French Connection: Hiro and Who Needs Maps? Split-12″
Be ready for the French Connection, so to say: a split 12” by Hiro and Who Needs Maps? (sic) that was put out on no less than ten DIY labels together: SM Musik, SHOVE Records, Dingleberry Records, Perce-Oreille, Impure Muzik, Saddestsong Records, Orchidscent Records, Moment Of Collapse, Dream Comes True, Emergence Records. Quite a lot, eh? But it was definitely worth it! Read it for yourself:
The Hiro side starts right away with a decent Metal riff, but evolves soon enough into something I would describe as Post-Core with a melodic edge to it. The five Frenchmen deliver a very own brand of this style and keep the momentum going throughout the four tracks. Dark and moody, but hard-hitting at all times, the songs sound very diverse and elaborate. My favorite track is the third, “Les Ceni Pas“: it begins with a dreamy introduction reminiscent of Isis and builds up slowly until the vocals kick in, thus providing a somewhat grotesque counter-part to the calming melody. Then the songs takes a turn towards heavier spheres and translates into a groovy, yet disharmonic riff monster.
Their vocalist has a raspy voice, that would even be adequate for a Crust or Sludge band. He also bears some Screamo influences, but to me this form of aggressiveness fits the music quite well, even more because he doesn’t switch between his nagging and an awful oh-so-whiny clean voice.
Strangely enough, the melody at the end of the first song,“L’Errance”, reminds me A LOT of Nachtmystium’s “Ghost Of Grace”… probably just co-incidence…
It’s hard to find sound files of this band on the web, so I can only refer to the myspace-page, where you can listen to the demo-versions of three tracks present on this LP.
Who Needs Maps? are not really my cup of tea. Their side of the split features a great deal of Screamo parts, a thing I don’t dig that much at all. So it’s hard for me to tell if it’s played on a high level of musicianship or by any means original and innovative for this type of Hardcore music. The biggest drawback IMHO is the fact that all of the songs almost never shift in pace. Just very occasionally, there’s a break or mellow part. The drummer seems to be excellent, though, but in the end, they can’t compete by no means with Hiro. I’ll give ’em another chance in the near future, as I still got their first full length release waiting on my shelf, so stay tuned.
Please visit the band’s own page or bandcamp site!
The cover and cardboard inner-sleeve of this release were illustrated by Elsa Varin, who did a beautiful job with these bugs. Check out her blog at this location!
To order this Lp, either get in contact with dingleberry(at)web.de, visit the facebook page, this myspace or look up the other labels and the bands themselves on the web!
Tracklist:
Side A, Hiro
1. L’Errance
2. La Tentation
3. Les Ceni Pas
4. L’Exil
Side B, Who Needs Maps?
1. I+II
26:58 in total
This entry was posted on November 29, 2011 at 11:17 pm and is filed under Reviews with tags Dingleberry Records, DIY, Hardcore, Hiro, Post Metal, Post-Core, Screamo, Who Needs Maps?. 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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