Year: 2025
Label: Zoharum
Talk about a massive album! Spread over two discs, In The Wake Of The Witch contains a hefty two and a half hours of music. At the same time it’s the long running Belgian project’s first album in four years. In other words, they’ve been keeping busy!
The problem with massive albums such as this is that individual tracks risk becoming lost in the sheer size of it all. This very much happens on In The Wake Of The Witch. Though containing only a relatively moderate 21 tracks, after sitting for two and a half hours listening to this, details have become blurred.
Discogs calls Hybryds‘ style simply “ritual music”, and that seems quite fitting. It’s certainly impossible to pigeonhole this too strictly, because Hybryds’ expression is very much all over the place. There are moments of powerful tribal drumming; minimalistic electronic experimentalism; harmonious new age synths; passages of martial bombast, and so on. There’s certainly more than one face to Hybryds.
However, one thing unites all of them: the compositions and arrangements are very stripped down. Typically, Hybryds will promote one musical element as the focal point, around which only rather stripped down and rudimentary backing is layered. This might mean pounding ritual drums with little else going on, or a synthesizer melody with only minimal background ambiance, and so on.
Sadly, the size of the album does to some extent negatively impact the listening experience. There’s just too much of this minimalism here. Even listening to one disc at a time is an endeavour: both clock in at over 75 minutes.
There are moments in here, when the compositions manage to break through the grayness caused by mass. The beautiful new age atmospherics of Wall Of Silence, somewhat reminiscent of a stripped down Enigma, or the tense, arpeggiated bass synths, ominous drums and electronic effects of That Shepard, Who First Taught The Chosen Seed are examples of moments when Hybryds impresses.
But there’s just too much material here. Too much stuff that, especially in these amounts, fails to leave an impression. Too much stuff that’s just vaguely irritating (such as the buzzing, droning synth of Once I Dreamed). Too much stuff that just isn’t quite on the mark.
In the end, despite some beautiful moments, In The Wake Of The Witch requires a lot and offers too little. It’s not a very rewarding listening experience.
Only Death Is Real 