Hecatoncheir – Nightmare Utopia Review

On the advent of the release of Nightmare Utopia, Hecatoncheir posted a series of poetry and stories attached to each of the forthcoming songs on social media. The journey begins by following a dark silhouette, each installment describes surreal and dreamlike landscapes, strange characters, and objects—with monolithic importance attached in the strange way that dreams do. In the latter tracks, ever-vigilant eyes watch from the stars and assume a more horrific face as they emerge from the darkness as the cruel pelagic and empyrean deities and monsters among Lovecraft’s multitudes. Hecatoncheir’s uniquely dreamlike take on chthonic horror, balanced by its ambitions in liminal spaces, set one hell of a precedent for the music contained herein.

Slovakian trio Hecatoncheir, named after a trio of hundred-armed, fifty-headed allies of the Olympians in Hesiod’s Theogony, blurs the borderlands between its influences—making this quite the feat for an act with limited experience in the scene.¹ Throughout Nightmare Utopia’s thirty-two-minute runtime, you will hear the familiar wail of dissonant stylings, the cold saturation of black metal, the brutality of death metal, the megaton weight of sludge, and the patience of doom—influences of Our Place of Worship is Silence, Portal, Thantifaxath, and Mass Worship all have a hand in laying waste to this hellish landscape. Hecatoncheir weaponizes riffs and atmosphere that not only conjure a journey through the uncanny valley but wield enough firepower to overthrow the Titans with the fists of chthonic gods in the act’s debut.

Humbly self-described as a “mid-tempo juggernaut,” the dichotomy of punishing density and menacing atmosphere is what makes Hecatoncheir stand out. Each track assumes an identity of its own, with a common thread of crystalline dissonance coursing through its jagged movements. Fiery tremolo gives way to thick riffs seamlessly, while monolithic doom sludge gives way to skull-crushing riffs, overlaid by simple yet effective plucking and dissonant leads. You would be forgiven in thinking that opener “Dreamless” introduces the next Thantifaxath album with its blastbeat and tremolo-guided trek, because after the brief ambient track “Nightmare Utopia (I. The Falsebound Kingdom),” the formidable and monolithic “Nightmare Utopia (II. Him in the Gulf)” hits with a Mass Worship-like sludgy intensity, portraying Lovecraft’s idiot god Azathoth with a deserving hugeness. “Sefirot of Understanding” capitalizes upon the Our Place of Worship is Silence influence in its thick and sticky chugs, balanced by dissonant passages and a blackened edge.

While the common thread courses through the sludge, black, and death metal passages throughout the first half of Nightmare Utopia as it maintains remarkable balance, it reaches its apex with its three closers, “The Crowning Horror,” “Madness of the Stars,” and “The Watcher, the Witness,” dragging the previous relatively safe compositions to an unforeseen depth. “The Crowning Horror” offers a central Portal-esque crawling riff atop vicious blastbeats with a nearly thrashy blaze tossed in, combined with an unforgettable melodic interlay that adds a needed jolt in context to the mid-tempo pummeling of “Sefirot of Understanding.” “Madness of the Stars” then proceeds to walk the path of Hierophant and Nightmarer with the thickest and most pummeling riffs of the album and a thickly distorted blackened closing, before “The Watcher, the Witness” revisits the uncompromising sludge of “Him in the Gulf” with a minimalist spin, focusing on its plucking and sprawling sludge, nearly-drone chords atop contemplative blastbeats.

“I am everything. The light and the darkness, the left hand and the right hand, the sun and the flesh, the beginning and the end. The creator and the destroyer.” I am reminded of these final words in Hecatoncheir’s poetic commentary on closer “The Watcher, the Witness.” Nightmare Utopia certainly dwells in far darker places than much of the metalverse, but it’s much more than that. The themes of forbidden knowledge, horror, and violence are balanced by the trio’s emphasis on liminality, emptiness, and patience. While listeners may see influence disparity as a lack of commitment, the sudden out-of-the-blue closing passages of the three closers jarring, or the unwavering growls monotone, Hecatoncheir’s ambition and the seamless blend of black, death, sludge, and doom balances atmosphere and punishment as deftly as a debut can get. As you find yourself in the fog, follow the faint silhouette of the man, slightly darker than his surroundings—he’ll guide you home.

Rating: 4.0/5.0
DR: 6 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Total Dissonance Worship
Websites: facebook.com/hecatoncheir.sk | hecatoncheir-sk.bandcamp.com
Releases worldwide: February 29th, 2024