From the late ‘90s to somewhere roughly around the mid-’00s, the heavy music scene was a flourishing birthing ground for legions of progressive, angular bands whose goal was to redefine hardcore beyond the tough posturing and thuggish machismo the genre was, until that point, most commonly associated with. As such, elements of post-punk, math rock and screamo began seeping in, resulting in some of the most groundbreaking and reverential bands hardcore has ever seen. Bands like Botch, The Dillinger Escape Plan and Coalesce led the charge, injecting their songs with unhinged riffs, unconventional time-signatures and structures, and a breathtaking lack of respect for genre ‘rules’. A second wave of bands followed that included kings of party noisecore Every Time I Die, Christian noise-mongers Norma Jean, and that band’s direct descendants, The Chariot. Then, something changed in heavy music. Everyone who’d previously fed exclusively on a diet of Hydra Head Records suddenly picked up copies of ‘Slaughter Of The Soul’. Bands grew their hair and started playing recycled thrash and death metal riffs. ‘Deathcore’ had arrived and, aside from the continued presence of bands like Every Time I Die and The Dillinger Escape Plan, it appeared on the surface that ‘noisecore’ had disappeared.
Nuremberg, Germany quartet Hyenas clearly didn’t get that memo, though. The band’s debut album ‘Deadweights’, released this month through Pelagic Records, is a refreshing new take on the kind of sounds being peddled by those luminaries of mathcore back in 2002. From front to back the album positively bubbles with the kind of clanky, off-kilter guitars, manic drumming and rumbling bass that anyone who ever got a kick out of any of the aforementioned bands will spill their proverbial beans over. Hyenas are not a simple nostalgic act though, their sound as fresh today as ‘We Are The Romans’ was back in 1999. Maybe it’s because the market isn’t currently saturated with bands of this ilk that ‘Deadweights’ sounds so remarkable, but realistically it’s the band’s own merit that make this album such a rewarding listen.
Following the creeping intro ‘Noise’, first song proper ‘Crooked Tongue’ comes to life with a stark, metallic bassline and the hoarse barks of vocalist Robert Sierl, before fully exploding into a jagged hardcore stomp that all too quickly concedes into the next track, the seething ‘Ambiself’. Though a mostly savage affair, there are moments of relative melody, with Sierl busting some rugged ‘clean’ singing out on various moments across the album, such as the chorus of ‘Crossbearer’, one of the most accessible tracks on the album and one that could easily serve as the band’s crossover ticket into the mainstream of heavy music. It’s a song that never lets up and is as ferocious as any other on the album, but one that also manages to subvert the notion of a ‘pop’ song whilst also still arguably being one, much in the same way The Dillinger Escape Plan’s ‘Setting Fire To Sleeping Giants’ was.
Maybe the standout track on the album is ‘Homeostasis’, a furious barrage of stabbing riffs that actually brings to mind Manchester’s late, great kings of mathcore, Beecher. In just two and a half minutes it manages to act as a microcosm of the entirety of ‘Deadweights’, and was unsurprisingly chosen as one of the two tracks Hyenas chose to preview before the official release of the album. The closest contender for album highlight would be ‘Smooth Talkers’, beginning with the fastest and most manic passage on the entire record before exploding into another top-tier Dillinger-esque ‘melodic’ chorus. This is immediately followed by ‘Displaced’, an introspective and harrowing track that strips back to just guitar and vocals for its entire running time. That Hyenas can pull such a feat off amongst the chaos is testament to their abilities as artists, their confidence in being able to ease off the gas for just a few precious moments giving the surrounding noise that much more impact.
Hyenas’ brand of twisting post-hardcore is a delight to behold, managing to pay homage to a scene that has long since passed its peak whilst remaining completely invigorating and fresh today. ‘Deadweights’ would have been huge if it had been released on Hydra Head in 2002, and the band deserve for it to be huge in 2017. Whether the album will only appeal to older kids who were there first time around remains to be seen, though with the right push this record could, and should, find its way onto a lot of this year’s ‘best of’ lists.
JAMES LEE