Haze: Clouds Surround And Breathe

Artist: Haze
Title: Clouds Surround And Breathe
Format Reviewed: MP3
Format Released: 10th August 2014
Reviewed By: Quinn

I'm currently listening to Kerrang! radio waiting for my good friends Doe début on the airwaves and all I want to do is turn off what I like to call ‘radio for the brain-dead’ and put Haze's first release on. It's ten times more imaginative than the pap playing at the moment. Except for Doe, those 3 minutes will be awesome...

Anyway, onto Haze. When I read the press release we were sent for this album my heart sank. It reads "The new album is an absolute masterpiece of soundscaped modern hardcore meets post-rock".  My first reaction was who the fuck comes up with these genres? If anyone can tell me what post-rock is meant to be, answers on a post-card please. My second reaction was dismay at having to review a hardcore album. I'm not a fan of hardcore in general so having to listen to and write about an album that self-styles itself as such was going to be a difficult endeavour. Especially when I saw the band. Not content on your usual line up, Haze have three guitarists as well as a bassist. I was preparing myself for the sort of overbearing noise parents tell their children to turn down.

Within the first five minutess of the album (that's one and a half tracks in real money) I got what this band were about and I was really starting to enjoy it. The album opens up with Colure, a two-minute thirty second instrumental that meanders through inspirational creativity and previews what is to come.

It's followed by I Can't Help But Get Lost, which starts with everything you would expect from a so-called hardcore band: in-your-face screaming backed up by a wall of guitars and heavy drum beats. That soon settles into the soft, melodic tunes that the rest of the album is primarily built on and transitions between the two contradicting tones eloquently throughout. This album is all about the music, with it being very vocal-lite, using all three guitars to complement one other and bring forward melodies that you would expect in an epic post apocalyptic sci-fi film score. Each one of the instruments is very deliberately written in a way so often not done in music these days. Haze are clearly a very musical band, thinking about exactly how each line from each musician will work with or against what the other members are doing. It's so refreshing to hear a band put so much care and attention into the music they are producing.

As the album progresses we go through a lot of different phases, with long intros accompanying long songs. Six of the nine tracks on the album exceed the five minute mark, with the third track running to just over nine minutes long, but this isn't something you notice because you just get lost in the fluidity and the beauty of the track.

The album is very experimental in places, and delves into areas that are seldom seen in rock music these days, especially differing time signatures. Their tracks are predominantly built off your standard 4/4 rock groove, but often find themselves playing in 3’s or in one case even 7/8, moving effortlessly between different time signatures, which is a skill in and of itself. They appear to just go where the music naturally wants to be taken, and do it without any fear or trepidation, creating as the press release said, a masterpiece.

The album ends on a trilogy of tracks that work to summarise the album as a whole. I spoke to Mark, vocalist and guitarist of the band, and he told me that "whilst working on the album these three tracks in terms of both narrative and vibe stood out as the tracks that alone describe the band".  He went on to say that they "form a summary of the diversity of vibes heard prior, bringing everything into harmony".  This is very much the feeling you get whilst listening to these tracks. They encapsulate everything that has come before and work to debrief the listener as to what they have heard over the previous forty minutes.

This is definitely an album I urge everyone to check out, if only to hear something different executed really well. It's very much a prog-rock album in terms of feel and composition, but explored from a hardcore angle. You may not instantly like it, but it's something worth experiencing at least once, to remind yourself rock music can be curated in an almost orchestral fashion. Haze have some of the album tracks on their bandcamp page (http://hazeband.bandcamp.com) so you can go have a listen, and you can pre-order the full album here (http://store.frailabuse.co.uk/product/haze-clouds-surround-and-breathe) which is due for release on 10th August.

Finally, my favourite thing about the album is that it avoids my all-time pet peeve: taking the name of the album from the first track. It's actually the name of the last track so just for that they get five shiny gold stars, which can't be exchanged for anything but will be worth plenty of bragging rights down their local Wolverhampton boozer.