With the band being of Welsh stock, it's no surprise to discover ‘Hiraeth’ is a Welsh term closely translated as “a longing for home” or "homesickness". Look closely at the artwork, by Bleed Electric's Chris 'MUG5' Maguire (who incidentally was responsible for recording, engineering, producing, mixing and mastering this beast), and you'll spot a Welsh flag flying high. This is a fact. Everything from this point on becomes dizzyingly, marvellously confusing.
A ferocious mixture of speed, hardcore, technical and death-infused groove metal, 'Hiraeth' certainly has a dark, sickly side that blurs edges; dulls the senses. Kryophere echo Pantera's dirty chugged rhythm one minute, slide into Strapping Young Lad's enveloping world of rotating double-kick and rippling shreds the next, before cutting the power and slipping into a Nightwish symphonic gown (see 'Generation Seven'). There's so much to absorb that repeated listens are the only way to possibly do this album justice. The vocal blend, alone, is never tied down to aping the cracking phlegm-fuelled delivery of your average death metal vocalist. The oddball cut and paste patchwork of 'Serious Fun', for instance, gives us a roar of Phil Anselmo, a blast of Randy Blythe, a jarring Patton-esque vocal segue and a sickening Kanye West rap in the space of a minute. It's so far off the wall that you'll either end up kicking in your speakers in frustration or laughing your head off.
Then, amidst all the frippery, there are moments of bruising clarity. 'Assume The Position' fills the room with a crawling series of riffs, pausing merely to find a deliberate sequence of minor keys to flay its audience with. 'Hypocrite' ironically sprays us with RATM bullets, bursts bloodvessels to nut out a breakdown then self-implodes in a ball of splintering effects. 'Children Of Prometheus' goes all Chimaera on us, punching out a primaeval rhythm; finding an incendiary sub boom vast enough to scorch skin. And 'Seat Of The Soul' is the sound of Kryophere finally getting serious - there's a heck of a lot of guitar neck friction going on, sticks batter furrows and the vocal drops so low it begins to ape the noise of a greedily sucking drain. The majority of the content is chaotic, demanding and confusing, but there’s a lot that is also ultimately rewarding.
What is more confusing than the music itself, however, is that Kryophere have, according to their biography, honed their sound to stand as a protest against mediocrity and commercialism in music but by, seemingly, throwing every one of their influences into a melting pot, they've given birth to a debut album that plays like a “Who's Who Of Metal”. It's all very well meaning, but surely that's not quite the result they had in mind when they sat down and wrote this bugger. Potential, off the scale; realisation, barely registering.
http://www.myspace.com/kryophere
