In the grand French tradition of eclectic, experimental and mindfuckingly heavy acts like Gojira, Comity, Overmars and more recently Erin Non Dae, come Hypno5e and their debut full length album which bundles dreamy ambience, crushing angular heft and musically artistic curveballs into one unpredictably brilliant and bipolar release of typically avant-garde French metal.

I’d throw this collective out there for fans of Meshuggah, The Ocean and Burst in so much that these French oddballs are just as ambitious and unpredictable, yet brilliant in their forays into lurching, caustic, jagged metal and unexpected sudden turns into softer, often eerie, yet, atmospheric and experimental segues.

Littered with strings, samples, female vocals, long segments of delicate programming, Des Deux l’Une Est l’Autre is a hard album to absorb and dissect quickly. Look to the first seven minute song “Maintained Relevance of Destruction, part I” alone to hear everything Hypno5e have to offer: a delicate intro erupts into an explosive lurch and back again on a dime, then some shimmering clean vocals and acoustics, and an thunderous groove. It’s all initially a bit overwhelming, but once you sit back and let it all sink in, the rest of the album follows suite with a chaotic rhetoric and pacing that begins to gel with each listen.

The much shorter “Maintained Relevance of Destruction, part II” allows you to catch for breath for a few moments with some haunting female vocals and acoustics before a sturdy riff backs the female vocals with stunning results and eventual caustic explosion of noise and screams that continues for the arguable 9 ½ minute standout “Daybreak at the Slaughter House” but does not last long as more languid injections lull you into a false sense of security and bliss (and back to discordant heft again).

Truth be told, three tracks in, and I’m pretty exhausted with the jarring shifts and continual sonic equivalent of motion sickness as the band stops, starts, cascades, bludgeons and relaxes with seconds, but there’s no denying its brilliance. Granted there are some longer reprieves like “H492053”, “Naked Lunch I” and closer “Remordes Posthumes”, but when you’ve been beaten, sonically abused and surprised for 11 minute “Scarlet Fever” and “Tutuguri”, they don’t really help the battered ears and psyche. And I could have really done without the techno pulsing of “Naked Lunch II”.

I wish I’d caught this act on their just concluding Metal as Art tour with Revocation, The Binary Code and Fallen Martyr as their recorded output alone is a jarring yet transcendental journey. I can only imagine what its like in a live setting.

[Visit the band's website]

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