It’s been three long years since Philadelphia based five-piece Hiroe dropped their first EP Wrought. The band has spent the intervening years honing their musical craft and in that time there’s been some shuffling around inside the band with three new members joining. Now they’re back with debut album Wield, released by the fine folks at Pelagic Records. The end result is a slick, polished debut album of purely instrumental post-rock that shows off just what the band is capable of, sweeping from delicate, delicate crystalline melodies to upbeat, triumphant riffs to potent, sludgy walls of sound.
Post-rock instrumental albums can sometimes suffer from listener fatigue, when every song seems to blend into the next one and in the end you’re not entirely clear what it was you just listened to. Hiroe‘s Wield avoids this by presenting the listener with a tightly focused package of 6 songs over not-quite 46 minutes, a rather modest effort compared to some titans of the post-rock genre. The tracks are laid out so that each one is distinctly different from the one that precedes it and while it could be claimed that this album lacks that distinct sonic progression, the “journey” that listeners are taken on in some other post and prog-rock offerings, Wield offers something more immediately accessible. Not a bad shout for a band still trying to make their mark in the genre.
‘Collider’ is arguably the stand-out track on this album, tapping guitars and synths weaving into a simply gorgeous track that slowly builds to a crushing peak of crashing drums and riffs. In comparison final track ‘I’ve Been Waiting For You’ wraps the album up on something of a sombre note. It’s another track where a slow beginning, underpinned by a steady, almost martial rattle of drums beginning builds and builds into a soaring wall of sound. Pianos and strings interweave with the guitars as it climbs to a triumphant crescendo, only for it to falter and end with a whimper rather than a bang. But then, that’s often how things end in life. We can’t all go out in a blaze of glory, and instead listeners are left with something far more contemplative as the final strains of the guitar fade into darkness.
To try and sum up the whole experience – Wield is a blend of shimmering post-rock styling, shoegaze thoughtfulness spiced with a dash of sludgy post-metal to create an intimate, welcoming album that’s a great jumping off-point both for Hiroe as a band, and post-rock as a genre.