Alpha Hopper’s new album Let Heaven and Nature Sing II (LHANSII) is a brute force hurricane of power chords and atonal riffs with thunderous drums and bass. It stomps like Andre the Giant formed a band with Reacher’s Alan Ritchson, and Thanos, with vocals that gather up all the screaming energy of 70s punk and 80’s new wave. Alpha Hopper originated in 2014 and LHANSII is their fourth album after 2016’s Last Chance Power Drive, 2019’s self-titled album and 2020’s Alpha Hex Index.
The sharp edges of guitar on tracks like ‘Night’s Calling’, ‘Would Rather Go Down in Flames’, and the standout ‘Yeah You’ slice and dice over the power chords which provide a granite foundation. The high guitar parts often act as counterpoint to the solid bass and drums on display in ‘No Breakfast’ with the two guitars from John Toohill* and Ryan McMullen flashing like razorblades in alternating speakers.
Huge respect to Doug Scheider who pounds the drums, driving 4/4 pylons deep into the earth while also throwing in the kind of syncopation you might not always expect from this kind of noise rock. There’s a delicious fill near the end of ‘The Beast’ and his shifting patterns in ‘Razor’ are superb. That Sean Kader on bass keeps up with his rhythm section compardre clearly demonstrates his skill, and often they meld so well it’s hard to tell where drums end and bass begins.
And like a siren wailing over the waves of distortion reminiscent of early Siouxsie & the Banshees and jerk-and-twitch riffs of the DEVO-like is singer Irene Rekhviashvili. Her vocals are like flying glass as she scream-shouts her lines cutting through the power of the backing. There is an urgency that reminded me of those scenes in movies where the hero is trapped in a room filling with water, but Rekhviashvili always manages to keep her head above the distortion.
Let Heaven and Nature Sing II is an exhilarating ride on the edge of a flick-knife. It has all the grit and glory of the best kind of noise rock; the kind that, when it stops, makes the silence seem so wrong that you want to dive back in and douse yourself in sonic gasoline while reaching for the matches.
* I’ve been following the musical career of musician John Toohill for a few years now and he is the man behind multiple genre-spanning projects. I dubbed him the ‘polymath of distortion’ for his work on Science Man’s NINES MECCA, the self-titled Black & White Cat / Black & White Cake, Brute Spring’s Turquoise Window and then sci-fi surf music on The Hamiltones in Space and Moon People’s Lunar Secrets.
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Review by Paul F Cook
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