Review: Hidden Mothers ‘Erosion/Avulsion’

Back in May of 2024, I had the pleasure of my annual pilgrimage to the Portals Festival, in the heart of London. As always, it was to be two days jam-packed with bands, many of whom I had been eager to see perform. Among the list which included Midas Fall, BIG|BRAVE and Slow Crush, there was a band that I had no knowledge of, beyond hearing one brief snippet, and that band was Hidden Mothers.

Off the back of that snippet, I added them to the list off bands to check out on the chances they would be on relatively early in the day. And if it’s one thing I’ve learned with Portals, you are best to hit the ground running with something guaranteed to fire things up right from the get-go.

Luckily for me, Hidden Mothers were my opening exposé to the festival, and they started the party in style. Their mix of moody pensive passages, sandwiched nicely between moments of unabashed ferocity really captured my interest, and ever since I have been intrigued as to just how the quartet would display on record.

So, imagine my surprise that six months later I’d be offered the opportunity to review their new album Erosion/Avulsion ahead of its release through Church Road Records.

Admittedly, Portals 2024 is now a distant memory, but one thing I retained was the vibrancy of the band’s sound. Looking at this album now, seeing the translation from live setting to studio accuracy, one of the many things I have noticed is the sheer number of layers which I just didn’t fully acknowledge at the festival.

As for the album itself, it’s an opus made up of eight unforgiving tracks, each sculpted and executed, to serve as a testament to a band full of creativity and enthusiasm. As the album progresses, just when you think you know Hidden Mothers, they throw another element in, to disrupt the balance.

Having formed around 2019, the band to this point have remained more as underground heroes than they have putting out multiple releases. Favouring honing their sound over putting second-rate music out, it’s only now they are ready to grace the world with their full-length debut album, and what an album it is.

chilled ambience plays off against hostile passages of abrasive aggression…

I will say, right off the bat, it’s a grower. There isn’t that initial rush which then drops off the more you listen to it, this is quite the reverse. This album gets more compelling with each listen, and even now, having played it through probably twenty-five to thirty times, with each new spin I get something I hadn’t noticed before. Such is the beauty of this release, it’s only once you get your head around it that you can truly start to gauge it fully.

It would be easy for me to pass Hidden Mothers off as a shouty post-hardcore band, and leave it there, but then I wouldn’t be able to impress on you all the little intricacies which you will miss by not throwing yourself into this album one hundred percent.

Tracks such as opener Defanged will have you dragged in from the very first moments, as the wall of charred hostility, a concoction of pummel-driven sonic pollution and face-shredding rage hits hard. Yes, it drops back to give a chance for respite, before returning more viscerally than before. The powerplay of clean vocals against abrasive growling makes for an impressive to and fro, and as the piece plays through, it’s clear even at these early stages just what Hidden Mothers are capable of.

This is also true on tracks such as Still Sickness, where their more chilled ambience plays off against hostile passages of abrasive aggression. With the likes of Death Curl and The Grey we get to catch the band at their most lavish, where elements of both prog and math rock sneak in, showing their uniqueness and versatility in sound. Death Curl has a vibrancy whereas The Grey is more ominous and darker in tone.

Grandfather manages to introduce a little Americana in the mix, there’s a woozy swagger to the vocal, which has a gruffness to it that’s very cool. Violet Sun swoops in at track number seven to return us to the full Hidden Mothers experience before Haze closes the album fantastically. By far the moodiest piece on the entire record, there’s a deeper edge to it, and the vocal is next-level quality. By its climax, we, the listener, have well and truly been taken on an experience, one of which takes a while to recover from.

As debuts go, this one is simply phenomenal, easily one of the best hard hitters of 2024 and an album which should see the band get an awful lot of recognition indeed.

Label: Church Road Records
Band Links: Facebook | Bandcamp | Twitter | Instagram

Scribed by: Lee Beamish