This is the second album from one-man black metal band Hasard.
This is the 46-minute follow up to 2023’s Malivore, which showcased the artist behind Hasard’s vision for dark, nightmarish black metal. Abgnose contains an idiosyncratic form of dissonant avant-garde black metal, one that’s enriched with dark orchestral symphonics as part of its journey into the abyss.
Abgnose documents a musical war between chaos and order. However, rather than one side winning outright, both achieve a tense stalemate, where one party arises ascendant over the other for a short while before the situation is reversed. Around this, they fight to a standstill, with the music adopting a chaotic restraint that allows it to continue to unfold without collapsing under its own dense, impenetrable weight. In this way, Abgnose persists and festers, rotting away internally, while it spreads it terrifying vision of utter darkness and complete hopelessness. All must bow before its malignant presence.
The songs are brutal, corrosive, infernal, abrasive, feral, hideous, and majestic. They mix these attributes freely, making for music that aims to terrify and oppress with its claustrophobic depths and harrowing atmospheres. Abgnose is an apocalyptic, catastrophic experience throughout, as the songs drown the listener in waves of blackness most foul and unyielding. They’re an otherworldly corruption in sonic form, weaponised and destructive across five hymns to the end of times.
No, this is not a pleasant record, nor will it constitute anything approaching easy listening for most people. Instead, adherents of horrific blackened worldbuilding and fathomless dissonance are the intended audience here. If you’re a fan of bands such as Akhlys, An Axis of Perdition, Blut Aus Nord, Deathspell Omega, Dodecahedron, etc. then this is for you.
Highly recommended.
Wonderbox Metal 