Review Summary: This is another excellent album to come out of Pelagic Records; its angry, sophisticated, and heavy like an organized crate of bricks.
I was not expecting an album like Meridian to come out last year. This is a pleasant surprise to me as I am a big fan of the modern Belgium post-metal scene, especially for bands labeled under Pelagic Records. To back this sentiment, I would go as far as to say Phanerozoic II was my 2020 album of the year along with Novena, it is a damn near flawless album. Antithetical to usual post/sludge metal, the general sound that comes out of the Pelagic Records material is usually quite polished, well-mastered progressive post-metal. They focus on accessibility, hence allowing for new fans to get into the genre, which is something I can appreciate. This leads us to Hippotraktor, a band that put two heavy things together in their name to show that they mean business.
Reading more into the band’s members I found out that three of them are also members of the acclaimed underground progressive post-metal band: Psychonaut. To be honest, having this constantly in mind might have inflated my expectations of this album to unrealistic proportions as I am quite often comparing the two. However, Hippotraktor does indeed separate itself from its sister band by honing their songwriting down to many short songs rather than the variety we get on Unfold the God Man. This would ideally make the listener more conscious of the riffs and melodies that the album presents.
Oh, did I forget to mention that this band is djent? Yeah, they combine elements of their post-metal roots with very modern-sounding, groovy, down-tuned, high gain riffs. This makes for something that has been done before but is a lot rarer than plain progressive post-metal. We get the djenty palm-muted riffs from the rhythm guitar, over the blaring reverb from their sludge influences, this is along with the lead guitar often playing mathy, staccato chords. This makes for a sound that sounds dark, clean, and industrial; kind of like an urban construction site.
The album art does well to drill this point in, that this is an album about complex, intelligent design, and the modern human world. The theme of this is somewhat new for the band as their two other projects Pothamus and Psychonaut were ones that focused a lot more on Zen Buddhism rather than western theism, and on ancient civilizations rather than modern city-scapes. In my opinion, they can do both pretty well and I appreciate the philosophical implications to their work; it might be a bit nicer if some of the hard-hitting lyrics of this were less screamy and more discernable.
The drum performance on this album is really good and the mix does it a lot of justice. There are plenty of moments where all of the instruments synergize together in a vibey groove and the drums wind up being the most standout instrument. That is not to say that the bass and guitars do not do their job, slowly crushing you like a rolling pin on dough. When the heavy djent parts hit, they hit hard. But I will say, the overall riffs on this album are not as interesting as on Unfold the God Man which was maybe something I was looking forward to seeing from the members of Psychonaut. Additionally, I will say that this album is a lot more straightforward than Unfold the God Man as there are not as many really stand-out experimental sections; with the exception of the mathy, staccato breakdown in the middle of “God is in Slumber” which is my favorite part of the album.
Other than being just a bit disappointing to me, this is a very good progressive post album. I would say this is a good primer for a new fan to get into the other Pelagic Records albums. Or for fans of djent that want to get into more sludge and post-metal; I think the modern cleanliness and dynamics of this album would appeal a lot to fans of Periphery, even though this is something entirely different. This is really a sound that one doesn’t come across all too often and I would still recommend this to anyone who is a fan of the bands stated above.
