by Mick Reed
Danish dark hardcore band Halshug is in a different headspace than their crust punk peers. This isn’t surprising given their name translated to English means decapitated, and heads tend to roll when they become separated from the neck, finding themselves in some unexpected places. And apparently, this head continues to dream as it tumbles chin over occipital through the gutter. The thoughts and feelings racing through its tortured cranial grist could not make the final curtain drop come soon enough. Like, 2016’s Sort Sind (translation: Black Mind), Halshug’s latest release Drøm (Dream) is preoccupied with the thoughts that keep you awake at night. The recesses of your own mind can feel like a landfill of bad ideas and regrets. A crater filled with a rotting tribute to failure that Halshug now gamely seeks to excavate.
While Sort Sind prioritized raw, cutting execution, Drøm has a slightly hazier presentation. Like its being played in a small, smoke-filled room where you can’t see the opposite fall due to thick rising fumes. The bewildered claustrophobic vibe makes the moments when the riffs really come at you all the more immediate feeling. There is no clear route of escape from tracks like, “Dø Igen” with its stumbling sweaty chords and racing rhythms, and “Fantasi” with its tense intro, establishing a treadmill like riff that builds tension with each measure, and an oppressive beat that slowly bends the listener’s eardrum into a stress position. Halshug’s onerous mix is cut slightly by more traditional metal guitars on tracks like “Giv Alting Op” and “Spejl.” There are also some moments when the band falls back on their d-beat roots like on the dreary churn of “Tænk Pâ Dig Selv,” which introduces a Fear-esque sax solo in the bridge to heighten its sense of communicable dis-ease. Elements of deathrock in the vocal performance and riffs of opener “Kӕmper Imod” and morbid trance of “Et Andet Stedl” cement Halshug’s aesthetic approach and provides the key to unlocking the depths of the cold, breathless compressed atmosphere that uncomfortably fills Drøm to the point of saturation.
The real heart of the Drøm’s thesis of the mind as a teetering, dry-rot ridden house full of boobytraps is the contemplatively dark, closing instrumental track “Illusion.” It’s wordless, patient pull is led by a haunting rhythm that picks up into a panicked jog around the three-minute mark, and illustrates how the control we exert over our own minds can evaporate in an instant of stress or anger. Halshug doesn’t just paint us a picture of our dreams and our nightmares, but a picture of our reality. A place where we have little control of our interiors, and less control over our surroundings. Dreams may feel like parole from the weight of the world, but it’s not an escape. More like a brief stroll through the prison yard within the quivering shell of the alienated self.