Hologram: No Longer Human 12″

Description

After a slew of impossible to find tapes and an excellent EP from 2018, the force at work behind HOLOGRAM finally emerges from the shadowy basements of DC with a primo LP full of wild ferocity that shatters all expectations. 9 tracks of reclusive enigmatic hardcore punk that span a lifetime… if your life was only 16 minutes long that is. Strap on your headphones and immerse yourself in the sound of melted reality.

Our take: Holograms first EP from 2018 got a lot of play around here, so my expectations for No Longer Human were high. While the weight of expectation can color my first experience of a new record, No Longer Human is such a phenomenal release that this isnt a problem. When I wrote about Holograms first EP, I noted they were one of the most progressive and forward-thinking projects in the hardcore scene, but this record goes beyond genre-bending and into mind-bending. Its hardcore devoid of cliche, rebuilt from the ground up and taking the least obvious, more difficult route at every fork in the road. The rhythms, while blistering fast, reach well outside hardcores confines for inspiration. Critics would describe the morse-code guitar leads in Bite the Smoke or the insane mid-paced intro riff for Deprivation Fantasy as complex and inventive if a noise rock band executed them at a quarter the speed, but Hologram rips into them with the wild energy of Neos or Deep Wound. Its not all herky-jerky rhythms, either. Album-closer See a Pale Light starts with a dense, creepy sounding melody that reminds me of Sonic Youth at their most sublime, but finds its way into a nasty mid-paced hardcore riff. For all their strengths, these mid-paced hardcore riffs might be where Hologram shines the brightest. The breakdown is possibly the most cliche-ridden aspect of hardcore, but on No Longer Human, Hologram approaches this convention with a freshness I wouldnt have thought possible, warping classic hardcore through a fractured, acid-drenched prism. As on their EP, Hologram deploys synths and noise sounds too, sometimes on their own (as in Untitled) and sometimes combined with the full-on hardcore (such as on Innate, where synth whirring occupies the space where you might expect a guitar lead), and these parts are just as inventive and exciting as the music performed on the more conventional (for hardcore) instruments. If you like the forward-thinking hardcore that Iron Lung Records specializes in, No Longer Human should be at the top of your list of things to check out.