Hierophant – Death Siege
Release Date: 26th August 2022
Label: Season of Mist
Bandcamp
Genre: Sludgy Black Metal, Crusty Death Metal.
FFO: Nails, The Secret, Wormrot, Early Darkthrone, Full of Hell.
Review By: Rick Farley
Discordant, raw, violent, and ugly would be the best basic description for Hierophant’s new crusty as hell album, Death Siege. The culmination of several years of evolving their sound, trying to reach the bands infernal vision. Equal parts black metal and death metal, with little bits of grind, hardcore and punk. Served up on a hefty platter of fucking sludgy and scratchy griminess. The production is primitive by choice, entombing the listener with a bludgeoning lo-fi barbarism. It’s terrifyingly engaging. The band is intent on controlled chaos, willing their impending doom on an unsuspecting world not ready for the extinction of everything. The album plays like a disgusting hypnotic dark force is instructing you to abide to its every whim, while dragging you down to the dirty sewers.
Hierophant began its rotten life in Ravenna, Italy as more of a metal infused hardcore band, but with the exit of their frontman in 2015, guitarist Lorenzo Gulminelli took over vocal duties and began the transformation into the putridity that we have now. Death Siege is a much more focused album than what we’ve heard from the band thus far, even their last album Mass Grave, released in 2016, was a transitional album to what the band wanted to become. Now several years later we have a brutal band with more focus on song writing and a newly found ambition for longer songs and better song structures. That’s surely not to say that this album is even remotely melodious or easy listening, because it’s not. This is fucking harsh, disgusting extreme metal with no regard for your fucking safety. Murky, no stop tempos all blend together into a misanthropic abhorrence.
Devil Incarnate is a blazing punkish, buzz sawed guitar stomping that explodes into ferocious blast beats. Violent bursts of extreme aggression, it’s a horrifying mix of raw black metal and crusty punk. The unrelenting pace is like a continuous blast of a hammer to your skull. Seriously fucking brutal. Abysmal Annihilation starts off like a noisy bouncy death metal song complete with eerie guitar melody only to blast your innards out of your body onto the floor with discordant ferocity. There’s a certain amount of uneasiness that comes with this level of intensity, enough to induce fits of panic and rage. There’s little groove or melody within this album. It’s purely violent, stormy paced, crusty linear buzzsaw riffs filled to the brim with blast beats and constant pounding. Always churning in the ugliest way possible. The vocals are vomited growls and shrieks of anguish. The bass is congealed to the guitar in a way that it’s all noise filled riffing never relenting its assault. Nemesis of Thy Mortals is a harrowing and frightening trip to hell. Droning noise filled beginning with huge chords ringing out and chaos filled drums. It becomes a ball of sludge with just enough clarity to discern what’s happening. The vocals are higher pitched growls filled with despair. Blast beats and what I believe to be tremolo picked guitars and weird pits of hell style solos round out this beast of a track.
For those that are initiated with this level of extreme music, Death Siege is a stellar piece of metal that will delight the darkest corners of your wicked little brain and get under your skin like a fucking parasite. For those unaware, this is not for you. At times this is pure noise and hard to distinguish what’s happening, this is by design of course but still, if you’re looking for melody or grooves, steer far away. If you’re looking for some completely nasty black metal crustiness and noisy putrid vile. This vehement study of dark elegance is definitely for you and me. 
(4 / 5)
