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Released on November 25, 2014 via Bridge Nine Records
Hierophant are one of those great hardcore bands that just don’t quite get the recognition they deserve, but with their new album Peste it’ll be pretty hard to ignore them. They are well and truly back with a vengeance on this record. A blood-curdling, fist-pumping, arm-flailing vengeance. They have evolved their style into something much more metallic, a familiar sound in today’s hardcore market. Despite the tinge of the generic it is a mighty powerful record nonetheless.
Peste most definitely takes a step up in attitude from the last record by adding a hefty slab of brute force, completely off-kilter to Bridge Nine’s usual roster of hardcore-punk in the realms of Backtrack, Expire and Defeater. Combining faster and heavier rhythms and a thicker web of darkness, this album edges the band away from the tormenting yet supernal similarities of Oathbreaker and Amenra and quite neatly side-steps into Nails’ territory.
‘Inganno’ explodes forth like a runaway train and the momentum is absolutely non-stop spanning the course of the next three tracks where it begins to peter out towards the end of ‘Egoismo’. At this point it evolves into a lurching, considerably measured venture throughout ‘Inferno’. ‘Paranoia’ then mixes both fast and slow elements to keep your interest at a peak while effectively taking a bit of a breather from the initial onslaught. Lurking at the very end ‘Masochismo’ has to be my personal favourite track from the album. It has a different, underlying vibe of their earlier sound that effectively screams personality stronger than all the nine songs preceding it put together.
I was kind of hoping for more punch atop their sound that had already captivated me, to perhaps stay a little more true to where they started, but progress is progress, and this still made me go “oooph!” so it’s done it’s job! I would highly recommend starting from the very beginning with these guys though- just to see for yourself how their development has carried them from the first record to this point.
FFO: Nails, Dead In the Dirt, Discomfort.
