Thanks to my impatience waiting for this week’s new releases to drop—and to my being not in the best of moods given the perpetual blizzard conditions outside—I found myself looking around for some new death metal to fuck around with. During that search, it took me about half a second to stumble on Heaving Earth‘s new album, Denouncing The Holy Throne. It’s the sophomore full-length from the Prague-based death metallers and I gotta say…it’ll kick one or two asses before all is said and done. Allow me to elaborate.
Let’s start by judging this book by its cover. I’m sorry, but artwork like this needs a shout-out. Heaving Earth are doing themselves a favor with this badass-as-fuck album cover. I wish I could explain more about what’s going on… but I can’t. There’s an impressive, Gothic church in the center, with a crazy, demonic trailing stone path—all surrounded by fire. Immediately, I’m hooked.
Musically, it’s fast-paced and has a heart of brutal death metal—especially on the percussion side. Jirka Zajíc creates an absolute hurricane of double-kick patterns, complete with the occasional blast beats, all at a furious tempo. And it’s necessary on here, because the guitar work by Jaroslav Šantrůček and Tomáš Halama is all over the damn place, changing the pace up frequently. They show off by bringing in plenty of tapping sections and harmonized solos, but show some other influences in their use of tremolo picking and their use of the entire fret board…on pretty much every song. Michal Štěpánek’s vocals have plenty of depth—it’s the guttural, blood-choking sound that we are all familiar with, but it works. The raw(er) production is about right. I feel like if it were any cleaner, it just wouldn’t match the environment Heaving Earth are trying to create. It’s death metal; none of the above is unexpected.
So yeah, it’s cool when you deconstruct it and look at each element. But with so much going on, it can be cluttered and awkward when put back together. After a while, we just “get it.” It’s a brutal death metal album with a dose of technicality. The talent is very clearly there, but you definitely find yourself becoming almost too aware of it. Fortunately, there are occasional instrumental breaks to mix things up. For example, “And the Mighty Shall Fall” follows up the first three tracks of the album, all of which are absolute crushers. Similarly, “…Where the Purified Essence Descends Ablaze” is a perfectly echo-drenched interval between the two longest tracks on the album, “Into the Depths of Abomination” and “Jesus Died,” the latter of which is absolutely evil. Despite being a relentless listen at the surface level, Denouncing The Holy Throne tends to rise and fall somewhat unexpectedly.
For an album that was intended to be more of an aside this week—we’ll call it an “Honorable Mention”—there’s some good stuff on this thing. Heaving Earth are trending in the right direction. And it brought the concept of priest-mutilation to mind, so…you know, all good things. Sure, it’s apparent that they are throwing everything they can at us, to the point where it gets a bit uncomfortable, but their skill level is undeniable. I get the impression that they know their abilities and they really don’t give a shit how we feel about its presentation. And frankly, I can get on board with an attitude like that.
“Ein Bier… bitte.”
– Corey
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