HYMNS

HYMNS are Oliver Hooper [lead vocals & guitar], Giorgio Compagnone [bass guitar & keys], Amy Chapman [drums & backing vocals] and Filippo Ferazzoli [guitar]. An alt-rock quartet that blend symphonic-sonics in an any-ol’ Morricone style with a Comsat Angels-esque knack for adding gothic gloss to loss (‘Sirens’), full of ominous lyrics and portentous sounds yet hope is doggedly held high. It has to be.

Debut 2016’s ‘The London EP’ was an introspective psyche-ogeographic detour de force that anatomised and soliloquised the solitudes of a life in the inner-city. A sonic love-hate letter to the contradictory freedoms and trappings that the UK’s capital proffers: a land of plenty still full of Dickensian poverty, a crane-infested skyline at odds with the energised and emancipatory nooks and crannies that nourish the soul and yet remains a sprawl that magically retains the booty among the least.

Follow-up ‘Reset’ comes after the last 18 months of round-table rhetoric, mixed mediated messaging and mandatory movement manipulation. Thankfully these four songs of vivid socio-commentary storytelling are less inspired by wannabee Bond villain Klaus Schwab’s ‘Great Reset’ plot to impose an invisible barred prison via networked smart-grids with the Ipopulace born to crave the tech-teat.

Continuing the theme of scratching the surface until it sheds red, HYMNS peel away the layers, reveal the players and provide a remedy to all the fakes and pains. Societies across the planet are systematically spoon-fed a mental-miasma of (sp)untruths and hegemonic hagiography (the ‘Royal’ family, anyone? ‘Divine right?’, yeah, right) from day one. The central mantra here is it’s ‘never’ too late to wake up and smell the choreography.

The titular ‘Reset’ posits the (not too disagreeable) idea that maybe we, us, the culture classed-masses ought to ‘rig the election’ in order for humanity to get back on the ‘right direction’. Frontman Hooper’s hollers his heartfelt plea to cease the corporate controlled chicanery, reprogram the cerebral cortex coordinates and smash the system of servitude. Vote HYMNS!