THE HIRSCH EFFEKT
This German trio could be the most eclectic band you’ve never heard of.
HIRSCH EFFEKT BASSIST and co-vocalist Ilja John Lappin categorises his band’s music as “progressive metal with an indie touch”. It’s a description that drastically undersells their restless eclecticism. Since forming in 2008, the trio have become one of prog’s weirdest bands, with the list of genres they’ve folded into their canon being long enough to cram a Yellow Pages.
“‘Progressive’ really is a good term for our music,” Lappin tells Prog, speaking after a slot at 2022’s ArcTanGent Festival with drummer Moritz Schmidt at his side.“It means that our music keeps evolving and becoming something different – that there’s a root that we’re growing from. And sometimes, on previous albums, that root can be metal. Sometimes it can be post-hardcore, or a different kind of music. We’ve always, from a certain root, spread out into so many different genres.”
Even on a line-up crammed with prog and post-rock royalty, The Hirsch Effekt’s set at ArcTanGent was unlike anything else. What they played ranged from Kris – a math rocker with an infectious, dual-vocalist chorus – to Xenophotophobia: a jagged and experimental punk cut with mind-warping technical guitar work.
All three members are songwriters, and they have wildly different music tastes. Lappin enjoys prog rock and metal, as well as ambient and electronic music. Singer/guitarist Nils Wittrock is into indie and hardcore, while Schmidt expresses a fondness for anything obscure. The only album every member owns is The Mars Volta’s De-Loused In The Comatorium.
When the world entered lockdown in 2020, The Hirsch Effekt used it to their advantage. Each member composed their own song in isolation, then presented it to the rest of the band. The resulting trilogy of tracks is on their latest EP, Solitaer. Lappin wrote Palingenesis (a Between The Buried
And Me-style cavalcade of intricate riffs), Schmidt penned the erratic jazz-mathcore of Amorphus, and Wittrock is responsible for Nares and its grooving post-rock.
“What usually works well is that we’d write in groups of two,” Lappin explains.
Schmidt adds: “Sometimes ideas can be combined. You would never have thought that two pieces could be compatible, but then something evolves and they can be put together. Sometimes we just put them together for a joke!”
The Hirsch Effekt’s last album, Kollaps, came out in May 2020, but the band flatly refused to release another LP during the pandemic, citing the inability to tour off the back of it. However, now they’re able to get back on the road, they’re finally looking ahead to their sixth full-length release.
“We’ve recorded the drums for three songs,” says Schmidt.“I think the guitars on them are completely done, as well.”
“It’s not gonna be the typical Hirsch Effekt album,” Lappin promises. “It’s going to be very moody. It’ll be soft and then very, very brutal. It’s going to be atmospheric and dark.”
Until it sees the light of day, we still have the Solitaer EP to explore the full breadth of this band’s range in three unclassifiable tracks.
”WE’VE ALWAYS SPREAD OUT INTO SO MANY DIFFERENT GENRES.”