Hesse Kassel: The Next Great Rock Band Is in Santiago, Chile

The youth are getting restless in Chile and they’re telling us to get pissed with them. Morir Saltando (“Dying While Jumping”) is Santiago-based band Hesse Kassel’s sophomore project, blending progressive rock, art rock, punk, jazz, and unbridled rage to create the most poignant and powerful album of the summer.

The opening track, “Pornomiseria,” lays everything this band has to offer on the table. Within its gargantuan 14 1/2-minute runtime, Hesse Kassel manages to encapsulate the sounds of doubled hi-hats, thumping basslines, and lead singer Renatto Olivares’ raw, spoken-word-esque vocals (reminiscent of the delivery of Isaac Wood of Black Country, New Road fame) to give this intense six-track record a bust-down-the-door opener. This epic of a song fluctuates from walls of noise to sporadic melodies and screaming from one second to the next, before again morphing between ethereal, ephemeral breaks of multi-instrumental virtuosity and a final climactic build up.

Like the first, each track off of Morir Saltando is a journey: frenetic post-punk and avant-garde jazz, lyrical explorations into the political state of Chile, and calls to action to get hip with the times (¡ACTUALÍCESE!) and express your pent-up frustration at the state of the country. (A language-barrier-transcending sentiment for the American listeners at home.) No hay que ser genio para hablar de lo que pasa—you don’t have to be a genius to talk about what’s going on—but Hesse Kassel nevertheless employs genre-bending musical brilliance to bring a normally overlooked nation to the forefront of art rock and sociopolitical commentary. Morir Saltando is an unforgettable musical experience, peeking into the state of Chilean culture and providing a healthy helping of anger for anybody hunting catharsis in the modern political age.

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Nicolas Allard is an international student from ¡CHI CHI CHI, LE LE LE, VIVA CHILE! and a freshman in the College majoring in Government.