A short introduction about this project… Hiemis is the name of a musical outfit by Juan Carlos Toledo, who runs the young yet fabulous Ominous Sounds label too, known for releases by e.g. Rune Clausen, Monotone Murk and Altum, and for some excellent ‘various artists’ releases that deal with the history, psychology and philosophy of magic, ceremony and belief in ancient times. Almost two hands full of recordings have been created under the Hiemis banner, all floating within the most intriguing areas of Ritual Dark Drone Ambient Music…
Compendium is, as the title suggests, not a new album by Spain’s Hiemis, yet a compilation, a collection of both known and previously unreleased material from 2018 until 2025. It showcases this act’s solid, designing nature throughout more than seven years of procreative yet consequent aural magnificence. Compendium consists of material from the former releases, done via labels like GH Records and Noctivagant especially, and songs from different compilations. This one too is available via Noctivagant Collective (such great label!), released in a so-called wallet (lite) package, a two-folded carton edition that comes with a six-page booklet (and with stunning visual artwork). It is a very limited release, apropos, limited to only fifty copies.
What follows is a concise portrayal about the thirteen pieces included; not a comprehensive essay about each single piece.
- Der Unheimliche Gast (05:08), from the 2018-album Nachtstücke (GH Records), is a haunting, oppressive track that describes tragedy and mystique; it’s about hypnotic and paranormal drama, veiled in a captivating nebula of delicate, icy Winter Synth;
- Ubbo-Sathla, a very lengthy piece (12:32) taken from the Noctivagant album Hyperborea (2019): a tribute to the legendary Arctic Inner-World, the lands beneath Earth’s surface, delving at least as deep into the coldest regions of the sonic territories. Eerie and mystic Dark Ambient, ritualistic soundscapes, mesmeric Winter Synth and droning atmospheres gathered into sonic fairness…;
- The Sacred Threshold Of The Two Columns (Thule, GH Records, 2019) (05:40): Thule / Atlantis, both civilizations covered in mystery and enigma, defined by a gloomy and, at the same time, frigid composition that combines paregoric sound-lines, floating background droning, dreamy lead melodies and distant yet somewhat heinous field-recorded sound additions;
- Scala Philosophorum (Radix, Noctivagant, 2020): a shorter ‘song’ (03 :28) but at least as suffocant; a carefully structured wave-of-sound, barren in nature yet abundant, even cryptic, in its hidden elements;
- Holocaust Of Atonement (La Chose, GH Records 2021), clocking 05:09 minutes: a vision of unphysical spirits, translated as a contemporary classical oriented, semi-contemplative, mesmeric piece, conceived with piano and keyboards at first, then turning, via a shorter shrieking intermezzo, into abyssal Doombient;
- Sotar (05:32) (Zothique, Noctivagant 2021) refers to a rather dystopian, yet at the same time revealing, vision on human existence, I think. Designed through prolonged waves of multiple key-lines, this track focuses on introspection, elementariness, purity and remembrance, as I feel it, in its moony texturing;
- Abraxas (taken from the 2022 GH Records sampler Odio Al Mundo Moderno; 05:09 minutes of length): more militant and malignant in essence, we’re entering the realm of Martial Industrial elegance, with these hypnotic yet persuasive synth-lines, doomed drone textures, and these subtly used drum beats and percussions;
- Blood (05:06), from the Lafarium compilation 25 Años A La Sombra (2022): a symbiosis of martial sketching, epic harmonies, and lugubrious narration; buzzing and whirring melodies, energetic beats / drums, and spectral soundwaves, resulting in a confident and solid orchestration;
- Svartalfaheim (03:45) (Yggdrasil, 2022 Noctivagant): ritualistic, transcendental, levitating; a Nordic Folk elegy with shaman / tribal percussions, female-voiced narration (for some reason I cannot but allude to the more poetic excerpts of Anne Clark!) and seductive synth-lines in an avant-garde package;
- Confessio, 2023, Noctivagant album Malleus Maleficarum (05:31): pain, penitence, penance; floating waves of ceremonial Industrial, funereal symphonics, integer whispering voices, droning undulations and rigorous lamenting, a tender and somehow narcotic hymn for repentance…;
- Ataecina, contribution on the first Ominous Sounds collection Rituals From Ancient Europe: for 07:03 minutes, we’re guided through the deep origins of our consciousness, when and where awareness and senses took over primordial instincts. Multiple percussions (adding a notion of energy), varied lines of Dark / Ritual / Cinematic Ambient, and ghostly-droning spheres, smoothly emerge, while interplaying and recessing before resurrecting in dream and isolation;
- Chaos (04:55) (2024’s Nephilim, Noctivagant): decadence, decay, deterioration, transfigured into aural hypnosis - a walling drone, arising from the abyss, expanding into claustrophobic ratio, withering into inner (yet tensed) tranquility, displaying once more, before waning once more into oblivion, and again…;
- In Silence, a lengthier (08:32) and previously unreleased track from 2025: a monument of doom-pression, both doleful and abominable, hypnotic, levitating, even chimerical and enigmatic; long-stretched and extended, yet plentiful in execution and concept…
…as said, in short…
https://noctivagantcollective.bandcamp.com/album/compendium-2
https://hiemismusic.bandcamp.com/album/compendium
https://www.concreteweb.be/reviews/hiemis
https://www.concreteweb.be/reviews/various-artists-rituals-ancient-europe