By: Andrew Rawlinson
Hibernal | website | facebook | bandcamp |
Released on July 11, 2015 via Bandcamp
For a one man band Mark Healy is certainly not one to waste time with his Sci Fi Post Rock project Hibernal. After The Winter is his third full release in three years following The Replacements and The Machine and once again delves into themes of cyber punk and futuristic dystopias with the synopsis this time of:
“A man who transfers his thoughts and memories to a synthetic body in order to survive an apocalypse seeks to return to his human form.”
I’ve been sitting on this album for a while admittedly as originally this was only released as the full ‘cinematic’ experience but recently Mr Healy has finally released the instrumental version (he released both versions with The Replacements), which has given this record a new lease of life for me.
The ‘cinematic’ version retains the formulas as before with voice actors narrating the story via dialogue and exposition to backing track synths and electronica that is punctuated by progressive and post rock that ebbs and flows with the unfolding drama.
However in this case the story completely failed to captivate me due to the over reliance on exposition from the less than convincing male character, who is especially jarring during dialogue with the more convincing female character in the story.
It’s a shame but happily the music itself is once again flawless, especially when provided with breathing space on the ‘instrumental’ version that allows the subtleties and emotional depths to come to the fore to dramatic effect.
Relying on a softer sonic palette of melodic mournful guitar passages as opposed to the more driving urgency and synth heavy nature of Replacements perfectly mirrors the pace and downbeat atmosphere of the narrative in question, in fact once you know what the story is actually about the music sells it by itself.
The one-two punch of ‘The Silent Earth’ into ‘Pathways’ is especially glorious and is Post-Rock at its finest with the former’s first half controlled by a plaintive acoustic guitar leading into a grinding metal riff that underpins a beautiful melodic guitar lead which dovetails nicely into the emotionally charged melancholy of ‘Pathways’.
