A manic doodle of hyper-fast fretwork and tootling synths it’s both very technical and very 80s sounding on ‘Level 1’. Kat Ward’s clean vocals have a distinctly poppy edge. In some of the softer passages it drifts dream-like, while in the heavier breaks – and there are plenty of those, when the guitars cut big, chunky riffs – it provides a neatly-poised contrast.
It’s easy to see how they draw on influences such as Amplifier, Opeth and Porcupine Tree, and there’s no questioning that hAND sit firmly in the ‘contemporary prog’ camp, but on occasion the overblown technicality of Muse dominates. Consequently, there are some moments when the songs threaten to collapse into themselves under the infinite complexities of their structures and chord and key changes, and those moments sound uncomfortable and awkward, and the mixing doesn’t help: the guitars aren’t sufficiently distinct, the drums too low and the vocals too high. But when they’re at their best, they produce some moments of megalithic heaviosity, and also some glorious sweeping sonic vistas. Patchy, but certainly not lacking in ambition, they pull it off more often than they don’t.
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hAND Online
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