HERESIARCH - Death Ordinance
Dark Descent Records
I think it's about time we start a Down Under genre for death metal since so many bands from this area of the world sound alike. HERESIARCH might hail from New Zealand but they sound like their Australian cousins PORTAL and IMPETUOUS RITUAL. But since they have an ex-DIOCLETIAN member in the band then things actually have some structure beyond the obvious punishment. Profound Lore Records and Dark Descent Records must have flipped a coin to see who was gonna sign this band. I'm glad the latter won.
Here we have HERESIARCH's long-awaited debut album which the promo info calls "a dominant forty-minute statement of savagery, chaos and death." By the way it's deemed "long-awaited" because this four piece act put out very promising smaller format releases previously. You've got their debut EP release Hammer of Intransigence from 2011 (also put out by Dark Descent Records) and 2014’s Waelwulf EP (which came out on Iron Bonehead Productions).
If you check out those releases (which I did) then you'll see that HERESIARCH has honed their version of blackened death very well. Like I alluded to earlier, their Australian cousins might find it simple to just shove the listener's head into a blast furnace where as these guys add slightly more substance to their bestial approach. Whenever music such as this comes my way I think of a huge lumbering beast consuming everything in it's path. But HERESIARCH are different. This beast has a brain, it can think in cold and calculating ways.
Death Ordinance in typical down under blackened death fashion. Another lumbering beastie coming to consume us all but then the second track "Storming Upon Knaves" kicks in and now it's an unforgiving militant warmonger of a machine bent on wiping out everything and everyone. This onslaught of beserker riffs, gutteral growls and screams plus jackhammer percussion continues on through songs like "Harbinger" and "Ruination" before finally taking a break (or a shit) on the short "The Yoke".
The second half of Death Ordinance is more diabolical more primeval sounding as if now it's time to torture the wounded type of sickness as well as going totally sick. The only time this thing lets up is on the final and longest cut "Desert of Ash" which actually lets in some contemplative atmosphere. Well yeah after a completely barbaric display of extreme metal Darwinism as well as being just merciless you just might need time to relax. I know I do. In the end HERESIARCH rules, Dark Descent Records rules and the world as we know it is in peril.
http://www.darkdescentrecords.com/
https://darkdescentrecords.bandcamp.com/album/death-ordinance
https://www.facebook.com/heresiarchcult
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