Hatematter - Antithesis

Five years after Metaphor, Hatematter returned to the studio to compose what would be their fourth studio album. Entitled Antithesis, the material is sold as a kind of odyssey between the pain and suffering experienced by the group in its early years, years that shared space with the Covid-19 pandemic.

It's like the sound of the wind, coming from afar, bouncing off the walls of an environment in a still enigmatic way. As the sonar amplifies and takes over the auditory foreground, you can sense a technological and cybernetic energy hovering in the air. Then Rafael Augusto Lopes' synthesizer offers a linear, slightly acidic melody that communicates to the viewer a slight tendency towards new wave. Accompanying this sound, a shrill voice imposes a dialog, an incomprehensible narrative that makes The Veiled Truth, an interlude that, from the little that can be assimilated from the lyrical lines, dissects and describes what reality is in space-time.

Symphonic metal merges with metalcore right from the start, with a scenic melodic punch and dramatic touches. Between the deep syncopation of André Buck's and Thiago M. Ribeiro's guitars, the synthesizer takes the place of harmony with a synthetic and low flight of the sweetly icy sonar of the keyboard. Epic and uniquely beautiful, capable of building a unified landscape of beauty and utopia on the horizon, Last Thread Of Hope relies on the drums of Marcus Dotta, who uses double kick drums extensively, to give pressure, concision and awareness to a melody that sometimes flirts with progressive metal. When Luiz Artur's deep, guttural timbre joins in with the lyrical lines, Last Thread Of Hope is a song about loneliness, about the harmful and self-flagellating effects of a mind in emotional imbalance. Even so, the track has a rigid foundation of hope in a future governed by mutual, unconditional and constitutional respect that doesn't just embrace differences, but sees the individual as a working part of a community, thus dispelling fear, insecurity and a hypothetical reality watered down by rejection, annulment and oblivion.

More somber, melancholic and dramatic than the previous song, this song is born with a melody that draws on a Celtic influence, while providing a dark and chaotic setting, in which the skies are adorned with absolute darkness and figures of a mythological danger prowling and feeding on the darkness. Dragons and disfigured elements appear between the thunderous gusts as a mixture of darkness and supplication until the moment when the dense and the harsh give way to a sweet but hysterical and agonizing sound. Through the sound of the keyboard keys, the progressive hovers once again among the aesthetic ingredients, while giving the guitar freedom to insert mixed pinches of alternative metal and nu metal into the melody. Between clean and guttural tones, Artur transforms S.T.A.Y. into an odyssey in four acts that presents a Planet Earth reaping the rewards of the actions of a failed, unconscious and reckless population. Now, these same people are looking for another place to live and this is the narrative-celtic scenario that makes S.T.A.Y. a discussion about the search for hope even when it is apparently absent from earthly emotions.

With a dirty rawness that shows itself as a flaw in the equalization, the song brings a different ingredient from those previously presented in Antithesis. Bringing a melodic feel through the overflying guitar solo, Where The Grasshopper Lies arrives with the promise of not only being the album's first radio single, but also the first material to bring a ballad aesthetic to the record. Bringing together electronic sounds from the synthesizer, which, just as it did in The Veiled Truth, inserts touches of new waves, Where The Grasshopper Lies is narrated by a guttural vocal with sour notes tha, besides prove the tuning between Artur and Ribeiro, from time to time, sounds like a grunt. Adorned by a chorus in which Artur appears clean-faced, Where The Grasshopper Lies is a song that, despite being melodic, presents the darkest plot of the entire album, a plot in which the absence of hope and the conscious surrender to chaos is neither a choice nor a summons, but an irrational act towards an inevitable end.

Its sound suggests the gloomy, the cynical, the post-apocalyptic. With just the reproduction of a sound, Precognitive Dissonance comes as the soundtrack to a moment that precedes the apex of terror. It's an interlude that serves, linearly, as the introduction to Condemned To Unexist, a track of hysterical, uncontrolled and dissonant awakening. Now also adding death metal shavings to their progressive-alternative base, Hatematter turn the track into a groove metal product, while the melodramatic takes the sensitive lead exuded by the melody. With sequential drums as a way of recreating lapses of consciousness, Condemned To Unexist is a dark track that laments the end of freedom of expression and the death of critical, questioning thought. In addition, like Last Thread Of Hope, the track talks about annulment, but here through the lens of political manipulation, which turns brains into puppets that assume untruths of the most varied origins as facts.

The guitar comes in with a sour sound in the background. Growing little by little in an escalation similar to that of The Veiled Truth, the instrument, in its structural doubling, comes to dominate the melodic scope of what turns out to be a song with a slightly galloping base. With an embryonic and purposeful dissonance, All Blind Eyes Turned evolves into a serious, robust and gloomy melodic scenario, but still capable of disdaining phrases with exquisite dramaturgy. This is how the track discusses hatred, intolerance and an unbridled sense of conservatism. However, what All Blind Eyes Turned brings between the lines is, between the guttural and screamo associated with death metal and alternative metal, a narrative that criticizes the way religious leaders act in such a way as to manipulate their followers into a false faith. A routine that, in the end, brings them guilt that has no chance of being cured and is therefore corrosive.

Sci-fi makes a strong comeback during the new intro. A female voice takes the listener to a space setting close to the orbit of Neptune. What follows is a metallic melodic ambience that is easy to digest. It doesn't have a radio bias like Where The Grasshopper Lies, but it still manages to be attractive with its rhythmic base in 4x4 bass, dense and full of the sequential and trotting use of the kick drum. Artur is joined by Mayara Puertas on the microphone, which gives Liberate Me a breathtaking drama, thanks to the guest's icy tone and suffering interpretation. With this structure, the track talks about loneliness and envy, but also about an insane desire to free oneself from living with these negative, false behaviors. It's a kind of cryogenic torpor in order to overcome relating to a community that is decaying because of its institutionalized lying acts.

Through the sonar of the hammond, with its acidic sweetness, the listener not only feels like they are passing between ecosystems, but is also bathed in a sense of hope and rebirth in a new environment, where everything is new and purity is intact. Unseen. Unseen To Lesser Eyes is a touching interlude, with progressive music as its aesthetic base and which, in its maximum harmony, becomes a delight to the suffering of the traveler who comes across a planet full of individuals lost in selfish and limited behavior.

As in The Veiled Truth and Where The Grasshopper Lies, sci-fi emerges as an aesthetic protagonist from the tinkling sounds of the synthesizer. It doesn't take long for the guitars to merge into a mix of dramaturgy and the denotative concept of melody, while the phrases become increasingly weepy, anguished and pleading. Wandering freely between the terrain of progressive and alternative metal, With Mankind Beneath My Feet is narrated by a guttural without suffering, but rather imposing and with hints of a kind of controlled rage. Growing in harmony during the chorus, the track is where the character deals with the guilt and remorse of a past, while finding himself plunged into rebellion, aggression and impulsiveness as ways of masking, or even giving voice to, the conflicting feelings that grow with each day in which yesterday becomes more and more painful.

It's like feeling like you're floating before the infinitude of the universe. While the voice echoes without limits, thoughts take on an incalculable speed in their process of reviewing lived situations and events. Although it is the guitar that carries the melody along with the vocals, it is the icy delicacy of the piano notes that make melancholy ripples capable of capturing the listener in their numb suffering. As a perfectly melodramatic track, In The Silent Still is the most touching and visceral track on the album. After all, here the character tears apart his pain and lays it bare for everyone to understand why he is suffering so much. And here, the reason is wrapped up in mourning, overcoming loss, and dwelling on memories that can no longer be lived.

There's no debating its brutality. Nevertheless, in Antithesis, Hatematter proved that rawness and aggression are only shields to hide the delicate, suffering and emotional essence of an individual in sentimental imbalance. It is here that tears and hatred form a single sensitive body, capable of confusing what is impulse and what is sincere.

In this respect, it's interesting to see how the album presents a balanced mix of melodrama, bitterness, intensity and rhythmic force. It is through these elements that the listener can really capture the emotional antitheses of a life in the process of self-knowledge and overcoming.

Between social and psychological issues, Antithesis is a visceral album that features an individual often dealing with feelings of loneliness, but which also laments the end of freedom of expression and criticizes religious manipulation. Above all, however, the album's character is captured by a sense of profound hopelessness about the future of global society, both as a unit and as a collective.

To represent these biases melodically, Hatematter teamed up with Brendan Duffey and orchestrator Lopes himself. Through them, Antithesis walked freely and intensely between the fields of alternative metal, death metal, metalcore, screamo, new wave, symphonic metal and nu metal. Even so, it is the combination of sci-fi and progressive metal that forms the melodic basis of the album and where technology meets emotion.

However, although the mix provided a good taste of the proposed rhythms, it also failed to equalize the individual instruments. After all, over the course of the album's 11 tracks, you can't clearly hear André Martins' contributions to the melody. The bass seems to be swallowed up by the drums, the guitar duo and even the synthesizer. As a result, the base of the album sounds as if it is missing an element to make it even more concise and full-bodied.

Rounding off the technical scope is the cover artwork. Signed by Daniel Gava, it consists of the focus of a humanoid individual who, observing a plant seedling delicately raised by his left hand, communicates the search for purity, fertility and, above all, for the hope of a better future acquired from spreading a sense of humanity. In a way, the work carries a good influence and reference to Pixar's Wall-e animation, as the central characters are combined in their determined roles.

Released on 10/06/2023 in an independent way, Antithesis is melodrama proving that brutality is only a shield for the most delicate emotions. The album is where Hatematter searches for self-knowledge that can help him overcome the pain of mourning and institutionalized sadness at the absence of hope.