(written by Islander)
We’re in the camp of people who believe that album cover art is a vital part of musical releases, not merely as a way of attracting attention to what’s inside but as an end in itself.
Of course, we can all think of instances when bland cover art has accompanied fantastic music, and conversely when stunning artwork has heralded what turned out to be bland music.
But today the artwork and the music align. Both are fantastic. And both are terrifying. And both will freeze you in place. Credit to Belial NecroArts for what greets the eyes. Credit to Hierarchies for a self-titled debut album that will do a real number on your psyche.
Hierarchies is a new formation, but not a band of newcomers: Their three-person lineup includes members of Acausal Intrusion and Dwelling Below. If you know the music of those bands (as you damn well should), you’ll already be expecting the potential for musical psychosis and fear given form — and exhilaration.
Transcending Obscurity Records, which will release this debut album on January 17th, has done a very good job linguistically evoking the album’s experiences, good enough that we’ll quote them before wrestling with our own words:
With music being this intricate, strangely intuitive and visceral, it blurs the point where the magnification of their music ends and the imagination takes over. It’s a dark, murky, nightmarish dive into a realm where trajectories from multiple dimensions manifest to intersect and overlap before dissipating, taking different temporal forms.
Nothing is permanent in their world; the tunes change every few seconds and so does everything around them – the implications are in real-time and catastrophically mind-melting. It’s a downward spiral of your consciousness where the out-of-control thoughts overwhelm and overpower, and take you on a one-way trip to incessant hallucinations and inevitable madness. Innumerable riffs are piled on top of one another first frantically, then slowly to allow for them to be properly seared into memory so that they can haunt you in turns….
Of course, you’ll take that with a few grains of salt, since it is a sales pitch. But it’s also truth-in-advertising, as demonstrated by the Hierarchies song we’re premiering today.
“Abstract” is indeed abstract, in the sense that its structure is tangled, and the music doesn’t fall into place as something familiar or predictable but instead as an incitement to the listener’s imagination.
This isn’t to suggest it’s formless. The ringing, writhing, and snarling tones at the outset of the song create a hook, and it digs in again later, and the swarming, screeching, and throbbing attacks that come next also follow a pattern. But these phases, and others, fly by very fast, augmented by eye-popping percussive riots and ghastly voices.
The instrumental twists and turns are multifarious and quite nefarious, including even a sudden halt to the madness when the music becomes soft and hallucinatory (and even there, the band creates a strange hook).
That’s just a quick breather for Jared Moran‘s drumming, before he resumes an overall off-the-hook performance, matched by bassist Anthony Wheeler‘s nimble maneuvers and Nicholas Turner‘s unsettling and extravagant guitar contortions, which are alternately jarring and fluid, chaotic and deviantly clever, and capped by a solo that’s gloriously freaked-out and also seductively proggy.
Scary stuff indeed, because it’s so deranged, but there’s also something jubilant about it, and it might just appeal to fans of free jazz as much as fans of dissonant tech-death.
LINE-UP:
Nicholas Turner (Dwelling Below, Acausal Intrusion) – Guitar
Anthony Wheeler (Dwelling Below, Hollowed Idols) – Bass
Jared Moran (Dwelling Below, Acausal Intrusion) – Drums and vocals
Hierarchies was mixed by Nick Turner at Malevolent Sound Studios and mastered by Will Killingsworth at Dead Air Studios.
Transcending Obscurity will be releasing it in multiple formats — in a lavish gatefold vinyl edition, on CD, and digitally, along with lots of apparel options and other merch. They recommend it for fans of Acausal Intrusion, Dwelling Below, Pyrrhon, Evilyn, Chaos Motion, Wormed, and Plague Rider.
After the links you’ll also find streams of the first two singles released from the album, “Complexity Parallels” and “Dimension“.
PRE-ORDER:
https://hierarchiesdm.bandcamp.com/album/hierarchies
https://transcendingobscurity.aisamerch.com/
https://eu.tometal.com/
HIERACHIES:
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61564013775330