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SHROUD OF THE HERETIC
Revelations In Alchemy

Blood Harvest (2014)
Rating: 8/10

Be afraid, be very afraid! Shroud Of The Heretic is a mighty death metal band who has just released this crushing seven-track debut album.

The band hails from Portland, Oregon, and formed back in 2011. After an impressive EP, 2012’s Boiled To Death, they’ve now created this monstrous opus that combines unearthly death metal with cavernous doom. The trio – consisting of Thom (bass / vocals), Lauren (drums) and JT (guitar) – make a right ol’ racket on this 40-minute slab.

The album kicks off with the gargantuan strains of ‘The Arrival’, which descends from the sky like some bestial blob beyond the imagination before we’re dragged from our homes by the slithering mess that is ‘Heretical Screams’, an unapologetic hole of sludge, slurry and discharge that features ungodly drums of gloom, guttural, resonant vocals and a bass that extracts the bones from the body. Throughout this album, Shroud Of The Heretic merely exist to batter the crap out of the listener, not once allowing us to submit but simply reducing our sorry carcass to a pile of ash.

Whether it’s ‘Chaotic Astral Ascension’, the monolithic ‘Illuminism’ or the vile title track, these guys just know how to wield together stark passages that sprawl across the room like cumbersome and yet unrecognisable Lovecraftian horrors. The bile-soaked ‘Blasphemous Rebirth’ leaves a trail of sodden dirt back to its astral grave and brings this fusty composition to a halt.

While not in the same gloomy bracket as the 2014 Spectral Tower self-titled debut, Shroud Of The Heretic still carve out similar soundscapes which rely heavily on those echoing, bestial vocals and dissonant, eerie guitar chords which once strummed seem to ripple through the body like some wayward, invasive and terribly ravenous parasite.

The whole congregation that consists of deathlier rattles and doomier reverberations is one that enables these guys to tower over their victims like some ascending spectre of arrogance. There’s nary a moment where the listener can pop their head above the congealing surface for a breath, such is the thick, enveloping nature of this sordid beast.

Far too unearthly and bleak to be deemed death metal and yet somehow too abrasive to be considered strictly doom metal, and with Thom’s aching growl, Revelations In Alchemy gives us a real sense of eerie unease. Hardly communicable, Shroud Of The Heretic’s debut lump is just happy to creep along like a cloud of foreboding darkness that any minute could have you engulfed in one putrid gulp. Where it comes from no-one really knows, but now that it’s here it’s something we cannot avoid, so run for your life because this agonising experience is one that’ll paint towns black.

Neil Arnold

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