II

Hisstönend is a weird band from Russia, which consist of three members and was formed in 2011. I say weird because I have met only one other band that it plays music which tries to bring the listener close to nature. By the cover of “II” to the samples used, the band is trying to bring the listener as close as possible to nature. The album is their first full length album which was released in 2013 and it contains six instrumental compositions of overall duration of about fifty minutes. The music that the band presents us is melodic and melancholic and it is based in the atmosphere and in the imagery that it creates to the listener.

From the first seconds the sounds of birds, frogs and generally sounds of nature, they build the scenery in which the listener will walk for the next fifty minutes. The riffs are of medium and slow speed with a few fast outbursts. They are quite atmospheric, they almost hypnotize the listener, and very melancholic, while they create images of nature at the transition point from the summer to the autumn. So, after the band setting the scenery, they achieve to create images to the listener and to take him with him to this autumn journey, but not for the entire duration of the album. Unfortunately the so monotonous and somehow repetitive compositions, the feeling, the atmosphere and the images that stay the same throughout the entire album as also the quite repetitive without any surprise structure of the tracks are tedious for the listener. The absence of vocals maybe makes the situation worse as there is nothing to put the compositions out of their monotony.

The instrumentation of the album is completely minimalistic, consisted by the guitar which is the dominant instrument in the compositions, the bass and the drums. The guitar is the instrument which sets the scenery, it creates the feelings and it produces the images to the mind of the listener. Its sound is clean, monotonous and absolutely melancholic while it is played without mistakes. The bass is not clearly audible. The drums have so repetitive lines and their sound is so empty and soulless that they are like they come from a drum machine. Their lines are simple, with very few changes, they simply keep the pace, while combined with their soulless sound they become boring quickly. In some parts, in which the listener have to make a special effort in order to achieve to notice them, some distant and very low whispers that I can’t call them vocals. They don’t serve their purpose as they are almost inaudible. The production puts out a very clean, warm and quite bass sound and combined with the quite good mixture they put out a result which fits completely to the style of the composition. In the cd, it is mentioned that there are lyrics that they are not containd in the booklet.

“II”, although it contains some good ideas, is a bad album. Unfortunately, the monotony in all levels ruins every atmosphere and every image that the band has created. The band shows that it knows what it wants to play and to offer to the listener but this album seems that has to make much effort in order to achieve to come close to the result that it wants. Surely, you can find many more interesting albums than this one. Avoid.