Hawkmoth - Godless Summit Review

Hawkmoth from Sydney, Australia are one of those rare bands that need to be heard. They are an instrumental metal band in the vein of Mogwai or Pelican. They have an incredible style and way of creating their music, it has so much feeling. The music feels like a gathering storm, or a surge of water ebbing and flowing with the weight of the oceanic tide.

Godless Summit is their latest album released late last year, it's an amazing accomplishment. The depth of music that this four piece manage to conjure really makes you feel as though you are an explorer facing something insurmountable, but inevitably trying. Like an impassable mountain range but the only way is over or back the way you came and around. Like the explorer's of old forging a new path through the darkest places of this world, but not the stories where they have succeeded, the stories that end in crushing woe. Godless Summit is only part 1 of a 2 part opus the second of which we'll see sometime this year hopefully.

The Musicianship on Godless Summit is spectacular, it's heavy, majestic and at times ambient and pleasing. The guitars have this distortion on them that makes me think of old school hard rock but it fits really well with this style of music. The guitars go from crushing heaviness to a really pleasing ambience, which gives the music this incredible ebb and flow. The drums manage to flow throughout the music offering exclamation points on the heaviest parts to giving the music something to raise your fist to and bang your head along to on the more ambient parts. All around the instruments are amazing, I can't fault them in the slightest.

Godless Summit is a really well created album it starts slow and builds tension then gets to a point where you feel like the odds are against you then you feel the hardship and crushing despair then when you feel like you can't take anymore, comes the feeling of complete and utter futility. It's a disasterpiece in 4 parts and it's hard to stop listening once you've started.

I feel like Hawkmoth have honestly made one of the best instrumental albums I've ever heard. I love Mogwai, Pelican and Russian Circles etc. but Godless Summit really just feels like a complete story, like this isn't just something that they've written, it's something they've experienced, or at least researched extensively. It feels like they've poured a lifes work in to the wave form and what has come out is exactly what it needs to be, if it were any different it wouldn't be Godless Summit and this review would be entirely different.

Pros:

Amazing use of ambience
The story telling is incredible
The musicianship is perfect


Cons:
I can't think of any

Track List:
Godless Summit 8:27
Ibex 5:54
Mala Fide 9:36
Charnel Grounds 13:51

Line-up:
Aaron Steed - Bass
Andy Griggs – Guitar
Heath Blows – Guitar
Brendan Mackay – Drums

Genre: Post Rock / Metal
Release Date: December, 15th 2017
Label: Unsigned
Links:
https://hawkmoth.bandcamp.com
https://www.facebook.com/Hawkmoth