Only last week Liturgy and Hunter Hunt-Hendrix announced the releases of new album H.A.Q.Q. and the soundtrack to Origin of the Alimonies respectively, and before the news even got to sink in, Liturgy's fourth full length was surprisingly unleashed to the world. The new album was recorded in August 2019 and mixed by Seth Manchester, and its physical releases will be out February 21st, 2020 through Hunt-Hendrix's label, YLYLCYN.
H.A.Q.Q. stands for Haelegen Above Quality and Quantity, and conceptually illustrates Hunter’s "uniquely marxist and psychoanalytic vision of God." Like everything else in Liturgy's catalog the album is overly intricate, heavily produced, artful and challenging to follow, as it draws from both the trancsedental Black Metal of 2011's Aesthetica, and the glitchy complexity of 2015's The Ark Work.
Hunt-Hendrix worked on H.A.Q.Q. during 2018 while he was also creating his Origin of the Alimonies opera, in addition to still being heavily motivated from his work as Kel Valhaal, as the new record's cover art clearly indicates. All those influences become progressively clear over the album's spine-tingling nine-song course, from the orchestral and operatic elements to the rich instrumentation, while the emboldened tendencies toward experimentation couldn't have been any clearer.
H.A.Q.Q. grapples with complex issues like mental health, sexuality, and religion, therefore its musical sophistication and knottiness which come through forthright and illustrative of the confrontational and provoking entanglement in Hunter Hunt-Hendrix's spiritual metal mastery.
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