Review by Carl on September 1, 2024.

Heinous (and not Anus, like someone I know actually thought) are a black metal band from my home country, with its most prominent member former Enthroned frontman Sabathan, handling bass duties here. Let me just put it out there, this fucking rocks! There are many, many black metal bands out there, but only a handful of those are capable of composing music as genuinely evil as this.

After an intro that is as ominous as it is awesome, the band strikes out with a dose of varied and especially well-constructed black metal, alternating between fast-paced blackened metal terror and more midtempo stomping parts. Playing is tight throughout and the riffing is way beyond the average black metal standard. Heinous utilizes a more intricate style of playing, going well beyond the Darkthrone-styled offerings of a lot of their colleagues, and in combination with the glorious yet subtle keyboards, the band manages to create an atmosphere I have seldom heard since the first Emperor album. The faster sections of their sound have me at times thinking of the early output of acts like Dark Funeral, Enthroned (no surprise there, I guess), and the more savage moments of a band like Abigor, but don't get me wrong, Heinous is no mere copycat act. As mentioned, there are parts that sound familiar, yet the spin the band gives their music has a face of its own. The best example is the last song before the outro, which must be one of the greatest starts to an extreme metal song in these last 20 or so years. Here, the listener is guided into the track by a choral keyboard drone that is underpinned by a double kick-driven drum, building up tension before the bass comes dropping in, sounding quite like Voivod's Blacky's legendary 'blower' bass. Going on, the band leads the listener into a black metal banger that combines Dissection riffing with Dark Funeral speed, before giving way to an unsettling outro of schizophrenic electronics layered with ranting voices and bellowing roars. Simply sublime, this ending. Equally as sublime is the production, sounding loud, clear, and balanced, without corrupting the essence of the music, maintaining that vicious and dark feeling of unchecked insanity black metal like this is supposed to emanate.

The most remarkable aspect to the band's sound, however, is the roaring, almost psychotic vocals, coming straight from the deepest depths of the dungeon. Drenched in reverb, these give the already solid black metal on offer truly a face of its own. I have seen them live, and take it from me that the guy is on stage equally as terrifying as he sounds, and that is why I'm going to deliver my next point of critique with a bit of a cold feeling enveloping my heart. How great as he sounds on here, by the time I reach the end of the album, the man begins to remind me of a homeless man ranting on a street corner. Once that idea popped up, I could not unhear it. A matter of taste, for sure, but it's a feeling that stuck. Keep in mind though, in the grand scheme here, it's not that big of a problem, especially with music this good.

Despite my point of criticism, anyone who has a pair of ears attached to his or her head cannot deny that this is a massive black metal banger. It seethes darkness, is drenched in an atmosphere I don't hear too often anymore, and sounds utterly impressive, both in sound and in execution. There's no other way around it than to say it like this: absolutely recommended stuff for all in the style!

Rating: 8.5 out of 10