{"id":303184,"date":"2025-07-30T06:11:27","date_gmt":"2025-07-30T06:11:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/303184\/"},"modified":"2025-07-30T06:11:27","modified_gmt":"2025-07-30T06:11:27","slug":"floating-hesitating-lights-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/303184\/","title":{"rendered":"Floating – Hesitating Lights Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Back in \u201922, your favorite AMG staffers butted heads and said \u201cyeehaw\u201d<\/a> in a Rode\u00f6 whose scores were disappointing, very good, and everything in between. The band was a little Swedish oddity called Floating<\/strong>, whose collision of sounds compiled a library of post-punk\u2019s sneering rhythms, post-metal\u2019s ponderous hugeness, and doom\u2019s lurching intensity, at heart beating with dissonant death metal blood inspired by Demilich<\/strong> and Ulcerate<\/strong>. I found myself on the more favorable side, a little put off by its inconsistencies and experimental quirks, but ultimately excited to see more, and my wish has been granted in follow-up Hesitating Lights.<\/p>\n

While entirely more streamlined, a major difference between its predecessor, The Waves Have Teeth, is the heart that beats within it and the crescendo that it embodies. While it uses much of the same tricks, it feels more like a post-punk band doing death metal, punky blastbeats meeting an unfuckwithable bassline, providing the backbone of each track \u2013 a flaying guitar and scattered synth forming the amorphous flesh. A tale of two halves, whose stylistic differences are tasteful in a gradual shift from punky energy to death metal disintegration, Hesitating Lights soars in its carefully orchestrated experimental attack, leaving a bit more to be desired, but remains a step towards the greatness that Floating<\/strong> is clearly capable of.<\/p>\n

Hesitating Lights by FLOATING<\/a><\/p>\n

The first half of Hesitating Lights deals in a post-punk style that is both impressively simple and mind-warping. Bass is the starting point in its rich and warm intensity that undergirds a deathened attack that is allowed to waver into various textures of dissonance and darkness, ethereality and irony. Taking cue from the ambivalent bumbling of acts like Cocteau Twins<\/strong> and Siouxsie and the Banshees<\/strong>, warm bass pairs with cold guitar in a collision that feels simultaneously ominous and energetic, taking cues from Ulcerate<\/strong> in contemplative sprawls and blastbeats (\u201cI Reached the Mew,\u201d \u201cCough Choir\u201d), while motifs of dissonant stings and chiming tones inject a dose of morbidity apt to the descriptor \u201cdeathpunk\u201d (\u201cGrave Dog,\u201d \u201cExit Bag Song\u201d). The first half feels like a carefully curated experiment in punk percussion and bass and death metal melodics and vocals. The result is unique and atmospheric \u2013 a bit that feels too safe periodically, but its careful composition shows Floating<\/strong>\u2019s songwriting prowess.<\/p>\n

\"\"It\u2019s only after the first act that Floating<\/strong> begins to fly off the rails in tasteful death metal dominance. Centerpiece of \u201cHesitating Lights \/ Harmless Fires\u201d is a tour-de-force of the more synth-driven experimental tendencies, a patient sprawl that refuses easy categorization into either territory. A nearly post-metal crescendo anchored exclusively by the rumbling bass guitar descends into a noise rock climax not unlike Gilla Band<\/strong> or Lightning Bolt<\/strong>. Beyond that, tracks begin to utilize a cascading riff technique in which guitar rhythms fall apart incrementally across repeated iterations, leading to tasteful slivers of melody and ominous buildups (\u201cStill Dark Enough,\u201d \u201cThe Waking\u201d), while doom makes a dirging appearance in the most pitch-black moment of the album (\u201cThe Wrong Body\u201d). But even aside from more experimental flair, each track in the second half features a kickass riff that gets the head bobbing and anchors the track in some semblance of reality.<\/p>\n

I felt like The Waves Have Teeth was a carpet bomb of ideas with glimpses of its deathpunk actualization shining through. Hesitating Lights feels like a much more fleshed-out beast, with the real teeth to speak of. The shifts between the more post-punk- and death metal-oriented halves can feel jarring, and perhaps that gradual descent into the abyss can be accomplished with a bit more finesse, but it shows the duo\u2019s amorphous quality in a fantastic display for a young band. Ominous death metal atmosphere and rebellious punk energy are harnessed with a kickass bass performance and a shapeshifting percussion in a tidy thirty-six minutes, and it\u2019s infectious. While certainly not the opus magnum Floating<\/strong> is capable of, you should have no hesitation in picking up Hesitating Lights.<\/p>\n

Rating:<\/strong> 3.5\/5.0
DR:<\/strong> 8 | Format Reviewed:<\/strong> 320 kb\/s mp3
Label:<\/strong> Transcending Obscurity Records<\/a>
Websites:<\/strong> floating-label.bandcamp.com<\/a> | facebook.com\/floatingdeathmetal<\/a>
Releases Worldwide:<\/strong> July 11th, 2025<\/p>\n

\n\tGive in to Your Anger:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Back in \u201922, your favorite AMG staffers butted heads and said \u201cyeehaw\u201d in a Rode\u00f6 whose scores were…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":303185,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3936],"tags":[743,10268,111732,12936,111733,111734,77,68205,111735,111736,91261,111737,269,98572,2401,6080,6082,111738,105930,111739,16,37771,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-303184","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-743","9":"tag-3-5","10":"tag-cocteau-twins","11":"tag-death-metal","12":"tag-demilich","13":"tag-dissonant-death-metal","14":"tag-entertainment","15":"tag-floating","16":"tag-gilla-band","17":"tag-hesitating-lights","18":"tag-jul25","19":"tag-lightning-bolt","20":"tag-music","21":"tag-new-wave","22":"tag-post-punk","23":"tag-review","24":"tag-reviews","25":"tag-siouxsie-and-the-banshees","26":"tag-swedish-metal","27":"tag-transcending-obscurity-records","28":"tag-uk","29":"tag-ulcerate","30":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114940705853075793","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303184","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=303184"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303184\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/303185"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=303184"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=303184"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=303184"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}