Album Review: Hive Mind

Hive Mind the five-piece rock act based out of Wellington have just dropped their brand new self-titled 12 track album, and it is quite simply superb.

I wasn’t quite sure what I was expecting when I opened the first track War Story. I automatically had images of Iron Maiden popping into my head and wondered if this was going to be an 80’s glam track with soaring vocals, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. I wouldn’t exactly say It’s something you are likely to hear on radio being 6 minutes in length, but what a glorious 6 minutes it was. Energy driven hard drums, vocals that somewhat draw me into a music video from 30 Seconds To Mars, and guitar lines that intertwine in a way you would almost expect to hear on Metropolis by Dream Theater.

Liberation is probably my favourite tune from the album. Dark and moody, think early stuff by Tool or Soundgarden. Open drums with heaps of space, big cymbal hits, nice intricacies up on the bell of the ride which I’ve only ever really heard pulled off in hard rock by Chad Szeliga from Breaking Benjamin
The vocals are smooth and flowing with crafted harmonies, not really gravelly like I expected, but quite fitting and smooth. My closest comparison is something like Scott Weiland meets Maynard Keenan.

All of the songs are really grand rock anthems not like the 3-minute quickfire verse, pre-chorus, chorus structure you normally rip into with rock music, it’s almost progressive rock with a recurring theme. 3 minutes 52 is the shortest song on the album, and man oh man are those guitars are so sweet from start to finish. You can tell this isn’t a bunch of dudes who want to be famous rock-stars, they are actually a group of individually talented musicians who as a solo artist would be absolute stand-out.

I really enjoyed this album. It’s so good to hear fresh rock music coming out of NZ where the industry typically tells us that live instruments are dead, I can assure you after having heard this, that is definitely not the case, and rock is alive and well!

Do yourself a favour, head a long to Hive Mind’s Bandcamp Page and download their album, I promise you will not be sorry for doing so.

_{Review written by Carl Hayman}