Shai Hulud - Misanthropy Pure (Album)
The new Shai Hulud album, Misanthropy Pure is a powerful package combining extremely fast, very heavy instrumentation, throat-ripping vocals, unexpected time signature changes, and a searing hatred for mankind. The album cover depicts what seems to be an upright corpse, with either a tree growing out of it, or its soul streaming away through the mouth and eyes. This is based, in very cool text, with: Shai Hulud.
The name Shai Hulud comes from the esteemed Frank Herbert’s best known works, the ‘Dune’ series of novels, where it is the moniker for a giant worm living in the sand, which devours anything that enters its territory (sorry, I’m a big Dune fan so I had to add this). Shai Hulud are one of the defining bands in the ‘metalcore’ genre, that combination of heavy metal and hardcore which often sounds like pure chaos and mere noise, albeit ‘angry’ noise, to the uninitiated. The band themselves have gone through numerous changes to their line-up, but are currently a 4-piece out of Florida.
To the music. Despite the metalcore tag, Shai Hulud’s music has strong elements of progressive metal therein; there are many structure changes such as time changes, pace changes, and slipping from soft melodies to brutal thrash without any warning. Most tracks feature high-pitched guitars and furiously-paced drums, accompanied by Matt Mazzali’s raw, screamed vocals.
In my opinion the best track on Misanthropy Pure is the title track itself. It begins with a smash, all instruments crashing in straight away, and quickly builds to more melodic longer verses. The lyrics are structured in quite an interesting way, with a chorus that varies on itself, and leaves you searching for deeper meanings long after the song has finished. The hook of the song is the meandering guitar parts that open up over the deep silences just before Matt chants “I choose not to accept it; not into my life!” A great piece of work.
While not necessarily bringing anything ground-breakingly new into a genre that they helped define, Misanthropy Pure is indeed a worthy piece of work. The power and contemptuous anger in the music is almost palpable. Don’t listen to this one quietly; turn that shit up loud for a rush of pure goodness.
