Australian artist, Higgs Field, have just released their latest single, Leader In The Eye, and we’ve been taking a few listens here at the Send Me Your Ears studio today.
Leader In The Eye is a song about the survival of culture. It takes you on a journey through a story of leadership and survival.
Leader In The Eye follows up from the band’s debut EP and will be part of their first full length album, due for release in 2023.
Leader In The Eye has a bright rock mix in the instrumentation. It comes straight in with a powerful full band sound that is progressive and rocky.
Vocally, almost a beck and call kind of style, with a low melodic line being followed up (for the most part) with a higher, more aggressive, screamo style vocal. The vocals are also layered which adds a nice dimension and fills out the sound.
The guitars are sitting nicely stereo in the mix and with some real creativity. Something that particularly drew our attention was how the drums follow the repeated guitar riff that keeps returning between verses. This was really well done and demonstrates very clearly just how tight this band are. We imagine these guys will draw quite a crowd at live shows.
The song, as you would expect for something that leans towards prog rock, has lots of different sections, which are separated well with the use of the drums/guitar riff mentioned earlier. We especially like the break down at around 3 minutes in. With picked guitar and some really interesting drum patterns, this section rises excitingly and uses the vocal as almost another instrument. A nice change of pace at around 3m40s followed by some stabs into a long instrumental section and back in to that chorus that we’re starting to recognise.
From a production perspective, a boost around 200Hz would give the track little more fullness and warmth. To our ears, there are also a few honky / nasal tones in the mids so a cut around 800Hz would help to balance these out a little. Finally a boost in the top octave for a little more clarity, particularly in the vocal tracks which are getting a little lost in places. The backing track is nice and bright overall but we feel a boost in the high mids and highs in the vocal tracks may help them to cut through a little more.
This is a truly creative and tight song from a band who clearly are very ambitious and powerful. Higgs Field was a new name to us today, but we have no doubt that, with the right radio stations behind them, they will be picking up new fans in the prog/grunge/hardcore rock arena.