Filthy Huns

Forever Beast

Not Not Fun

Westward expansionist Nick Koenigs has been laying rusted highway scorpion riffs over ragged diesel chug since transplanting from Minneapolis to Echo Park in 2011 but Forever Beast is his first foray into Filthy Huns collaboration, enlisting Aaron Steinberg on burner synths and wind tunnel smoke. The extra presence revs the songs into deeper terrain, through shadowed canyons of shredded leather and bleached bones. Modes swerve between badlands raga (“Magick Tea”) and psychedelic ritual (“Class War”), cloaked in dub menace and pentagram fumes. This is the Huns at their headiest and heaviest, ripping ghost rider guitar and vortex keys from busted amps tied with chrome chains. The Beast rises. Mastered by Collin Gorman Weiland. Design by Britt Brown.

Filthy Huns

Leopard On My Right

Not Not Fun

Echo Park (by way of Minneapolis) motorcycle mechanic Nick Koenigs aka Filthy Huns follows his 2012 self-titled debut with a freshly iced 8-pack of stark tar-streaked roadburn meditations, Leopard On My Right. Echo-blurred metronomes rev from dive bar dub to aging engine chugs, laced with keyboard exhaust, stick-and-poke guitar designs, hungover highway vocals, and dust-choked American desolation. As before, Koenigs keeps the dead-eyed leather menace quotient high while bleaching the songs' rock bone structures into pale, emaciated shapes ("Ancient Hell," "Nomad Status"), occasionally dissolving into drained badlands atmospherics ("Into Oblivion," "Stein Stugga"). Sleeveless, stained with axle grease, after midnight, a Viking in the basement with a 4-track, wind whipping through his mind. Have been loving these skeletal rider themes rendered live in various unkempt Los Angeles interiors across the last year, stoked to present them publicly for physical consumption. Mastered by Cole Gorman Weiland. Artwork and layout by Eric Carlson and Chris Hontos.

Filthy Huns

S/t

Not Not Fun

Daughters Of The Sun's singer / guitarist Nick Koenigs has been toiling solo as Filthy Huns for a couple quiet years at this point, layering grease-stained drum machines with badlands guitar, mirage keys, and desolate vocals, alternately broke-down and road-burned. His debut is a dusty midnight ride through black hills. “Watch Of The Bear” in particular captures a loner-in-leather mood, headlight off, pushing 70, chasing the horizon under a sea of stars. Elsewhere there's woozy, hungover dub (“Hot Morning”),  peyote campfire awakening (“Infinite Ride”) and stoned sunshine raga (“Out Of The Grave"). Barren times on the highway, through darkening deserts.