HAIL SPIRIT NOIR

So "Mannequins" features no regular rock instrumentation and no ties to the band´s black metal past or even their more recent psychedelic/progressive/space rock output. The band have stated in interviews that this is probably a one-off experimental release, and that they´ll most likely return to more familiar territories on the next album release (which they did with "Fossil Gardens" from June 2024). The idea to release a synthwave release was probably born during the COVID-19 lockdown, and it makes sense that this sort of release could be conceived under such circumstances.

The band had a self-made 80s influenced slasher/horror story script in mind while writing the music featured on "Mannequins" and it´s to be listened to as a soundtrack album to that sort of movie. Keeping in mind that it´s the premise of the music, Hail Spirit Noir succeed very well in that mission. This is John Carpenter and Goblin type synth horror music, which is predominantly instrumental. The title track and the synth disco beat track "Enter Disco Inferno" feature vocals though, and both are among the highlights of the album. The remaining tracks are great too with simple eerie synth melodies and programmed drum beats. Although not completely similar it´s interesting to note that Ulver released their horror movie themed synthwave album "Scary Muzak" just a month after "Mannequins" came out. It may just be a coincidence, but maybe it´s a contemporary trend.

"Mannequins" is a well produced release and while it´s sometimes almost a bit too simple and one-dimensional, it´s still a well-made, well performed, and interesting release. At least Hail spirit Noir hit all the right notes to trigger my imagination in terms of visioning how the imaginary movie scenes play out during the various tracks, and I guess when that´s possible the band have done something right. This may not be a release for the "regular" fans of Hail Spirit Noir, but to those who enjoy horror movie synthwave soundtrack music, this one is definitely worth a listen. A 3.5 star (70%) rating is deserved.

(Originally posted on Metal Music Archives).

"Mannequins" was always meant to be a one-off experiment, and "Fossil Gardens" sees Hail Spirit Noir returning to their psychedelic/progressive black metal roots. We do get a little bit of "Mannequins'" sound and melodies as opening track "Starfront Promenade" features select melodic themes from the "Mannequins" title track. It´s pretty interesting to hear what was originally a synth pop track transformed into a progressive black metal song, but it says a lot about the eclectic and adventurous nature of Hail Spirit Noir.

While "Starfront Promenade" a bit deceivingly opens "Fossil Gardens" with a mellow melancholic clean vocal section, and there are several other moments on the album which belong in psychedelic/progressive rock/metal territory, "Fossil Gardens" is actually one of the harder edged and most black metal leaning albums yet from Hail Spirit Noir. At least when they play harder edged sections. There´s bite and black metal snarling and aggression (and even blast beat sections) here which are sharper and more caustic/chaotic sounding than what we´ve normally been treated to on the preceding releases from the band. The atmosphere is often epic in scope (almost symphonic black metal styled at times), but just as soon turns melancholic or psychedelic. The many tremolo picked melancholic guitar melodies are just gorgeous and feel massive, leaving an intense impact on the listener.

When your ears get adjusted to this more extreme black metal style, "Fossil Gardens" is still unmistakably the sound of Hail Spirit Noir (...and it´s not that extreme), and it´s an incredibly well crafted release. The sound production is top notch, the performances showcase high level musicianship on all posts, and the songwriting is eclectic, adventurous, and intriguing. It´s the kind of the album you can listen to many times and find new details everytime. If they weren´t already one of the leaders of progressive/psychedelic black metal, this album would surely lift them to that status. A 4.5 star (90%) rating is deserved.

(Originally posted on Metal Music Archives).

If one listens to some sections of some songs then it is obvious they are coming to music from the genre of black metal, yet highly polished albeit very powerful, aided again by Dimitris Douvras (Rotting Christ, Nightstalker) and Magnus Lindberg, member of Cult of Luna and world-renowned mastering engineer, who handled the production duties. But then there are plenty of others when the approach is more prog metal, and others when it is something which is quite poppy in nature. One never knows what is going to come next and if someone is looking for something which stays in one place without venturing into another then they will probably find this album way too distracting and without enough focus. But, if the listener wants to be taken on a journey where there is no clear path, then this might be of interest. The title track can be blasting along or move into a section where there are just held-down keyboard chords overlaying pounding drums, before moving into something which is massively over-produced and building into something anthemic. One never has the opportunity to rest and there is this constant feeling of a band who are not interested in staying in one place but instead will keep mixing it up.

There is no doubt that the result is somehow challenging and interesting at the same time, as here is a band who truly are progressing the genres as they mix and meld them into something quite unusual. This will not be for everyone, but if you can follow their thought processes then there is no doubt this a very interesting release indeed.

Fossil Gardens, the band's sixth full-length release, sees HSN get back to their core sound. I once saw someone describe their music as "blackened psychedelic folk," and while I don't necessarily agree with that description, they were admittedly onto something. This band's sound is undoubtedly and undeniably metallic, but influences from psychedelic rock pervade their music more than any metal band this side of Sigh.

The album opens with "Starfront Promenade". Its opening is lurching and ominous, but also astral and expansive. The slow introduction blasts off into a passage of rich, cinematic black metal, where synthesizer embellishments and eerie wordless vocals evoke this record's sci-fi themes. The black metal on this cut is some of the rawest the band has ever recorded, and it blends marvelously with the lusher atmospheres the band deploys.

"The Temple of Curved Space" is melodic with a solid backbone, and the clean vocals are smooth and powerful in contrast to the snarled chorus. Guitars and synths trade time in the spotlight, emphasizing alternating rough and rich textures. Things remain dramatic and enthralling throughout this cut's runtime. Instrumental passages focus on evoking moods and feelings, rather than technical soloing.

After the swirling, interstellar maelstrom of the preceding cut, "Curse You, Entropia" has a much calmer opening. The main riff is reminiscent of certain slower songs from melodic death metal acts, but the vocals here add a sense of ragged anger. Though they're mostly relegated to a supporting role, I love the way synths are utilized in this piece. The tones are inventive and unique, and they always bubble up at just the right time.

"The Blue Dot" features some of this band's most crushing riffs ever, but it is also one of their least-distinct songs. It's enjoyable, and it features some neat instrumental moments, but it doesn't really stand out.

The 10-minute "The Road to Awe" has an airy opening that sounds like it could have come off of a Riverside album (but in a good way; not a derivative one). There's a sense of building majesty and, well, awe as this cut gradually builds up. One of the band's few solos occurs here, and it's emotive and powerful. HSN expertly shifts between a sense of amazement and black metal's more-expected bleakness.

"Ludwig in Orbit" is a brief, two-minute interlude focused around airy chanting and spooky organ. It acts as a great, ritualistic-feeling breather.

Fossil Gardens ends on its title track. Glassy synths lend a sonic continuity with "Ludwig in Orbit", and the sound here is so dense it's nearly overwhelming. This sonic maximalism is momentarily undercut by a filter that makes everything sound distant and muffled, and it's a powerful contrast. On this song, the production is the real star, as opposed to any one instrument.

Hail Spirit Noir's sixth LP is a powerful return to form. It's spacey, psychedelic black metal woven into exciting and inventive song structures. All the instrumental elements blend beautifully, and it's clear a lot of thought went into its composition and arrangement.

Review originally posted here: theeliteextremophile.com/2024/07/22/album-review-hail-spirit-noir-fossil-gardens/

A divisive band to say the least HAIL SPIRIT NOIR is either one of those bands that clicks with you or on the contrary totally rubs you the wrong way. As with most intrepid musical explorers that break all the rules and introduce strange chimeras to an established genre that many have settled on a comfort zone within, this band fearlessly steers its craft into strange musical worlds that have hitherto never been aurally integrated into the egregore of the greater black metal fanbase. Nevertheless HAIL SPIRIT NOIR sallies forth into the great unknown and delivers another slice of progressive black metal with a heavy emphasis on symphonic touches. While "Eden In Reverse" eccentrically and eclectically delved into the farthest reaches of space rock infused progressive rock that skimped a bit on the metal, FOSSIL GARDENS makes a retrograde into its roots.

On FOSSIL GARDENS the team has once again reinstated the black metal aspects and given the fans what drew them to its unusual style in the first place albeit encased in a psychedelic haze within a proggy framework. Sounding more like the weirdest experiments of Dodheimsgard than Darkthrone, the black metal returns but in a sort of musical truce kinda way. The album surprisingly starts of with clean vocals and spacey synthesizer ambience which suggests HAIL SPIRIT NOIR has totally gone Ulver on us and abandoned all notions of being a metal band but after a sensual baritone tribute to classic Dead Can Dance, HAIL SPIRIT NOIR unleashes its pent up black metal sensibilities and offers a blastbeat driven and tremolo guitar rampage complete with raspy vocal rage however the atmosphere remains thick and frigid and rather dominant but nevertheless, black metal HAIL SPIRIT NOIR has arisen like a phoenix form the ashes.

The rest of the album follows suit however the black metal isn't as angsty as the typical second waver. This album finds the metal more in chord stomping mode for much of the time along with those jangly dissonant strumming sessions joining in for contrast's sake. Guitar sweeps place this squarely into the melodic black metal camp with the eerie ambient backdrops never renouncing their presence for a second. Raspy tirades trade off with haunting clean vocal excursions into surreal spacey soundscapes that keeps the band firmly in the black space metal camp. This is progressive metal after all with the black metal a mere ingredient in the larger picture, a bane to black metal purists while avant-garde experimentalists will rejoice at the band's audacity to meander through labyrinthine passages that include as much dreamy ambient pop motifs as it does adrenaline outbursts of black metal fury.

For many this one will elude them as it is by no means a conventional album. While slightly less abstract and freakishly alienating as "Eden In Reverse," FOSSIL GARDENS nevertheless is no return to the black'n'roll bouncy grooves of "Oi Magoi" or "Mayhem In Blue" but rather delivers a veritable dip into progressive rock territory that just happens to incorporate black metal as the evil step-sister that keeps it from falling into complete ambient space rock terrain. As far removed though as FOSSIL GARDENS is from classic "normal" black metal, the contrasts make this a dynamic listening experience much like the world of Ihsahn, Enslaved or other formerly black metal dominated acts that now have successfully hybridized their caustic angst with a more pacifying structured layout that offers a true musical majesty behind all the weirdness. While i prefer the previous "Eden In Reverse," i have to say that FOSSIL GARDENS doesn't disappoint at all and rubs me in the right way which makes my tail wag in delight. In other words, NOT what i was expecting but in a good way!

Review originally posted here: theeliteextremophile.com/2020/09/14/odds-ends-september-14-2020/

While the three preceding releases weren´t exactly primitive and simple, the new sextet lineup do create an even more massive and more busy soundscape. Hard (and more mellow) rocking guitars, bass, and drums, loads of vintage synths/keyboards/organ, and well performed clean vocals, harmonies and choirs. This is 60s/70s influenced heavy progressive rock with a strong psychadelic touch. The contemporary artist which comes closest to the sound on "Eden in Reverse" is probably Opeth and their 70s hard rock infused progressive rock sound, but Hail Spirit Noir have a more driving, repetitive rhytmic pulse (Krautrock/space rock influenced). The latter influence is especially heard on the 10:20 minutes long closing track "Automata 1980", but the hard rocking repetitive rhythmic playing is there on most tracks.

Hail Spirit Noir come from a black metal background, but while the three preceding releases did feature black metal elements, they weren´t really black metal. It was just an element of their sound. That element is now almost completely gone from their music, and "Eden in Reverse" does not feature much more than 1 minute of black metal influenced sounds. A raw black metal styled scream at the end of "Alien Lip Reading", and a few sections with tremolo picked distorted guitars and some faster-paced drumming are about it. The clean vocals are performed in a laid-back almost sedated fashion. Very pleasant on the ears, but maybe slightly too one-dimensional in the end. On the other hand the vocals suit the atmosphere of the instrumental part of the music perfectly.

"Eden in Reverse" features an organic and detailed sound production, which suits the material perfectly, and upon conclusion it´s another strong album release by Hail Spirit Noir. They´ve moved forward and have added new elements to their sound and they´ve removed other elements, but ultimately they still sound unmistakably like themselves. A 4 star (80%) rating is deserved.

(Originally posted on Metal Music Archives)

A fellow progressive metal reviewer on the Prog Archives, Silly Puppy, has written extensively in his reviews about the rise of "Psychedelic Metal" in the past decade, a movement of which Hail Spirit Noir is a part. Unfortunately for this band, this invited me to make some very unflattering comparisons to another psychedelic metal record released this year, Oranssi Pazuzu's Mestarin Kynsi. While Mestarin Kynsi was marred a bit by misplaced black metal vocals, it contextualized its "weirdness" by putting together a masterclass in generating and releasing tension in the songs. Eden in Reverse is just all weird all the time with no respite. I for one will not be returning to this record or this band for quite some time.

1. "Darwinian Beasts" (2:18) great song that introduces the futuristic sound and music that is to follow. (4.25/5)

2. "Incense Swirls" (7:14) sustained synth note is followed by pounding rock marching us forward. Jakub Roszak (RETROSPECTIVE)-like voice enters to begin telling us the story as the music trots along. Bass gets some interesting lee-way during fourth minute. Then vocalist(s) return singing int two different octaves. Nice! Scaled back instrumental passage in the fifth minute is cool--and is followed by a return to the higher-voiced chorus. The the marching beat is reestablished over which some interesting not-flashy synthesizer solos preceding the introduction of a new theme: a guitar arpeggio. Underwhelming ending. (Just prepping us for the next song?) (13.25/15)

3. "Alien Lip Reading" (6:36) great thick atmosphere with a very satisfying PAIN OF SALVATION-like wall-of-sound melodies, chord shifts, and feel. A top three song for me. (9.25/10)

4. "Crossroads" (5:09) opens with Gregorian chant-like effected male vocal before guitars and band launch into a drag race to the next song at the one minute mark. The simple and straightforward metal with simple synth riffs are fairly funny for their generic sound. The only saving grace is/are the vocals. What voices! (8.5/10)

5. "The Devil's Blind Spot" (3:42) guitar and synth created horn sounds open this one before full band enters to establish the foundation. But then it stays instrumental (other than some kind of growlish screams). Builds to a solid one minute finale. (8.75/10)

6. "The First Ape on New Earth" (7:26) it's off to the races from the opening note. The computer-esque drone voice of the lead singer is half BLUE ÖYSTER CULT half PAIN OF SALVATION--and the lyrics couldn't be more appropriate to both. Great tremolo strum in the fifth minute to pick things up. This, then, leads into a couple of nice whole-band power weaves. Very cool. Great bass play. Nice melodies that gradually, subtly worm their way into one's brain. Another top three song. (13.5/15)

7. "Automata 1980" (10:20) opens like a TODD RUNDGREN/TANGERINE DREAM/ "Twilight Zone" electronica experiment. Drums join in during the third minute while keys continue to do weirdness only. At 3:45 deep male voice enters with bank of Mellotron angelic voices. At 4:45 drums stop for cymbal crashes and heavily-treated choral voices singing "oohs" until 5:45 when the music smooths out into an equal palette of guitars and synths and more solid, laid back metal drumming while vocals become multi-tracked to sound multiplied. tremolo guitar slo in the eighth minute is very cool--gives the song a kind of "Court of the Crimson King" feel to it. Finishes with a Berlin School like sequencer sound as Gregorian voices vocalise in the far background. My favorite song on the album and oh, so different from the others! (18/20)

Total Time 42:45

My favorite aspect of this music are the vocals: they are excellent. It is also very refreshing to hear such adventurousness from a Prog Metal keyboardist!

B+/four stars; an excellent addition to any prog lover's music collection.