Five the Hierophant - Through Aureate Void

Angry Metal Guy

The last time I encountered a hierophant, I 4.5ed it and slotted into the highly respectable – to me, at least – second spot on my 2020 List. While I dared not hope that London’s Five the Hierophant could reach such heights, a small part of me hoped that this band, which has been plying its trade since 2014 and bills itself as a psychedelic fusion of black metal, jazz, post metal and ambient drone, might just share some DNA with my beloved Hierophant Violent. And, as I listened to Five the Hierophant’s full-length debut – 2017’s Over Phlegethon – in preparation for this review, I thought I might just be in luck. As flowingly atmospheric and deeply complex as the hellish, mythical river from which the album borrowed its name, I really enjoyed the first LP. Has Five the Hierophant struck gold again with Through Aureate Void?

In a similar vein to its predecessor, Through Aureate Void is an almost entirely instrumental affair, with only softly spoken passages – in, I think, in a mixture of languages, though they hard to make out – interspersed across its run. And quite a range of instruments are brought to the instrumental party, including saxophone, music saw and zither, as well as a range of percussion instruments. Hovering firmly in the post-metal and ambient drone camps, Five the Hierophant serve up five sprawling compositions, with eight minutes and change the shortest thing on the menu, pushing out to fifteen and a half minutes for the main course (“Pale Flare over Marshes”). The ambience is delivered largely in the form of semi-discordant jazz, with wailing saxophone and hypnotic, percussive rhythms, tinged with the otherworldly melodies of the music saw.
Through Aureate Void by Five the Hierophant

Set against these more unusual – in metal at least – elements, Five the Hierophant’s post-metal stylings are much more familiar, with meaty chords and rolling riffs a la B R I Q U E V I L L E, or even early Pelican at times. It’s when the two aspects of Five the Hierophant‘s sound combine, as they do, for example, beneath one of the spoken word passages, at the back end of album opener “Leaf in the Current,” that Through Aureate Void is at its best, with something of the mesmerizing drone and introspective looping percussion that Dark Buddha Rising recently nailed. Equally, the delicate zither plucks that set up the first post metal riff drop on “Fire from Frozen Cloud” are gorgeously subtle, if perhaps under-utilized on the album. The stuttering rhythms and often discordant jazz spirals and swirls around the more predictable post-metal elements.

The problem with Through Aureate Void is that it meanders and I’ve pretty much had my fill by the end of “Fire from Frozen Cloud.” At that point though, which I find myself a mere 21 minutes into Five the Hierophant’s 53-minute creation. It’s not that the record goes downhill from there, rather it simply goes on and on. For another half hour. Everything is performed with skill and the sheer range of instrumentation that weaves in and out of Through Aureate Void’s channels is impressive. It’s the songwriting that lets the album down, as it appears to go nowhere and to repeat the same tricks over and over again. For all that, it sounds lush, with the guitars taking on a nice crunchy edge, even as the fragility of the zither and skirling music saw lend a truly unique sound.

Five the Hierophant frustrated the hell out of me with this one. I really wanted to love Through Aureate Void but I don’t. I love many of its elements and chunks of it bore me away (the first five minutes of “Pale Flare over Marshes”) but, as a whole package, I was left bored by it (the other ten minutes of “Pale Flare over Marshes). While feeling smoother and more polished in execution than Over Phlegethon, this latest outing lacks the dark experimental edge and bleak devastation that made its predecessor so captivating. By contrast, Through Aureate Void feels like its creators ran out of ideas and were content to repeat the same, admittedly very good, moments. Somehow, I feel this is going to be another Nero di Marte moment. There too, I proclaimed that an experimental post metal band’s debut was outstanding but, as envelopes were pushed and records made longer, so the band lost its way a bit. According to many of you, I was wrong. Badly wrong. Well, here goes again …

Rating: 2.0/5.0
DR: 6 | Format Reviewed: 256 kbps mp3
Label: Dark Essence Records
Websites: five-the-hierophant.bandcamp.com | facebook.com/fivethehierophant
Releases Worldwide: February 26th, 2021

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