ALBUM REVIEW: Hollow – Hauntologist
HAUNTOLOGIST may not be a name that many people within the black metal scene are currently familiar with, but the members of the band certainly will be; Darkside, who has provided world class drumming for both MGLA and KRIEGSMACHINE, and The Fall, notably of ASHES and ESCHATOLOGY, have both been at the cutting edge of Polish black metal, especially over the last decade, and have been instrumental within the black metal scene both in their home country and internationally. The joining together of two creative juggernauts is bound to garner not only plenty of attention, but also some incredibly lofty expectations. Luckily, the pair’s new band more than lives up to this hype, blending black metal, post-rock and hints of indie into a noxious brew that makes the duo’s debut album Hollow so compelling from the outset.
Ozymandian is a brilliantly dark, sinister slab of black metal with a bleak, ethereal edge. Frenetic drums, grating rhythms and slick, polished leads all create an imposing sound right off the bat, whilst injecting just enough tight hooks to make it punchy. Coarse gutturals complement the harsher elements of the music and work surprisingly well alongside the lighter moments, creating a vicious sound that provides an incredibly varied start to this record. Golem leans prominently into the post-rock undercurrent that informed the opener, bringing it to the forefront with cleaner guitars and a steadier pace whilst retaining the visceral black metal touches, notably in the vocal deliveries and the more driven drum passages, again crafting a haunting blend of the extreme and the sublime.
Waves Of Concrete acts as a short instrumental interlude centred upon heady, ambient synths, which acts as a great segue into the following track, and arguably one of the album’s centrepieces, Deathdreamer; this brooding offering marries together the black metal and post-rock elements together a lot better than earlier efforts, with the weightier, more ferocious side working well with the catchy, riff-driven post-rock moments. There are a few subtle, jarring touches thrown into the mix, turning this into easily one of the album’s most memorable songs, capturing both the band’s soaring and searing sides perfectly.
Hollow tries to carry forward this epic sound, but develops the progressive flourishes a bit further, adding clean vocals, intricate, cymbal-heavy drumming and subdued guitars for a slow-burning feel. It draws more from post-rock for much of the song, before gradually introducing discordant riffs and forceful rhythms as the track reaches its climax, finally bursting into life in a sea of cavernous guitar work and thunderous drums. It’s just as impressive as the previous track, but for entirely different reasons. Autotomy, a grandiose and imposing affair, veers abruptly back towards a fairly traditional black metal sound, with authoritative drums providing a great backdrop for the muscular hooks, melodic leads and dense vocals. A few softer guitar components creep in on occasion, adding another layer to the sound rather than informing it, with the end result being a huge, mid-paced piece of black metal with an underlying grandiose quality.
Gardermoen strips back the chunkier tones and harshness and offers up something that is decidedly more reserved, bordering on indie rock at points, with crystalline, shoegaze-inspired riffs and thick, rumbling basslines lending this track some of its best moments. The spartan, gloomy vocals match the subdued approach of the music, making for an effective and powerful change of pace that works extremely well. Car Kruków continues in the same vein, with the hypnotic guitars, fleeting but effective synths, and overarching ambience making for an instantly engrossing and memorable sound far removed from the rest of the album. This repetitive motif is accompanied by a spoken word soundbite that makes it even more immersive, completely removing the vocals from the equation to allow the music to carry this song to its conclusion in a fairly calm but nonetheless impactful way.
It would have been great to hear a few more tracks in a similar style to the final two tracks, as the introduction of shoegaze and indie elements works really well when it is utilised on this album. It’s very evocative of bands such as ALCEST and especially AMOSEURS in its blending together of light and dark, and the more urban atmosphere the music invokes, making it stand apart from a lot of other albums and bands with a distinctly blackened side to their sound. It’s also incredibly refreshing to hear a band that actually embraces the atmospheric black metal tag and manages to create an album that is actually atmospheric, and in a distinct fashion as well. As far as debut albums go, Hollow is impressively layered and nearly fully formed in its style and musical scope, immediately placing HAUNTOLOGIST on the map in the wider scheme of black metal.
Rating: 8/10
Hollow is out now via No Solace.
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