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When it comes to music in the “post-everything” realm, if it bears the mark of Pelagic Records, it’s pretty much guaranteed to be of the utmost quality. Wield, the debut full-length by Philadelphia based five-piece HIROE is no exception. Comprising six tracks that blur the edges between post-rock and post-metal, this is 47 minutes of shimmering beauty and tectonic heft.
The album sees HIROE build upon the ideas laid down on their gorgeous 2022 EP, Wrought, and fleshing out their genre melding sound with three new members Brian Kong (guitars), Jon Seiler (bass) and Dan Sagherian (drums) joining the ranks. Original bass player Jill Paslier switching to guitar, taking their guitarist count to three.
The triple guitar approach is put to good use across these instrumental tracks, adding rich layers of melody and harmony to the clean sections and huge walls of sound in the heavier parts.
Opener The Calm, which at just under five minutes long is by far the shortest track on Wield, serves more as an intro to the rest of the album than a full song. It’s built around a single riff, picked on a clean guitar with satisfying amounts of reverb and compression, while the other guitars build layers of cinematic sound design beneath it. While on the first listen the subtleties of this track may pass you by, further listens reveal more, while the main melody will bury itself into your skull and have you humming it for days after.
Things get markedly heavier on Tides, which sends the listener tumbling as they’re hit by wave after crushing wave of thick, frothy riffs. It’s as if Poseidon himself traded his trident for a Marshall stack.
The turbulent seas do calm briefly before the swell returns and in true post-rock fashion brings the track to a thrilling climax.
Collider opens with a jittery yet beautiful melody tapped in harmony over lush chords, bringing to mind AND SO I WATCH YOU FROM AFAR at their most playful. The hopeful atmosphere of the opening gives way into something more desperate, an impassioned yearning being wrought from the emotive melodies.
The maturity of the songwriting on display here is quite remarkable. The way HIROE’s instrumental compositions unfurl themselves, revealing rich sonic tapestries that convey the gamut of human experience, you’d be forgiven for thinking this was an album by a band deep into their career.
Dancing At The Edge Of The World, for example, with its sublime bass runs underpinning the screeching tremolo picked guitars, and a thumping heart beat of a drum pattern could easily sit on a latter-day MOGWAI record.
The Crush begins with a serpentine three part harmony that twists and writhes its way around a staccato drum pattern before giving way to a chugging one note riff. It’s by far the darkest song on the record, bringing to mind RUSSIAN CIRCLES at their most haunted. But then gorgeous synth notes poke their way through the din, shining like beams of light through dark clouds. It’s an expertly crafted display of dynamics.
No truly great post-rock album would be complete without a soaring swan song to close out, and I’ve Been Waiting For You All My Life truly delivers on this front. A repetitive arpeggio played over fizzing electronics develops into an emotionally charged barrage of more tremolo picking and chord progressions that could rival anything by the likes of EXPLOSIONS IN THE SKY in terms of sheer sonic majesty.
If this is what HIROE are capable on their full-length debut, it’s going to be a pleasure to see what their future holds with the capable hands of Pelagic Records guiding them.
Rating: 8/10
Wield is out now via Pelagic Records.
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The post ALBUM REVIEW: Wield – Hiroe appeared first on Distorted Sound Magazine.
