Seven years have passed since Heresiarch‘s last album Death Ordinance (reviewed here), a long gap in new music segmented only by a pair of splits in 2019 and 2020 (the second of which, with Antediluvian, we premiered here). Now, at last, Heresiarch‘s second album Edifice is on the way, with a release date of April 12th established by Iron Bonehead Productions.
Our review of Death Ordinance referred to the music as “belligerent and bestial”, “militant, violent, and ruthless”, “an obliterating war metal juggernaut”, a “fusion of bloodthirsty primitivism and inhuman mechanisation”, and “a genuine tour de force”, with emphasis on “force”.
Even seven years later, no one would expect Heresiarch to make peace with the world or with their listeners, and on Edifice they haven’t. But as we’ll explain in more detail at a later time, the album’s unforgiving assault on the senses is a multifarious as well as nefarious experience, and the song we’re premiering today — “Noose Above the Abyss” — is a vivid and extremely unsettling sign of that.
The song’s opening phase is unmistakably violent, but also unmistakably intricate in its disturbing permutations, a head-spinning experience as well as a decapitating one.
Beneath the dense churn and burn of the riffing the rhythms brutally pound but also explode into maniacal snare-drum fusillades. The guitars writhe in agony, rise in hideous glory, and join with the humongous bass and the drums to segment the chaos with fast, jackhammering bursts. The words come forth in cavern-deep roars, cold-hearted and imperious, but also ignite in rabid screams.
About halfway through the song, the music shifts into a second phase that will remind you about the song’s title, replacing the barbaric madness and mayhem with music of utmost misery and supernatural frightfulness. The music moans in abyssal depths and eerily wails in the arches of the blood-freezing crypt where it has suddenly been transported, accompanied by both titanic pounding and martial snare tattoos, and by strangled shrieks that spray blood against ruined walls. No hope survives here, only abandonment and desolating pain.
There’s a third phase in the song, and for that Heresiarch saved the greatest violence for last, delivering a mad war zone of sound, the lead guitar suffering a paroxysm, the riffs swarming and searing, the bass churning like magma and joining the drums in overheating cannonades, the vocals howling like wolves on fire. It’s so catastrophic it might leave the whites of your eyes showing all ’round.
Iron Bonehead will release Edifice on CD and vinyl LP formats. For more info as the release date draws near, keep an eye on the locations linked below.
And lend an ear to “Gloryless Execution“, the first song revealed from the album, which you can stream below. It’s a jaw-dropper too, thoroughly exhilarating, thoroughly ruinous, completely insane, and with its own changing phases of ruination and dread, culminating with an ambient outro that will stiffen the hairs on the back of your neck.
P.S. The tremendous artwork foir the album included above was painted by Khaos Diktator Design.
IRON BONEHEAD:
https://www.ironbonehead.de
https://ironboneheadproductions.bandcamp.com
https://www.facebook.com/ironboneheadproductions
HERESIARCH:
https://www.facebook.com/heresiarchband
