There was a UK meme a few years ago where we dubbed our drab mid-year period ‘medieval summer’. Given our good six months of heinous heat, those feel like halcyon days now. But we are quick to laugh at our thousand-year-past—an utterly miserable time of precarious leadership, destructive crusades, bubonic plague, Chaucer taking the piss out of chivalric figures who were anything but—and, hey, does this not sound familiar?
Even having the Bayeux Tapestry on our shores for a bit is telling. We are fascinated by a document that blurs true events with unthinkable fantasy; truly testament to our times. None more so than metal bands, today’s equivalent bards. Some even choose to dress up like jesters. Not so much Hamburg’s ferocious Half Me; there’s no gimmicky cosplay here. Rather they have taken to riffing on Europe’s repeating history (with emphasis on riffing) and ‘gone medieval’ by audibly bludgeoning your skull.
DOGMA is the latest in their brand of new-age metalcore that’s unforgivingly heavy—cyclones of breakdowns and low strings reverberating all over the place. This time, the band describes societal collapse through human tales of struggle, which works as a more pointed version of the concept employed by Bury Tomorrow’s The Union Of Crowns from 2012. Christopher Zühlke’s fury pities how we are “led by crooks” (No Oasis) and forced into apathy: “giving up comes from within, until fear is the new belief”. The fittingly titled Coup d’Êtat closes with a barraging call to arms, with us all feeling like the sad clown of Jan Matejko’s Stańczyk that adorns the cover.
Their sound fits the mission statement well, each track wasting no time in getting the proverbial pits moving from Christopher Hesse guitar’s elastic whips and Maximilian Eisersdorff’s cymbals that are complemented by clanks of anvils throughout. Splinter In A Rusted Crown’s growls and blastbeasts are pure metalcore joy, before its industrial chugs and chiming bells sound like they come from Mordor encampments. Tribal drums pepper Psalm which builds from its clean-channel djent guitars well, more so than Ira’s Spanish-y work and Cholera’s shuffling, nearly dance-like beats, but each interlude does grant a few pauses for breath.
Those are necessary. When this album’s off its hinges, it goes for broke. A shifting palm-muted slammy riff of Weather Eye is absolutely nuts, just like the ending cavalcade of Fear Is The New Belief and Built On Your Blood. Hochgeboren adds ample senses of dread through its false start, and Zühlke’s vocal range comes to the fore to grant multiple shades of black to this thing. The dungeon-like growls are some of the best on record; likewise, the stomping rhythm employed for its breakdown. King’s start is a headbanger-of-all-headbangers, with wicked harmonic riffs bringing out noughties-inspired squeals.
For all its critique of false prophets, images of guillotines, rebellion and loss of hope, Half Me’s effective and passionate playing captures their genre at its most frivolous, fast and dirty; caricaturish levels of the vitriol that are, sadly, all grounded in truth. Today’s metalcore is usually for chin-stroking, retreading past-favoured styles into the mud or vying for a nu-metal’s radio resurgence that probably won’t work. Our ‘sign of the times’ metal should be about channelling bleakness into rousing anthems that would have filled a pre-battle mead hall. Luckily, Half Me are firing up the furnaces.
For fans of: Knocked Loose, Frontierer, Darko US
‘DOGMA’ by Half Me is released on 23rd October on Arising Empire.
Words by Elliot Burr
