The Hirsch Effekt – Der Brauch
Release Date: 30th January 2026
Label: Long Branch Records
Bandcamp
Genre: Progressive Metal
FFO: Earthside, Leprous, Between the Buried and Me.
Review By: Andy Spoon
The record has a progressive overall tone, especially playing into the hands of progressive rock fans who love the more pensive side of a heavy project. If you’re a prog fan, this is going to be one of those projects that will rouse you or chill you. Some people seem to have strong opinions on bands who dance between genres because some of those bands are doing well in recent years. That being said, there’s quite a lot of twisting and turning going on. First off, I’ll have to say that the recording quality is good. The band employs an excellent use of effects and stereo engineering for wide effect. This makes sense, as the band is well-known for being technically-adept and progressive. Interestingly, the band’s own press-release claims that they wanted to use some of the same style and energy that they have employed in years back where the album was full “metal”, but with a unique, newer sound that was developed in the covid-era slowdown that pushed many artistic projects to the brink.
Many of the tracks have movements and waves that aren’t just a typical verse-chorus format. There’s a good deal of variation between styles of intermittent parts. The band will sometimes use an unexpected instrument for one single segment of a track, a synth pad, haunting church pipe organ, or classical guitar. Many segments are derived from a genre only used once in the whole track, like a thrash segment that gets pulled into one track, black metal on another, or a nasty thall breakdown with screeching accents. The band never tries to incorporate that sound into their repertoire, but it seems like they manage to cram it in, somewhat like an Easter egg. What’s cool is that it doesn’t really get “kitchy” in the sense that it doesn’t seem like a post-hardcore band trying to do a “sleep token” and genre-roulette their way through the album. If anything, it always seems thoughtful and intentional, which is what gives the genre-twist legitimacy. I think that they would probably not reach a lot of the respective genre snobs, but most generalized metal fans and prog fans will really appreciate how the little “jumps” seem to glue a lot of the segments together.
Some of the tracks have multiple interludes and movements that end up being really good intros into the next track, giving some longitudinal consistency across the album. This is great for those listeners who really want to absorb an album without having a lot of time to sit quietly while one song ends and another begins. It’s clear that the band has put considerable effort into making sure that they are thinking about the whole album, which is important when considering the whole artwork.
I’ll have to be honest, here. I went into this review not actually knowing much about the band in the past. I wanted to make sure that I had fresh ears, not wanting to be disappointed by a weak follow-up, or be subject to the hype. I think that this is a well-though-out album that is cohesive and follows a strong, diverse, melancholic feeling with beautiful accents of fury and pulse that give way for the listener to digest the emotion. After listening to the album, I found myself impressed and wanting to learn a little more, after which I discovered that insofar as German-language albums go The Hirsch Effekt has been recognized as a highly-lauded project, having made an album, Holon : Anamnesis, which is highly-regarded as one of the best German-language metal albums ever. I honestly wasn’t surprised. What does surprise me is the fact that the band claims that Der Brauch was the result of another artistic endeavor, the creation of a personal memoir about fatherhood, which morphed into a retrospective look at the band’s progress through a difficult time. The Hirsch Effekt has suggested that this album purposely deviates from the previous metal offerings to render an intentional sound. Having learned that, I continued to spin the album a couple more times, thinking about the tonal choices. Perhaps this is one of those bands from which “fresh ears” might not have been the best choice. That being said, I liked Der Brauch, and I think that progressive metal fans are going to like this. If you’re a diehard fan of the band, this is going to be one which is intentionally going to throw you, at least that’s according to the band, itself.
(4 / 5)
