When I actually sat down to review to review Hybris, it was a quiet and rainy day which was suiting perfectly the atmosphere of this release. Agael is a solitary artist coming from the land of great underground music, Germany.
Hybris appears to have been inspired by nature and human emotions. This type of black metal is actually pretty much based on atmosphere than on the extreme instrumentations. For one thing, five out of the nine compositions are just ambient instrumental pieces. This greatly helped making this album a melodic type of black metal opus. There are distorted riffs on this disc, rasps and faster elements, but they are rather scarce and far in between. Those are usually done with no bass, to give a rawer edge, without compromising the melodious side still. Besides the already mentioned instrumentals, Hybris contains some long instrumental breaks in the songs as well. The omnipresent keyboards, ambient or epic ones are also taking the tones of a flute or violins in a few occasions. This instrument is creating the nicely atmospheric / emotional and haunted feel of this release. Nature samplings are part of the song structure and they are as varied as: wind, thunder, rain, crickets, and crows, besides some footsteps in the forest. You can hear a bit of clean guitar, arpeggios, but no acoustic guitars on this disc. Nonetheless, Hybris is a very pleasant album from beginning to end. Amongst my favorite tracks: "Legend", "Lambs of the Rain" and "Detritus".
Track listing:
1- Black Human Snow
2- Legend
3- Inanity
4- Lambs of the Rain
5- Cathartic
6- My Guilt
7- Have You Seen the Others
8- Garden of Detritus
9- Die Gestohlenen Flüsse
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