Hegemone - Voyance (2022)

The Polish monumental metal outfit Hegemone is back with their third album called Voyance. They came back two years after their last release called We Disappear, "shaping their already bleak and oppressive sound into something even more grandiose, desperate and terrifying" and it works like a (terrifying) charm.

This is the metal sound I find very alluring. There's no time spent on building up the atmosphere and slowly getting to the higher notes; Hegemone's music is already as monumental as possible, from the very first seconds. This doesn't make it any less atmospheric, quite the opposite, the mood here is simply sweeping the listener out of their feet. I can't comprehend how consistently heavy, blackgaze-like smooth and pitch-black dark the Poznań-based band's music is. It feels overwhelming in the best way, the audience can hardly do anything but soak this heaviness in awe, having their chests crushed and eyes getting wet.

This is the most attractive way of serving such a gloomy music. Even the desperate-sounding, bleak, very black metal-like screams only underline this fact. This dead feeling finds its pinnacle in Sermon, a track that dies towards the end into a poignant, bass-heavy soundscape. But the album goes back to exploding with aggressive sounds very soon and it's something the band is very capable of doing.

Voyance costs 6 EUR.

Check: Odium

Country: Poland

Genre: post-black metal

Label: Brucia Records

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