(written by Islander)
The Milwaukee-based multi-instrumental musician Jerry Hauppa is known for his work with Northless, Ara, Acanthrophis, and Deorbit. He also has a solo project named Liminal Spirit whose music can be described as “Avant-Garde Cinematic Doom”, though that description is incomplete.
Almost exactly one year ago Liminal Spirit released its third studio recording and debut album, Unwell. Its disturbing narrative concept, which was informed by Hauppa’s work in nursing homes, involved the afflictions of aging and his fears about them. As he has explained, the album developed “the idea of building sympathy for a character with dementia [Phillip Hastings], only to find out that he is actually a monster who has done some horrific things despite not remembering them”.
Liminal Spirit has recorded a second album that will be released on November 6th. Titled Forfeiture Hymns, it is described as “a continuation and recontextualizing of the story from the previous album”. As Hauppa explains, “Each song tells the story of an individual character’s demise based on proximity to the main character of that album, told musically in highly unorthodox and extreme ways.”
One song from the new album has been revealed so far (“The Initiate“), and now we premiere an unnerving lyric video for an unnerving second song — “Sins of the Father“.
On the new album Hauppa performed Kite guitar, fretless guitar, synth, vocoder, sampling, and drum programming. As noted above, while Unwell chronicled the final days of the troubled character Phillip Hastings within the confines of a nursing home, the new album broadens the scope dramatically by tracing his life from birth onward — and all the people whose life he ended. Hauppa explains:
Rather than focusing directly on Phillip himself, Forfeiture Hymns tells its story through the perspectives of individuals whose lives have been irrevocably altered by him. Each song documents a different character driven toward suicide following encounters with Phillip, creating a sprawling concept album that examines influence, guilt, abuse, obsession, and the devastating ripple effects of human actions.
Each track is the story of one of those people and how his influence steered them toward ending their lives. To flesh out the record, I had to create all of these people and develop their motivations, which I then used to create the melodic characteristics of each song.
“Sins of the Father” involves Johnathon Hastings — Phillip Hastings’ own monstrous son. Johnathon is the narrator, describing his disposition of his late father’s belongings. Those belongings include a mysterious locked chest, its terrifying contents, and the effects of the discovery on Johnathon himself.
The music is also terrifying, as deeply unsettling as the tale that unfolds through the harshly screamed words. The song also warrants the term “cinematic”, because it does come across like the nerve-racking soundtrack to a horrifying film, one whose horrors do not depend on the supernatural for their chilling effects.
In constructing this soundtrack Liminal Spirit creates a changing collage of gleaming, shimmering, and shivering tones, sometimes accented by horn-like fanfares that blare and wail, sounding both demented and ominous. The music is twisted, anxiety-inducing, and hallucinatory but it compulsively draws the listener into its strange intrigues.
The song further includes heavy bass tones and slugging drums that are in the forefront of the experience, but the drums have been arranged in ways that enhance the song’s unsettling atmosphere. The beats don’t proceed in simple or straightforward ways but instead suddenly stop and re-start, undergo feverish convulsions, pump like pistons, and pound out off-kilter grooves.
Before the song ends, those horn-like tones ring in ways that seem to channel wrenching dismay, crushing fear, hopeless agonies, and crushing grief, and even the mania exhibited in the drumming doesn’t distract from the shattering nature of those feelings
Forfeiture Hymns was produced and mixed by Jerry Hauppa. It was mastered by Jeff Wojtysiak, and features album artwork by James Becker. It will be available on all digital platforms on November 6, and comes recommended for fans of Skepticism, Jesu, Nine Inch Nails, Shape of Despair, Confessor, Anata, and Cynic.
For more info, visit the locations linked below. Also below, you’ll find a stream the album’s first single, “The Initiate“.
PRE-ORDER:
https://liminalspirit.bandcamp.com/album/forfeiture-hymns
FOLLOW:
https://www.facebook.com/people/Liminal-Spirit/61575618106702/
https://www.instagram.com/liminal_spirit_mke/