GUEST POST: Hourvari - EP (2011)

(Volo is back with another review for a hardcore band. At this rate, we're gonna have to make him an official TZEEEAC member. God, no... think of all the paperwork!)

I feel like the older I get, the more I tend to listen to faster and more aggressive songs. I don’t really have that patience to sit through a 10+ minute song nowadays, but I have to admit, Hourvari’s EP got me stuck next to the speakers the whole thing through.

Hourvari are a band hailing from France, they are a side project that features members of some pretty cool French bands, including Birds In Row, As We Draw and Puzzle. They play and blend of Post Hardcore, Post Metal and all other sort of post stuff. Unfortunately, this EP is just 2 songs long, which just keeps me wanting more, but as I understand, the band isn’t around, so that sucks.

Music wise, it has your typical song structure for a post metal song, I don’t even know if we can talk about song structures in this kind of music, but you know where I’m going with this. Both songs start really chill and spacy and steadly increase in volume and energy, before going into a wall of sound that’s just ear shattering, and catches you pretty off guard, and yeah the first part is a build up pretty much, but damn, it will catch you off guard, be warned!

The production on these 2 songs reminds me of the early stuff that Birds In Row have put out, like on the Cottbus EP, just an overall heavy drum sound and powerful guitar noise, but also the bass sound is really present there, which I really love when I can distinguish the bass from the other instruments. I wouldn’t be surprised if it were produced by the same guy.

The vocals are really something special on this EP. You would expect from a post metal record to have those barking growly voices, well you’d be surprised to hear that this is not the case. There is a lot of diversity, you have everything from clean singing, to screamos (similar to those in Birds In Row, I think it’s the same guy) and to some extent whispering voices. And the vocals do complement a lot the songs, giving them a lot of emotion and power.

All in all this is an excellent EP, too bad it’s the only one from them, and I don’t really know if they will release something else, though I hope they do. Props to Lost Pilgrims Records for sending this our way! The record comes out on 20th of September on vinyl, of course, but if you can’t wait until then, just go to their bandcamp page and download on a pay what you want basis, but if you like it, do spent a few bucks on it, because it’s totally worth it.