One of the great joys of heavy metal is how often it forces you to learn random things. A little peek behind the Last Rites curtain for you: we have a shared Excel file with the team that lists a bunch of releases for us degenerates to pick albums to review whenever we don’t already have something in our lineup. I saw Decathexis by Hebephrenique and thought to myself, “What the hell is even that?”
So what exactly does the dissolution of all emotional attachment sound like? Well, a dissonant perfectly 50/50 blended mash of black and death metal of course! What’s particularly interesting with Hebephrenique, however, is all the various band connections that come to mind within their work, including some seemingly oddball outliers. Driving dissonant riffs accompanied by anguished vocals and pummeling drums will naturally bring Deathspell Omega to mind, but that will be balanced again simpler chugs with violent notes that erratically sweep in like a hostile hornet. Then there might be a grinding assault with a very specific vocal treatment that connects dots with Phantom Limb. You may also experience a haunted hall of mirror’s chaos similar to Ulcerate at their most fiery or a spacey open section reminiscent of Dødheimsgard. By the way, all of that happens just in “I, Adverse.”
Of course, there are several other fleeting moments of odd connections. There’s a beautiful but pained beauty in a melody on “Visions of Magdalene” that would be right at home on Sunbather. The brief, psuedo-interlude of “Ascent to Derilation” is a slow trudge with occasional bits of wailing guitars that I’m sure the Inter Arma boys would be happy to play. All of this is to say, Hebephrenique play a very engaging and varied style of dissonant hostility. Part of what really helps the album is it’s shorter run time. In fact, Decathexis is only about eight minutes and two tracks longer than the band’s previous EP, bringing it to a tidy 37 minutes. That means while the aforementioned “I, Adverse” explores much across its seven minutes, the band also strips back some of the atmospheric elements to go for the throat on back-to-back tracks “Argumentum Ad Baculum” and “To Inflict or Nurture” (great song title, that one). The former has an overall infectious bounce to it but it’s not a fun bounce; it’s a violent one like a kangaroo with a suicide-bomber vest on coming right at you. The latter starts with ominous pulsing keys before unleashing holy hell.
The keys are worth calling out because they are expertly deployed in a sparing manner and generally blended so well into the mix as to add atmosphere rather than dominate the song. The title track is a great example of this where the keys provide certain sections an eery spaciness while the rest of the song attacks. There are some rare moments where the keys lead but they’re deployed at the perfect time and don’t overstay their welcome. The title track, yet again, has a late passage where the keyboard-driven segment feels like the soundtrack in a horror movie when the protagonist finally puts all the pieces together and the true horror is revealed, sort of like the final sequence in Saw.
Vocalist Kris Wolf deserves an extra shoutout as well. He approaches his work with a great variety but it all comes across with varying levels of torment and anguish. There are some truly pained screams balanced against a steady pattern of near-ranting like he’s riding the edge of psychosis. Hell, the nutjob laugh on “To Inflict or Nurture” may just be when he broke. Some of the production feels like it actually holds the impact of Wolf back a bit. The music is pretty polished, so there may have been concern that not putting more effects on his vocals would lead them to be too raw, but it seems like he’s right on the cusp of hitting that true madman impact similar to something like A Forest of Stars.
All in all, this an incredibly well crafted and executed debut from two guys and hired gun on drums. Hebephrenique is absolutely a band I will be continuing to keep my eye on.
