The second song on Laminated Denim is “Hypertension,” a song seemingly about someone time traveling and experiencing hypertension (high blood pressure) while doing so. It features a number of references to the band’s other work: notes outside the scale (microtones), harbinger of changes (the album Changes which was released shortly after Laminated Denim), and sticky red death (“Lava” from Ice, Death…). The song also features a gong hit every five minutes a polyrhythm accenting at 60 bpm, reinforcing its ties to the passing of time found in the Made In Timeland concept. Taking influence from progressive and classic rock, “Hypertension” is a sprawling track with multiple instrumental sections and solos that build to a climatic end. The song’s main riff is also interpolated towards the end of “The Land Before Timeland.”
According to liner notes, the song was performed by Ambrose (keyboards/percussion/vocals), Cavs (drums/percussion), Cook (guitar), Joey (guitar/bass/synthesizer) and Stu (vocals/guitar/bass/keys/percussion/flute). Before the song was even released it was being hyped up. In Cavs’ drum seminar at Drumtek in Northcote, he described it as a fifteen-minute “space rock odyssey” and mentioned that it was one of his all time favorite Gizzard songs. Before the album’s release, a countdown clock with the song was played during the band’s intermission on 2022-10-11. “Hypertension” was later released on October 12th 2022. Alongside the album release, the band uploaded the official countdown clock visualiser made by Jason Galea.
The song had been teased as far back as 2022-08-03 where Stu sang a verse during “Am I In Heaven?”. “Hypertension” saw a live debut on 2022-10-23 at The Anthem in Washington D.C., appearing as the opener. In the following shows, however, the song would become a destination rather than a starting point coming out of songs like “Hot Water” (2022-10-26), and “Iron Lung” (2022-10-27). The song would be played heavily throughout 2023. At the beginning of the year it was back to being a standalone song but began to break back out of that role at the beginning of the residency tour on 2023-06-01 where it often came out of “Ice V” or “Iron Lung.” Typically, live performances of the song are shorter than the studio version.