Hyvmine Drop Another Hard Shred Slapper, “Assassins”

“Retaliation,” the first single from Hyvmine’s upcoming album of the same name, gave me an unshakeable earworm the likes of which I’d not had in ages, resulting in many a late night rock sesh and a flurry of texts to friends imploring them to listen. The song’s mix of traditional metal, shred and hard rock — hard shred? — resulted in pure fire.

I’m not as insanely gaga over Hyvmine’s latest number, “Assassins,” but it’s still a damn solid track. Propelled by a Meshuggah-laden groove and Al Joseph’s ace guitar technique (as admired by one Mr. John Petrucci), the song’s progressive punctuations within a pop song shell provide the perfect base for Joseph’s richly layered vocals, which I’m told he ended up handling in the band by default (that’s insane to me — if only I could sing this well by accident!). It’s another catchy tune from a band for which I see a very bright future if they can hone in on the right audience, be it shred nerds or hard rock radio listeners, both of which should dig it.

Listen below. Retaliation will come out in July.