Going back twenty-five years there was once drunken talk of forming a band. Initially the line-up took some early changes, with a couple of demo’s done before the unique Hybernoid style started to take shape. The dark ecology and nihilistic lyrics with scathing guitar, twin male and female guttural vocals, put the band in the Death Doom genre. But, it was always more than that. The Punk and post Punk guitar melodies of people like Robin Guthrie (Cocteau Twins) came through in the guitar work of Dave Evans, which really did set the band completely apart from pretty much everybody at the time. The goal was to release a 7”EP single, but things progressed way beyond that when the band found Displeased Records. Three 7” EP singles were released (Two on Displeased, and one on US label Psycho Slaughter Records) as a prelude to the band’s debut album.
In 1994 Hybernoid released their crowning glory, “The Last Day Begins?”. It became a big hit on the huge underground music scene at the time. In the mainstream music media, it was dismissed, to their embarrassment they were more interested in big hair bands, most didn’t even know a massive undercurrent of fans even existed (we were getting a minimum of 10 letters every day). It is totally ironic that bands of that era in the “underground” music world were actually paving the way for how the mainstream metal acts of today would end up. Such was the impact, “The Last Day” was released by Displeased Records, then licensed in Germany on Massacre Records and again in Poland on Sick Records. The album was embraced and received massive reviews, finding its way into many fanzines top 10 lists of releases for that entire year.
A new album was released in 1995, entitled “Today’s Tomorrow’s Yesterday”, super nice digipack by Displeased with a couple of new tracks, the 7”EP’s, and some techno flavoured Remixes. The two new tracks on this album really would show that the band could actually play, “Dread The Time” and the title track “Today’ Tomorrow’s Yesterday” took the Hybernoid sound to new depths of clarity. We even surprised each other when it was recorded about what each of us actually played. We practiced in a barn full of chicken shit, zero acoustics and zero heat, it was not always that easy to hear any clarity in a wall of noise.
In 1996 and 1997 a third album was planned, and with the help of Andy Slater at Burst Studio, Hybernoid laid down some album demo’s. These were to be taken to Academy Studio and played as guide tracks for the new material. However, they were never to see the light of day until now. Everyone contributed at the time, but there are no vocals on these demos (some were recorded but there whereabouts is elusive). They are roughly mixed with spaces for more guitar, but do form part of a true Hybernoid anthology. The tracks were the beginning of the end, with musical indifference, apathy and location contributing to the band calling it a day. Some close family friendships were made in those years, of which endure still today.
“Advanced Technology” was an album that came after in 1998, this was essentially a spin off project and does not form part of a “true” band Anthology and therefore is omitted. Joe Strummer described the last Clash album as “sweeping out the closet”. We swept out ours with “Advanced Technology”. It has its real glory moments, but was not rooted in the seven years’ growth that had gone before it.
Xtreem Releases:
Band:
HYBERNOID
Title:
The Last Day Begins?
CAT. #:
XM 202 CD
Format:
2-CD [127:59]
Genre:
Doom/Death/Industrial
Released:
02.2016
Media:
If you run a zine, webzine or you need high quality graphic stuff about the band, you can download here a .ZIP file with: Pictures, Logos and Album cover.
