Review: Heretoir - Heretoir

Artist: Heretoir
Title: s/t
Format: Full-length
Year: 2011
Label: Northern Silence
Genre: Black metal with some depressive rock elements
Rating: 70 / 100

This was an album I was really looking forward to, because, in my opinion Heretoir has always been a very promising band. Their first demo/EP Existenz, released in 2008 and the splits with Thränenkind, Soliness, Shyy, Ethereal Beauty, Dopamine and Dernier Martyr were a bit of a mediocre, but pretty promising introduction to what Heretoir was all about: the mixture of black metal with various elements from depressive rock bands like Katatonia and Anathema, and, since this new album, some minor post-rock influences.

With half clean, half screamed vocals and a bit of a dreamy overall sound, Heretoir fits, genre-wise, in the same tradition as acts like Alcest, Amesoeurs, Lantlôs and all the above mentioned bands/projects. And, like most other bands in this row, they are, with every release, moving further and further away from their black metal background. It's of course still undoubtedly present, but where on most black metal albums blastbeats are present in abundance, on this records they are mostly replaced by more down-tempo drum patterns, followed by a mixture of hazy guitars and, occasionally, some acoustic melodies.

The thing I loved so much about the first Alcest album Souvenirs d'un Autre Monde was the unprecedented, extraordinary dreamy atmosphere. This thing I love so much about Alcest is what I miss a bit on this record: It's there somewhere, oh yes, it's definitely there, but it isn't by far as present as on the earlier mentioned French band's first record. The self-titled debut of Heretoir is more mechanic, especially because of the drumsound, which was probably recorded in a studio this time. The thing I hate about modern studio's, or better said: about modern recording technique is the excessive use of compression, mainly on the drums. In this case it results in a somewhat mechanic overall tone of the music. Which really wasn't necessary, because the drumming patterns fit really well to this kind of music.

Overall, this album is pretty good, but to be fair, it's still in the stage of being promising. I hope their new album will be beyond that stage, while not becoming a clone of some of Neige's projects. I also hope it will be released before this whole new post-black metal thing gets over the top, if it hasn't already. Oh, and before I forget: curly logos are soooo 2010.

Spread the love, goddamnit,

Selwin.