Artist: Hapax
Title: Monade
Genre: Darkwave / Goth / Alternative / Goth Rock / Industrial
Release Date: 7th July 2019
Label: Swiss Dark Knights
Album Review
HAPAX is a band from Naples in Italy and they work in a similar vein to CHRISTINE PLAYS VIOLA or EUROPEAN GHOST. Their soundscapes are run the whole gamut from the blackest black through the tones to white intermingled with sharp slithers of silver and cold steel flashes. Listening to this album is like walking through a vast dark Dante vista one minute with high walls of cold stone speckled with a few patches of warmth given reluctantly by the allowed rays of light penetrating from the black ceilings above, and then the next we stroll through the deeply detailed painting of a Canaletto painting completed by its muted colours and photographic realism. I not only get to use sound as my guide through this album’s duration but the sense of touch as well. One minute the textures are rough, the next they are smoother. Each touch that the mind’s hand experiences evoke an emotion or a feeling no matter how fleeting.
This music is most definitely not one-dimensional pap that exudes a brief fix before one moves on to the next sugary tripe. What you get here is a 45-minute journey that satiates the soul and the spirit because for the rest of the afternoon after listening to this I could stand in a totally silent room listening to the sound imprint playing its merry tune in my head. What we have here is a sneer in the bass that’s in a dance with the heavily set deep eyed vocal, keyboard lines whip in and out as if it was the instrument of the furies. The sound is grand, full of textures whether decayed or new and it has this intrinsic Italian feel to it. It’s well crafted, no track really stands out to me as the best or the worst or whatever. But if I have to pick a few I’d say ‘Bewildered’ because of labyrinthine aspirations. You know, also this album feels like something Carl McCoy would record if he wanted to just shift his musical stylings a bit. As I stated above, there’s a Dante feel here as I get from FOTN albums, not the first one, obviously cos that’s more Ennio Morricone.
‘Sacred Pt II’ is another great track, as I say, if I have to pick one out, because of it is slow elevated build up. I feel like I’m gesticulating ominously in a dark room backlit under a low hanging cloud that I have to fight my way through in methodical phases until I’m standing tall, a black silhouette with white eyes ablaze! ‘Monade’ as you can probably guess is the title track. A monade is an elementary individual substance that reflects worldly order and from which all material properties arise. And then we have ‘Elegy’ which sounds like the best of EDITORS. This sounds light and heavy at the same time. Like the opposing energies have been harnessed just about right. I love the video for this. Even with the colours in it the black just seems blacker.
To sum up, I highly recommend this album because it’s well crafted, well produced, it has space to it and a fluidity that helps increase the satisfaction quotient. Go and buy, I order you!
Tracklist
01. Creature Of Distance
02. Elegy
03. Parallel Words
04. Shining Lover
05. Bewildered
06. Truth Or Lie
07. The Game Of Devotion
08. Sacred
09. Sacred Pt 2
10. Monade
Line-up
Michelle Mozillo - Vocals, Lyrics, Bass and Synths
Dye Ki Nlooln - Guitars, Synth, Programming and Artwork
Website
http://www.hapaxband.com
Cover Picture
Rating
Music: 9
Sound: 9
Total: 9 / 10
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