Hypnotise the World by Lords of Form–Album Review
Hypnotise the World by Lords of Form–Album Review
Hypnotise the World is Lords of Form’s latest release. Bandleader Niall Hone spent a dozen years on and off in the band Hawkwind in this 21st century– first on guitar and then bass plus electronic noise. This album features Hone on bass, synths, and guitar with Jamie Gillett on drums. Because this is Niall’s project instead of giving service to a psychedelic mammoth like Hawkwind, he gets to cut loose and show his own sensibilities instead of being a cog in the decades-old machine that is the space rock legend Hawkwind.
This Space Rock offering feels somewhere between a seasoned professional recording of Hone’s passionate work and a twenty-year-old psychedelic ranger fucking around in a garage. That’s not a slam, as it shows the dedication and naïveté necessary for true sonic exploration. Honestly, this sort of music can go either way depending on the performers and the listeners’ sensibilities. It’s no wonder Hone was recruited into Hawkwind…the driving beats and electronically generated space noise originated by that band heavily perfume Lords of Form. Their previous albums, Flying Chromium Society (2022) and 23 Strangers (2023), are extremely similar to Hypnotise the World in a musical context. However, the band has been getting heavier in their sound with each subsequent release. Is that giving the people what they want, giving the band what they want, or just rehashing ideas?
Speaking to my categorization of this as “Space Rock,” Niall Hone has previously expressed his disdain for the term. Similarly, the word “Jazz” is shunned by many artists. “Krautrock” is 100% offensive and not used by the German musicians who invented it. Even the “Canterbury Scene” has been pointed out as an incorrect term since the genre’s progenitors came from suburbs and surrounding towns of Kent (pointed out to me personally by Soft Machine’s Roy Babbington). While most artists want to defy classification and lean into their unique sensibilities, if you were truly going to define the genre by its hallmarks, Lords of Form are definitely space rock.
THE TRACKS
“Arial Slew” kicks off the album with a bit-crushed sonic appetizer and ventures further with the arpeggiated synth lines for which Niall is known. It is moody and atmospheric and a good introductory precursor to the rest of the album.
“Break My Gaze” is a well-recorded song featuring some standard modern metal drum work, akin to (surprise, surprise) late Hawkwind and Monster Magnet with distorted and aggressive vocals. A delayed guitar breakdown accompanied by assertive bass and electronic noise generation [as previously mentioned, he did this along with bass playing in the live Hawkwind shows] round out this track.
“We Soothe, You Suffer” is a long-form relentless space rock freakout lasting 20 ½ minutes (!) This is where most of the “world hypnotization” comes in, presumably.
The song “Ravaged” threads lithely through thick, burbling effects and delayed guitars to finally hit its full metalhead stride halfway through the track. Another aggressive vocal performance overtakes the mellower mood of the song’s beginning, a 100% retread of Hawkwind looking for a newer take but not quite finding it.
“Fhhu” is a mellower offering, but still quite mesmerizing in its arpeggiated instrumentation and form–almost Scandinavian in its style but not as pastoral or progressive as those bands.
Ending the album with a rocker, “Everyone Knows Your Name” consists of heavy beats, distorted guitars, and vocals. Just a few sentences make up the lyrical content of this track, but it makes its point known.
Hypnotise the World is short on poetry and, to face facts, Hawkwind has also been lyrically uninspired for decades. Hawkwind (arguably) were the creators of this form, and there have been many imitators who have done this sort of thing better and worse than Lords of Form. As a fan of the space rock style, I’ve followed many bands that attempted to either tread in the footsteps, borrow pieces, or build upon the legacy of Hawkwind–Farflung, Nebula, Ash Ra Tempel, Helios Creed, Ozric Tentacles, etc., etc. Riding on the pedigree of his duties in the actual Hawkwind, Hone has a built-in audience just by flashing his interplanetary spaceman badge. Niall Hone is doing what he wants to do, and isn’t that enough if he has an audience?
– Hypnotise the World is available now on CD and for download on Bandcamp.
Lee Morrall
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