Track: HAAL – Vinculum – Backseat Mafia

Four-piece Bristol outfit HAAL have shared their new single titled ‘Vinculum’ which is taken from the band’s debut EP ‘Back To Shilmarine‘, due out on the 10th of May via Babka Records.

This new track follows on from what was arguably their heaviest song to date, ‘Platform 1, 18:1‘. The lyrics for ‘Vinculum’ were written by a longtime friend of the band – writer and illustrator Nathan Richards (@scrungoincorporated) – and were then narrated by synth player Ethan Jones. The producer with long-time collaborator Alfie Tyson Brown (Katy J Pearson, SCALER, LICE) then re-sampled Jones’ narration, cutting and re-recorded them into the final track, resulting in a liminal, almost robotic sound.

Speaking on the singles themes, Nathan Richards summarise the story as a tale of

“A boy who is left shunned from his village, due to his disfigured body. He travels alone in a forgotten part of the world, looking for a cure. He comes across a place where he has the ability to rewrite the natural law of the universe. Being stuck between, hatred, rejection and fear, he is unable to focus his thoughts into anything coherent, only wishing for the vapid idea of him, and everyone else being one in the same. The culmination being the birth of a plague, where everyone suffered equally.”

Speaking on Richards involvement, front man and guitarist Alfie Hay says

“He actually had already written the story when he sent it to me, but the concept particularly resonated with the themes of my other lyrics. Given the story concerns a medieval boy finding a ‘mathematic creation’ that then turns him into something other whilst changing the rest of the world immeasurably, this resonated with the themes of my other lyrics (transhumanism particularly) perfectly. We like to think that the narrator of the song is that very same medieval boy or ‘mathematic creation’, telling his story back to the listener”.

An acid trip of crushing rock guitars and a splattering of drumming all wrapped in a paranoid haze and spoken word and screams. The track doesn’t sit still and demands a reaction from the listener who is flung on a chaotic ride as the music goes haywire. Hardcore-math-indie rock done in the only way Haal no how.

Check it out, here