ALBUM REVIEW: Heresy II – End Of A Legend – Paradox

Heresy II – End Of A Legend is too long. The eighth full-length from German veterans PARADOX is a massive album, running to 76 minutes in total, and like the Spruce Goose before it, is too big for its own good. It has a few decent ideas, but it also sounds as if nothing has been edited out and winds up being a bloated, self-important record. And that’s a real shame because it’s been decades in the making.

It’s the direct sequel to Heresy, an oft-overlooked classic of the thrash world. A concept album based on the Albigensian Crusade, it briefly made PARADOX into the Next Big Thing of German metal. Line-up changes and a decade of inactivity halted their momentum, but for a few months at the end of the 80s, PARADOX’s star was on the rise.

Three decades and five albums later, they’ve finally revisited their breakthrough and continued the story. It gets off to a decent start too, Escape From The Burning is an energetic opener with blood-thumping, high octane riffs aplenty. The chorus is an earworm, the guitar work is well-executed, and frontman Charly Steinhauer puts in a charismatic vocal performance. It’s a bit long, but that’s not much of a problem at this point and it’s understandable they’d want to kick things off with an epic.

Mountains And Caves keeps things moving, but as it transitions into The Visitors the cracks start to appear. The intro is a drum-smashing, axe-swinging beast and it briefly looks like they’re about to launch into an instant-anthem. Instead, it turns into an okay song. The musicianship is decent enough, but it lacks a distinct identity and for the most part never rises above being average. Any hope that this was a blip however is soon dashed. The jangling of keys, feminine scream of terror and cartoonishly evil laugh that introduce Children Of A Virgin are the most notable thing about it, while Journey Into Fear is another unremarkable thrasher that feels like it’ll never end.

Priestly Vows is absolutely jam-packed with extravagant guitar work but is otherwise forgettable. It lacks memorable hooks and does nothing to justify it’s nearly seven-minute runtime. Worst of the bunch though is A Meeting Of Minds, a slow, plodding ballad that kills the momentum stone dead. It’s a dull, overwrought slab of melodramatic excess and is to this album what police roadblocks are to bank robbers. It should have been left on the cutting room floor, not right in the middle of the track list.

By the time Unholy Conspiracy rolls around, Heresy II has outstayed its welcome but there’s still a full quarter of it left to go. You can tell the band are aiming to end on a gloriously overwrought note with The Great Denial, but again it just drags. PARADOX never play one note when ten will do.

There’s some great stuff to be found here, but you’ve got to be really determined to even make it close to the end. You can’t fault PARADOX for stretching themselves and if nothing else, they’ve got more ambition than the average thrash band. That said, 76 minutes of religious persecution, fallen priests and medieval violence shouldn’t be this boring.

Rating: 4/10

Heresy II – End Of A Legend is set for release on September 24th via AFM Records.

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