ALBUM REVIEW: No Sun Dared Pass Our Windows – Heruka
Since their formation back in 2001, Italy’s HERUKA managed to produce some impressive music, although they haven’t been incredibly active with recording until fairly recently. After an extended, 13 year hiatus from the studio, the band released their debut album, Deception’s End, and have made a point of releasing new music each year since. Their second album, No Sun Dared Pass Our Windows, tightens up the band’s sound even further, and proves to be one of the bands more memorable records to date.
Time Collapse starts the album on a powerful note, making great use of groove laden guitars, punishing drum hooks and varied vocals to create an incredibly solid track that sets the listener up for the rest of the album quite well. The albums title track opts for a darker, more haunting sound that combines the better elements of the first song with a much more engrossing sound, with more imaginative guitars and bellicose vocals providing a grating, vicious edge that proves to be marked improvement. Walking Dead Syndrome sees a more prominent use of bass hooks and a more expansive approach to the guitar work that gives this particular song a more layered and eclectic sound right out of the gate, helping to make for a more diverse sound and keeping the listener engrossed throughout.
The Eleventh Rule takes the more melodic side of the band’s sound to new heights, with slick leads adding a soaring, sublime quality to what proves to be an extremely atmospheric offering. It successfully builds upon the strengths of the songwriting in the previous song, giving more depth to the songs sound. White Coats Don’t Understand sees the music take on a much more visceral and chaotic sound, with ferocious, speed-driven guitars and drums providing an excellent backdrop for the feral vocals that carve their way through the mix, adding an excellent, caustic exclamation point to the track.
Unreal Consciousness is a fantastic interlude that breaks up the album with a much lighter, acoustic and ambient driven sound that departs significantly from the sound on offer up to this point, making for a criminally brief, but brilliant, pallet cleanser. The United States of Insanity. with its hypnotic guitar sound and sonorous vocals, is one of the albums better moments, combining the razor sharp intensity that defined the earlier songs on the record with gripping, softer side that manages to maintain much of the bleaker aspects of HERUKA‘s sound, making for a memorable piece of music.
Two Heads, One Brain is a short, yet effective blend of beguiling atmospherics and tight, catchy guitars, with vocals that mirror the captivating feel of the music, adding an almost singalong quality to the music on here. It’s a punchy and precise slab of melodic black metal that it’s quite hard not to appreciate. Twisted Into Form takes the music back down the more cacophonous, savage route that made White Coats Don’t Understand such an impressive piece of music, but manages to punctuate these dizzying elements with more focused, progressive riffs which gives this song a lean and at times dissonant feel. This brilliant take on the bands sound reaches its apex with Let No One Be Saved, a track that exemplifies all of the better points of the band’s sound, providing one last, primitive aural assault to the proceedings, ending the album on what is arguably its finest moment.
Other than the first two songs, which are provide a shaky start to this record, and a slightly coarse production that detracts from the obvious quality of the music on offer at points, this is an extremely good album. It’s certainly a record that gathers momentum and confidence in not only its songwriting, but also its style, as it progresses, with each song gradually adding another element to the sound and drawing the listener in even further. HERUKA are definitely onto a winning formula with what they have created on this album, which is without a shadow of a doubt one of their finest to date, and with a slight improvement in production, whatever HERUKA do next could very well be equally amazing.
Rating: 8/10
No Sun Dared Pass Our Windows is out now via Rude Awakening Records.
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