HIPPOTRAKTOR: the riffs are calculated. The outcome is negotiable.
On ‘Annihilist’, the Belgian five-piece loosen their working methods while their protagonist tries to escape reincarnation. Everyone, it seems, would appreciate a little more control over their circumstances.
Progressive metal enjoys a complicated plan. HIPPOTRAKTOR tried sharing theirs before it was finished.
For earlier albums, guitarist Chiaran Verheyden would send completed instrumentals to the rest of the band. On ‘Annihilist’, he brought them into the process sooner, with compositions still open to intervention. Five musicians could start responding while there were decisions left to make.
A modest change on paper. Potentially quite a significant one when your music sounds capable of supporting a motorway bridge.
The Mechelen band’s third album, released through Pelagic Records (PSYCHONAUT, The Ocean….), brings that collective involvement into seven tracks and around 38 minutes. Verheyden describes it as combining the atmosphere of ‘Meridian’ with the technicality of ‘Stasis’. It also continues their shared narrative: a nameless man discovering that his repeated incarnations are someone else’s experiment, and deciding he would rather stop.
Understandable. Even one lifetime comes with a considerable administrative burden.
There’s a pleasing tension between that story and the people telling it. Their protagonist wants to break a cycle imposed from above. The band have opened their own process to more possibilities.
Stefan De Graef and Kristof developed vocal demos separately, without hearing each other’s versions, before combining their ideas. That gives the clean and harsh voices an interesting role: they can offer different readings of the same passage, changing its emotional perspective as the instruments move beneath them.
The contrast becomes particularly effective on “Courageous Apathy”, where vocal reach meets the tightly articulated force of Lander De Nyn’s drumming. His contribution goes beyond keeping a difficult arrangement upright. Accents create resistance, changes in attack redirect momentum, and restraint leaves space for the next impact.
You can admire the coordination. Your shoulders may arrive at the conclusion considerably sooner.
That is where HIPPOTRAKTOR’s technical language earns its place. The riffs keep shifting, but a physical thread runs through them. Bass adds movement within the low end; guitars exchange rhythmic pressure, texture and melody. Complexity gives the groove its particular shape.
How progressive is a band if every musical decision arrives exactly where you expect it to?
“Everything Is Permissible” offers one answer through its looser, jazz-inflected passage. The writing itself remained open unusually late: its final chord progression took shape during mixing. Somewhere, a carefully maintained project schedule developed a nervous twitch.
The quieter decisions are equally revealing. “Oblivion Walker” lets its ending recede into a reduced, piano-supported passage. The title track carries its intensity through clean vocals, allowing its darker atmosphere to hold the attention without a harsh-vocal eruption.
Those moments matter because constant force can become its own kind of predictability. Giving the listener space changes the weight of what surrounds it. HIPPOTRAKTOR have plenty of power available; choosing when to withhold it makes the music more expressive.
Start with “Oblivion Walker”. Existential questions can wait four minutes.
“Builder of Eden”, featuring Loïc Rossetti, brings another voice into that developing conversation. PSYCHONAUT and DVNE offer familiar coordinates through melodic scope and physical intensity, Meshuggah through rhythmic insistence, and The Ocean and Hypno5e through atmosphere and narrative. Add Blackshape, one of the most compelling discoveries of recent years, for the way intricate arrangements become something immediately physical.
Familiar coordinates, then. HIPPOTRAKTOR leave themselves room to take another exit.
‘Annihilist’ remains dense and demanding, and its quieter departures leave a particularly strong impression. Within that imposing sound, the small changes in emphasis — the voice that enters, the rhythm that shifts, the passage allowed to breathe — give the story its human scale.
A man trying to escape an endless cycle. A band finding more freedom inside its own construction. Plenty to consider while enjoying some thoroughly unreasonable riffs.
HIPPOTRAKTOR: precision engineering. Some assembly required.
