On just their third overall single, the duo of Hailing Ishimura have completely blown us away with their latest effort, “We Did It To Survive”. Please keep reading for a closer look into the track, in addition to a background on this emerging band.

Made up of Dom Hopson (Guitar/Bass/Synth) and Chris True (Guitar/Bass), Hailing Ishimura have beat all of our expectations on their newest musical endeavor, “We Did It To Survive”. While infusing a handful of genres such as Metal, Post Rock, Synthwave, and more, they’ve certainly leaned towards the heavy side of things on this song. However as it’s fully instrumental, they’ve still managed to immerse us as listeners through four and a half minutes of mind-bending sounds and styles. Without a doubt, we’re highly recommending all give this a listen as soon as possible.

On the background of it all, the members have described the song as “finding the adventurers at their most desperate. They are dead in the water and they have to make hard decisions. The vibe of the track embodies this completely. It’s dark and brooding, but light at times”. While it’s certainly tough at times to decipher the meaning behind something without lyrics, we can 100% attest to the feeling of mixing that dark overtone with light and airy moments through the instrumentation. Typically we “judge” a little bit harder when it comes to lyric-less songs, mainly because it’s so much more difficult to capture a listener’s attention without them, but the duo have completely proved us wrong and legitimately had us on the edge of our seats from start to finish.

Now considering that this is only the band’s third single, we took the opportunity to listen to the first two tracks in order to compare. While they’re undoubtedly a lot less heavy in their tone and mood, it’s setting themselves up for a fruitful future of experimentation and exploration. We particularly enjoyed the synth-drenched single “Looking For Life” and the way it made us feel like we were floating in outer space, but even just with a song in between, you get a grasp for their technical capabilities and how they can switch it up. No matter what genre you prefer, we’ve got the feeling that Hailing Ishimura will tackle it in due time, and we’re looking forward to the journey ourselves.

In the meantime, go ahead and check out those links below to listen, follow along, and of course to keep up with all future releases and information.

Listen to “We Did It To Survive”

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Hailing Ishimura get heavy on third single, "We Did It To Survive"