HYPNOS: “THE FALL”

(We are delighted to welcome Mick from the excellent Brutalitopia metal blog to our site with this guest review of the new album by Hypnos.)

I suppose I’m preaching to the choir, but No Clean Singing does an outstanding job of introducing all of us to new bands. In response to Islander’s call to arms for guest posts, I figured I’d return the favor to the NCS community and contribute a band I just discovered a couple months ago that really took me by surprise… so much so that *spoiler alert* it should be making an appearance on my year-end list over at Brutalitopia. If post-metal is your thing, you’re going to want to have Hypnos on your radar.

Hailing from Lyon, France, Hypnos is a five piece post-metal band that sent me a promo back in September for their debut album, The Fall. Despite being a generally lazy listener, I thankfully hopped on this album a few weeks after getting word about it. Only six tracks in length, The Fall utilizes atmospheric passages that bring acts like Isis and Mouth Of The Architect to mind, while throwing in harsh vocals that are somewhat akin to Behemoth. These harsh vocals dominate the album, which, much to the glee of many readers here I’m sure, leaves the album void of clean vocals and accentuates some of the droning harshness The Fall takes the listener through.

Like all worthwhile post-metal, The Fall takes barrages of sludgy, albeit straightforward, guitar riffs and mixes them with other riffs that are entrancingly soft and often harrowing and dissonant. It’s one of those albums that is all the more impressive considering it’s a debut album. While I wanted to do a more thorough review, the holidays and a busy work schedule have prevented me from accomplishing this. So for now, I figured getting a small word out about Hypnos would be better than getting no word out at all.

Listen to my personal favorite track “Arrow” below:

Check out the rest of The Fall on the band’s Bandcamp page here.

http://hypnosband.bandcamp.com/

Also, keep Brutalitopia in mind when perusing through year-end lists. We will have five of our own being posted up towards the end of the month. Thanks again to Islander for posting this and everyone who gave this a read!