They Will Surface

Hyatari's first album was a giant success- a friend of mine who was similarly impressed described it as "the only drone album that I play in my car". True enough; it was drone doom but by far the catchiest album in the genre; massive and catchy riffs just unloading again and again- classic stuff.

Then, unfortunately, post-rock.

Not to say that post-rock is inherently bad, far from it; and you'd be hard pressed to deny the gorgeous breakdown of the first song, with it's e-bow symphony and EiTS-esque bass lines. However, by integrating (or at least attempting to integrate) various post-rock elements into the mix here, Hackett and crew seem to have overstretched themselves somewhat.

It's not terribly hard to figure out why, really. "The Light Carriers" succeeds because of the relative scarcity of mellow bits; the riffs start off slow and get increasingly huger, not unlike Dopesmoker. The structures and general use of dynamics on this album are really quite lacking- it's just quiet/loud/quiet/loud over and over again. The riffs- and there are a few rather huge ones - don't really get enough time to develop and get truly huge, and likewise, the quieter sections- with the notable exception of the first track- generally aren't allowed to fully blossom and get all that pretty or what have you.

The question remains, is this a good album? It's hard for me to say I hate it, as pretty much all the music, when stripped of the 50-minute-long-song context is oh a high quality, and as it stands there's still some really great moments- 'Mountain Lit with Fire' in particular is based around a truly massive doom riff that pretty much everyone will love- but the thing as a whole leaves me feeling rather cold. There's a chance that one day I'll understand the structure, all will be revealed, and I'll give this album a glowing review. As of now though it's somewhat mediocre; get their first album instead as it's far better.