Hiraki - Stumbling Through The Walls

Angry Metal Guy 60

Synths are the future. It’s only logical now that the guitar, an antique device used by nostalgic, decrepit moshers in back-alley dive bars, is disowned. The guitar is dead. Long live the synth. Long live, especially, synthpunk and noise rock which, in the wake of that new, hip arcade game Cyberpunk 2077, is the in thing. In the satellite station of Aarhaus, Denmark – 166 cosmomiles north-east of Copenhagen – a young band by the name of Hiraki corrupt data by producing an abyssal synth-punk noise that takes influence from the likes of Daughters, Street Sects, and The Body. Stood on the rooftops and looking down are a medley of decommissioned industrial bots from the second half of the twentieth century, shaking their heads and lamenting this new movement. For us metalheads who dip our feet in the supersonic waters of industrial electricity, this style could go either way. Thankfully, for the nostalgic metalhead cyberzombies at AMG, the guitar isn’t completely dead in Hiraki’s second full-length Stumbling Through The Walls.

Though smothered by aggressive punches of synthy knob-twisting, a fuzzy guitar chunkiness roots Hiraki’s sound in noisy, grinding synchronicity. Here, we have just over thirty minutes of constantly shifting noise that oscillates between twitching punk jaggedness and monstrous metal massiveness. Does Hiraki combine the colliding forces well? Does Hiraki care? Probably not. Stumbling Through The Walls is certainly an acid trip down a crooked alley of blood stained neon. Disorientation is at Hiraki’s core. Take the blunt opener “Common Fear” as an example. It opens with a weaselly vocal tirade that steadily descends into maniacal screaming. Beneath the vocals, synth throbs, guitar shards, and lumps of drum machine noise fight for space.

This is mostly the case throughout the record. Blood, sweat, and wires overlap as Hiraki’s many heads groove in the dust. Remember that blind flamethrower guitarist from Mad Max: Fury Road? Hiraki are twitching their schizophrenic electronica on the same war rig. “Wonderhunt” has a firmer guitar-led drive that suits the mangled screams of vocalist and synthwizard Jon Gotlev. The walls of wired noise that envelops “Wonderhunt” and “Blossom Cuts” is invigorating, especially when the tracks skip and swagger into screeching and glitching grooves. Dense tracks like “Wonderhunt” combine myriad features in a way that sweeps a listener into a state of numb wonderment. A sense of sensory annihilation is present when Hiraki are at their best. Hiraki are still powerful, though, when approaching songcraft from a more subtle angle. In tracks like “Proto Skin,” Hiraki builds with a steadier post-metal ebb-and-flow approach that works well in comparison to some of the more instantly arresting tracks.

The more fragmentary, unravelling, and colder tracks on the record are less instantly gripping – “Mirror Stalker” for example. The unhinged chaos at Hiraki’s core is present when channeling a post-punk styled electronic vibe, however the greatest sense of aggressiveness and satisfaction occurs when the band are layering, slicing, and splicing denser noise into a dust storm maelstrom. The Kim Gordon-esque spoken word segments of “New Standards” add a level of cinematic cheesiness that interrupts the record’s instantaneity, although the crushing The Body-esque electronic powersurge in the second half relights the record’s fire. Some of the cyber-core segments – with Gotlev’s screams evoking teen-like cries of body changing agony – have too much of a 2000s post-hardcore/emo tone that trigger painful memories of side-swept hair and Kerrang! TV. Penultimate track “Peach Lung,” for example, feels too much like an awkward satellite station nightclub scene from a sci-fi B-movie. These moments detract comically from the emotional heft of tracks like “Wonderhunt” and “Blossom Cuts.”

When held against similar sounding bands like Street Sects and Daughters, Hiraki are less seedy, dangerous, and emotionally powerful. There’s a greater playfulness that governs Hiraki’s sound, a sort of hazy, hedonistic trip through gimmicky labyrinthine cyberscapes. This is an appealing trait. The main issue is with the balance of emotions and sounds on Stumbling Through The Walls. There is 27 minutes of appealing cyberpunk here; there’s also five minutes seriously in need of a patched update. Nonetheless, Hiraki are a good band and this is a good release with some excellent single tracks. If you’re looking for a truly menacing industrial jolt, however, you may as well revisit the industrial titans of yesteryear.



Rating: 3.0/5.0
DR: 5 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Nefarious Industries
Websites: hirakiband.bandcamp.com | facebook.com/HIRAKIband
Releases Worldwide: April 9th, 2021

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