Praise for VYGR‘s Hypersleep from San Francisco’s aQuarius Records: It’s been a while since we’ve been excited about a post metal doomgaze post Neur-Isis outfit… It was a sound that, we, and lots of other folks got pretty obsessed with, mixing the mathy sprawl of post rock with the doomy heft of sludgey metal, but like most exciting new discoveries these days, it didn’t take long for us to be inundated with boring clones, and pointless pound and meander. There were definitely exceptions, bands who took that sound and made it all their own, Pelican, Snowblood, Cloaca, Conifer, Rosetta, and you can Boston heavies VYGR to that list.
Formerly called Voyager, a shift in sound and membership resulted in the moniker change, and while we have no idea what they sounded like before, we love how they sound now. This epic post metal writ surprisingly melodic, the only holdover to the forefathers is the bellowed vocals, without those, this would be more like a metalized Explosions In The Sky. The same sort of slow build brooding majesty, but this is definitely metal, massive downtuned riffage, big pummeling drums, flurries of double kick, but for every bit of doomy crunch, the band get all synthy and proggy, spacing way out, getting super melodic and poppy, wedding double kick to spacey synths and woozy major key melodies, or taking those same melodies and dropping them right into the middle of some serious metallic churn.
‘Galactic Garbage’ is a highlight, with its almost stonery groove, its cool minimal droned out space rock middle, and a killer chugging second half. So is ‘The Hidden’, textured and dynamic and melodic, the synths way up in the mix, adding a sort of sci-fi prog element to the loping post rock doomisms, not to mention one of the best little chunks of guitar harmony EVER, we wish the song was 10 minutes longer just so that part would never end.
And it’s those guitar parts, the harmonies and leads, that definitely elevate this stuff, adding a distinct melodic and almost poppy component that works surprisingly well amongst the chug and pound.
Unfortunately for these guys, the specter of Isis and Neurosis and all the post metal that came before will loom large, but it’s still an awesome sound, and this is a killer record, and if you’re like us, and love THAT sound, then this stuff will for sure hit the spot.
At 40 years old, Aquarius is the oldest independent record store in San Francisco. We try to only carry music we love, and we’re always searching for more new, cool, weird and wonderful music. All of which we then share with you, our loyal customers.
Tags: Album of the day, Aquarius Records, Creator-Destructor, Hypersleep, Postrock, VYGR
This entry was posted on Monday, March 28th, 2011 at 6:57 am and is filed under 2011, Album of the Day . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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