I must have had a more troubled childhood than I can remember. I mean, what else would explain this absolute fascination with anything and all things metal? Well, metal and coffee, but we’ll get to the coffee at a later date. At one point in my life, I thought that the more complex the music the better, but then I realized that just because something is complex doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s good. Complexity for the sake of complexity tends to lose the soul, and without the soul you’ve got no groove and, therefore, nothing to really shake your ass to. Even the greatest jazz masters knew this. Miles and Monk could swing with the best of them and still blow your socks off with their technical virtuosity. So, make the metal complex to the point where you raise my eyebrows a half inch or so and get my body movin’ to the music, and you’ve got yourself a recipe for making one happy Pope. Enter my latest group of heroes, Hacride, with their latest release entitled Lazarus.
Upon receiving Lazarus, and having some prior knowledge for what I was in for, I grabbed a cup of coffee, sat back in my desk chair, closed out the rest of the world, and proceeded to let the music flow over my body. Hacride combine brutally heavy metal that is as imposing a blend of metal as there is with some fabulous progressive movements that give the music space to breath, then add enough melody to make the music memorable and, with a touch of flamenco guitar, they keep things constantly intriguing. I mentioned earlier that this was complex, and it truly is. So complex, in fact, that more than one listen is required to grasp the full impact of what’s going on in the music. Fortunately, Hacride made the music accessible enough that on first listen you’ll realize that there’s so much more that you need to hear and you’ll look forward to revisiting the album on numerous occasions.
“To Walk Among Them” kicks the disc off with an almost psychedelic sounding guitar run through effects boxes before building up into a senses shattering barrage of heavy metal blasts of distortion, cymbal crashes, and vocal outbursts. Fifteen minutes later and mopping sweat from the brow, we’ve listened to the band power out frenzied blasts of techno metal, shift to melodically rich atmospheric passages, and give us a glimpse at the inner workings of their minds. Mixed in the flurry of style changes, Hacride incorporate some acoustic and flamenco guitars, which helps separate these guys from anything else that’s being done out there. What I really dig on this track, as well as many of the others, is the guitarist’s approach. He mixes palm muted riffs with sustained chords as adeptly as someone like Adam Jones of Tool fame. I never really noticed how much texture that this style of playing added to a piece of music before, and for that I’m even more thankful that I happened upon Lazarus. “Awakening” is a flat out amazing! Opening with a clean toned guitar running through a goth-y sounding piece immediately makes me think in sepia. There’s just something creepy about that sound and it makes my imagination create old Victorian homes with a lot of woodwork, smartly dressed men and women drifting in ghostly fashion from one darkened room to another, and an air of classic horror is suddenly upon me. Once the melodic vocals kick into this tune, “Awakening” becomes otherworldly. Note the acoustic guitars strumming softly in the background. Again . . . little things that add a wonderful element of texture. As to be expected, the song doesn’t stay in this mode for all too long. This is Hacride, after all, they’re bound to change things up and get a little aggressive on our collective ass. Sure enough, the palm muted guitars return and the steady drums drive spikes through the forehead. But again, listen to the guitar approach as those extra and very subtle notes are dropped into the middle of the riff, making the pattern sound different every time through. The musicianship on this track is seated at the right hand of God. To cap the song off, the lads go free form jazz on us unsuspecting listeners. The guitars are run through some nasty effects that make everything go in orbit around Saturn, the bassist plays a pattern channeling the late great Jaco Pastorius, and the drums come at you like a sudden storm of golf ball sized hail.
Lazarus is made up of seven songs running at just a hair under an hour, so that should tell you that these are no popcorn or bubblegum tunes. All seven tracks come across as epic pieces of art, filled with vibrancy and emotion. The nine minute epic “My Enemy” is a metal classic mixing all of those qualities that we’ve come to expect from these guys. “My Enemy” drives with all of its reckless abandon, yet soothes with its more atmospheric passages. The guitar solo near the 5:30 mark has a fabulously rich tone, partly because of the gear being used, but also because of the way the song is arranged with the layers of guitar dropping out of the mix and creating this open space for the notes to soar. There’s so much going on in this song that I tend to forget that its nine minutes long! “Phenomenon,” which happens to be an instrumental is a tune I just have to squeeze in and make mention to. The build up at the intro with its steady rhythmic strumming and the textural clean phrasing all the way to the point where the whole band collapses into the groove is a jaw dropping execution of composition. The groove on this tune shows that aforementioned guitar approach of the palm muting mixed with sustained chords. The tension that this technique creates is overwhelming and, combined with the steady drum pattern and overbearing bass tone, makes this song a ravenous bear preparing to be released on an unarmed band of Christians in the Roman Coliseum. I’ve been spouting on about the brilliance of the French Renaissance of Metal, or the French Collective, or whatever you want to call it, for quite some time now, and Hacride are yet another band helping to push the movement forward. Waverider Alex from All About the Music and I have been in many a virtual mosh pit celebrating the grandness of the music, not just because its heavy as all hell, but because its musically experimental and progressive. None of the bands coming out of France seem content with just playing straight up thrash metal or death metal or black metal . . . they’re all putting their own spin on things, pushing the envelope on their own creativity, and they’re all doing a fucking awesome job! Lazarus should pull the spotlight off of bands like Gojira for awhile simply because it’s just as progressively complex and metallically heavy, but also because the melodies are intoxicating and more atmospherically uplifting. Viva la France! - Pope JTE
Buy here: Lazarus
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