Artist: Heaven Shall Burn
Label: Century Media
Release: 2010
Length: 45:13
Rating: 3.5/5
Hyperactive as ever, Heaven Shall Burn are keeping their promise. We’ve arrived at the end of their “Iconoclast” trilogy. Here’s the third and final part, called “Invictus”. An “unconquerable” ending to the story, in other words.
Heaven Shall Burn remain inspired by historical figures and adventures from the battles of World War II, drawn to positive historical figures who defied the odds by staying true to their own faith in order to reach their goals. They preach about injustice and mass manipulation, though the final sum of the equation usually comes out the same on both sides. Zero, that is. The battle between good and evil, between madness and reason. The messages aren’t new, but it’s nice to take them in every now and then, since they remind you that an individual’s invincibility lies precisely in keeping your inner purity while developing your own identity, so Big Brother’s manipulation doesn’t wash you away into a human mountain range of timed batteries with a limited shelf life.
The band’s trademark sound remains a constant on “Invictus” too. So, if we rewind the tape a little, it’s a recap of the Gothenburg death metal school with a strong feel for melodic elements, something At The Gates pretty much defined. Heaven Shall Burn, meanwhile, play the card of explosive speed, dictated by the devastatingly fast commands of the double bass drum pedals and the sharp stamping of riff alliances, then occasionally break out of that position and sail, as expected, into harmonies of fast tremolo-picked triplets over the riffs, which mostly decorate the choruses in the songs. The production is once again triumphant and flattens everything in its path. It feels like finding yourself in the most cursed corner of the Earth. If this isn’t paradise, then let heaven burn and hell be damned! I can say that this time it’s a Heaven Shall Burn album whose production is even more dynamic, better balanced and shaped than ever before. Even the bass guitar isn’t completely buried by the riffs and the combination of blast beats on the snare and the double bass foot this time. And that’s a good thing. It gives that sense of depth and life that the card of playing at the extremes in pursuit of brutality badly needs in order to avoid the feeling of hermetic, sterile sound.
The vocals are once again that indispensable link, the band’s protective, recognizable emblem. They successfully avoid single-frequency verse chopping, shaping the vocal picture from a mid-pitched approach that comes close to the edge of a growl (though it isn’t one!) up to higher and high screaming (core shrieking). Often it’s layered with additional brutal vocals, to get a bigger effect of aggression in the songs, as well as to add harmonizing and fill out their sonic picture. It remains the active element of Heaven Shall Burn’s definition of the metalcore genre, driving the band’s recognizable sound forward across the whole album.
Still, it has to be said that Invictus is probably the heaviest album of the band’s career. At least it feels that way, since the band has seasoned the album, especially its middle section, with a heap of chopped-off wreckers that work relentlessly in their extreme version of compact brutality, playing and singing with everything they’ve got, full force, and of course with the necessary fury. So the sense of melody on “Invictus” is a bit overshadowed compared to previous Heaven Shall Burn records, though it’s still an album that all of the band’s fans will pounce on with the greatest hunger. Playing the aggression card also means some songs, taken together, sound a lot more alike than you could hear on earlier albums.
Notes above aside, the album’s opening is also its strongest moment. An opening in the style of following in the footsteps of classical composers shows once again that there’s a bit of Wagner hiding in every German, and that goes for Heaven Shall Burn too. The very fitting intro turns into a gallon of blazing nitroglycerin when the band hits with The Omen. This is really what embodies most of the songs from the first part of the trilogy. A bold combination of melody and aggression in a compact metalcore wrecker of defiance, at the level of the band’s high creative quality. The album continues in that manner with Combat, where the sporadic bursts of demanding transitional textures, with the drums breaking through thrillingly, work nicely. With Combat the band steps on the gas even harder, while keeping the highly effective freshness of integrating the melodic component of tremolo-picked guitar ornaments over the riffs. From there on, though, things somehow fail to hold that level. Especially the one-dimensional drumming, where the band forces the double kick to the front at all costs, creates a feeling of cloned songs. There’s not much difference in the songwriting or atmosphere between Of Forsaken Poets, Return To Sanity, Against Bridge Burners, Sevastopol or Burried In Forgotten Grounds.
The Lie You Bleed For in the middle of the album is a welcome detour, where the coexistence of snare drum and double bass blast beats communicates inspiredly with fast tremolo-picking over the riffs and vocal manipulation in an effectively sinister show. Near the end of the album we run into a welcome experiment from the band in the song Given In Death. The band decided to invite Sabina Weniger of Deadlock along for a vocal duet. The opening part of the song is at first unusual, even irritating, and it’s hard to pick out common ground between metalcore and gothic metal approaches, but the rest of the song soon rescues it effectively. Here the band finally breaks out of the rut and lets the melody blossom. Along with it comes a distinctive atmosphere of its own, which brings the album to a close in a high-drama theatrical finish!
“Invictus” is, then, a typical Heaven Shall Burn album. It’s very good, but once again not as thrillingly fresh as the first part of the “Iconoclast” trilogy was. Maybe the band’s desire to deliver the maximum of its extreme and sinister sound in the studio was too big, and so for a moment it forgot about the option of adding more variety to individual arrangement structures. I doubt the guys were in a rush to get a new product out as fast as possible, which might leave expressive gaps of “sloppiness”. Heaven Shall Burn are a band that stands for high quality, and so the expectations for their releases are that much higher. It’s simply a moment in the band’s evolution that doesn’t show the full representative power of its usual arranging talent, yet still holds the desired and demanded level of quality. And that’s what keeps Heaven Shall Burn a hot modern metal band on today’s musical map.
Lineup
Marcus Bischoff – vocals
Alexander Dietz – guitar
Maik Weichert – guitar
Eric Bischoff – bass
Matthias Voigt – drums
GUEST MUSICIANS:
Sabine Weniger – vocals on track no. 11.
Sebastian Reichl guitar on track no. 11.
Production
Tue Madsen
Track list
01. Intro
02. The Omen
03. Combat
04. I Was, I Am, I Shall Be
05. Buried in Forgotten Grounds
06. Sevastopol
07. The Lie You Bleed For
08. Return to Sanity
09. Against Bridge Burners
10. Of Forsaken Poets
11. Given in Death
12. Outro
