Artist: Hæresis
Title: Si Vis Pacem Para Bellum
Type: Album
Label: Digital / Vendetta Records
Berlin band, Hæresis. Been going a while but appear to have only really hit their stride in the last year or so it seems. If Metal Archives is right, when a shift in musical outlook came about. Depending on you point of view this is either an extreme and atmospheric take on black metal or ‘post-black-metal’ (which I resist diverting into one of my spectrum personality rants about the term… 🙂 .) Or maybe just a great take on black metal pushing the envelope. Oh and anti-NSBM, which is always nice to see.
What am I blubbering about? Horror.
‘Echoes Of Ashes’ begins with a deeply unnerving, push of synth sounds; black, ominous, and intense. Hiss rises as the sound, an unhinged scream and then an absolute avalanche of riffing. It’s a wall of noise, the vocals screaming right into its teeth. This is stick your head in a wind tunnel stuff; massive sound, utterly implacable, violent sound. But there is a vicious melody here too, one so easy to hear and then realise you have been hurled straight into the maelstrom. This is an utter howling, malevolent beast of a song. There are tempo changes, smooth shifts to slower, off kilter meolody but in reality this is eleven minutes of dark, savage and unnerving screaming from something being torn apart. The drums are a constant battery, the guitars heavy and determined and the tune that appears around the eight minute mark will absolutely steal the remaining shreds of your soul. That is what sealed this into its own, gorgeous tomb for me. Amidst the relentless, desperate violence that tune…
Quiet, beautiful clean vocals to whisper through the fade at the end. Yeah, Hæresis are the real deal.
‘I Who Repel All Light’ enters on shimmering wings utterly destroyed by a death tinged assault. This is again unrelenting. It has an almost melodic death metal shade to it but a completley feral heart that is pure black metal. This, if it makes any sense is like a monolith in some endless abyss. It is massive, unmoving and absolutely dominates any space into which it enters. Dominates and binds you and never lets you go. Screams across a howling wind, the maniacal determination to be heard. The sound of angels falling, lies dragging people to oblivion. And rage. So much rage. Mae maxima culpa indeed.
I feel beaten, and only halfway through this ordeal.
‘Drifting Beyond Times’ Grasp’ is almost a moment to breathe. Almost. When the track hits a certain point, the almost groove of the drumming and the guitar offer a false solace as all Hell descends upon you. The vocals here are fantastic, somehow full of the sound of betrayal and the utter rage against it. This is bordering on a war metal sound; that harsh metallic violence, the eerie discordance of some chords. The utterly bleak nature of the atmosphere. Hæresis know instinctively when to shift into a slower tempo without allowing the intensity to slip away.
The elven minutes of ‘Eradicate Taciturnity’ begins with soft, clean vocals. A musical backdrop suffused with grey mist and a kind of sound that weaves a feel of Darkher perhaps. A slow ethereal, dreamlike atmosphere swirls slow and lost around you. Katatonia, Hauntologist, that kind of world but with such a sense of utter loss of the soul. And then the rage slips loose once more. The bitter drumming, the strident guitar and that soul searing howl. This is just glorious and terrifyinh and hopeless beyond all description.
Oh, lords of whatever…. This album never gives up, never settles, never lets you breathe. It crushes the hope within into a black obsidian ball of fury and shatters it into this howl of
righteous anger, of disgust, of hate. It is beautiful. It is ugly. It sounds like a declaration of war, a manifesto, a warning to the liars and traitors.
Utterly magnificent. Utterly bereft. Hæresis are an ordeal you must undertake.
Gizmo
Walking The Liminal Space 