Review: hijss ‘hijss’

Following the blistering, psychotic ‘industrial’ noise-rock, fuelled by pulsating blues riffs, that powered their 2024 debut album Stuck On Common Ground, the Northern Italian power trio hijss – hailing from the Autonomous Province of Bozen-Bolzano/South Tyrol, specifically the Bolzano and Laives area – returns with a new self-titled album.

Here, Lois Lane (guitar, vocals, electronics), Pan (bass and synth), and Maurice (drums) take their new musical adventure to a more elevated sonic core, where the raw physicality of the power trio opens into hypnotic rhythms, pulsating electronics, swirling textures, and psychedelic space. In some respects, this release moves away from the more overtly abrasive territory of noise-rock and embarks on a journey into something that feels more ‘kosmo kraut’: hypnotic and pulsating, yet still full of vigour and a spirit of adventure.

If Stuck On Common Ground seemed intent on pushing riffs, distortion, and sheer sonic abrasion until they almost broke apart, hijss take a different route here. The noise is still there, but it has been given more room to breathe, mutate, and become hypnotic. The transformation is particularly apparent in the way the trio now handles rhythm. Rather than relying solely on the immediate impact of the riff, they allow grooves to stretch out and take hold.

Maurice‘s drumming supplies a persistent, almost trance-like pulse, while Pan‘s bass provides the deep, muscular foundation around which the music revolves. Lane‘s guitar moves more freely above and through that foundation, shifting between fuzzed-out riffs, psychedelic abrasion, and atmospheric textures, with electronics adding another layer of movement and unease.

From the first few minutes of the record, there is a sense that something is being deliberately pushed beyond its natural limits. The guitars grind rather than simply riff, the bass carries an almost physical weight, and the drums keep everything moving with a nervous, punk-derived insistence. Above all, synths and electronics add a colder, more mechanical dimension.

It is heavy, certainly, but heaviness is only part of the story. hijss have taken the raw abrasion of punk and noise-rock, the repetition and propulsion of krautrock, and the psychedelic pull of heavy rock, then fused them into something that feels simultaneously primitive and futuristic. The influences are there, sometimes quite clearly, yet they have been absorbed rather than displayed. It has the defiant spirit of punk, the raw abrasion of no wave, the hypnotic grooves of krautrock, the cold machinery of industrial, and the overwhelming psychedelic force of guitar feels almost physically tangible.

sounds, textures, rhythms, and atmospheres gradually come together to form one immersive experience…

There are also traces of the grittier side of ‘90s alternative rock and grunge. But trying to reduce hijss to any one of those ingredients misses the point. If anything, I hear them less as a stoner or psychedelic band that has added punk and electronics, and more as a punk, noise, and post-punk band that has discovered the physical possibilities of heavy psychedelia, krautrock, and machines. There is a tension in the way this music circles around their grooves; what initially feels hypnotic gradually becomes more insistent, as though the music is quietly gathering itself for an eruption.

I am usually inclined to single out and dwell on the most significant tracks on an album, but here, I find myself wanting to do something different. Rather than dissecting individual songs one by one, I prefer describing the album as a whole and depicting the broader musical direction it takes; the way its sounds, textures, rhythms, and atmospheres gradually come together to form one immersive experience.

That said, I cannot deny the overwhelming, hypnotic beauty of a song like drain of thought, nor the fragile ‘romanticism’ of underwater, a ballad that seems to carry tears and melancholy within every note. Then there is the driving, almost intoxicating pulse of dopamine, while s.w.a.n. reveals a darker, more translucent side to the band’s sound, its shadowy sonics seeming to hover somewhere between the tangible and the ethereal.

Each of these tracks reveals a different facet of what they have achieved, yet none feels isolated from the greater whole. They belong to the same sonic journey, each adding another colour, another shade, another movement to an album that, for me, is simply perfect in every respect. This is perhaps the most striking evolution from Stuck On Common Ground: their raw physicality has not been abandoned; they have stretched it into something more expansive. The aggression has become more controlled, the sequence more purposeful, and the space between the sounds more significant.

There is still something wonderfully primitive about the three-piece attack, but it is now surrounded by an increasingly futuristic and psychedelic sonic environment, rooted in the physical force of a power trio while reaching towards something far vaster. hijss have not left the noise behind; they have simply discovered that noise can travel further when you give it somewhere to go.

Label: Heavy Psych Sounds
Band Links: Facebook | Bandcamp | Spotify | Instagram

Scribed by: Domenico ‘Mimmo’ Caccamo