Anthony Paganelli has been at a monster truck rally all day long with his son. When Submerge catches up with Horseneck’s guitarist/vocalist (affectionately called “Pag”), he’s slightly frazzled by the spectacle of the subculture drawn to such an affair, lamenting the unbroken yelps of a patron directly behind him for the entirety of the event. It’s an interesting anecdote, considering Paganelli’s notoriety as a bit of a screamer himself. The drain of the day’s events could be why most of the rest of Horseneck admit some confusion when our interview begins.

“We cleaned the house for this phone interview, just so you know,” says guitarist Lance Jackman.

Paganelli interjects, “Apparently I forgot to tell them this was a phone interview.”

“This is for the cover of Rolling Stone, right?” adds Jackman.

Levity is an undeniable ingredient in Horseneck’s auditory alchemy. The band—rounded out by drummer Jess Gowrie and bassist Lennon Hudson—are gearing up for the release of their first full-length album, Heavy Trip, which they are self-releasing. Unlike the somewhat spastic stoner thrashers of the band’s duo of 2013 EP releases, Heavy Trip was endeavored from the outset as a fuller, more realized artistic vision for Horseneck.

“The two EPs were essentially early songs that I just wrote quickly and didn’t put too much thought into,” admits Paganelli of the Belly Full of Blood and The Worst People Ever EPs. Both EPs were originally released only digitally via Artery Recordings, with whom the band cut ties shortly after. Consequently, neither EP can be heard online, save for a scant few YouTube clips.

Heavy Trip, on the other hand, revels in its musical inclusivity. Writing as a group for the first time, Horseneck fortified its typically ferocious brand of sludge-y, riff-forward metal with more expansive instrumentation—namely lots of keyboards and horns.

No, not devil horns. We’re talking brass here.

Existing somewhere within the sonic field of Murder City Devils and Red Fang, Heavy Trip sounds like a band unafraid to push the coveted tenets of heavy music to more nuanced volumes.

“We went into it with expectations of doing more,” says Paganelli. “Then we got silly and thought, ‘What if we put some horns on it? Maybe some background singers?’”

The result is no less abrasive on tunes like “P.A.G.,” a particularly punishing exhibition of stoner-metal that folds in tasteful B3 organ work, an accoutrement that levies new ciphers of sound into an otherwise brutish composition.

“There are some songs, like ‘Hangman,’ where there is so much going on in it that no one would know unless they were here recording it with us,” says Jackman, who recorded Heavy Trip at his studio, The Dock.

“Hangman” is perhaps the record’s most dynamic track, blooming slowly from a droning mellotron/trumpet intro flourished by a slide guitar lead before more organs, refined drumming and thudding bass begin to open a wormhole of impending noise. The song’s shapeshifting is indicative of Horseneck’s varied musical inspirations, as well as their desire to feature both the light and dark of their nature as a band.

“We’re the band that every person in a band wants to be in but can’t because everyone is too serious all the time,” explains Paganelli. “If we wanna put horns on our record, we’ll put horns on our record. We’re just doing it for ourselves.”

“I think the record shows our lighter side a little, too,” adds Gowrie, who also drums for Chelsea Wolfe. “We take the music seriously, but we don’t really take ourselves seriously. In doing that I think it allows us to experiment with different sounds. So you get to see both sides of the band.”

“We’re the only band like us rocking Doobie Brothers,” says Jackman. “Half the time we go out to our practice space and just jam on ‘70s tunes for hours.”

Horseneck’s humorous side plays a big role in their reputation. One needs only view the band’s hilarious video for The Worst People Ever’s “Driving to Idaho Alone,” featuring the band and a dozen other friends performing and partying entirely inside of an RV. Their most recent clip, for Heavy Trip’s “Michael Caine,” follows the costumed foursome pillaging and partying in downtown Sacramento, dressed as forest creatures and haunting Old Ironsides, among other locations.

“We just like to get goofy and have fun,” says Paganelli. “Plus videos are easy to make. Just throw on a rabbit suit and do whatever you want to do and it looks good. The band always had sort of an air of fun, like a party band. But not everything I write about is about partying. The music isn’t party music.”

Besides, beginning with Heavy Trip opener “Bird Worried,” it’s clear Horseneck are marching to the beat of their own bunny rabbit. Exploding in a classic-rock riff, the song’s rock tropes are applied thickly, with Paganelli and Jackman’s guitar runs accenting musical segues between song sections. Featured largely in the track are the backing vocals of Sharlotte Gibson, who was once backup singer for Whitney Houston. The contrast of the song’s churning thuds with Gibson’s soaring tenor is a revelation, and just one of many things that makes Heavy Trip a remarkable album. Gibson was even nice enough not to give the band too much guff about their song “Bobby Brown.”

“She was like, ‘What’s this Bobby Brown song?’” said Jackman. “And I was like, ‘uhhhhhhhhh.’”

Those keeping score at home may note the inclusion of one seemingly nepotistic song title in “P.A.G.” (it’s about post-alcohol guilt), one ode to one of Britain’s finest actors in “Michael Caine” (in reference to a web video of people reading the words “my cocaine” and realizing it’s how Michael Caine says his own name) and to one of R&B’s most notorious bad boys in “Bobby Brown.”

“A lot of bands write a song and have a working title for a song until they finish it and then they name it something serious,” explains Paganelli. “We just never change it.”

For their album release show, Horseneck plans to perform the new record with everyone who featured on it, including adding a horn section and keys for the first time in a live setting. Managing the release of the record on their own, they’ll have a limited run of cassette tapes, followed by a digital release. With Gowrie bound to extensive touring commitments with Chelsea Wolfe, and with Paganelli’s duties as guitarist in seminal Sacto noise-rockers Will Haven, Horseneck is likely to keep things regional for the time being.

“If someone finds out about the record and wants to talk to us about it, we’ll probably talk to them,” says Paganelli. “I feel like we can do most of the stuff ourselves. We’re not going on tour 300 days a year, but we’re not opposed to touring either.

“I don’t wanna fall into a category or anything, but … I don’t know what I’m talking about. I’ve been at a monster truck jam all day, man.”

Horseneck releases Heavy Trip Friday, Feb. 17, 2017, at Harlow’s (2708 J St.). Co-headlining and releasing their own new record are Kill the Precedent, and opening are Peace Killers and The Moans. Doors at 8 p.m.; show at 9 p.m. 21-and-over. Tickets are $10-12. For more info on Horseneck, visit Facebook.com/horseneckmusic. Stream the track “Bobby Brown” via the player below.

Horseneck: Born out of Booze and Ready to Rock Your Face

Most of us would agree that bars are wonderful places. They’re great places to go with your friends or significant others, or to meet new friends or significant others (at least significant for a night or so). And, hey, if you go alone, your bestest buddies Jack Daniels and John Jameson are already there waiting for you. Besides sources of booze, bars can also be houses of inspiration. Artists, writers and musicians have flocked to bars for as long as they’ve existed hoping to find their muse—either at the bottom of a glass, or hidden in the cacophony of overheard conversation. As Sacramento heavy music purveyor Anthony Paganelli tells us, his newest band Horseneck owes a lot to local bars.

He had known bandmate Lennon Hudson through their mutual manager, Eric Rushing. Paganelli and Hudson were both entrenched in the music scene as members of other bands (Paganelli as part of Tenfold, Shortie and Will Haven, and Hudson as part of Still Life Projector). The two got together one night at Golden Bear with Hudson’s longtime friend Matthew Ison, and the conversation eventually turned toward the three playing music together.

“We weren’t doing anything else but drinking and having fun,” Paganelli says. “We were like, ‘Might as well start jamming, kill time that way.’ We started a band. It wasn’t this band. Then we changed it to Horseneck and it just felt right.

“Will Haven wasn’t really doing much. They’d put out a record and did a little bit of touring in Europe, and that was it,” he goes on to say. “I was getting really bored and I wanted to start something new. I had all these riffs and ideas, so I called Matt and Lennon and said let’s do this.”

Paganelli says that he formed Horseneck because “there weren’t very many heavy bands out in Sacramento that I could relate to.” A counterpoint to the many scream-o and metalcore bands on the scene, Paganelli wanted Horseneck to hearken back to a different, blues-based era of metal.

“I was drawing influences from all the classic rock like Led Zeppelin and stuff like that…blues-driven rock stuff,” says Paganelli, who says he first started playing blues when he picked up the guitar, inspired by the music his father would listen to, before he got into punk and metal later in life.

The music got heavier, though, when the band decided to put Paganelli behind the mic. He says Horseneck felt right as a power trio, and they really didn’t want to go out and find a vocalist that would possibly stir the pot.

“None of us could really sing, so I just grabbed a mic and started yelling and it just worked,” Paganelli explains. “We became this heavy band, but that was what we wanted anyway. We wanted to do what everyone else wasn’t doing.”

Their vibe must have been right as the band released two EPs in 2013. The first, Belly Full of Blood, is the heavier of the two—a low, throbbing, grungy, Melvins-esque five-song EP with similarly gruesome song titles like “Dirt Turkey” and “Hooker Toilet.” The second, The Worst People Ever, is still heavy but is less pure brute force and has more of a calculating attack.

“The first EP, we had just started playing. That was the first five songs we wrote. I was trying to figure everything out,” Paganelli says of the difference between the two EPs. “I feel like it was a little bit harder of a record, too—more metal influence. With The Worst… EP, we were a little bit more organic about writing. We were jamming more, and I felt a little more confident with my vocals. With the new stuff we’re writing, it’s getting more organic, and I’m even more comfortable with my voice.”

The differences between the two was one of the reasons why Horseneck ended up having two separate releases as opposed to one full-length album.

“We never planned on releasing anything,” Paganelli says. “I gave it to Eric Rushing, because he’s a longtime friend of mine, and I thought he could help me get on shows or just network and stuff, and he told me to hold on to it and not release it. He said, why don’t we go back and record more songs, and we’ll talk to the label, Artery Records, and maybe release it through Artery.”

Horseneck has a distinctly different sound than many of the bands in Artery’s stable; however, both Rushing and Paganelli thought Horseneck could help the label diversify.

Both EPs were recorded at Pus Cavern with the help of Matt Pedri, who’s worked with Armed for Apocalypse and Will Haven in the past. The Worst People Ever was mixed by Dance Gavin Dance’s Josh Benton.

“We went back and recorded seven tracks, which became The Worst People Ever EP, but they sounded totally different,” Paganelli says. “We recorded them in a different process and spent more time… We weren’t going to put them both together as a weird sandwich, like, we don’t care if they sound weird. So I said, why don’t we release them as they were recorded? That sounds better. It makes more sense. We felt comfortable with that approach, and Eric thought it was a better idea as well.”

Paganelli says the band is currently writing new material for a possible full-length, hopefully to be released early next year. He says that the confidence in his songwriting that he built coming into The Worst People Ever is continuing to grow on the new material.

“I feel like I’ve thought it out a little more than I did in the past,” Paganelli says of the new material he’s working on. “Having more confidence in my ideas helps.”

Paganelli also has a new songwriting partner, his 1-and-a-half-year-old son.

“I play guitar for my son, and when he likes it, he dances around. So sometimes I actually bounce riff ideas off of [him],” he says. “We play guitar all the time at home and sing songs and stuff. It definitely changed a bit of my songwriting.

“It’s more difficult being in a band as a parent, because, obviously, you have a lot more responsibility,” Paganelli says of being a rock ‘n’ roll dad. “Touring is a little harder, practicing is a little harder, but it’s still doable, and it’s still fun. We still do it. I don’t think I could not do it. He enjoys it. He watches me do it, and maybe when he’s a bit older, I could play with him, or he could play with me. It would be rad.”

It’s funny to think that the good chemistry and momentum Horseneck has going probably started with a simple conversation between colleagues over drinks at a bar. The opening track on The Worst People Ever, “The Birth of the Neck,” is actually an homage to the band’s booze-y beginnings. It’s a short track featuring ambient bar noises—conversation, people fiddling about. In fact, the whole EP is based on the bar that Paganelli, Hudson and Ison usually hang out at, Cheaters.

“Most of the songs on that EP are reflections or stories or things that we went through hanging out there all the time,” Paganelli says. “It’s a bunch of inside jokes, well, not just inside jokes, but things that happened to us there. That whole EP is a little story about that bar…a little Cheaters storyline, I guess.”

So what is it that makes bars so inspiring?

“I love bars,” Paganelli enthuses. “I was a bartender for like four years. We collectively love to drink. Love beers and whiskey. I live on 32nd and Matt and Lennon live on 35th so Cheaters is smack dab in the middle and that is our home base. I love bars! I love bar noise. I love meeting people and the social interaction you get at a bar. It is different than any other place.”

So get out there and go to a bar. You never know. You might even become inspired. As if you needed another reason to go out drinking… 

Check out Horseneck as they blow the doors of the place at Blue Lamp in Sacramento alongside Armed for Apocalypse and Death Valley High on July 12, 2013. Horseneck’s EPs are available via iTunes. For more on the band, go check ‘em out at Facebook.com/horseneckmusic.