Blending together subgenres of metal to further push the boundaries of heavy music is not an uncommon practice these days. Hierophant, while starting off as mostly a blackened sludge metal group, is more recently focused on mixing the extremes of black metal and death metal. Their fifth release, Death Siege (Season of Mist), continues this signature for the Italian foursome.

‘Devil Incarnate’ had everything one would ask for from a blackened metal song. The little bit of cheesiness of yelling out the title track in the beginning, heavy use of tremolo picking in the guitars, and thunderous double bass but not blast beats. This blueprint gives off the impression of literally melting in the depths of Hell. ‘Crypt of Existence’ is another great example of the mixing of black metal and death metal seen throughout Death Siege. As each passage of the song progresses and moves to the next, clear influences of both subgenres are observed such as blast beats evolving from d-beats, and machine gun guitar riffs switching back to tremolo strumming.

 

If screaming the song title as an intro is your thing, the album titled track gets you another dose of that fun cheese. This track is all about speed for nearly all of the five minute and forty-two seconds with only seldom breaks to allow for your headbang to slow down. However, they slow it down in the last minute of the song that is a big stand out point on really the entire album.

Not having heard much of this blackened death metal band from Italy, I was not certain what to expect as every band of this subgenre seems to have their own recipe. Hierophant takes everything you love about old school death metal and just covers it in despair and hopelessness.

 

The only gripe with Death Siege is the large use of blast beats which starts to blend together between tracks along the course of the whole album. Outside of that critique, I would have to say Hierophant has made a new fan from this release and I look forward to catching their back catalog.

Buy the album here: https://hierophant.bandcamp.com/album/death-siege

6 / 10

TIM LEDIN