I’ve been looking forward to getting my hands on this one for a while, the debut album ‘Hartsick’ from the UK’s own Our Hollow, Our Home who have found themselves getting quite a bit of attention globally since their inception. Their singles YouTube video’s have views going through the roof, hell, we’ve even added them to the PMM playlist with good reception…a sure sign the guys are doing well, lol! So, how does the album sound?
After a suitably spooky and slow buildup the first guitars slam you into submission and ensure that you are paying full attention, from this point on the album grips and does not let you go for the duration. First full tune ‘Lone Shark’ follows seamlessly from this point and gives you the blueprint for the rest of the album that follows, a mix of melodic and harmonious cleans mixed with a surprising variety of aggressive vocal styles over crushing riffs and crashing chordal segments.

There’s a hell of a lot more of an emotional pull to many of the tracks than I had expected from only hearing previous singles ‘Worms Wood’ and ‘Karmadillo’, a beautiful and haunting piano introduction leads into ‘Throne to the Wolves’ (see what they did there?!) which leads to an equally emotive clean before the song switches you its guttural lows. This is repeated on several tracks including ‘The Wild Will Wait’ (which is the lead into the two ‘Pride’ songs) and the atmospheric ‘Web Weaver’. You are thrown too and from the melodic to the heavy continuously, Our Hollow, Our Home have a big thing for juxtaposition and they use it well.

‘Pride-Lieoness’ changes tack yet again expanding from the tech, metalcore sound into an almost skate punk bounce which actually rides along with their sound fairly well! The band prove themselves very proficient in whichever direction they choose to explore and sound quite comfortable doing so without dismissing the core of their fanbase.
Fans of Betraying The Martrys, No Sin Evades His Gaze, Hacktivist and Novelists are going to be the most interested in this release, there are plenty of huge riffs, a great mix of vocal styles leading to moments you will be shouting along and others you will find yourself crooning! It’s a very good debut and I will be interested to see how they may develop their style in future.