Hypo5e are a band formed in Montpelier, France in 2004. Playing a unique brand of "cinematice metal," Hypno5e fuse elements of audio samples, djent, post metal, and progressive into an atmospheric and somewhat avantgarde end result. The music has been compared to everything from Between the Buried an Me and Cynic to Amen Ra, but you'd be hard pressed to find anyone who sounds quite the same as Shores of the Abstract Line.
If you didn't already know that the band hailed from France, one might have a difficult time determining the country of origin. That's because Hypno5e utilize several languages to covey ideas across the album. One moment English, then French, the next Spanish: like the music itself, you never know exactly what to expect. The delivery favors a clean, almost psychodelic post-metal approach mixed in with some very unusual choices of audio samples. All of this alone lends a very experimental feel.
By the time you add in the music itself, it's easy to get lost in these (often lengthy) compositions. Chill ambient transitions to crunchy, technical measures of head-banging djent. It's all very off-kilter, and the only truly consistent genre is progressive. "East Shore - In Our Deaf Lands," the first proper track, gives a pretty clear snapshot of what to expect in its 12 minute duration: acoustic guitars and atmospheric synths, powerful distortion and palm muting, deathy growls, and then a haunting shift to post-metal. It's all...fascinating."
So if you were craving something unique early in 2016, Shores of the Abstract Line is one of the more successful attempts at creating something you may not have quite heard before. I haven't really dug into the concept of the album, as there clearly seems to be some kind of underlying story here, but you don't need to understand to enjoy it. The album releases tomorrow but you can already stream it below.