Herod

Herod (formerly Herod Layne) is a Post Rock 4-piece ensemble formed in the huge city of São Paulo, Brasil, at the already distant year of 2006.  Differently from most Post Rock-ish groups, Herod does not make use of orchestrations, complicated arrangements or any pompous resource to craft their art, but simply creating (mostly) instrumental music with the traditional elements that made rock n' roll famous but without making rock n' roll itself. I've been keeping up with their work since their debut, In Between Dust Conditions, from 2008, when they were just a trio, and since then they were already delivering us some of the best quality music that has been done in the brazilian underground sphere. Roughly five years later, their latest album Umbra comes to light (sic), showing the great sonic evolution they went through along these years. Instead of keeping in the well-stabilished boundaries of Post Rock, these guys explored dark than deepest sea atomspheres, as the album name suggests, incorporating Shoegaze, Post Metal and even Drone in the already effervescent cosmos of their music such that you don't even feel the time flows by when listening to Umbra, even though it contains three songs (out of 8) with over 8-minute long. Besides, Umbra has some great participations along the album, as the likes of Cadu Tenório (Sobre a Máquina, Victim!, Ceticências), Jair Naves (ex-Ludovic, solo career now), Filipe Alburquerque (Duelectrum) and Joaquim Prado, the album producer who also colaborated with guitars or synthetizers in 7 songs. 

Although it may sound "natonalist" from my part, I'm not afraid to say Herod is one of the most creative and impressing Post Rock groups in the world by now. That's really great to see a "local" band crafting such high quality material as they are, even without the money and press they deserve to achieve such level. Alongside Labirinto, the aforementioned Sobre A Máquina, Loomer, The Sorry Shop and many others, there we have a blooming local scene, to put it in this way, which is delivering us some of the greatest music this country has ever produced. Therefore, I drop  a free download link for Umbra in the sinewave page, as well as the Herod's bandcamp, where you can get all their material released up to now by name-your-price method.


As usual, I hope you enjoy it!

sinewave / bandcamp