Hum
Inlet

Hum left us at the end of the '90s with two masterpieces: You'd Prefer An Astronaut and Downward Is Heavenward.

The peculiarity of the American band lay in their ability to wonderfully combine a variety of genres (post-hardcore, space-rock, shoegaze tinges); but above all, to merge in an almost impossible combination a brutal "heaviness" given by the wall of sound from the guitars (from which the Deftones took inspiration, indeed) with an exquisite "pop" taste, in short, a natural, talented inclination towards melody. Thus, during listening, it was possible to let go with the wildest of "headbanging" and simultaneously bask in atmospheres now sweet, now dreamy, now melancholy (almost as if they managed to be emo - naturally in the good sense of the term - without being emo).

More than twenty years later, here's the much-anticipated (mainly by the fanbase, of course) Inlet: what is wrong with this work so packed with expectations? Why break balls? Because of bright melodies, snapshots of poetry, romance, and dreams almost nothing is left; what Hum offer us is a completely dark album - oscillating between mediocre and decent - made of heavy riffs, heavy riffs, heavy riffs, and if that wasn't enough, more heavy riffs. Someone said, a muck of heavy riffs. The aforementioned heaviness has been further accentuated compared to the past, not surprisingly, if we want to keep pondering on labels, this time we can venture to talk about alternative metal and post-metal tendencies, alongside the usual, ancient space-rock core.

In short, by subtracting one of the two founding elements, the spell is broken. Perhaps it should have been foreseen that they would desire (or that it would come naturally to them) to take another path, perhaps instead after a gap of two decades it was legitimate to expect a worthy closure to the trilogy.

But the change of course isn't everything, because beyond the variation of style it must be observed that even the songwriting itself is not at excellent levels, which makes the album often frankly boring. And twenty years is not a short time to allow one's creative abilities to ferment...

"Waves" at the start tries it, but it could be compared to "Star Roving" present on another comeback, that of Slowdive: pleasant, nothing more.

The mammoth "Desert Rambler" and "The Summoning" proceed mechanically and seem to want to convince us through sheer force of power blasts (without even a flower blooming on the surface), but we are light years away from the sensitivity of the past.

"Cloud City" is the only one that seems to bring back a bit of that old Hum magic, but just at its peak, instead of insisting on the melodic side, it stubbornly sticks to the usual exhausting repetition of riffs.

The ending with "Folding" assisting and "Shapeshifter" scoring might be the most successful part of it all, although at the cost of repeating ourselves, we must note once more: it is "only" space-rock. Maybe done a bit better here, but lacking particular richness of nuances.

The quality, in short, oscillates between stretched adequacy and inadequacy; as for the nature of the product, it could be more coherent if it were a release from Failure, or - based on what it tells us at times - from Jesu; but from Hum, far more chameleon-like and refined artists, after all this time, we expected far different. Well, no, let's be precise: I expected far different.