HOR is new black metal outfit from Greece, which – based on the increasing number of newer Greek bands making headways overseas – is quickly reasserting itself as a black metal hotspot. ‘Exitium’ is their debut LP released in 2019. A streamlined and direct battering of four songs that stretch to just over half an hour, this album does not bother with preamble or elongated interludes. Taking the framework laid down by ‘De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas’ and stripping it back even further, HOR extend the narrative progression of this album into one that – despite the lightning fast tempos – slowly and gradually unfolds through minimal yet well thought out riffs.
Vocals are a distant howl, sometimes descending into spoken word, which again reminds one of Mayhem around the time of ‘Esoteric Warfare’, or maybe a Zyklon-B. There is a sense of finitude to the way the chord progressions are constructed. This is only augmented by the intensely melodramatic vocals, and the blasé nature of the deadpan spoken word narration. Aside from the vocals, the guitar tone, drum mixing, and execution are pretty much industry standard for black metal. But HOR don’t need to resort to anything too flash to embellish their music.
Given the short runtime and minimalist nature of HOR’s approach it is surprising just how much music is packed into ‘Exitium’. This album is sparse, clean, open, the opposite to a chaotic riff-fest hellbent on suffocating the listener. The soaring, in listening to the stripped back riffs held up by understated yet purposeful drums I feel like a weight is being lifted from my lungs. Despite all this however, it’s worth noting how much music is packed into this release. Herein lies one of the many curiosities to this album. On an emotional level this is a sparse, open album. Yet when one observes how HOR have gone about achieving this, with all the themes that they unpack in such a short space of time, one cannot help but conclude that the album is deceptively dense. There is no wasted space and no laboured breakdowns or extended passages of wind samples that grow tiresome on second or third listen.
Addressing this paradox further, it is interesting to note that HOR construct riffs out of the most basic chord constructions, and stick with them ad-absurdum, before driving through the most minor alteration by way of developing the theme further. The result is a mesmerising blast of hypnotic, repetitive black metal that squeezes every ounce of tension and drama from these simple shifts in pattern or tempo. The closing epic title track brings this to its logical conclusion with a slower first half, that gradually builds and grows in tension if not complexity, before the tempo creeps up and the guitars become more restless. Then suddenly things explode into a soaring three chord riff that is driven through a few variations, stripping black metal down to its most basic components to reveal the epic, primal heart of this music. And without any catharsis or logical conclusion, the music simply stops, fading back into the nothingness it arose from just as quickly. It is refreshing to see a band like HOR make such a powerful statement in this intensely minimal, back to basics context.
Sample: youtube.com/watch?v=bfzHNyVA_Q8
