Darkness of God

5 years is a long releasing break? Ha! Apparently not for the Czechs from Heaving Earth, because their "Darkness Of God" was made even longer than "Denouncing The Holy Throne", as much as 7 years. Well, there is no need to criticize this approach, however, the realities of playing death metal are not the most gracious (which was even aggravated by the pandemic), and the band of Tomáš Halama itself has undergone a number of personnel changes during this time, among which...everyone left the band except the mastermind! So Heaving Earth was joined by vocalist Marek Štembera (at the same time performing in Brutally Deceased as a guitarist - in which Halama once also played), second guitarist Marty Meyer, bassist Tomáš Ledvina and, session drummer Giulio Galati (best known from Hideous Divinity). Apart from these line-up changes, music changed the most. It has gone into distinctly different regions from those of "Denouncing...".

Well, "Darkness Of God" is a turn towards Ulcerate, Ad Nauseam (interestingly, it was mixed and mastered by Andrea Petucco - guitarist/vocalist of this band) or even Artificial Brain sounds; generally bands - mostly - heavily saturated with late Gorguts. In the aftermath, these changes caused Tomáš Halama's group to relegate most of Immolation's influence to the last plan (and those from Morbid Angel it completely got rid of) and...got a little lost in it all. Unfortunately, not every element is on this album as I would like it, even though the overall "Darkness..." keeps a high level. First of all, the music of the Czechs has become bizarrely noisy, sometimes too insistently technical (as in "Forever Deceiving Dismal Gods" and "Apologetics (Of Failure And Fall)"), and sometimes even not very memorable. Of course, these are not disadvantages that dramatically lower the quality of the whole cd, although I think that with less dissonances, technical showing off and a more interesting growl (above all, not so uniform), the band would crush much more directly and legibly, especially since the degree of brutality is still very much high, and the quintet is definitely not lacking in general ingenuity.

In my opinion "Darkness Of God" is located in a similar rating as "Diabolic Prophecies" - even though there is a gap between these releases in terms of technique and style. Both albums are really nice, they can hold attention for a while, although they also contain less exciting and sometimes too well-groomed fragments. So I'm a bit disappointed but not enough to not recommend it!

Originally on: https://subiektywnymetal.blogspot.com/2022/06/heaving-earth-darkness-of-god-2022.html