Zer0

There's a brilliant compilation called The World Comes to an End in the End of a Journey, which features some post-rock and post-black metal bands. The compilation does not feature Hypomanie but their music would probably not feel out of place on that record, as their sound is pretty much in the same ballpark and invokes a similar snow-covered winter feel. Hypomanie are from the Netherlands and started out as a depressive black metal band before gradually morphing into a post-rock outfit. Unfortunately they are not taking post-rock into new frontiers or creating an identity of their own here. The overall result is somewhat underwhelming, you get the impression that there's some potential here but the overall execution is somewhat lacking. A major let down on this album is the drumming, it sounds too simplistic and does not drive the music the way it should. Some black metal-style blastbeats or jazz-influenced drumming would have made this album so much more interesting.

The highlight of this album however is 'If Only the Seas Where Merciful', with it's dreamy, psychedelic glide-guitar lines and suitably-place crescendos. 'Lullaby for Ian' is a tribute to the late Ian Curtis of Joy Division. However the dialogue samples taken from the Ian Curtis biopic Control seem ill-advised and even a little bit cringe-worthy. The track feels like a squandered opportunity. The album does sound pretty and melancholic for the most part but then again so does a lot of post-rock, and there's plenty post-rock albums which can invoke these emotions far better than this album. Post-rock used to have an edge and offered tons of variety but here we end up with the cliqued version of the genre which has been done to death over the past decade or so.


I feel like I've discussed shoegaze to death at this stage, but it remains one of my favourite genres. While the media in general stopped giving a **** about shoegaze by the mid-90's it never really went away as such. And when a new crop of shoegaze bands started gaining some momentum in the 00's the awful term 'nu-gaze' was coined. The term was originally aimed at English alternative rock band My Vitriol, who have some shoegaze influences but personally I've never seen them as a shoegaze band. If there's one band who could be held responsible for this upsurge in shoegaze around the mid-00's that would probably be Amusement Parks on Fire. When I feel like listening to this band my album of choice is usually their sublime second album Out of the Angeles. However I feel like I have criminally neglected their self-titled debut, which is a shame because this album is nearly just as good. It's an album which updates the shoegaze sound for the 00's rather than rehashing what went before. I get the impression that they also have a 90's emo influence in their sound, in particular bands like Sunny Day Real Estate and Mineral, and this sets them apart from being another My Bloody Valentine, Jesus and Mary Chain or Slowdive clone.

'Venus in Cancer' is a fantastic tune I must say and it sums up what the band do so well. Meanwhile 'Smokescreen' sounds like a noisier, more overdriven, wall of sound version of 90's emo. It's an album which fits together nicely as a whole and the one-two punch of the final two tracks 'The Ramones Book' and 'Local Boy Makes Good' provide a great conclusion to the album. This album comes highly recommended and deserves to be played loud.

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