Review Summary: The Hylozoists created a simply uninspired, boring, and bland album. With the potential shown in each individual member's musicianship and pedigree, it makes the album even more disappointing.
There isn’t much worse than a group of musicians who take themselves too seriously. Very few bands pull off a completely serious tone well. Luckily, post-rock is one of the easiest genres to convey a serious tone. With its epic grandeur and scale, “fun” music is hard to convey through the styling of post-rock. However, the Hylozoists come across as just that, a band that takes themselves too seriously. They advertise themselves as the next Canadian post-rock supergroup, but they really sound like Godspeed You! Black Emperor Lite. La Fin Du Monde looks like a great album on the outside. The title is in French, the song titles look creative and profound enough, and the whole idea of Hylozoism is extremely profound (albeit scientifically proven wrong). This may be stereotyping, but my mind automatically associates profound beliefs, French titles from a primarily English band, and post-rock with great albums. Unfortunately, my suspicions proved false. This is a failed attempt at creating beautiful, flowing music simply due to simple chordal structure, overused and uninspired melodies, and a lack of dynamics and contrast.
Simple doesn’t mean bad, right? Well, in some cases, especially in the case of minimalist artists like Eluvium, yes. However, the form of simplicity that comes through the Hylozoists music is simply boring. They usually follow a melody, counter-melody, bassline structure and never create that rush of melodies so well known in post-rock. It gets old with such simple structure. With only a few voices in the mix of sound, the chord structure never reaches anything all that interesting. A few times, such as in a short interlude between the main theme in
The Fifty Minute Hour, a pretty good progression comes out of the song. The interlude includes a great sighing motif and a beautiful descending chord progression. However, these times are few and the songs just drag along with the same boring progression. Overall tonality is another major issue. Nearly every song sticks strictly to a major key, never putting in anything the slightest bit minor. Major keys aren’t necessarily bad, but on songs like
Smiley Smiley, the music is just too dainty. It features mainly a fairy-like descending vibraphone melody, but it gets old fast. The song jumps into a second section featuring vocals that simply fail to please. Two vocalists harmonize with each other throughout, but the harmonies sometimes fall out of tune and overall the vocalists clash.
However, even if the chordal structure and harmonies were excellent, the melodies fail to impress. No single instrument stands as the main melodic instrument through the album, giving a slight bit of much needed variety, but the melodies are just too simple harmonically as well. They stick to the “by the book” style of melody writing—starting on the third, resolving from the seventh to the third when the chord changes, etc. The musicians even play the melodies with great musicianship, shaping each line perfectly. Despite all that, the melodies are not catchy and they come down simply to poor songwriting skill. The melodies shown in
If Only Your Heart Was a Major Sixth repeat over and over and simply sit still, never really going anywhere throughout each run-through. They slide up to create an attempted lift upwards, but it just fails due to the balance in the band, yet another major issue. Everything in the band sits at the same volume as the next instrument. It plays to their advantage sometimes, such as in
Warning Against Judging A Christian Brother, where they attempt to make a rush of melodies rather than sticking to their normal structure. However, when trying to bring a melody to the forefront, it just sits in the mesh of strangely voiced instruments.
The strangely voiced instruments and one volume production of the album all lead to the immense boredom that La Fin Du Monde creates. Post-rock is known for its builds and huge dynamic swells. While some artists have proven swells and climaxes are not needed, in the setting created through this music, it is almost vital. The pure lack of contrast makes even an album of only 40 or so minutes drag. The drummer sits a bit behind the beat; laying back much like a jazz drummer would, but never propelling the band forward like he should. His fills sound sloppy and uninspired. The closer,
La Fin Du Monde, shows the drummer playing a simple rock beat and features some country tinged guitar. Everything in the song, as usual, plays at all the same volume, drowning out whatever the intended melody is. At some points, the song picks up tempo but the drummer can’t quite keep up and falls behind the beat. The mix of instruments, a piano and this country tinged guitar, sounds too strange together. Once the vibraphone comes in, the song becomes even stranger and the mix of styles is more annoying than interesting.
Overall, La Fin Du Monde is just a bad album. It is a failed attempt to join the higher echelon of Canadian post rock artists. The album does have its good points, though. The musicianship contributed by each instrumentalist is fantastic. Taking members from bands like Broken Social Scene, the quality of the musicians is implied. Each member shapes every line just as they should, and they produce excellent tone on their instrument. The album even contains a couple hidden gems.
Strait is the Gate showcases some excellent Spanish-influenced guitar, jumping all around the fretboard and mixed excellently to allow the guitar to stand out. The song sounds slightly minor, giving a much needed break from the daintiness of the rest of the album.
Lover Becomes Lovers shows excellent and beautiful female vocals and some excellent string accompaniment. Those songs are nothing spectacular, but they certainly stand out on an album of this quality. It seems the musicians in The Hylozoists can play anything put in front of them excellently, but they can’t create for themselves.
Recommended Tracks:
Strait is the Gate
Lover Becomes Lovers
