Review & Track Premiere: PH, Eternal Hayden
Posted in Whathaveyou on January 26th, 2017 by JJ Koczan
[Click play above to stream ‘Reach’ from PH’s Eternal Hayden. Album is out March 10 on Svart Records.]
If you think your mind might be up to the task, PH‘s Eternal Hayden best offers its ethereal, droning delights of cosmic doom in full headphone submersion. The question is whether one can listen without being overwhelmed by its pulsations, by its strong lines of synth, by the guitar that scours underneath and by the vocals that speak through the wash no less a part of it. Eternal Hayden is the first album by the Finnish collective through Svart Records, and the first to be released under the moniker of PH after a trilogy of full-lengths issued as Mr. Peter Hayden between 2010 and 2014. Those records, 2010’s Faster than Speed (review here), 2012’s Born a Trip (review here) and 2014’s Archdimension Now (review here) all arrived via Kauriala Society and were works of increasing scope one into the next until the band, at the end of Archdimension Now, seemed finally to obliterate themselves through sonic means.
In other words, I thought they were done. And maybe they were, but, taking the new name PH from the illuminated logo/symbol they play beneath on stage — also seen on the Eternal Hayden cover art, in a fitting declaration of purpose — the band seem to be willfully embarking on a new era with these five tracks, and where the first three Mr. Peter Hayden albums broadened exponentially, first to over an hour, then to about two hours, their first as PH seems to reset the sphere, clocking in at a manageable, single LP’s 37 minutes. Hell, the second to last song, “Higher,” is under four minutes — and it’s one of three cuts included that would qualify individually as the shortest song the band has ever done. Clearly a shift in approach is underway.
And PH are well aware of it. Consciousness and purpose at the root of their work are nothing new — all along, they’re what’s made it breathtakingly progressive instead of haphazard in its experimentalism — but Eternal Hayden itself seems to become the band’s process of resetting, as much how they’re explaining it to themselves as how they’re explaining it to their audience. They begin with 16:45 of self-examination on “Looking back at Mr. Peter Hayden,” the opener and longest track (immediate points) that directly tackles the issue of where they were and where they are through an emergent noise wash and richly atmospheric build, post-metal as much as it’s post everything else, but underscored by low end rumble enough to keep the guitars, synth, vocoder-style effects-laden singing and open-spaced ambience from spiriting itself away into nothingness. Its drones have underlying movement, in other words, and if Eternal Hayden is starting off with this extension of its self-awareness, then PH‘s conclusion doesn’t seem to be without its sentimentality, though after about seven minutes in, the band goes into full-crush mode and plunders for the next minute-plus until drones, synth and other un-drummed atmospherics take hold for the duration, hypnotic, immersive and — yes — potentially overwhelming on headphones, depending largely on the volume at which one consumes/is consumed by them.
At various moments minimal and others seemingly endless in its depth, the ending of “Looking back at Mr. Peter Hayden” feeds seamlessly into the resonant crashing of “We Fly High,” which Mr. Peter Hayden released as a single in 2014 (review here), prior to the release of Archdimension Now. Re-recorded and at least somewhat reinterpreted from its first showing, it ups the plod factor from the opener while holding to the post-Jesu vocal-style and wash of keyboard melody, coming to a swirling apex as it hits the halfway mark and receding into ambience from there. Crashes are peppered throughout, and the bassline remains consistent to hold it together, but “We Fly High” soothes as much as it crushes, and its position between the past and the future makes it the perfect linear fit as PH move into Eternal Hayden‘s final trio of cuts.
All three of Eternal Hayden‘s final titles — “Reach,” “Higher” and “Rock and Roll Future” — give some indication of moving forward, and they do likewise in their sound as well, feeding one into the next and finding a place between heavy post-rock, cosmic drone and doomly lumbering. “Reach” is backed by a swirl that holds for the entirety of its four and a half minutes, and though these songs are all shorter, as noted, PH maintain the sense of sprawl brought to “Looking back at Mr. Peter Hayden” and “We Fly High” as they execute the turn into this new aural reality. Even the keys in “Higher” seem to nod, and the guitar line is happy to follow suit, a crash gradually arising that echoes “We Fly High” without being quite as direct until the last minute or so, when joined by what might be buried vocals, more layers of guitar and further wash. It’s not necessarily about stripping down from where PH were at the start of Eternal Hayden so much as redirecting how the elements at play function to create a song — “Higher” could’ve just as easily been titled “More Efficient,” and as a standalone piece, it doesn’t lose anything for its sense of compression, particularly as its crescendo leads into the closer.
The last movement of this miniaturized trilogy, “Rock and Roll Future” brings the guitar line forward to emphasize the well-punctuated post-rock drift and the push that PH are able to bring to it, so that their material seems to drone even as its motion carries toward a clearheaded ending. One or two measures is all it takes. As “Rock and Roll Future” approaches the four-minute mark, the noise wash rises quickly, the song dissipates and that’s it. To conclude Eternal Hayden in such a fashion only highlights the purpose of the album as a whole — PH have made the transition to set themselves on a new path with this fourth and/or first record — and they’ve done so while sharing the process with their listeners on a meta level. That honesty of approach is rare, but moreover, as PH assess their past and their way forward, they engage the audience as a part of it. This is crucial to the immersion that Eternal Hayden creates with its depth of mix and atmospherics, and it makes it plain that as Mr. Peter Hayden become simply PH, they’re carrying pivotal lessons with them as to what that process means.
