40 minutes of metal, ambient insanity. Celebrating 40 years, cult metallers HexenHammer have delivered their second full-length – the weird, ambitious, and maddening Hyberacula. Divided into four parts, Hyberacula is “a curious tale involving the very real practice of cryogenics... the habitat of Limbo inside a box of quantum time...the relentless patience of Ol' Mr. Death come to call... and the prophetic spectacle of Mankind's latest version of sanity....”

That’s an intriguing concept and HexenHammer does it their own way – hell there isn’t a single chorus to be found! It’s vastly atmospheric with the “metalized” parts coming in and out the picture at various moments. Hyberacula swims in this sci-fi/horror environment that reminds of those radio programs from the ‘40s/’50s like Suspense or The Whistler and fits well with the Halloween season. 

The vocals can barely qualify as singing as it is mostly this muffled spoken word passages of the characters and the descent into madness with his shallow existence and also oratory and lecturing, describing the dystopian world of Cydonia (“Part Three”) – similar to Libria from the Christian Bale movie Equilibrium.

The 7 minute “Part Two” is just a doctor talking to the patient about their new “living” status accompanied by soft, creepy instrumentation. The uniqueness and thinking outside of the box writing is admirable and at times really engaging. When the metal hits, it his hard too with thrash, doom-laden riffs with an industrial quality coupled with this searing drum sound. 

It’s hard to rate this because Hyberacula isn’t something to put on to rock out too – it fits a specific mood and mindset. It’s worth a listen solely based on the weirdness of it – check it out on Bandcamp.