My knowledge of Hair Police is extremely limited. I had a copy of
Constantly Terrified back in
high school, but it got borrowed and never returned. Since than I
had not listened to any Hair Police until I recently heard Mercurial
Rites came out.
Mercurial Rites is hard to classify.
The soundscape is filled with harsh squeals and looming tones, but I
wouldn't necessarily classify it as 'noise'. Rather it is as if Hair
Police were trying to make ambient instrumentation but attempted this
by dredging an assortment of noise releases. The sound is haunting,
and not in the Halloween kind or way, but instead in the playing
Silent Hill 2 in the dark kind of way.
Some of the instrumentation is
quite reminiscent of older Wolf Eyes, specifically their album
Slicer. If you have
made your way through Wolf Eye's catalog, you may realize that this
is a great point to be compared to.
The vocals on Mercurial
Rites fall somewhere between the
intense whispering style of older Sightings music and the overdriven
effect screams of Whitehouse. While at times the vocals do hold the
music back slightly ('We Prepare'), tracks like 'Scythed Wide' turn
out a perfect representation of what Hair Police were trying to
achieve. I found that the more minimalistic the vocals were, the
more they fit the mood of the music and the better it overall
sounded.
Overall, I found myself mildly
enjoying the album until I got to the second half. From 'Dilate and
Inhabit' on, Mercurial Rites
was engrossing, and it is because of these tracks I keep going back
and am taking the time to share it with you.
Stream the album Here
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