Hell is Other People is a great band name and certainly sums up how I feel a lot of the time! Being intrigued, I went away to doing a little digging as to its origins, and was led to a philosophical play called ‘No Exit’ by French existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre, from way back in 1944. The play contained the line ‘L’enfer, c’est les autres,’which translates to ‘Hell is Other People’. It is outside the scope of the review to discuss this any further, but if I have piqued your interest, it is well worth looking into the play and its concepts further.
Enough rambling……what about the music. Well as you might imagine from the title, this is a very bleak, sombre album. Over the course of five tracks, the album imbibes a multitude of influences but focuses around a core of atmospheric black metal and DSBM. The five tracks sit together as one piece of music as the mood gently ebbs and flows. Opening track, ‘Moirae’ has a desolate beauty to it, with epic melodies juxtaposed against harsher passages of (post) black metal. This took me to far away, barren, windswept lands, miles from anywhere or anyone, and had a feel of introspection. ‘Fates’ continued the theme with the harsh, almost tortured, vocals sitting a little more prominent in the mix, and perhaps it’s just my interpretation but there felt to be a faint whiff of hope buried within the forlorn melodies.
There is a change at the opening of ‘Degrade’ with a minimalistic but effective guitar section with ominous gaps in the intro which are as effective as the music. Having set the scene and created a mournful atmosphere, the track explodes into the more familiar, abrasive but controlled black metal barrage. Harsh, almost howled, vocals are piercing, juxtaposing well with the melodic undercurrent, until after almost eight minutes, the track abruptly comes to a close, but leads straight into ‘Loss’, which spends almost nine minutes creating a challenging, pessimistic soundscape, and although you can fell the negativity, it becomes impossible to pull yourself away as it pulls you into its morbid web.
The album is brought to a close by the mammoth ‘Atropos’, a beast clocking in at thirteen and a half minutes. As you might expect, this track is in no rush and spends a lot of time building and exploring with ambient passages sitting comfortably within the frantic maelstrom. This continues until the track eventually fades out giving the impression of a never ending cycle.
This is not an easy listen, but neither is it intended to be. It is challenging and demanding, even draining, but ultimately it is very rewarding, and with each further listen it reveals itself a little more. At times the album smothers you, while at others it embraces you. Perhaps I am being a little poetic, but if you’ve made it this far into the review, then you need to track this down and give it a listen.
(8.5/10 Andy Pountney)
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