Hollows – Blood

Hollows are not like any other band you could stumble upon nowadays. In a vast sea of same and repetitive modern rock music, their songs shine in a limelight, proving there are still bands able to resonate with the same warmth, depth, meaning, and emotion. These profoundly creative musicians are capable of delivering that special feeling when all those gentle, carefully implemented notes instantly wrap around your listening apparatus and transport you to a completely different world. “Blood,” their latest single released just a couple of days ago, exemplifies their devotion to delivering deeply impactful pieces of sonic artistry. It’s their first piece of work this year, a standalone single arriving after the critically acclaimed “Running With Scissors” EP, worth placing among strongest works released this year.

This song screams emotion through each orchestral layer. Although it begins with tastefully assembled chord progressions delivered on acoustic guitars, subtle key leads, and vocal harmonies, it gradually expands into more deep, complex, colossal composition. Hollows expertly transit from all those calm, soothing, relaxing, ethereal, otherworldly moments to raw, aggressive, heavy, and powerful moments. This tradition continues throughout the entire song, with the tremendous help of an equally impressive rhythm section. Lyrically, the song tackles various sentiments, moods, situations, and circumstances, so this combination of push and pull or tension and release perfectly suits the song’s mood and ambiance. Hollows know how to channel sincere emotions and meaningful message through their music, making “Blood” such an enjoyable listening experience.

This song arrives with a perfect structure, garnered with many profoundly detailed segments, brilliant ideas, and outstanding musical performance. It’s one of the reasons why everything in this track resonates with such a tremendous power, aggression, harmony, and melody. All these qualities make a perfect sense once you deep dive into all those fascinating soundscapes, crafted by wisely stacking subtle, delicate, beautiful keys and synth pads with multiple guitar layers. Like that is not more than enough for an impactful result, Hollows incorporated all those hypnotic, memorable, irresistible guitar themes, melodies, harmonies, and paired them with either colossal, heavily distorted guitar riffs or calm chord progressions, depending of the current mood, ambiance, or segment of the song.

It’s nearly mindblowing how all these layers articulate together without overwhelming each other. It’s like separate sonic universes collide together in slow motion, creating such a colossal, inevitable, mesmerizing impact on all the senses. These orchestral maneuvers are the actual moments where all the creativity, talent, skills, experience, and knowledge of each band member are vividly hearable. You’ll immediately realize that this is a music piece with meaning, a carefully sculpted work of art that demands your utmost attention and examination to fully grasp its true meaning. The impressive vocal performance shines in the mix by further emphasizing everything the remainder of the band intended to convey with this composition. The elegant dance between low, mid, and high notes decorates all those carefully composed segments and orchestration. Each vocal line, melody, harmony has been performed with such precision and finesse, contributing more than necessary emotional depth and complexity over an already intricate structure. With each new section of the track, the vocal harmonies become more emotional, passionate, soulful, intricate, and powerful.

The way the rhythm section balances calmness with heaviness goes beyond comprehension so many times throughout the entire track. You’ll feel the crunch and subtle distortion, but also warmth in all those basslines. These low ends rumble throughout the entire composition in different forms, but are always present in the mix, delivering heaviness, clarity, and depth while binding mentioned instrumentations with the remainder of the rhythm section. The rhythmic patterns also expand with each new section, with all those wisely arranged, flawlessly performed, well-accentuated, moderate beats, breaks, fills, and other percussive acrobatics decorating and elevating the remainder of the instrumentations, keeping them in line, and dictating groove and pace. Hollows crafted a perfect indie song, a memorable listening experience worth revisiting every time when you crave marvelous musicianship wisely paired with brilliant ideas and poetic lyricism. As soon as you press play, all those vocal, sonic, and rhythmic maneuvers will immediately convince you to place this track at the top of your indie playlist. “Blood” is available on all streaming platforms. Do not miss it!