You Send Me Things, I Listen to Them: Hinayana – Endless
Sometimes musicians send me their work. Sometimes that work is good and not bad. This is one of those times.
Let’s go back alllllll the way to August of 2014. It was a different time. Undercuts were in style, metal nerds were still overhyping The Flesh Prevails as the future of metal, and the blogosphere was buzzing about the launch of a toilet-themed meme database called The Circle Pit. During those heady days, a man quietly released a demo of brilliant melodic death/doom on Bandcamp under the moniker Hinayana. Unfortunately, it went mostly unnoticed by the unwashed masses. Let’s remedy that error.
Hinayana is the project of Casey Hurd, a resident of the greatest city on the face of the Earth, Austin, Texas (don’t move here). He began working on Endless, his first demo, in 2013 and completed every part of it all on his lonesome. Fans of Katatonia and Swallow the Sun will find a lot to love in these tracks.
Organs, sequencers, and bright guitar lines intermingle to create a swirling, hypnotic effect that compliments the doom-y low-end that carries the record forward. Casey’s low growls crawl along these sheets of melody and wrap the demo in a web that binds the listener. Hinayana’s songs exist on a grand scale, but never overextend their reach because Casey supplants each moment with just enough dynamic riffage to keep a meathead like me engaged for the entire ride.
So what’s it all about? I asked Hurd to explain his concept behind Hinayana. According to the man himself:
While each individual song on the demo is about something different, they all share a central theme which ties them together. Endless is mostly about the never ending struggle between man, himself, and the occult universe in which he exists.
With a total 5 songs clocking in juuuuust under 30 minutes, Endless is a little too brief, a surprisingly refreshing feeling. It’s rare that I find a record that doesn’t seem overstuffed with half-baked ideas. Or maybe I just have the patience of a toddler. One of the two. If for some reason you can’t spare half an hour of your pwecious time, try out “Endless” or “Taken”, my two favorite tracks.
Casey is currently hard at work on a new Hinayana release that you can expect early next year. He’s planning on expanding Hinayana from a one-man bedroom project to a full band, with shows, tours, and additional instrumentation. Already, he’s been working with a few musicians and plans to build out the full lineup soon.
Endless is a name-your-own-price download at Bandcamp, so go pick it up. Also, give Hinayana a Like on Facebook and tell Casey the Toilet says “Bazooper”.
