ALBUM REVIEW: Death Siege – Hierophant
Italian death and black metal acts are often renowned for their more polished and overtly bombastic style, often incorporating symphonic and melodic elements into their music, more often than not with brilliant results. It’s not really a nation that is known for producing the sort of rawer, harsher and grimier music that many other European countries have, at least not when it comes to global acts like FLESHGOD APOCALYPSE and HIDEOUS DIVINITY. But begin to delve into Italy’s vibrant underground scene and it’s clear that there are many acts that favour dirtier production and primitive hooks. Perhaps one of the best bands to showcase this is HIEROPHANT, who have gradually transcended their roots as a band with a notable hardcore and sludge influence to become a more rabid and impressive blackened death metal outfit in recent years. The band’s fifth and latest album Death Siege may very well be their finest hour, and easily one of the more acerbic and visceral records of the year.
The instrumental Mortem Aeternam is relatively brief, but sets an ominous tone right out of the gate, priming the listener for what’s to come before launching into the album’s first full track Seeds Of Vengeance. This doesn’t ease the listener in, instead opting for an all out aural assault, with the unyieldingly fast drums, guitars and bass punctuated by catchy but nonetheless fierce lead guitars and bestial, venom-soaked vocals which carve an acidic rasp through the whole track. It’s a brilliantly unhinged opening effort that immediately commands the listener’s attention. Devil Incarnate adopts chaotic drums, caustic vocals and dense, grating guitars, all of which create a dizzying whirlwind of nauseating, intense blackened death metal that again has one foot firmly planted within an old school sound.
Bloodbath Compendium initially takes a slower, more sinister aspect, with slicker guitars and thicker rhythms, but quickly descends into a blistering piece of blackened thrash with chunkier guitar hooks interwoven in amongst the sharper, more jarring elements within the band’s sound. It proves to be an effective slab of extremity, albeit with a slight twist upon HIEROPHANT‘s established formula. Crypt Of Existence captures the claustrophobic, demented qualities of the album’s earliest offerings, but manages, with its huge guitar sound, to seem more cavernous than many of the tracks that have preceded it without sacrificing any of its rabid edge and oppressive songwriting.
The fleeting but domineering Interlude serves as a short bridge between the album’s two halves, with a gargantuan sound built around a dark, repetitive riff and thunderous percussion. It lurches abruptly into the aptly-named In Chaos, In Death – an exceptionally chaotic, abrasive piece of death metal that again utilises the murkier production to lend an opaque, dramatic quality to the relatively dissonant music, serving as a prime example of how to create belligerent, primitive blackened death metal. Abysmal Annihilation, with its steadier drums and huge, droning rhythms, has a monolithic, grandiose side to it, without stripping away any of the unbridled intensity. With bellowing vocals, demented guitar hooks and sludgy bass parts all vying for attention, it makes for a noisy, crowded sound that teeters on the brink of full blown cacophony.
Title track Death Siege has a cavernous drum sound and tight, melodic hooks, coupled with punishing flourishes, blending together all the best elements of black and death metal with a generous dose of thrash to make for a monstrous combination of styles that serves as another stand out take on classic extreme metal. Nemesis Of Thy Mortals, with its bleak ambience and ominous feel, starts at a crawl by this album’s standards before shifting back into the pummelling style that has dominated this album’s sound. Again, there’s a lot of speed and aggression that does, at times, mean that the music’s various components simply blur together, with a few brief, cavernous sections peppered throughout to provide some reprieve. It’s one last harsh, rabid burst of brutality that serves as an impressive conclusion.
Death Siege, not unlike many albums that draw heavily from the early days of extreme metal for its core influences, doesn’t exactly reinvent the wheel in any respect, but this is far from a downside here. The primal, primordial blend of styles that is incorporated here works exceptionally well, and although there’s a dominant blackened death sound at the heart of everything that’s going on, the subtle hints of thrash, ambience and even the tiniest industrial flourishes that are present all make this a far more diverse and wide-ranging album than it may appear upon first listen. Injecting the tried and tested mix of styles with just the right amount of grit and grime, HIEROPHANT are perhaps one of the more impressive acts when it comes to this musical approach to extreme metal, and certainly one of its more successful acts when it comes to the songwriting front.
Rating: 8/10
Death Siege is out now via Season Of Mist.
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