In the music world you don’t often have to look far to find woe-filled tales of addiction, and Hail the Sun know it. The Californian five-piece detailed their struggles on their 2018 album ‘Mental Knife’, but the story doesn’t end there. Of course, addictions never take place in isolation – they spill over into other lives, influence choices, and continue to affect the wider world. it stands, then, that on their excellently-titled new album ‘New Age Filth’, Hail the Sun explore the path to redemption, learning to live with the wreckage, asking for forgiveness, and trying to atone. Laced with riffs, melodies, and a side-helping of angst, this is an album you need to hear.
Hail The Sun’s core sound is a catchy form of math-rock that mixes frantic guitars and short passages of serenity, while oceans of delay are fused with rapid guitar licks and overlaid with a blend of singing and screaming vocals. You could easily fit them alongside bands like The Fall Of Troy or Dance Gavin Dance, but despite sitting in the same genre, they have a distinctive spin that sets them apart.
While Hail The Sun have redefined themselves on each of their previous albums, you could still trace their music’s evolution, and in the same way, ‘New Age Filth’ is very much a continuation of ‘Mental Knife’. It’s less adventurous, sure, but their audacity has been replaced here with surefootedness; while their early songs were a mix of angular assaults and serenity, here the two parts of the band’s personality are intertwined, trading in their cluster bomb approach for something more like a guided missile. Each song is streamlined, hook-filled and powerful exactly where needed, making for a frighteningly consistent record, and the strong songwriting is further enhanced by production from Kris Crummett (Sleeping With Sirens, Issues, Dance Gavin Dance) – it makes for a robust sound, with each instrument given its own weight and space. Put simply, it sounds great.
The music’s character is defined by Aric Garcia and Shane Gann’s interlocking guitar riffs as both effectively play lead, bouncing off each other’s work to create a layered and complimentary sound. This gives the record a light, flighty feel as they trade wonderful licks on songs like ‘Misfire’ and have a little fun on the breakdowns in ‘Slipped My Mind’. At the album’s mid-point, ‘Made Your Mark’ transitions between direct and spacious. This plays into its key themes – building a symbolic bridge between the two halves, and offering an olive branch of forgiveness. It’s quite remarkable that in less than three minutes the song manages to feel so expansive, visiting the album’s key themes and throwing in some superb guitar solos for good measure.
Although the album is characterised by relative restraint, it avoids a single tone and there is still room for explosive hysterics. This is clearest on the screamo-styled ‘Slander’, but they even note it in the title of ‘Hysteriantics’; a mix of screaming, yelling, and tantrums, backed up with blasts of increasingly caustic guitarwork. If ‘Solipsism’ is the band’s quintessential song, then ‘Punk Drunk’ is their zenith. The entire journey feels like it is building toward this epic noise-fest, which passes in an angular blur of guitar lines, thunderous drums, and a whirlwind of melody.
With Donovan Melero also fronting Sianvar and Nova Charisma, you could say he’s comfortable in the limelight and has plenty of experience of writing catchy choruses, with his high voice and style of delivery bearing similarities to Vic Fuentes (Pierce the Veil) and Anthony Green (Circa Survive). Here, he uses his clean vocals to their full potential, making the album accessible despite its harsh moments. It’s a striking performance throughout, and is almost worth listening just to hear the stresses he puts on the phrase “I made a list of my character flaws” – if this is his confession, he truly means it. When he does scream, the sound registers as more emotional than aggressive, which either helps to telegraph the lyrical arc or simply provides a strong hook, sometimes even both. As the band’s drummer, he also complements his vocals with a rich array of beats and fills, especially the machine-gun sections of ‘Parasitic Cleanse’ and ‘Hysterantics’, where he sounds like a stampede of wildebeest.
Melero has a clever way of constructing lyrics, combining honesty and metaphor so that they shine a light on the darker parts of his life without illuminating too much, and it really makes a mark. Weaving between these two styles ensures his work is never too personal, nor too distant. ‘Solipsism’ is the perfect example as it opens like a confession, quickly becoming a pointed musing upon his mental states – but by being wrapped around a clever vocal hook, it holds your attention and enhances the listenability. While not explicitly a concept record, the album’s theme of redemption is repeatedly referenced, and on opening song ‘Domino’, Melero lays down a statement of intent with the yelped phrase, “I’d be fine with hurting myself, if it didn’t overflow to them”. After eight songs exploring the darker side of his personality, penultimate track ‘Devalution’ is a slower song and a delicate flourish. It gives him chance bask in sadness, all while setting up the big final number. Everything he offers here seems so elegantly constructed, you can only hope he finds the solace he describes.
‘New Age Filth’ sees Hail The Sun combine melody with maturity to create a refined and razor-sharp experience – that they do so while trying to atone for past mistakes only makes the album stronger.
IAN KENWORTHY