ALBUM REVIEW: Spiritual Poverty – Hive

Minneapolis’ HIVE have no doubts about who they are or what they want to do. Featuring members of veteran hardcore bands such as BOSNIA and DISEMBODIED, the constituent parts of this four-piece had all been around the block a few times before they settled on this project’s largely singular vision of destruction back in 2014. Helping themselves to overlapping dollops of D-beat, crust and hardcore, their methods may be somewhat familiar, but they’re also thoroughly effective. Their latest effort, Spiritual Poverty, is out this Friday via the invariably consistent Translation Loss Records. True to form, it’s a razor sharp offering that proudly flies the flag for the legendary Twin Cities scene.

With the band clearly uninterested in reinventing the wheel, Spiritual Poverty mostly gets by on fury alone. Early impressions of the record are essentially a whirlwind of blistering D-beats, crunchy riffs, squealing guitars and invariably pissed vocals. It hits the ground running with opener With Roots In Hell, the band doing away with any kind of ominous intro or slow-build and instead launching arguably far more impactfully into a scuzz-caked rager. Second track So It Is Done only ups the ante from there, again avoiding any particular frills or fancies in favour of a feral exploration of “the relationship between master and slave in the American political system”. By its end, you should already have a good idea of what to expect from the record to follow, and it doesn’t disappoint from there.

Sensibly though, HIVE haven’t made nine versions of the same song here, even if the majority do opt for the high-octane fare of the opening pair. Third track Parallel Lines grooves a little harder for example, its weightier riffs hammering home a rejection of the concept of “picking sides” which has come to dominate much of today’s political landscape. Elsewhere, Metamorphosis arrives smack-bang in the middle of the record to provide even more of a shift at just the right time. Opening up with an acoustic guitar, it’s the doomiest and most dynamic cut on here, and one of the most compelling as a result. It’s also one of three tracks which stretch past the four-minute mark, with the other two (Protection and Hallucination) making similar use of the length and space afforded to them to offer some more ponderous and doomy turns of their own.

At the end of the day though, it’s hard to sell Spiritual Poverty as anything less than a total rager. Laced with fury and delivered with fulsome conviction throughout, this is an album that comes at its listeners hard and fast. It may stick happily to the conventions of HIVE’s chosen genre, but clearly there is still mileage in their D-beat-driven tank yet. Clocking in at a sensible 34 minutes. and sure to please fans of anyone from DISCHARGE and DISFEAR to CONVERGE and CURSED, most readers will probably have a pretty good idea if they’re going to like this or not before they’ve even hit play. If you are on the fence however, now is as good a time as any to jump off – you’re unlikely to regret it.

Rating: 7/10

Spiritual Poverty is set for release on August 19th via Translation Loss Records.

Follow HIVE on Bandcamp.