Artist: Heaven Shall Burn
Label: Century Media
Release: 2006
Rating: 4/5
Two years have passed since “Antigone”, and metalcore crew Heaven Shall Burn, with a sound that loves to flirt with old-school In Flames melodic death metal while keeping the roots of its hardcore, world-against-us attitude, stay loyal on “Deaf To Our Prayers” to the tradition of their predecessor.
So from the very first second it’s pretty clear that Heaven Shall Burn are sticking with the style and sound of “Antigone” on the new record too, with deep, distorted guitars whose eruptive, demolition-grade intensity could happily shift skyscrapers off their foundations. Once again they’re nicely balanced with that raw, furious, evil shrieking and snarling that’s the band’s trademark. Right from the opening, the band serves up gorgeous melodic passages of guitar harmonies and hellish double-bass drumming. Across the record, the melody is a fantastic counterweight to the brutalizing and the merciless mangling of the vocals! Heaven Shall Burn are really smart about this, and the record is unbelievably accessible, especially for anyone who can stomach the piercing voltage of someone screaming like they’re being roasted on a spit, because it’s offset by a huge dose of highly atmospheric melody that the band builds with big harmonies throughout. Heaven Shall Burn blend all the colors into a beautiful balance, so the album is first and foremost highly atmospheric, the tracks carry different thematic shifts as well as tempo changes, which makes the mood wavy and dynamic. Technically the band hits a high level of quality, especially the drumming, and as the cherry on top there’s that insanely aggressive vocal I mentioned, shrieking and spewing curses in a way that can be downright painful for the average ear in its extremity. Take the highly contrasting Tresapassing The Shores Of Our World, with its enviably woven guitar harmonies. Interesting and a bit annoying, though, is that this very track has some motifs strikingly similar to Metallica’s classic Fade To Black.
Compared to the previous album, Heaven Shall Burn have pushed their boundaries even deeper into melodic epic territory on the new one. The middle of the album especially leans hard on melody (the tracks Armia and Of No Avail), but don’t worry. Those tracks still get the ears boiling at the exact kind of temperature only extreme metal can reach. So the album gains an enviable contrast. It opens with a ferociously sharpened first stretch, and in the middle the epic side steps forward a bit, as a product of the heavier melodic input. But there are some annoying things too. For example, the chorus of the aforementioned Of No Avail strongly recalls the riff pattern of Numbing The Pain from “Antigone”, so it comes off as a sort of alternative version of “the original from the last record”, which is a bummer on the new one. Otherwise, though, the way the new material is delivered across the record is extremely convincing! Witty, interesting guitar harmonies racing over a toxically destructive rhythmic foundation and sitting beneath the shrieking vocal make for a gorgeous, grandiose intro on, say, Armia. The screaming sticks to the same frequency throughout the record, although you can spot a few departures in the vocal production compared to “Antiogone”, as they explore deeper vocal shades, as on Biogenesis (Undo Creation). Otherwise, the shrieking basically stays at the same base frequency across the whole record. So if you dig the vocals, you’ll take this album with open arms. As for production, it’s too loud again, which is a constant problem with bands in this style that “steamroll” everything with double-bass-pedal drumming. You simply can’t hear the bass guitar lines in the mix, which is a real shame.
The lyrics are playfully set against the mass stupidity of modern society, and Heaven Shall Burn tackle it most fiercely and directly in the “MySpace” parody MyBestFriend.com. The ending of the record, though, “grates”! The choir-style shouting, with all its chanting and over-the-top “hardcoreness”, is annoying right in the closing The Dream Is Dead, where it would have been better if Heaven Shall Burn had conceived this track as a full-on instrumental closer, because the guitar lines laid beneath the vocal “layer” are once again hugely appealing atmospherically, just like the atmosphere of the whole record. And it’s precisely that “Biohazard” vocal approach that kills the atmosphere at the end of the whole record. Luckily the track is under three minutes.
On “Deaf To Our Prayers”, then, Heaven Shall Burn ambitiously build on and expand the concept they set out with “Antigone”. The new album boasts excellent epic harmonies, a dynamic, wavy atmosphere and gorgeous contrasts between melody and extreme aggression. As said, the occasional repetitiveness bugs us when you compare the new and old albums, but there’s no way those of you who fell in love with “Antigone” won’t take this one to heart pretty quickly too. Those of you demanding a higher degree of innovation through a band’s evolution won’t have any special cathartic revelations meeting “Deaf To Our Prayers”. It’s a nice, quality piece of work, but in terms of musical exploration and innovation it brings nothing remotely earth-shattering. An album that, at its core, doesn’t surprise. An album that will win over melody lovers sooner than fans of extreme “terror” brutalizing!
Lineup
Marcus Bischoff – vocals
Alexander Dietz – guitar
Maik Weichert – guitar
Eric Bischoff – bass
Matthias Voigt – drums
Production
Jacob Hansen
Tracklist
1. Counterweight (4:22)
2. Trespassing The Shores Of Your World (5:20)
3. Profane Believers (3:38)
4. Stay The Course (3:58)
5. The Final March (4:08)
6. Of No Avail (4:59)
7. Armia (5:52)
8. Mybestfriends.com (4:54)
9. Biogenesis – Undo Creation (3:56)
10. Dying In Silence (4:22)
11. The Greatest Gift Of God (2:42)
Album length: 47:51
