Project Axis 01 Burial Hex: The Hierophant Reviewed format: CD album Welcome to the 2020 reboot of the Project Axis series which will have a bit of a wider ranging selection of music in the Noise and related genres, underground music sphere as well as various experimental Electronic and Electro-Acoustic music released on Bandcamp and other spots online. If I like the music enough I will then feature full discography reviews of the artist, group or label in either the Project A1 or B1 series over time. The first release I’m reviewing for Project Axis today is this album by American Horror Electronics project Burial Hex, titled The Hierophant. Formed in 2004, Burial Hex, a solo project lead by Clay Ruby but also featuring various contributions by additional artists in the avant-garde scene in instrumentation, arrangement and production, has released at least 51 albums, various EPs, singles and compilation so far with the music diving through various stylistic influences ranging from Dark Ambient and Industrial to slower styles of underground Metal leading to a varied unique sonic signature. Indeed Burial Hex’s music isn’t really grounded in a single genre and the exciting juxtapositions of uplifting instrumentation with low pitched, often growled vocals on The Hierophant was a great first peek for me into the unique Horror Electronics sound Burial Hex has developed over time. The Hierophant features 5 long tracks spanning a total playing time of around 46 minutes, most of these 5 pieces are connected with each other through the use of field recordings of a natural environment (featuring prominent cicada chirping). The CD version of the album houses the CD in a simple but classy Digipak. The Digipak looks like a miniaturised version of the LP design with the credits numbering on the back still mentioning the LP layout of the tracks rather than the 1-5 numbering used for the main tracklist on the back. The album cover features a shocking but really well framed photograph by Spanish photographer Bernat Armangue of what looks like the aftermath of a bullfight, a dead bull laying in a circular sweep of blood. The artist name and album title are subtly layered over the photo in lightly glossy gold ink, making for a cover that is on one hand a bit disturbing but is also thought-provoking in the direction of the subject of death, in this case the death of an animal. The rest of the Digipak’s design follows that classy kind of vibe you get from the type of the cover in the form of classic serif type giving us all the album credits an details as well as a type of family weapon like design in gold glossy ink that adorns the back and CD design like an icon for Burial Hex himself. The CD face itself has a vinyl LP label type circular design similar to the back cover and the stylised etching like photograph by Kevin Gan Yuen (who also designed the album) looks intriguing too. The phrases “With Faith Alone, We Fight Alone, And Die Alone, With This Final Love”, on the left inside panel also give us an impression of the themes of the music on The Hierophant. With that said, before I move onto the music itself, I will point out that the production of The Hierophant was done by Clay Ruby, mastering was done by James Plotkin (and it sounds nicely clear in the separation of instruments especially). The Hierophant starts with the track Winter Dawn, a brooding but also quite upbeat piece of music that introduces us to the album’s captivating progressive compositional style and inventive arrangements of metallic Industrial elements, subtle sound design and most importantly the main ingredients of Clay Ruby’s vocals backed by (in this case) “late night” like introspective guitar phrases but also some catchy Techno like drum machine rhythms mixed with sweeping bright percussion. The piece starts with a melancholic melody played by a combination of strings and brass sounding in an arrangement like it’s straight from a sombre and decayed old film, the melody is backed by the ambient sounds of cicadas which subtly fade out overtime as the main melodies of Winter Dawn enter, performed on guitar, backed by a smooth warm bass synth and the aforementioned drum machine. The guitars on The Hierophant often have a rather clean reverberated sound hinting at seeing the glow of dim lights in the distance as you’re walking through a quiet town back to your home. There’s a certain calm but also hopeless feeling within both the tone and melody in Winter Dawn indeed, Clay Ruby’s vocals furthermore reinforcing a strong feeling of loneliness and inner struggles. Clay uses various vocal techniques on The Hierophant to express the poetic lyrics through a rich palette of textures and emotions. He’s often singing or growling in a low register like the musical equivalent of a man acting as the narrator of a sad gloomy story who’s got a lot of life experience and struggles behind him, himself. However, despite the sombre vibes the guitar, synths and vocals give off in Winter Dawn the changing drum machine rhythms give the song quite a drive regardless which does give the music a bit of a grounding into a feeling of a light at the end of the tunnel, cause unlike the metallic Industrial percussion that features in the piece the drums themselves are punchy and playful. Using this drive Winter Dawn travels towards the climax at the end which features Clay’s fragile but sincere vocals over an emotional melody arrangement for strings and sweeping strong percussion, which works as the finale of the orchestral music we heard in the beginning of Winter Dawn, a quite surreal finale to this first track on The Hierophant. On the next track Final Love the music turns into a more aggressive albeit also playful direction with Burial Hex’s vocals become much more screechy as the song progresses expressing himself in melody textures of pure desperation. The instrumentation’s got a much more Industrial rhythm to it, albeit more of a mixture of metallic samples and fast moving at times even Footwork like drum machine programming. Sweet maybe even slightly sticky piano and synth melodies back the fragile vocals making for a curious juxtaposition of warm positive atmosphere with vocals that sound more like an emotional breakdown. I admit that first hearing the combination in this track felt quite amusing to me in a strange way but I did quickly get into the vibe of the vocals so it definitely does work, the piano also’s got a bit of a Noise edge to it in that it’s quite loud, maybe even fuzzy into the mix, making it sound quite heavy for such a bright instrument. Burial Hex eases the composition a bit in this track, making it more of a slowly building piece of music rather than changing it up like in Winter Dawn. Then on title track The Hierophant Clay Ruby performs some great energetic growled vocals backed by an instrumentation made up of freely clattering percussion and strings. It’s good to point out at this point that the string and brass arrangement as well as additional percussion on The Most Foolish Son Is Always The Oldest One were all created by American avant-garde musician Troy Schafer who’s also got a curious discography of solo and band releases to check out. Back to this track though and you can hear some curious Folk influences in the melodies and instrumental performances in its first section which move towards a bright intense climax of wavy synth melody and synth bells, uplifting violin melodies which combined with Clay’s growled vocals makes for quite a curious kind of atmosphere. Indeed during my research I found out that influences within Burial Hex’s music do indeed include Horror film soundtracks themselves too and I can definitely hear that clearly in the wavy texture and bells featured in this climax, they do recall Dario Argento’s soundtracks in a way in how they give the music this heroic feel while the vocals represent the gruesome, dark and surreal imagery you’d see on the screen. I love how Burial Hex found a way to make his music have this Horror vibe yet also include some really fun elements within it without them dragging the music down into absurdism. It just works in its own unique way. Then on Never Dying we have a bit of a cool down of sorts as we’re moving towards the finale of The Hierophant, which is the track The Most Foolish Son Is Always The Oldest One. A much more subdued and quiet piece, Never Dying features Clay Ruby singing in more of a whispered sort of manner, mixed with his softly growling vocals, with the lyrics pointing towards a sad fragile and weak physical and mental, like someone surrendering himself to nature which never gives him his needed rest after a history of past suffering. The song features a great expressive (improvised) piano performance by Kathleen Baird, an American multi-instrumentalist and vocalist whose solo music besides piano improvisation features physical movement and electronic manipulation of her flute. Somewhere between abstract and trickling drops of melody the piano works as a great backing too Clay Ruby’s captivating hypnotic vocals and mixes well with the ambience created by field recordings, tinkling bells and some nicely 80’s styled Industrial clangs, bangs and low pitched resonating thumps. Also, nice to point out is that there is a great binaural effect within the field recording and Industrial scraping sounds that intensifies at the end of the track, swirling around your head, as it were. Before we move onto the last track of The Hierophant I’ll mention some of the other musicians who contributed to this album, these are Nathaniel Ritter, who provided additional programming and electronics on Winter Dawn and The Most Foolish Son Is Always The Oldest One. Edmund Xavier plays additional rhythm guitar on Winter Dawn and Billy Lee provided additional percussion on The Most Foolish Son Is Always The Oldest One. We’ll now move to The Most Foolish Son Is Always The Oldest One, the final track on The Hierophant, which is also the longest one. The song’s got a great composition especially in terms of its progression. Starting with a mid tempo groove consisting of a bouncy drum machine groove, funky electric piano, bass, and sweeping strings and brass melodies, Clay Ruby’s low pitched vocals enter, backed by delayed guitar and a phased swirling stream of wind. With this song I really felt that especially the melodies of the vocals and instrumentation themselves are a particularly great driving force and strength of the music and one of the most enjoyable aspects about the progression of the song are when the music moves into this quite trippy kind of jam with some great delayed percussion taking over from the drum machine groove, with tambourine, snare drum, cowbell, bass drum and other percussion giving the music a bit of a “crusade in an open field” type of feeling which afterwards morphs into an even tripper bit which is the ending of the song. In this last bit of the song the electronic kick disappears and we move into a cloud of swirling wind, whispered, at times screamed vocals as well as elements from the main string and brass melodies repeated. While it is is practically more of a jam on the main composition itself, the added improvisational surreal element to the sound of the music really makes you feel like you’re coming to the end of a journey or crusade you’ve went on as you listened to The Hierophant. It’s an excellent mixture of the sombre dark elements of the album with the playful experimentation Burial Hex adds to his music, blending Industrial, Dark Ambient and Psychedelic elements into a really captivating and especially enjoyable mixture. The Hierophant is in my opinion a great introduction to Burial Hex’s music but also a great discovery for listeners interested in exploring underground music which involves both elements from Folk, underground Metal as well as more electric / electronic minded styles like Industrial and Dark Ambient. Burial Hex’s music is definitely a highlight in the scene and one to definitely dive deeper into, which I will indeed also do at a point in the future. But first check out The Hierophant. The Hierophant is available on CD through the Cold Spring mail order shop here: http://store.coldspring.co.uk/index.php?route=product/product&path=46&product_id=8186
