3 out of 5

Label: Skin Graft Records

Produced by: Ippei Suda

This is absolutely the most polished and listenable of HYPER GAL’s three releases on Skin Graft Records, but in that progression, loses some of the edge that informed their prior albums. That’s inevitable to an extent: a lot of that energy came from a punky vibe that spoke of the duo’s youth, and youths… grow up. However, that growing doesn’t have to signal a loss in quality, and that holds true on Our Hyper, the songs of which are all interesting, and challenging – chanted vocals; blasted out drums; stretches of repetition – they’re just also kinda catchy. Something is being signaled that indicates the band’s shift from art rockers to indie rockers, and just as the hop from Pure to After Image showed the duo becoming much more confident in the former genre, we probably need another round to achieve the same in the latter.

Messaging may be getting in the way to a degree: the album copy speaks of commentary on social media, and the aforementioned catchiness blended with noise elements may be a way of presenting some surface / beneath the surface dualities. Without speaking the language I can’t say if the lyrics are in support of that, but you can “hear” the desire for the group to be heard here, as opposed to being more directly blown away by musical antics.

Wrapping back around, this is probably the album I’ve looped the most so far. The production is really lovely, nailing a kind of hollow, faded sound for the percussion that plays off of the synths / guitars and vocal layer effectively, allowing it to sound intimate and alien at the same time. I’ve also mentioned the catchiness: everything is a legit song here, even when HYPER goes into some looped dirges – it’s always in service of a song’s punctuation. But, again, this makes thing comparatively slick to prior albums, and that sacrifices some impact: more listenable, but less memorable.

However, considering how interesting the group’s changes have been from album to album, I’m looking forward to the next step.