{"id":61275,"date":"2026-03-30T18:04:27","date_gmt":"2026-03-30T18:04:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/musicianvoice.com\/index.php\/2026\/03\/30\/melanie-martinez-hades-album-review\/"},"modified":"2026-03-30T18:04:27","modified_gmt":"2026-03-30T18:04:27","slug":"melanie-martinez-hades-album-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/musicianvoice.com\/index.php\/2026\/03\/30\/melanie-martinez-hades-album-review\/","title":{"rendered":"Melanie Martinez: ‘Hades’ Album Review"},"content":{"rendered":"


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\n\tFrom the very beginning, Melanie Martinez<\/a> has dwelled in darkness. Maybe on the surface it didn\u2019t seem that way,\u00a0given the cotton-candy-colored artwork and sugary pop hooks of her first album, 2015\u2019s Cry Baby<\/em>. Yet on that surprising debut, Martinez \u2014 then best-known for her short stint as a shy but inventive favorite on The Voice<\/a><\/em> \u2014 built a bleak, biting world of family secrets and a loss of innocence. She tucked everything in a pastel, childlike aesthetic, creating the character of a little girl named Cry Baby to tell haunting stories of suburban melancholia, domestic abuse, pill-popping, kidnappings, and ever-lasting trauma.<\/p>\n

\n\tCry Baby<\/em> spawned off more projects and a film, each release as creative as the last, until Martinez swerved into the lush forest fantasies of Portals<\/a><\/em>, her excellent LP from 2023. Portals t<\/em>ook tons of sonic risks, from the serrated production of standouts like \u201cVoid\u201d and \u201cEvil,\u201d and also saw Martinez adopt full-on specialized prosthetics as she transformed into a four-eyed fairy-nymph creature in the videos and accompanying tour. All of it served as a testament to Martinez as a prolific visionary with no shortage of imagination, and it left fans curious about what universe she\u2019d dream up next.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut since the world is going to hell, why not go to Hades<\/em>?<\/p>\n

\n\tThat\u2019s where we find Martinez on her latest album, a sprawling compendium of 18 songs that plunge straight into the most daunting topics of our time \u2014 and easily the heaviest in Martinez\u2019s catalogue.\u00a0Crisis is at every corner, and existential dread starts creeping in from the first baroque seconds of the opener, \u201cGarbage.\u201d A haunting string orchestra promises to pacify the listener, all while gunshots in the background tug at the anxieties of constant war and violence detonating all over us. This is Martinez setting up a complex, technocratic dystopia, starring a new character she\u2019s invented named Circle.<\/p>\n

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\t\tTrending Stories<\/p>\n<\/h2>\n<\/section>\n

\n\tAn audiobook that accompanies the album tells the whole story: Circle escapes a commune to become a pop star consumed in a barren, wealth-obsessed AI wasteland.There\u2019s religious hypocrisy and brainwashing on the seesawing eeriness of \u201cIs This a Cult?\u201d, racism and misogyny on \u201cWhite Boy Has a Gun,\u201d cyberbullying and body dysmorphia on \u201cChatroom.\u201d The story itself isn\u2019t super concise; the plot is often hard to follow, with convoluted moments across a drawn-out runtime. But what would you expect when most of us can\u2019t figure out which way is right side up anymore? The thrill here is seeing Martinez find a new way into every song without repeating herself. She plays with melodies and song structures, pitching up her voice on songs like \u201cThe Vatican\u201d and talk-singing her way through \u201cGrudges.\u201d The second half of the album loses some of its momentum, but she still finds interesting ways to deliver some damn good pop tracks.<\/p>\n

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\t\tEditor\u2019s picks<\/p>\n<\/h2>\n<\/section>\n

\n\tWhat Martinez has is a bottomless supply of ideas \u2014 and there\u2019s perspective and insight as she navigates her thoughts on technology and the digital age, even on the weaker moments of the album. It\u2019s even more refreshing, given the frequency at which artists seem to throw their hands in the air and sacrifice creativity to an algorithm. The end of the story lands as an appeal for human imagination and creation: \u201cSo guard the parts that make you whole before the world takes you,\u201d the final line of the audiobook reads. No matter what apocalypse we\u2019re living through, Martinez will survive as a world-builder with something left to say.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n


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Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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