France’s HYPNOS delivers a melancholy exploration into heavy despair and sadness that compliments the ever-shortening days of winter that have now befallen us, but there is a lot more to this band than slower-tempo offerings. Their approach is rather modern; instead of paying homage to Death or Doom sensibilities, they are among the exciting new bands who are deconstructing the essence of heavy itself. The album’s opening track, ‘Burden’, utilizes a quiet-loud arrangement, which allows for the climactic moments of the song to exude power by the execution of this contrast. The quieter parts, similar to an orchestra starting up, feels like a soft gathering of the instruments, a kind of conference before dramatically converging to create the various climaxes where the vocals come in to enhance and heighten these moments. The vocals are projected and gruff enough to emit a sense of desperation, but they serve more as a compliment to the music as it increases exponentially in intensity. The same could be said about the guitars as they seem to undulate rather than punish; powerful moments of the songs up their intensity but they never sound aggressive and the shift from driving power chords to more beautiful melodies are purposefully transitioned, sometimes seamless. This is demonstrated clearly in ‘Arrow’, where we also uncover the power of the bass in the songwriting as it takes on a sludgier and more ominous tone towards the latter third of the track. This band definitely exudes "Post Metal" in that there seems to be a reflection on styles; heaviness is pursued with regards to aural weight and beauty is realized with undeniable woe. The band aims to make these two qualities appear physical as well as emotional as the rhythm section kicks in to enhance the heavier moments adding density and volume in layers, while the softer moments remain minimalist and their production strives more for soundtrack than say, an anthem. ‘Phantasm’, on the other hand, ends up successfully blending these two elements. The opening is undeniably etherial and conveys an airy yet craggy atmosphere of blurred notes that almost border on drone before the drums and bass kick in. It deviates slightly from the pathos of the previous tracks in the sense that the song plateaus, allowing the vocals to avoid giving the song climax while instead allowing the pretty to coexist with the heavy simultaneously. Taking this further is ‘[h]elle- The Fall’, where the song builds drastically slower, almost Hitchcockian while the airy guitar tremolos compliment and adorn throughout. HYPNOS is less show and a little more tell in the sense that it looks not only to exude certain tones and emotions, but more to to demonstrate the endlessness of them. The dullness of depression, the vastness of uncertainty, this music almost embodies the nature of dreams themselves: always poignant, never truly resolved. This is the ever present weight to the soul, the inertia that always threatens us even at our best moments, the impossibly heavy. Despite how all of this may sound, this is an inevitability of Metal, or of any other kind of music. Sometimes absolute heaviness isn’t always a matter of plunging to the depths, but to take on the arduous task of exploring the grey, the contents of fog, the purgatory between black and white. The trick is finding a way to convey the beauty in it. HYPNOS joins the ranks of a new school of Metal bands making this possible and embracing the task with dignity. www.hypnosband.com, http://hypnosband.bandcamp.com, www.facebook.com/33hypnos33