HEMINA - Romancing the Ether

HEMINA

Album: Romancing the Ether

Genre: Progmetal

Release Date: August 11th, 2023

Country: Australia

Label: Bird's Robe Records

Band Links: WEBSITE / BANDCAMP / TWITTER / INSTAGRAM / FACEBOOK

Prog is predestined to transfer conceptual ideas - the list of great examples is long…- and Australian four-piece HEMINA not only play this game through one song or record, but span a story-line throughout their entire back catalogue. What started with the characters developed during their previous albums, “Synthetic”, “Nebulae”, and “Venus”, and continued with their child’s adolescence story on “Night Echoes” now leads to an epic conclusion on their fifth album, “Romancing the Ether”. It consists of only one 35-minutes track (and a single version of "Revelation") divided into 6 movements, each exploring the depths of the human psyche with the innermost motivations of family, meaning, and belonging in an amazing way. 

The musical expression is diverse and dynamic, coming along with marvelous, often polyphonic vocal performances, mesmerizing instrumental parts, and some surprising interludes, tipping their toes into different styles. Besides the classical progrock- and metal elements, we can also hear modern, techno related or more traditional snippets among others, which go well together in this context. 

While it took me several spins to get into this opus, it grew over the time (like a good prog album should do ;-)) with the well-balanced production revealing more and more beautiful details on this colorful journey. Welcome aboard, hope you’ll enjoy the ride as well :-) 

Written by Katha

Line-Up: 

Douglas Skene - Vocals, Guitar, Keyboards

Mitch Coull - Guitar, Vocals

Jessica Martin - Bass, Vocals

Nathan McMahon - Drums, Vocals

Track-List:

1. Romancing the Ether

Part I. Intention (0:00)
Part II. Strike Four (0:55)
Part III. Embraced by Clouds (11:45)
Part IV. Dissolution (21:47)
Part V. Revelations (26:01)
Part VI. Integration (33:34)

2. Revelations