Signed to the awesome Pelagic records (The Ocean, Arabrot), Hypno5e is the result of a long-running collaboration, originally comprised of Thibault Lamy and Emmanuel Jessua, aimed at combining the visceral power of music with the narrative heft of cinema. Emmanuel’s primary goal in this respect was to produce “some kind of original score for an imaginary movie, built on memories and souvenirs.” Hypno5e’s story is not an easy one. Like any band challenging the boundaries of what is perceived to be acceptable in heavy music, they spent a good deal of time forging their own path, gaining acceptance and label support only in 2012 (some seven years after the band formed) although, by the end of that year their fortunes had changed, the band invited on the road as direct support to Gojira – a major profile boost. Now on their fifth album, entitled A Distant Dark Source, the band conceived this new record as a restatement of their purpose following on from the acoustic record, Alba – Les Ombres Errantes. The result, a hypnotic, eleven-track record, may well stand as their grandest achievement to date.
Opening with On The Lake – Part II, an epic, twelve-minute piece that opens amidst a haze of eerie synth and echoing samples, the band engage the listener from the off. It takes some little while before Theo Begue’s drums announce the arrival of the band, Emmanuel and Jonathan Maurois weaving magnificent castles in the sky with their heavily textured guitar lines. The arrival of piano and subtly-employed strings only adds to the sense of grandeur, the band falling somewhere between the might of Gojira and the evocative ambience of Red Sparrowes. It makes for a remarkable opening track – one that explores the most extreme elements of the band’s sound and yet one that is not afraid to embrace melodic digressions and ambient interludes. To be honest, it’s difficult to summarise the remarkable diversity of this fluid, engaging piece in a single paragraph, suffice it to say that it sets the tone for the album that follows – ambitious, imaginative and exciting. A short, string-laden interlude, In The Blue Glow Of Dawn – Part I is aptly titled, the music evoking exactly what the title describes, the gentle warmth of the piece allowing a moment of respite before the brutal Part II sees the band deploying elastic riffs reminiscent of Meshuggah’s stabbing assault. Crushing, yet not without focus, the violence abates as suddenly as it appeared, the band switching abruptly between ethereal beauty and explosive rage, driving the piece forward towards the beautiful Part III. With its stair-stepping guitars, clean vocals and filmic strings, Part III brings the Blue Glow suite to a neat conclusion.
The next suite, also in three parts, is A distant Dark Source. Part I offer s a short, elegant introduction that glimmers in the darkness. Part II, in contrast, has a strong Gojira vibe amidst its gargantuan riffs, pummelling percussion and multi-tracked vocals. There’s a richness to the band’s delivery, even when unveiling the heaviest of riffs, that keeps things wide-eyed and filled with wonder and the band make good use of the track’s extended runtime. Part III, which is also lengthy, is brutal enough at the outset, but it’s not as easy to follow as all that, and staccato time shifts, the deft use of subtle piano and an abrupt tonal shift that suddenly sees the band operating in a field not a million miles away from The Cooper Temple Clause, keeps the listener guessing as to what’s coming next. The shifts from might to melodicism are particularly well manged and the latter stages of the song are delivered with such monolithic potency that it’s hard to believe that mere moments before the listener was caught in a mellifluous web of layered harmonies and glistening guitar lines. It is a remarkable suite, well-placed at the heart of the album, and worthy of the entry fee alone.
Opening the third suite, On Our Bed Of Soil, Part I, is a thing of shimmering beauty. A short piece, it still crams in a wealth of ideas, including spoken word passages and clean vocals before Part II explodes into life, all metronomic riffing and harrowing screams. It’s one of the album’s heaviest moments, although that does not mean devoid of light and shade, and a sense of melody remains even amidst the sonic wreckage of the relentless percussive blasts and stabbing riffs. In contrast, Part III, which includes snippets of T.S. Elliot, is a hazy, woozy piece of music that takes its time to explore the dark poetry of The Love Song Of J. Alfred Prufrock, before exploding into blazing light as riffs collide and coalesce in one great, sonic lightning storm, as beautiful as it is filled with pathos.
The final piece of the album, the string-washed and cinematic Tauca Part II (Nowhere), brings the album to an elegiac close, the lilting melody and off-beat rhythm designed to allow the listener to slowly drift into the ether, before one last effort to rage against the dying of the light sees those same strings raise to a crescendo before the guitars burst forth once more. However, it is but a fleeting digression, one last chance to raise a fist against the elements, before calm returns and a serene piano sees the track, and the album, reach its conclusion.
A Distant (Dark) Source is almost too sumptuous a sonic feast to take in one sitting. Certainly, in attempting to review the album, the challenge has been to try to provide a narrative to the remarkably diverse elements that the band allow to filter into the mix. Nothing is quite as it seems, and yet it all flows with remarkable coherence, the result being closer to classical composition in its symphonic ebb and flow, than a traditional, song-based rock record. The production, the sense of wonder that greets each new element and the astonishing musicianship of the band all play a part in this being one of the most magical records of the year and, potentially, the decade. Truly original bands are few and far between and should be treasured. After a decade or so of making music, Hypno5e’s time in the sun has come and it is more than deserved, for this album is a true masterpiece. 10/10
