Hailing from France, Hiding son join the very small list of artists to release a single track EP that lasts as long as some other artists’ albums. At twenty-eight minutes, ‘Sol Mane’ takes on Mogwai’s epic ‘my father the king’ as the longest single in my possession.
Mired in doom-laden drone, ‘Sol Mane’ is not a journey to be undertaken lightly and it will most likely appeal to those fans of Sunn 0))), Khanate, Earth and their ilk who enjoy their music to be so rooted in the bowels of downtuned misery as to emerge from the speakers like molten lead, sparking and glowing with malevolent heat. The guitars here are unfeasibly horrible. You can imagine the speaker cones in the band’s undoubtedly sordid practice room reverberating to shreds as the band squeeze the last ounce of power out of them whilst the drums are delivered with a power and precision that the likes of Royal Blood undoubtedly wish they were capable of delivering. A misanthropic, snarling beast that is compiled from riffs that even Tony Iommi discarded as too heavy, ‘Sol Mane’ is the sort of music that should be played if ever we’re able to lock up Simon Cowell in a room and force him to listen to anti-pop until his ears bleed and he promises never to emerge into the light of contemporary culture again. An odious, unhuman racket, ‘Sol Mane’ is, in short, awesome and doom fans will find themselves trembling in anticipation of every quivering beat and every searing riff. At twenty-eight minutes, Hiding sun allow themselves plenty of space to explore their chosen genre and they take this opportunity to the full, offering up passages of light and shade that help to avoid charges of monotony, and the result is a track that ebbs and flows across its run time, keeping the listener hooked but never Straying too far from the dark pastures in which the music is rooted.
With only one track on offer, what the ‘Sol Mane’ EP lacks in quantity, it more than mamkes up for in quality. This is dark-hearted, innovative doom played by a band that clearly worship the riff to a quite unholy degree. The fact that this is available, for free, via bandcamp means only that there is no excuse for doom fans not immediately downloading a copy (look, we’ve even included a handy link), and the only complaint SonicAbuse has is the lack of a vinyl version – the inclusion of which would not only show off the music but also the artwork in the best possible light. That quibble aside, ‘Sol Mane’ is not so much highly recommended as thrust upon you.
