Fabric of Intention

Variety is wonderful, particularly in a genre where things can become overly familiar. death metal often suffers from this affliction, and it’s the innovators that push things along, slowly but surely in a new direction.

Hadea, a four-piece outfit from North Carolina, know this. They know it well, and their ability to provide a fresh approach to a genre mired in the propensity to exhaust itself is very becoming of the ‘experimental’ prefix they’ve bestowed upon themselves. A quick spot of research will reveal that this isn’t really the band’s first entry. They’ve been reliably drifting along since 1998 under the name Gollum and Fabric of Intention is their latest under a new guise; their second release since the passing of drummer and co-founder Hunter Holland in 2008. But enough throwing dates around, the crucial question is how have the band changed? And what is experimental death metal anyway?

If I were pressured to define Hadea’s sound, the word ‘confused’ would resonate somewhere deep within. It’s as far from traditional death metal as it’s possible to get whilst still maintaining it in essence, and since their debut the range of influences from Industrial to southern rock have been hard to deny. These are welcome additions to a bands repertoire, but sadly the intrepid fusions of style scarcely get off the ground. Shawn Corbett’s vocals are mostly spoken chants interspersed with ‘core style screams, well delivered but serving more to upset the character of the music rather than enhance it.

It’s rare for Fabric of Intention to break into a genuine death metal stride, with the tempo comfortably settled at the slower end of the spectrum. As much as I dislike the term death ‘n’ roll, it could be aptly applied here. It’s frustrating listening because when it works, it really works. The instrumental closure to “Reconstruction Of Our Ways” is surprisingly emotive, and provides an example of what happens when the various elements become untangled and begin to work together. But this is a magnified fraction of what could be, as for much of the record we’re left with a muddy pool of material that’s hard to decipher. “Ignus Faatus” presents Corbett’s vocals in a heavily synthesized, more robotic fashion, one of the few occasions where the record truly breaks stride, and all I can think amidst the crooning and unremarkable riffing is that it’s something far better left to Cynic.

The biggest issue here is inconsistency. Good experimental music succeeds in bringing it’s influences to the forefront whilst preserving a coherent sense of direction, but at other times it conjures up images of someone being ripped apart by a bolting horse tied to each limb. Unfortunately Hadea fall into the latter category. Any glimpse of ingenuity to be found in Fabric of Intention is lost within a maelstrom of befuddled experimentation. A hopeless case? No, but it seems a name change hasn’t marked the end of Hadea’s identity crisis. Not yet.

Written for The Metal Observer