If you like The Cure, you’ll love The Grand Scheme of Things by Sugar Horse.

Hailing from Bristol, Sugar Horse have carved out a reputation as one of the most intriguing and unpredictable bands in heavy music. Known for their crushingly heavy sound, irreverently funny song titles (Fat Dracula, Pictures Of Dogs Having Sex, Mulletproof), and refusal to fit neatly into any single genre, their music dances on the edges of sludge metal, post-rock, and the melodic grandeur of ‘80s synth pop with a sound both sprawling and intimate, balancing ear-splitting heaviness with ethereal beauty. The Grand Scheme of Things is their most ambitious statement yet. Recorded in a disused church in the wake of frontman Ashley Tubb’s father’s death, the album is a searing exploration of grief and loss, blending hymn-like reverence with sonic devastation.

This is an album that demands your full attention, rewarding listeners with an emotional rollercoaster that is as cathartic as it is exhausting.

The album opens with its title track, an understated, almost meditative arrangement: muted drums and a slithering bassline underpin a soundscape that feels simultaneously delicate and expansive. The guitars are restrained, shimmering and reverberating like distant echoes in a cavernous space, a hint of the monumental scale that lies ahead. Tubb’s vocals enter softly, almost a whisper, but as the track unfolds, it gradually builds in intensity, crescendoing into what can only be described as the first of several ‘hallelujah moments’ throughout the album: immense, uplifting choruses that feel like a burst of light breaking through darkness.

The second track, The Shape of ASMR to Come, delivers a towering wall of sound with staggeringly massive guitars creating a level of intensity to rival a religious experience. Dropping into a quieter midsection before roaring back with crushing force, the contrast between the delicate and the devastating is intentionally overwhelming. Corpsing opens tenderly, with delicate guitar lines that again lull the listener into a false sense of calm. As the song swells towards its climax the descending guitar riff feels monumental in its simplicity, more like a mantra than a solo. Another standout, Jefferson Airplane Over the Sea, comes with another soaring “hallelujah-like” chorus, anthemic and enormous. Thematically, The Grand Scheme of Things is a meditation on grief, loss, and the human condition, but it’s also an exploration of music’s ability to transform pain into something transcendent. Sugar Horse have built a reputation for being nearly impossible to pin down, gleefully subverting expectations at every turn, whether through their song titles or their insistence on zigging where others would zag, they revel in challenging assumptions about what a “heavy” band can and should be. Nowhere is this spirit more evident than in the album’s final track, Space Tourist, in which an infinite loop on the vinyl (or 20-minute wall of noise if you choose to listen on Spotify) serves as anything but a gimmick. What does this noise mean and why does it never resolve? In the context of an album so deeply tied to grief and loss, the loop becomes a profound statement. The Grand Scheme of Things couldn’t have ended any other way. Sugar Horse have crafted something deeply challenging, emotionally exhausting, and utterly unique - a record that dares you to embrace its contradictions and lose yourself in its epic vastness.