Hemlock
No Time for Sorrow
Blind Prophecy
Don't you cry tonight
Hemlock let their roots show all the time, as when bassist Chad Smith growls, “I ask you to be honest / And not to cheat yourself” at the beginning of anti-media screed “Beautality.” But Smith jerks the last syllable way into the upper reaches of blackness, a screechy demonstration of how the veteran Las Vegas-based quartet has accumulated so much technique since forming in ’93 that even the hardcore values they espouse lyrically are clad in enough metal to supply a tank factory.
Given their vintage, the band’s knack for refining novel death/black/thrash alloys is hardly surprising. Guitarist Bryan Gentry even gives Gothenburg a badly-needed makeover on “And the Friendship Corrodes,” braiding familiar melodic gestures into new chords before gliding to Stockholm and whipping off a solo worthy of Meshuggah’s Fredrik Thordendal. Gentry’s the Gandalf of utility players; a few flicks of his picking wrist and doomy Reaper-appreciation frolic “To Submerge Another” is adorned with skulls and vines. “World of the Transparent” finds the guitarist trading lines with Smith on the verses: “If I die,” the latter screams; “Nobody’s going to hear it,” Gentry replies, sounding like Ministry’s Al Jourgensen pre-Stigmata. Isolation, desolation and cessation of bodily functions dominate the album.
Still, the band likes to party in their own grim fashion. “This could be my final day,” Smith proclaims on the title track, only to conclude, “I have no time for sorrow / So I live for today.” Given Hemlock’s relentless touring schedule, it’s the smartest thing he could do. —Rod Smith
