Hey there, tech fiends. It's that time of the week again. Before we dive into today's focus, here's the usual weekly reminder that if you're looking for even more sick bands to hear, all prior editions of this series can be perused here.
The ongoing weekly launch of a new single or full release stream by a different band continues once more. I've got the exclusive premiere of "Negentropy" by Hatalom for you all today. It's the debut single from the group's upcoming album, Occhiolism, out on March 19th. As usual, you can read on to learn more about the group and their music, or, you can scroll below and click play on "Negentropy" immediately.
If you've been following this space prior, you'll recall that we covered Hatalom's 2018 EP, Of Sorrow and Human Dust, here for the column. The Québec City-based project was on to something great in 2018 and has only gotten better on their upcoming album. Building upon what the group established on Of Sorrow and Human Dust, the music on "Negentropy" draws from so many different styles of tech-death in order to create something eclectic with a bit of something for most everyone's tastes within their new single.
In order to delve further into the new single and the album as a whole, Hatalom kindly shared with me that "Occhiolism means “the awareness of the smallness of your perspective, by which you couldn’t possibly draw any meaningful conclusions at all, about the world or the past or the complexities of culture, because although your life is an epic and unrepeatable anecdote, it still only has a sample size of one, and may end up being the control for a much wilder experiment happening in the next room.” – taken from the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows.
The album explores the unknown, incomprehension in the consciousness and in the dimension of time. Some elements of modern sciences were taken to create fantastic stories questioning the purpose of humans and the foundations of reality, all in a casual way.
With the arrival of Hubert Gagné (Guitar) and Anthony Caron (Vocals), Hatalom defines itself in a more melodic way than its previous EP, Of Sorrow and Human Dust. Some elements from the Black Metal genre were also incorporated in the mix, giving the album a more refined sound, a bit more technical than before.
It is with great pleasure that we present you the first song written for this album, "Negentropy", with the participation of Jonathan Leblanc (musical arrangements). The song is inspired by a concept developed by Shrödinger in his book “What Is Life?” to explain the behavior of life itself. The lyrics are about the reversal of entropy to a point where enhancements could be incorporated in a new form of life, where greater things would be achievable by the individual."
Having heard all of Hatalom – Occhiolism many times in full by now, I'm very sure this will be one of my favorite tech-death releases of 2021. So be sure to check out our premiere of "Negentropy" below, and pre-order it through Bandcamp if you like what you're hearing. You can also follow the group on the Hatalom Facebook Page.
