Grace Hayhurst

Grace Hayhurst’s debut album, //The World Is Dying//, is a time capsule – part personal musical history, part snapshot of one woman’s experience of a world refusing to live in harmony.

Setting such existential topics to music is a monumental task, but few can call on a background as fittingly broad as Hayhurst. Classically trained in piano and French horn, she grew up playing in orchestras around Europe before teaching herself guitar through a discover of bands such as Opeth and Yes, and working in a studio alongside the likes of Fontaines D.C..

“[My background] led me to throw a bit of everything at the wall! I guess that’s why I’ve always resonated with the progressive genre.”

This diversity is echoed even in the album’s concept. Through politics, economics and sociology, it explores the idea that revolution and fighting for what we think is right rarely results in anything but loss.

“I could point to dozens of current and historic political events where the common person is standing up to fight for what they think is right,” she says. “Only for someone richer and more powerful, with bigger weapons and other ideas to refuse to listen, and say a loud resounding ‘no!’ from their palace.”

The album doesn’t offer a solution to these issues. Instead, it “tells the story of what [she thinks] might happen if people tried to change how the world is progressing.” How important could a shift in mentality be for our collective future?

In short, it’s an album that could never be small, because nothing small inspired it. And as a result, //The World Is Dying// isn’t just thematically ambitious – Hayhurst’s compositional style is as wide-ranging as her lyrics.

Broadly, she describes the release as progressive metal, but drop in at a random moment, and you’re just as likely to hear Poulenc or Dodie as you are Dream Theater.

“I have such a wide taste in music that narrowing down styles and genres that I want to ingest was too challenging,” she explains. “I wanted to try and pack in a bit of everything from my musical history as a display piece to share my lifetime experiences with music.”

The album’s thirteen-minute centerpiece, //Revolution//, encapsulates this eclecticism. In its outro alone, we’re taken smoothly from a neo-Romantic piano, harp, string quartet and horn arrangement into a crushing, polymetric frenzy that Haken would be proud of, topped with black metal vocals.

“There’s an octave slide which nods to the main riff in Rammstein’s //Deutschland//,” she says, of the many references to her inspirations hidden throughout the track. “A flamenco-style lick that takes inspiration from Novena’s //Corazón//, and later on, a muted electronic section that sounds like a slowed-down Infected Mushroom record.”

It’s this ability to bring such diverse influences together that reminds us that contrasting ideas can interact and flow seamlessly between one another. //The World Is Dying// proves that contradiction and complexity can co-exist – even if we’re supposed to think they can’t.    DP

PROG FILE:

Line-Up: Grace Hayhurst (everything)

Sounds Like: Every artist you’ve ever heard being invited to guest on a new Haken record.

Current Release: //The World Is Dying// is out now.

Website: bandcamp.com/gracehrst/

— Dan Peeke