Interview: NH of Heresiarch

by Brett Stevens on October 7, 2013

heresiarch-waelwulfAn eruption has occurred within death metal over the past years where bands have been attracted to the linear phrasal riffing of old Incantation, Demoncy and Havohej and have hybridized it with the ripping war metal of Angelcorpse, Conqueror and Perdition Temple, producing a sound like the roar of battle from within a cavern.

Leading this charge is New Zealand’s Heresiarch, whose Hammer of Intransigence introduced a stunned world to this new assault two years ago. Currently, the band prepares to release its Waelwulf EP and embark on a new series of combative adventures to further saturate the world in its violence.

With this in mind, we pitched NH of Heresiarch a few questions about the band, its direction, and the volatile ferment of motivic forces that provide a warlike impetus that is able to avoid destroying itself. His answers, which demonstrate the raw visceral approach of both this style and its existential attitude, follow.

What made you choose to make the style of metal that you did?

It was the sound that resonated most with me and reflected what I wanted to present effectively.

Why was your US tour recently canceled?

Line-up issues have plagued the progress and possibilities of Heresiarch since the beginning and this was no exception.

The main priority currently is completing the album writing and then preparation for recording, touring will be re-addressed when it’s pertinent to.

You say that Heresiarch is “esoteric leaning.” What does that mean?

Heresiarch takes influence from several esoteric paths, the most noticeable being from Indo-European branches; the upcoming Waelwulf EP is heavily influenced by Anglo-Saxon and Germanic literature, warfare, symbolism and worldviews with my own interpretations.

How do you compose?

Central to Heresiarch are visions of war, death and victory, on a grand apocalyptic scale with the aim to reflect the dread, violence and atmosphere attributed to such themes.

There is minimal melodic motivation behind any of the writing and writing generally consists of bludgeoning the guitar to the aforementioned themes, from there the songs and riffs are refined and eventually materializes the atmosphere I aim to convey. If the song or the riffs do not reflect this they are discarded.

Do you write on guitar, bass or vocals?

Composition is primarily done with guitar but always with an idea of how everything else should go with it; drums, bass and both guitars are written close together to compliment and reinforce each other.

Vocals and lyrics are generally the last thing to come since the content is already decided on within the writing process.

Will you be recording more material as Heresiarch?

The Waelwulf EP has been recorded, I am yet to finish the vocals but it should be done in its entirety by the end of October.

I have been working on a full length which will be released by Dark Descent records; around 25 minutes of the album is written to date. The theme, composition and the general layout have been completed and it will be the most “complete” release from us.

In your view, what are the bands today to watch in the underground, meaning the people who produce interesting music (who cares if it’s “commercially successful”)?

Besides the obvious ones there is IMPETUOUS RITUAL and GRAVE UPHEAVAL (some of our closest allies) from Australia.

SABBATIC GOAT, SINISTROUS DIABOLUS, VASSAFOR are all worth listening to from New Zealand. VESICANT is a new band I am drumming in; there will be recordings of that in the next year. Also TREPANATION are a relatively new band taking an interesting direction with what I’ve heard of their new material and BLOOD OF THE MOON from NZ now have a lineup again.

Also check out PAROXSIHZEM and ADVERSARIAL from Canada, IMPOSER from Italy and GENOCIDE SHRINES from Sri Lanka.

Will you tell us which musical works were your biggest influences in creating Heresiarch?

CONQUEROR – War Cult Supremacy is the most essential album of this style in my opinion.

Besides that: Realm of Chaos by BOLT THROWER, Fallen Angel of Doom by BLASPHEMY as well as some classical such as Lizst, Wagner and Holst.

Your newest track, “Endethraest,” sounds familiar but I can’t place it. It’s highly rhythmic and military, like a real war being prepared. What influenced this?

The initial influence for the track originally stemmed from Gustav Holst’s “Mars Bringer of War.” It’s a good indication of the new direction Heresiarch is heading, with less regard for speed like on Hammer of Intransigence and a focus towards creating a dark, martial atmosphere.

Rumor has it that Heresiarch uses some members from Diocletian and Witchrist as session musicians. These bands are apparently part of a ‘Doom Cult’ which is trying to brand itself as a certain type of metal. Are you part of that movement, or heading in a different direction?

Heresiarch has no members of Diocletian or Witchrist present in the current line-up and we never have been a member of Doom Cult.

What’s next for Heresiarch?

The aforementioned album is intended to be released by Dark Descent Records in 2014. All further intentions will be announced when suitable.

You say the band is based around war, death and victory. Why do you choose these topics? What do you hope to express? Do you intend to create change in the world?

There is no “hope” to express anything, the music does the talking and is the expression itself.

Do you think war metal carries with it a big of a stigma in that so many bands are seen as humorless and self-important?

Yes.

Do you think most people accept war as necessary, or think of it as an evil to be purged? Why or why not?

I don’t care what most people think or believe in.

Extreme ends always attract extreme people, usually regardless of goal, doctrine or outcome.

It looks like the old school metal has lost out to the metalcore/indie-metal types. Is there any hope of rolling back the clock and getting to the days of better music? How important is it when the majority takes over a genre or a country and turns it into the same old stuff?

It’s not important. The “majority” as you say will always manifest their interests in trivial activities, beliefs and art in one way or another.

I guess the next logical question is, if you have no notion or desire for changing the world, what is your purpose in creating the music of Heresiarch?

I lost interest in all facets of politics and society a long time ago and from a logical perspective, a Black/Death Metal band is the least likely candidate to rally the masses towards changing the world.

In some respects that attitude is militarized in Heresiarch as an expression of contempt and disgust for all morality, faith and social structures which is a valid view for one to hold in today’s world… Essentially Heresiarch exists because it needs to and when that need ceases, so will the band.

If you could change the world, in what direction would you take it?

It’d look like the gatefold of Hammer of Intransigence.

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Profanatica – Sickened by Holy Host / The Grand Masters Session

by Cory Van der Pol on October 3, 2013


Profanatica
Sickened by Holy Host / The Grand Masters Session
81 min, Hells Headbangers, $12

profanatica-sickened_by_holy_host-the_grand_masters_sessionFor those new to Profanatica, this is the album to get. Like the band, it is baffling, organic, unsystematic, arcane and labyrinthine. It resembles its own hybrid of occultism, blasphemy and feral Jack London/Fred Nietzsche style absurdist feral Darwinism. It is ungovernable, down to the 7″-sized packaging for a relatively plain CD.

Sickened by Holy Host shows Profanatica at two extremes. The first is Paul Ledney, the percussionist and conceptual designer of the band, with an unnamed collaborator on guitar. The second is the same drum track with contemporary Profanatica guitarist John Gelso riffing along on guitar. The idea is that the first side shows us Profanatica as it might have been in the early 1990s, while the second side shows us Profanatica now as it evolves.

The Grand Masters Session on the other hand is a CD recording of the material Profanatica unleashed as a 7″ box set, and is essentially the band in the studio covering some old classics with updated musicianship and production. This serves as a continuity for the two parts and unites the album at full strength.

Together, Sickened by Holy Host / The Grand Masters Session reveals this atavistic American black metal band in all of their glory. The motivic force is undoubtedly Ledney’s (Revenant, Incantation, Havohej) impulsive but controlled drumming, which like a ritual dance of knives lures our listening minds closer to the core of each song. Gelso holds his own with an ability to make classic and new Profanatica riffs both simultaneously awkward and unearthly and also surprisingly difficult to pull off at speed. The result is an untameable surge of raw ideas guided by the torn-silk vocals of Ledney.

This album provides an ideal introduction to Profanatica because it captures its extremes through its most evolved material, giving a quick but deep plunge into the psyche of this sonic terrorism against the civilizing forces of religion and sociability. Soon you too will be chanting blasphemies against the highest holy while engaging in ceremonial defiance.

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Axiom of the Elite — Issue Number 2

by Brett Stevens on October 2, 2013

axiom_of_the_elite-issue_number_twoThis professional zine comes from New Zealand and has two really unique features: first, it exclusively focuses on local bands, regardless of genre within the metal-punk spectrum, and second, it aims for an elegant and professional presentation that radiates distant analysis more than organic enmeshment.

Axiom of the Elite thus more resembles a specialized trade publication or end-of-year report, with consistent use of fonts, highly readable pages, and consistent information. The writing is accurate and in depth with a breadth of vocabulary, and addresses all the questions an aspiring metalhead could have. In voice, it’s more literary magazine than gutter rock publication.

While the writing voice is more “chatty” than an American or central European publication, those who have read British or Australian zines will recognize this use of familiar social tokens as a kind of contexting. It works quite well here, where reading is like a formal presentation of data in an informal setting, and thus puts the mind in decision-making mode immediately. This works in favor of the bands covered, who are presented as contenders from the beginning.

Issue #2 of Axiom of the Elite picks up where last year’s first issue left off, but swaps the CD compilation for a download code for band tracks online. If the zine editors want to keep costs and postage low, this is an essential move, although these compilations seem to be something you’d want on the wall, from the sound of things.

Seeing heavy metal, crust punk and underground metal all presented in the same zine might seem a bit odd at first but it helps feather the presentation by allowing some levity and diversity where otherwise, especially in the context of the professional/arch layout and language, might be a bit overbearing. Even better, this zine comes with a clear mission statement:

• To promote NZMetal bands who have had little to no exposure internationally.
• To input my own personal and anecdotal reflections on the bands (this includes from recordings through to live shows) and their impact upon the local scene as a whole.
• To display the NZMetal scene as what it really is. As not one purely consisted of ‘bogans’ and Nu-Metal but one of genuine hard-working bands filled with a variety of Underground Metal genres.

These lines are relevant for anyone who has tried to defend metal as “art” and not simply a pacifier-cum-adornment for clueless teenagers and burnouts. Even more, it shows the role zines have always had, which is to concentrate information but also to allow powerful personalities to shape the Underground socially and thus inject more clarity of idea.

One other thing that other zine editors might take away from Axiom of the Elite is that its layout, like that of an annual report or professional trade magazine, is consistent. The first page of each band report is black, with the logo up top and a picture; from then on, the content is black-on-white text for enhanced readability. The editors don’t mock around with fonts and ornamentation, which makes the zine easier to read.

As the Underground experiences a revival, and the old ways of zines, radio and vinyls are brought back because the newer ways present too much information and thus submerge us in unnecessary possibilities (a process called entropy), zines like Axiom of the Elite emerge in a tastemaking and organizational role and we the fans are better off for it.

Features the following bands of various metal genres from New Zealand, each of which contributed a track to a digital compilation which can be unlocked with the download codes in each zine. You can also stream tracks from these bands at the zine’s website, listed below:

  • Arc of Ascent (Crushing Stoner Doom Metal)
  • Bloodfvkk (Reckless Grind Metal)
  • Boltcutter (Dystopian Crust Punk)
  • Brutal Supremacy (Barbaric Death Metal)
  • Carnal (Pulverising Brutal Death Metal)
  • Filthy Lucifer (Feral Crust Black Metal)
  • Horrendous Disfigurement (Defiling Death Metal)
  • Malevolence (Legendary Death/Grind Metal)
  • Orgiastic Rebirth (Ugly, Filthy Brutal Death Metal)
  • Red Dawn (Ripping Power/Heavy Metal)
  • Stormforge (Thunderous Power/Heavy Metal)
  • Trepanation (Apocalyptic War/Grind Metal)

Contact
deusintroclades@gmail.com
http://axiomoftheelite.bandcamp.com/

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Funerus – Reduced to Sludge

by Brett Stevens on September 20, 2013

funerus-reduced_to_sludgeComing from the tradition of thunderous American death metal that incorporates doom passages, Funerus write European-style melodies through their songs and as a result create an architecture of moods that gives us song a distinct presence.

Reduced to Sludge uses rolling rhythm riffs, upset by longer fretboard-walking riffs that set up a more complex rhythmic expectation, and then as these riffs repeat modifies them to bring out a melody. Often this is a simple riff that, like a rebuttal, speaks back to the verse-chorus arrangement and expands its two and three notes into a whole melodic phrase.

Funerus shows its influences strongly from all over the map. The easy ones to pick out are Asphyx, Cianide and Entombed, and it’s foolish to expect this band to avoid some influence from Incantation from which its guitarist is loaned. Its faster riffs are simpler and evoke more of a NYDM feel, while its phrasal riffs sound more like the Incantation-Revenant-Profanatica-Demoncy spectrum of cavernous occult doom-death.

While Reduced to Slude demonstrates a range of powerful death metal riff archetypes, its vocals emerge straight from the early days of death metal, sounding both gruff and breathless without being fully guttural while also avoiding the rasp of black metal. These guide the onslaught of riffs when intense, and as it slows the textures meld, creating a sonic veil from which the listener gradually emerges.

Although Funerus stays with a classic death metal sound and thus does not offer a quirky or unexpected aesthetic, the result is that Funerus stays true to its roots and has a voice it is comfortable with. The result is an album of shorter songs that feel like longer songs, and despite being rudimentary and using similar techniques, avoid boredom by staying true to their essential mission of creating a dark and thunderous mood.

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Why I am a douchebag elitist

by Brett Stevens on September 20, 2013

black_metal_in_quotesSince metal is caught within the regime of popular entertainment, it speaks the language of socialization exclusively. Thus, if you have an unpopular opinion, it’s because you’re mean or a douchebag. Thus it is that people frequently refer to people who have standards as “douchebag elitists.”

Listening to a release by what I’ll call a respectable band, I was reminded of the reasons for my douchebag elitism. This CD is after all mostly right. It has all the right elements, knows the conventions of the genre, and has a number of sentiment and somewhat obvious but effective riffs. Should be good, right?

Except that it’s not good enough. It’s close, but not the same. Where Graveland — its primary influence — had a unique personality and a clear direction, this respectable band is derived from Graveland and Darkthrone and that basis is audible. The basis for Graveland was reality itself; the basis for the respectable band is music.

As a result, it misses on what black metal was. Even more importantly, it misses out on a standard of quality that lets blackmetal be of that level. When we are elitist, and admit only the bands which have a distinct and amazing perspective on the world, we see the genre as it is: the product of independent minds with purpose.

When we let that purpose fall, and allow those who simply want to partake of that vision to be part of the genre, standards plummet. Those bands are imitating from outside and trying to reproduce what was, but in doing so, they’re losing the most essential part of it, which is its motivation as a whole.

For a band to be black metal, it needs to discover the motivating ideas that made black metal what it was. Then, it must have its own take on those ideas, and in addition to that, do what everyone can do these days, which is play well and have good production.

It’s interesting how few people are actually required to make a genre. Graveland is immortal; while Woodtemple sounds good at a distance, and I know from the word of close friends that the person behind it is a good fellow, it would be an adulteration and sacrifice of what black metal is to endorse this album.

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Letters: Why isn’t Metallica “thrash metal”?

by Brett Stevens on September 14, 2013

metallica-kill_em_allA reader writes with a few questions:

Why is Metallica’s debut classified in your website as Speed Metal and not Thrash Metal? What defines Thrash Metal and why are Metallica and Kreator placed under Speed Metal? The second question really being what defines Speed Metal?

What is speed metal? Speed metal is the music formed of the hybrid of NWOBHM and punk music. NWOBHM itself was a fusion of Black Sabbath and the “metal-like” hard rock genres of the time, including some progressive rock, given an underground and DIY outlook. The definitive speed metal album is the first Metallica work, but we could also look to Overkill, Nuclear Assault, Anthrax, Megadeth, Testament and Prong.

What is thrash metal? A marketing term for “speed metal.” Some argue that it’s a separate genre, namely speed metal with “broken beats” or d-beats, but the fact of the matter is that the d-beat-influenced drumming was already part of speed metal. Musically, anything regarded as “thrash metal” is speed metal. Hence use of that term instead.

Now, as to Kreator — why is it speed metal? Kreator is on the line between speed metal and death metal but ultimately has more in common with later speed metal like Destruction and Sodom than it does with outright death metal. It was a previous generation to the music that expanded in the late 1980s through early 1990s.

What is thrash? Thrash is a hybrid form of heavy metal and punk music preferred by thrashers, i.e. skaters. This music evolved out of the explosion of punk music at the end of the 1970s and the tendency of bands like Discharge, Amebix, The Exploited, the Cro-Mags and others to take on metal riff-styles, especially as inspired by Slayer and other heavily punk-influenced bands. However, many thrash bands used riff influences from NWOBHM or before, with Black Sabbath being prominent.

The reason we separate speed metal and thrash is that they are different movements. Speed metal is metal that incorporates some aspects of punk; thrash is a metal/punk hybrid that generally uses punk song structures and metal riffs, laying the groundwork for grindcore. There’s also no point in expanding the speed metal franchise into many different sub-types when all are essentially musically identical.

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Call of the Void – Dragged Down a Dead End Path

by Brett Stevens on July 31, 2013

PrintBack in the day, we would have called this hardcore. It doesn’t use metal riffs, and unlike metal songs, it doesn’t build an atmosphere of heaviness. It throws out a sense of distraction and then hammers you with it. Not surprisingly, it’s verse-chorus all the way in riff pairs, and the vocalist does that shouted vocal that sounds like a frustrated drunk person trying to explain something.

Much of it is expansive hardcore in the style of later Disfear with some overlap with newer Napalm Death, meaning that the ranting eventually picks up intensity and you get a trudgy-churny part over which there’s meaningful chanting. It isn’t bad at all. However, more than about four minutes of it results in scrambled brains, because it’s essentially about hammering out one message and then looping it.

This might appeal to fans of bands like Tragedy who want poignant moments of voices raised in protest with their riffs. It makes the mistake all modern music does, which is that by turning all the intensity up to eleven, it ends up with an intensity of a constant one as it drones on in the background. All instruments are competent.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUZjvKV14A4

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The enduring brilliance of Varathron’s His Majesty at the Swamp

by Rob Jones on June 23, 2013

varathron-his_majesty_at_the_swampHad I encountered this album in the early days of my journey of metal discovery I probably would’ve dismissed it as boring. True enough, this album does get a bit samey and the production doesn’t really help things by being quite plain and unadorned. What this album does have going for it – and what certifies it a classic, is its patient and utterly logical riff writing.

Taking the tradition as laid down by Hellhammer/Celtic Frost (more on that next week), each new musical idea on this album proceeds from a blueprint motif/riff that drives the whole track and makes each change sound like a clear and meaningful development from the one that preceded it. Most of the tracks remain in the one key for more or less their entire duration, whilst introducing a sparing and arguably quite Classical (Haydn, Mozart) sense of chromaticism at specific points to colour passing harmonic regions and create the necessary dramatic arc in the track. Being largely monodic though, it skirts the line between evocative ancient-feeling, modal style melody and more Classical structure-centric writing.

For example, Son of the Moon first deviates from its blueprint Aeolian/natural minor by introducing a riff with a # 3rd, returns to the Aeolian melodic shape and then introduces a riff with a raised 4th – two very typically Classical bits of chromaticism that colour regions related by the circle of fifths (a system that explains keys relationships and how to change key coherently) yet also, in the way they are used, give the riff a folkish/modal feel. They also come at just the right moment in the track, when the initial idea has been very much established and it’s time to reveal a bit of conflict and ambiguity. True to the narrative structural approach the track has been leading us along, what follows is a riff that returns to the Aeolian basis, responding to the ‘conflict section’ and expanding the original melodic idea. A properly satisfying emotional resolution is delayed until the very end of the track, yet even then, in typically metal form, the sensation it leaves the listener with is one reminding them that the journey goes ever on – rather than offering up a neat ‘happily ever after’ cadence, the way a pop song or even a piece of Classical music would be expected to end with.

The fact that the production comes with no proverbial bells and whistles means all the more that the riffcraft is laid bare and made the main focus of the listener’s attention. Melodically a lot of the album is very simple, and it really doesn’t stretch itself in terms of speed, variety or technicality, but it does what it does very well, revealing the essentiality of metal song writing in a relatively calm and assured way.

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