(Nightmare Utopia, the debut album from Hecatoncheir, is out now on Total Dissonance Worship)
As we’ve said several times, one of the reasons we keep doing this is because we love discovering new music, and we love sharing our discoveries with people.
Hell, if we didn’t have this blog we’d probably just be running up to people in the streets and screaming at them about how good the latest Blackened Post-Progressive Doom-core release is… and, according to the authorities, we’re not supposed to do that any more.
So when I first stumbled across Nightmare Utopia, the debut album from talented Slovakian Dissonant Death Metal trio Hecatoncheir, last week I knew immediately that I wanted to write about it and spread the word.
And while it took me a little longer than I’d hoped to find space in my schedule, I’m hoping you’ll agree that the wait was more than worth it, as this is one of the most promising debuts I’ve heard so far this year.
It’s obvious from quite early on that Nightmare Utopia is an impressive statement of intent, especially as the band’s first full-length, with the electrifying, Wake-esque opening bars of “Dreamless” steadily building in both aggressive intensity and asphyxiating atmospheric density, only to undergo a sudden and unexpected inversion into something far more introspective and discordantly ambient before exploding into a ferocious flurry of tangled, technically-twisted and disgustingly heavy riffs, interspersed with moody moments of eerie anti-melody (recalling, in places, the similarly unorthodox approach of Ingurgitating Oblivion).
So far, then, so good… and, in a way, so familiar.
But while comparisons can be made to the likes of Convulsing (who also released a new album last week) and Cosmovore (who appear, finally, to be teasing some new material), Hecatoncheir have a particular way of arranging all their various disparate, dissonant pieces – as exemplified by the ambitious, elaborate arrangement of the album’s two-part title-track, which shifts from a series of sinister, shadowy soundscapes to a monstrous, doom-laden death-march, before climaxing in a succession of convulsive kinetic spasms – which suggests that while some of the individual steps may be recognisable, the band are very much dancing to their own tune.
It’s the back-half of the record, however, which really starts to show you what Hecatoncheir are capable of, and how much more they might be capable of in the future, with the taut, tightly-wound riffage of “Sefirot of Understanding”, the torrential blastbeats of “The Crowning Horror” and the gargantuan, grinding grooves of “Madness of the Stars” each showcasing a slightly different aspect of the group’s already well-defined identity, all tied together by the band’s nerve-jangling use of negative space and disturbingly melodic dissonance.
Perhaps the biggest compliment I can pay this album – with particular reference to the way in which cathartic closer marries doomy weight and gloomy atmosphere with expulsive eruptions of pulse-pounding rage and face-melting fury – is that it often reminds me of Ageless Oblivion‘s massively underrated, but still seminal, Penthos, in the way that every song somehow seems that much greater than the sum of its parts, constantly hinting at hidden depths and secret layers waiting to be uncovered over time.
With that in mind, the one complaint I have about Nightmare Utopia is that, at just under thirty-two minutes, it doesn’t quite satisfy my appetite for everything the band have begun cooking up here – sure, “less is more”, and all that, and by keeping things short and succinct Hecatoncheir have ensured that there’s no fat or filler here, but there’s still room, in my mind, for the band to go even bigger next time around… and I already can’t wait.