For most bands, the first track of an album is them setting their stalls out early, giving a brief but fully packaged taste of their sound, and lets the listener know what to expect. So as expected, the first track on ‘Erosion / Avulsion’, the debut full length from Yorkshire-based Hidden Mothers, doesn’t waste any time getting to brass tacks. Opening track ‘Defanged’ begins with pounding drums, pacy riffs, and guttural screamed vocals. However, first impressions don’t always tell the whole story.
The moment this album grabs you and demands your attention is on the first of its many left turns. After three tracks of heavy music blended with cleaner, more melodic sections, in comes ‘Caton Green’, a gorgeous, shoegazey instrumental that blends into ‘The Grey’ – a track that slowly builds before exploding into a wall of noise. But the surprises keep coming, as ‘Grandfather’ plays; a stripped back song that forces you to focus on its lyrics, in the style of a singer songwriter that’s telling a story, as much as singing a song. All this is bolstered by the frankly stunning clean vocal delivery from vocalist Luke Scrivens, which at times makes you forget you’re even listening to a metal record at all.
Make no mistake, without these stylistic shifts, this would still have been a fantastic heavy record. But with them, it creates a much more interesting and dynamic whole, as well as allowing the heavier sections to hit even harder when they do come in. This convergence of influences also lends real emotional heft to the album in a variety of different ways. ‘Violent Sun’ is a fantastic example, a song that blends together clean vocal and guitar lines with crushing heaviness. The result is that the two styles create a devastatingly visceral sense of melancholy in a way neither could have on their own.
They manage all of this in a remarkably concise fashion as well. Many genre bending bands take a long time to pull all of their ideas together, with albums clocking in at well over an hour. This record, however, sits at around the 45-minute mark, with the average track around 6 minutes long. As a result, it never outstays its welcome, and by the time the final notes of ‘Haze’ ring out, you’ll be tempted to jump back to the first track and play it again.
Hidden Mothers have been ones to watch on the UK metal scene for a number of years, and the release of ‘Erosion / Avulsion’ has been highly anticipated. It was worth the wait. Hidden Mothers have made a real statement with a record that is interesting, masterfully performed, and sounds unlike anything else in the UK metal scene at the moment. The album’s cleaner sections are where it truly soars, and it wouldn’t be a surprise if this helps it find audiences outside of the UK metal underground.
ASH BEBBINGTON