Hacride - 'Lazarus'

French metallers Hacride release their third provocative album with as much mind-expanding progression as their fellow countrymen Gojira.

The same closely controlled developmental headway Gojira utilizes to create their atmospheric metal has rubbed off on their French brethren Hacride. In some ways, Hacride is more ambient and textural, even as both yield elements ranging from Pink Floyd to Voivod to Neurosis to Bathory.

On their third album Lazarus, Hacride are so confident in their capabilities they set off with a 17-minute odyssey, “To Walk Among Them.” Such a gambit proves risky for Hacride’s purposes, considering there’s another six songs of lengthy duration in their own right. No backfire here, though.

Hacride doesn’t necessarily sculpt from one point to another like Isis and Pelican. On many songs, Hacride gets to the point and explores from within, such as on “My Enemy” or “A World of Lies,” though the latter escalates between blaring crunch strums and oxygenated guitar fills. Every bar is full of unpredictable wonderment, even when “My Enemy” jettisons into an air duct of rapid beat strikes and then swirls into a hypnotic swoon. Hacride then tosses another snub-nosed swerve into brain-smashing immensity on the same cut.

“Phenomenon” does operate from a translucent series of dotting synth notes and melancholic guitar lines for almost two minutes before amping up and lumbering forward in short, heavy strokes to comprise what was built previously.

As Hacride has traded off some of their omnipresent mellow granules such as the flamenco bits residing on their previous two albums, by no means does Lazarus suffer in translation. The Pink Floyd feel of the opening stanzas on “Awakening” are impressively lucent, nearly deceiving listeners into thinking Hacride are going to settle for placidity. Of course, you know there’s far more to the story whenever this band writes their perpendicular buoyancy which generates artistic metal jaunts to tumble adrift within.