Album Review: Hyperdontia - Hideous Entity
Reviewed by Sam Jones
Hyperdontia are a band who need little introduction for those amongst the extreme metal circles. For those unaffiliated with them, the band formed in 2015 with a combination of Danish and Turkish musicians however are strongly associated with the burgeoning Danish death metal scene. Their 2017 EP Abhorrence Veil was their first release but it was their debut album of 2018, Nexus Of Teeth, that really blew the lid off Hyperdontia and who they were. I remember when that album was released, it was huge and was amongst many people’s top releases for the year. So when it was finally announced Hyperdontia would release Hideous Entity this Autumn I was absolutely on board. I was ready for a scene of devastation. I was ready for Hyperdontia’s second full length release.
The guitar work has this rolling and malevolent tone to its performance. There’s a reason why the Danish extreme metal scene has been blowing up as of late, and it all points towards how bands like Hyperdontia are utilising their riffs. The riffs and track progressions aren’t dominated by riffs that strike you one after another like some pummelling assault, instead it’s a rolling and gathering death that is continuously picking up intensity and climbs upon the littering and rising mountain of corpses this band’s sound evokes. The band’s riff work creates imagery of this gradual but inevitable doom that you can’t escape, especially as the band keep throwing alterations in the direction of their songwriting which forever keeps you second guessing where you’ll go next. The guitar work doesn’t try and emit itself as anything overly special, instead simply resigning itself to do its job. The riffs don’t stand in front of your face here, rather they have the professionalism to stand back and perform for you because they know by taking a step back you’ll be able to comprehend and appreciate them so much more.
It must be said that the band make use of a strong bass sound emanating from their drums; i’d argue it’s one of the first and most prevalent features of this record. Blast beats don’t possess the tinny or loose skin that Tom-toms may possess, instead delivering a compact and fat strike that points towards a strong Bass presence not only behind the drums but the album as a whole. Now of course, we’ve also got the cymbals going on in the background but they are at the back of the album’s sound and haven’t been given the drumming prerogative. As a result it’s evident that the band’s incentive towards the drums is to this punching approach whereby even when the drums aren’t undergoing blast beat techniques, the drumming is still able to make you feel engaged and involved with the music because the drums don’t leave you alone for a moment. The taut drum skin creates only the narrowest of sound waves therefore the residual strike dissipates quickly, so by heightening the pace at which the drums come down on us it crafts a much more destructive and pounding experience.
Hideous Entity may be a record that’s just shy of that 40 minute runtime however we mustn’t assume that the band just throw some conventional and standard tracks at us. Every single track is absolutely bursting to the seams with material to keep us engrossed and entrenched within their sound, for every thirty seconds that we’re audience to a particular song we’re being treated to something unique and fresh almost all the time. It’s amazing how riffs and solos and drumming patterns and the overall aesthetic of a single track may evolve and take on newer life as the band continue to play. A simple 5 minute track here can have more we can take away from than other bands have done with triple that length. What’s more is the band’s pace isn’t a lightning tempo either, Hyperdontia have an explicitly defined flow which you’ll come to recognise as the default speed they play at. Consequently, the fact that we can acknowledge how much they can give you within a single track without them sacrificing quality or coherence for it is astounding.
More so than their previous work I feel, is the bass on greater display than ever before. We’ve touched on this factoid prior in regards to the drumming whereby there feels to be a greater injection of Bass into the album’s general mix than other death metal works have offered recently. That much is reflected in the overall bass guitar itself as it may suddenly jut itself outwards past the primary guitar work and vocal onslaught. Once you’ve heard the bass make itself known the first time round it becomes difficult to turn away from its presence not simply as a force of entertainment, but as an additional layer by which the album presents itself to us. This ensured depiction of the bass throughout the record aids the band in painting a more vivid picture of what their sound is, rounding out Hideous Entity into a more three-dimensional product if you will. The basslines may not be wholly audible throughout every moment of the album but they’re noticeable and outlined enough to warrant particular audible attention when they rear their ugly and sonorous tones.
In conclusion, this is absolutely everything that I wanted to get out of a Hyperdontia follow up to Nexus Of Teeth. In my mind this record was well worth the three year wait as while their previous record was a standout for that year, it certainly feels like the band have refined and focused their craft with greater success. Considering how much material the band give us without giving up cohesion or audibility, it’s incredible how this album doesn’t feel bloated or too big for what is a rather rudimentary runtime. The band’s pacing and flow of track progressions is fantastic as their sound manages to be lively enough to not feel one note or static, yet it doesn’t jump around too much from one riff or segment or section of a track to feel like they aren’t doing enough with that particular piece they’re working with. The songwriting here comes across like streams of tar whereby we can follow its course without any semblance of difficulty and yet can’t help but gawk at the viscous sludge it’s matter possesses. Hideous Entity feels like a step up from what was an already stellar debut full length, it’s an album that’s going to get a lot of repeat listens. As mentioned beforehand, there’s a reason why the Danish extreme metal scene is exploding and Hyperdontia are a prime candidate as to why. An album that’s the product of nameless, hybrid nightmare made manifest, Hideous Entity is death and dilapidation in archaic, petrifying form.
