HERE LIES MAN - You Will Know Nothing LP / CD

Highly recommended. Also available on CD.

Here Lies Man took the music world by storm in 2017 with their self-titled debut positing the intriguing hypothesis: What if Black Sabbath played Afrobeat? Rough Trade named that album in their prestigious Top 10 Albums of 2017. BBC 6 and Classic Rock Magazine deemed it among the year’s best, as well as countless other press outlets singing its praises. This June, the L.A. band comprised of Antibalas members quickly follow their auspicious debut with the even more thoroughly realized album You Will Know Nothing. Its eleven tracks expand upon the band’s exploration of heavy riff-based rock and psych within the ancient rhythmic formula of the clave.

Sonically, the dynamic range is thicker, crisper and more powerful on this album. It glistens as much as it blasts. The songs are even catchier, more anthemic, and the production reflects that of a band truly come into its own. While it also certainly maintains its gritty grooves, there’s an interesting conceptual mathematics to the entire proceedings. “There are interludes between each song that are 2/3 to 3/4 of the tempo of the previous song,” vocalist / guitarist / multi-instrumentalist Marcos Garcia says. “The reason it breaks down to 2 over 3 or 3 over 4 is that everything in the music rhythmically corresponds to a set of mathematical algorithms known as the clave. The clave is an ancient organizing rhythmic principle developed in Africa.”

Lyrically, the album is also an equally more conceptualized effort that reflects upon states of being and consciousness—a driving force that carries throughout the words and moods of all of the band’s releases, interconnected to their trancelike music. This band have truly honed their sound and their focus, and soon, you will truly know nothing.