LP Review: HIDE - Castration Anxiety (English)

Castration Anxiety is the title of the first full-lenght album by the American duo HIDE. Chicago based Industrial band HIDE were founded in 2014 ,and consist of percussionist Seth Her and visual artist Heather Gabel. What the duo put on vinyl this year might be the darkest, gloomiest and most intense disc I ever had lying on my record player.

Seth Her is creating controlled confusion in the greatest fashion of Industrial music with his modules which instantly invite the listener to getting lost in its sounds. The music of HIDE is defined by diversified drum patterns who activatingly move forward between deep, aggressive, swirling bass and sub bass on the one hand, and masterfully disharmonic melodies on the other hand. Furthermore, rhythm and melody install beautiful structures in every track which build up slowly towards activating beats and always end up in a slick climax.
This mixture of gloom and industrial charm is presented in high quality. Also it is extremely beautiful to listen to the drum patterns which do not sound like plastic bottles, but strongly and intensively hammer against the eardrums.

Performance and visual artist Heather Gabel's voice is what makes the sound of HIDE become perfect. The distorted, vigorous and somehow wavy, swirling singing adds to the rough sound like a cold grater, and instantly gives you goosebumps. Her voice is really intense and precisely fits the pitch black sound of Seth. Heather's singing is strikingly low-pitched, and she only rarely changes it to higher tones; such as in the song "Wear Your Skin". Also, the doubles, echoes and effects intensify the vocals' impact even more and highlight the deep black character of HIDE's music.

Castration Anxiety is an incredibly gloomy and intense record. The lyrics of the tracks highlight this fact even more. Lines such as "Take off your mask, I want to see your dying face. Your silent screams are none too loud" from the track "Close Your Eyes" mirror something aesthetically dark and evil. Seth Her's floating and choppy music in combination with Heather Gabel's ripping voice make this album become so eerily beautiful.
For a bit more than half an hour HIDE are opening a pitch black abyss of highly intense Industrial music. It invites the listener to dive in and dance staggering while going down. This LP makes me hope for more music to be published by HIDE, and it should belong to the inventory of every dark dancefloor.