HARDCORE ANAL HYDROGEN
Eclectic pandemonium from the 1%’s playground
“Our name is a representation of our music: extreme, funny, incoherent and grotesque.” Guitarist and programmer Martyn Circus sells Hardcore Anal Hydrogen short. OK, their namesake’s a fart, but HAH’s new album, Hypercut, deserves to be taken seriously.
Borrowing The Bezerker’s cybergrind template and splashing it with cinematic soundscapes, folk instrumentation, jazzy piano and Ziltoid-era Devin Townsend riffing, Hypercut could’ve easily outstayed its welcome at 43, minutes, but it boasts the one thing HAH’s previous efforts have lacked: cohesion.
“We wanted to take more time to develop our ideas,” explains Sacha Mouk, HAH’s vocalist/programmer. “With our previous record, people told us that they wanted longer tracks. A large part of this album is a tribute to composers who influenced us. In Jean-Pierre, you can hear Squarepusher, Aphex Twin, Tangerine Dream and Jean- Michel Jarre. In the track Paul, you hear a kind of auto-tuned Beatles!”
Pooling more familiar influences this time – their last album, The Talas Of Satan, draped itself around traditional Indian music – HAH can now focus on rubbing shoulders with extreme metal’s elite. Based in Monaco, their activity largely revolves around the sovereign city- state’s recording studio, Phebe’s: “A place for creation and artistic research,” as Sacha says. Local peers include punk band I.M.O.D.I.U.M and trad metallers Joe La Mouk, but HAH are more comparable to neighbouring France’s Igorrr.
And despite fans including The Algorithm’s Rémi Gallego, HAH are little more than an underground proposition, with live shows scarce.
They’ve progressed immensely since 2009’s dreadfully titled debut, Fork You, but some things never change. “The leitmotif since the first album is violence,” concludes Sacha. “It’s a constant of HAH.”