Hollow Shift is that duo you put on when the night’s getting weird, and you’re not quite ready to call it. Drawing inspiration from acts like Tempers, Molchat Doma, and New Order, they’ve spent the last few releases perfecting this very specific vibe, dark enough to feel substantial, beat-driven enough to get your head nodding.
“When the city sleeps but your thoughts won’t. “Reload” is your companion.”
Right out of the gate, “Play the Game” throws you into this world where everyone’s playing by rules nobody wrote down. The whole song is about survival through compromise, doing what you need to do when morality becomes a luxury you can’t afford. Then “All Alone” comes in and gets uncomfortably honest. We’ve all had that feeling of being in a room full of people and feeling completely disconnected. Being with someone and still feeling like you’re on an island. The title track “Reload” is where things get a bit unsettling. The whole thing reads like a dissociative episode, like the only way to process your own trauma is to project it onto someone else and observe from a distance.
“Heat” doesn’t ease up. If anything, it cranks everything to eleven. It starts personal, feeling suffocated in a small town, dealing with someone’s hate wrapping around you “like a snake,” then spirals outward into full apocalypse mode. Closing out with “Fatal” was a smart choice. It circles back to isolation but adds genuine menace to the mix. There’s weird imagery, slightly absurd even, but it works because it captures how we sometimes feel about our own thoughts. Like there’s something predatory living inside us. The song doesn’t resolve anything, which feels appropriate. It just loops back, reinforcing that sense of being stuck in patterns we can’t break.
What Hollow Shift nails across these five tracks is the balance between making you move and making you feel. If you’ve been sleeping on Hollow Shift, “Reload” is your entry point. So, do yourself a favor: listen to this late at night, preferably while doing something slightly inadvisable. That’s when it makes the most sense.
Muse Chronicle 
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