Album Review: Hypnotic Nausea - The Death of all Religions (2019)

Once again, we are looking at a concept album today. Hypnotic Nausea's second album "The Death of all Religions" was released in March 2019 and deals with the oppressive and enslaving measures that helped organized religion to maintain its power. The ten tracks lasting for a bit less than one hour are available as a digital copy via Ikaros Records and the  One Woman Company. The vinyl version is contemporarily sold out. It might or might be available again in the future. Just contact the label and the management.

Hypnotic Nausea are a four-piece band from Greek capital Athens founded in 2013. Their style can be described as something like Heavy Rock, Progressive Rock, Experimental Rock and Post Rock. "The Death of all Religions" is their second album which contains ten songs concerning the history of religion as a means to control people and oppress their free will. As a bonus the vinyl version comes with a 24-page comic book silently telling the history of religion since the dawn of humankind and its ongoing fight against enlightenment and science.

The musical surface of the album is a dark and solid foundation of psychedelic Post Rock with a certain Doom Metal atmosphere. The heavy riffing is being irradiated by glitchy Noise effects and plenty of voice samples which adds to the feeling of watching a gloomy film while listening to "The Death of all Religions". After all, the multitude of side effects and slide-in sounds is held together by the massive Heavy Rock air that mills through the album.

In the song 'Priest' Jon Voyager is featured as a guest singer. Apart from his vocals almost all lyrics on the album are added in the form of spoken word or voice samples. The accusing way the voices are added somehow reminds me of Aus-Rotten's introduction to "The System works... for them". Apart from that the best comparison to describe Hypnotic Nausea's music would be Mainz' Doom Metallers The Mountain King with more emphasis on Stoner and Prog Rock.

What makes the album extraordinarily smooth is its intelligent arc of suspense that fits the story which is told. Hypnotic Nausea commence this album in dark times and therefore add a lot of brachiality, intensity and shifted glitches to their songs. As enlightenment tries to counter religion the sound becomes more easy. Or does it sound more easy because peope started to give in? That might be a question for philosophy to deal with.
Beginning with the track 'Faded Faith' a more calm and spheric reign uplifts upon the soundscape. This new found peace lasts until the middle of the final song 'Inquietum Cor' (Latin: unquiet heart). For the last four minutes of "The Death of all Religions" Hypnotic Nausea bring back an extremely heavy half-time Doom Metal riff with gloomy psychedelic borrowings.

"The Death of all Religions" is an album that should be listened to from beginning to end. Each part of this versatile story is exactly where it belongs and the whole album just feels like watching a dark but realistic film. Hypnotic Nausea have hereby created listening pleasure for all senses.

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