Greece’s Hail Spirit Noir are one of the most original and weirdest bands out there.  Really out of the box, non-linear type of music.  I have enjoyed their different types of albums, and while they started out as some avant-garde black metal band and their musical influences continued to expand and morph into some Twilight Zone 70’s/80’s shoe gazey, metal, rock, atmospheric bastardized musical machine.  Last year’s Eden in Reverse was one of the best albums for 2020.  So as a 10^th anniversary special for the masses they have released this new album Mannequins, which once again resembles nothing of their prior discography.  The majority of this album is made up of instrumentals that sound like they  were extracted from some slow burn or schlocky 70’s/80’s horror movie.  This is a soundtrack album based on a story written by Theo Liratzakis (guitarist/vox), played in a synthwave style.  This is a bizarre and creepy album.

“12-31-1985: Night Shift” begins with some weirds sounds before it settles into a slower synth beat and this goes into “Against Your Will, My Blade”.  It’s a bit faster and reminds me of one of the female characters in an 80’s horror movie running for her life as the slasher is stalking and running after her.  The song is rather upbeat and has a super catchy sound and even sounds like some alien UFO’s flying around and ready to beam you up into the spacecraft.  There are many sounds going on and around the 3.30 part you’re transported into a trancelike state before the catchy main synth part returns.  The song is over 6 minutes so it could send you into a trance where you zone the F out, since some of the repetitive sounds can enter into drone.

The title track actually has vocals.  This opening part sounds like Duran Duran-I’m not kidding you all, especially when the 80’s type of vocals come in.  They’re happy and has some drenched in reverb vocal sound effects.  I can picture if this song was transported back to 1984 the discos/dance clubs would play this non-stop, thus making the future Hail Spirit Noir, one of the most famous and legendary bands in existence-how’s that for some time travel weirdness-it’s befitting due to this strange, but enthralling album?   “Enter Disco Inferno” has vocals as well.  Ethereal in nature with more bizarre synth but catchy soundtrack moments as the Casio drum machine pattern keeps pace with the synth rhythms.  “Ending Crashers II” ends and is epic with the highs and lows of the synths and this is the perfect ending as the song sounds like a lava lamp spilled onto your shag carpet and clipped your bell bottom pants.

I am a sucker for horror movie and weird sounding soundtracks.  Hail Spirit Noir’s Mannequins is bizarre, catchy, creepy, fun, light and airy at times, yet because of what I mentioned in this first sentence in this end paragraph,-I love this album.  It’s original and stylish and goes to show everyone this band conforms to no musical boundaries.  Give it a whirl-it’s a lot of fun.

[Visit the band's website]

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