This album is a tough nut to crack! And Oceans (the band’s former name) played industrial metal in their later years and HAVOC UNIT exhaust named style with harsh beats and apocalyptic vocals demanding on the listener’s patience. So I get struck down by penetrating power and variability of such steam hammers like I.Esus caused by extreme coldness and despair.
Nice melodies, heart-warming refrains, convenient relaxation? No way while listening to HAVOC UNIT! Instead I can detect a lot of stomping rhythms, intense vocals and strange musical collages. It is really hard to listen to this album cryptically entitled h.IV+ in one turn, because the sentiment is this negative and nerve-wrecking that I can only sparsely inhale a forceful dose of HAVOC UNIT. The eerie noises and innocent use of a musical clock contrast the heavy direction and add some nastiness to the machinelike overall impression. Every now and then HAVOC UNIT integrates floating, trance-like calm elements in their apocalyptic sound creations to achieve an enormous hefty effect of programmed drums. Surprisingly a stoic and relaxed groovy part with harmonic vocals emerges among two fisted sound walls during the track Ignoratio Elenchi offering important alternation to becalm my longing for melodies and euphony. This normal composition seems to have the only aim to get struck down by next fraught rhythms all the more. The very positive Kill All Nations disperses morbid charm through its combination of hefty lyrics and effectuated samples, distorted vocals and lovely interplays.
This release is nothing for feeble listeners or music addicts needing a lot of melodies or wonderful guitar harmonies – HAVOC UNIT put across coldness, they play with contrasts and unsettle through alienated sounds.