Ohyda is a dark hardcore punk band from Lublin, Poland, featuring ex-members of Alert! Alert!. Having formed in early 2015 shortly after the previous band’s end, they played their first gig on May 1st of that year. Inspired by music like Siekiera, Tragiedia, and Atak, Ohyda brings psychedelic and postpunk flavors to hardcore. Their debut self-titled record is out now on LVEUM.
“Wladza” opens the album with feedback and rough noise. The guitar creeps along in a high pitched whine not unlike something you’d hear in a Bauhaus song. A tough, doomy guitar picks up right when the echoing, tormented vocals chime in. There’s some obvious crust influence in this track, but they combine a bunch of different elements to make it their own, giving it a fresh feel.
Label: LA VIDA ES UN MUS DISCOS
Tracks 2 (“Bunt”) and 3 (“Wybory”) are combined on the Bandcamp pages, so I’ll review them as one. “Bunt” is probably the most “evil” sounding track. The instruments seem to scream aggression, and the vocals are particularly bleak. Vocalist Olo sounds like he’s trapped and aggravated to the point of nihilism. The reverberation on his vocals pair excellently with the guitar. “Wybory” has a completely different tone. It’s much slower-paced, with a colder, empty feeling. Olo’s vocals sound rushed and more desperate. The music gets surprisingly melodic toward the end. It has an intense feeling of doom, as though time is running out.
At this point, I should mention the lyrics are available to read on Discogs.com, but they’re in Polish. Overall, the lyrics are dystopian in nature, focusing on the vision of a pessimistic, doomed future – absolutely relatable in lieu of America’s recent elections. “Grzech Śmiertelny” is more simplistic than the previous tracks, but there’s an absolutely amazing guitar solo toward the end you can’t miss!
“Umarli” is one of my favorite tracks. It has an excellent guitar buildup for the first 40 seconds before the vocals start. I love the use of multiple guitars along with the echoing vocals that can barely catch up with themselves the faster Olo sings. In the last third, a very postpunk influenced guitar adds itself to the mix, and the track fades out in a more dramatic way than previous songs
“Szczury” and “Zlowjeszcze Sygnaly” are combined into one final track. “Szczury” has a fast, mean tempo. There’s a lot of energy in this one, Olo shouts more than usual, and the same phrase is repeated over several times before the song reaches a quick end, as though zapping the band’s energy. The song drowns out in a thick pool of noise before the final track seems to rise from what’s left.
“Zlowjeszcze Sygnaly” has a similarly good buildup to “Umarli,” but it’s much darker in tone and not unlike darkwave. The transition from the previous song is one of the smoothest, most natural sounding flows I’ve heard in hardcore. The drums have a nice tribal vibe and the guitar is very postpunk. The last minute of the song goes from something that sounds psychedelic, to goth, to noise, back to tribal nothingness. The song itself just feels like a hybrid. An impressive ending to a great record!
