Now, I’ve been an advocate for pretty crazy avantgarde death metal throughout the years, but I believe that the way an idea is presented is generally far more important than the idea itself. Enter Hierarchies with their self-titled debut album, released through the label Transcending Obscurity. The label has a knack of signing interesting off-kilter bands that dwell within the death metal umbrella (see Diskord, Veilburner and Saevus Finis as examplee). So far so good, as all this applies to Hierarchies as well.
Hierarchies is one of the new bands of Jared Moran and Nicholas Turner; both have a near-ridiculous number of wacky side projects (and in fact they work together in many of them). With the line-up completed by bassist Anthony Wheeler, Hierarchies aims to present an avantgarde style of technical death metal.
I have no doubt in my mind that all these musicians are talented; the drumming is relentless and varied, the vocals are appropriately disgusting, and the guitars shred and wail forbidden notes, with the bass providing some alien undertones. This should work for me, but sadly it doesn’t. To start with, the production isn’t doing this band any favors; there are moments where the low end disappears, and the music turns into discant noise that is unpleasant to the ear once the guitars start soloing wildly. The drumming also suffers from inconsistent mixing, at different times overbearing or too quiet. Unorthodox production is rarely something that puts me off, though (Ordo Ad Chao is Mayhem’s best album, come at me), and that alone wouldn’t be something that stopped me from enjoying this album, but the songwriting is also lacking. Mind you, this is not some masturbatory type of technical death metal. It’s not overly complex, and I can see how the band is aiming for some atmosphere in passages here and there to balance things out (see the middle section of “Abstract”), but the breakdowns or fast sections that follow are jarring to say the least.
I’m under the impression that the songs don’t go anywhere, and it’s difficult to recall memorable moments. I believe Hierarchies need to pull back some of the outlandish structures, because once the band comes together and lands more old-school riffs, we are treated to some interesting matches, like in the last 90 seconds of the opening track “Entity”, during which the band channels both Imperial Triumphant levels of craziness while also serving up some great melodic leads.
It’s really weird how some of the things I praise other dissonant death metal bands for doing are not working as well here, but this is what happens when everything is all over the place with no clear agenda. The intentions are there; they just need some order.
