The Call

I hear a lot of people saying that this isn't as good as Lost Horizon. Why? Why would you even bother to make that point? They are nothing alike. Heed are very much their own band. What, did you go into this expecting Wojtek-caliber arrangements and Daniel Heiman wailing through more eleven minute fantasy epics? Nothing about this project alludes to anything of the sort, and if you put aside your preconceived notions about Lost Horizon and their quality, you might just enjoy Heed's superlative debut The Call a lot more.

The basic style pushed forward on this album is a modern, driving style of pulsating, writhing traditional metal that puts forward an interesting question - how exactly did the genre go from the riff-heavy, galloping medieval knight festivals and leather n' chains manifestos to what we see on this album? It's kind of like a view into some kind of dystopian Heavy Metal future where the music is heavier, the vocals angrier and the mood darker and more serious and even pretty epic at times. It's like...some sort of broken hope; a fragment of the promise that Heavy Metal could have fulfilled with time and logical progression and a lack of bad ideas influxed in. It's the sound of a band that has nothing left to lose in a world that has all but forgotten about its genre, and so they take it to its logical extreme. Hey, that would make a pretty good "apocalyptic future" film! I can just picture it now: In a dark and distant future, where nothing is sacred anymore, one band has been chosen to save the world from the apocalyptic clutches of Jon Schaffer's Demonic Army. Pushed to their limits...beyond all reasonable thought...abandoning their moral principles and all sensibility of traditional riff and song structure...they must go to the depths of human depravity and HEED THE CALL!

Ahem. Yes, Heed's The Call is really quite a new and strange beast, sounding nothing like anything else I've heard in the past. It isn't quite prog or anything, just really different sounding. A lot of people might be thrown off by the modernity on display here, and you might be tempted to call this mallcore or any other thing that vaguely implies something negative about this. But it isn't, and you'd be wrong. The guitars on here aren't really doing what you'd consider traditional metal riffs, so much as they are just teaming up with the bass and drums to produce a muscular, heaving wall of sound to back up Daniel Heiman's wailing vocals. This might sound lame, but it isn't - everything sort of gels together to create this almost chaotic, vengeful backdrop, and when you turn it up loud enough, you can actually sort of feel it in you, vibrating and beating like a living human heart. It's a massive, controlled dirge, washing over the listener with just the right amount of depraved filth, just the right amount of traditional melody, subtly intertwined into something quite fresh and interesting. I don't know how intentional this was, but it is a brilliantly executed effect, and it creates some really great atmosphere and power on a record that would be just as powerful as an A Capella one with just Heiman singing alone.

But really, let's just skip everything else and talk about Heiman, because let's face it, you didn't come to hear the guitarist, the bassist or the drummer, and you definitely didn't come because you liked the guy who produced this slab of molten, dripping steel. No, you came because you wanted to hear Mr. Heiman sing, and how can anyone, much less I, blame you? He gives an excellent performance on here. Fucking excellent, I should say, with his emotive, clear, muscular wail belting out a set of vocal lines on every single song, with each and every one of them being 100% all natural and genuinely powerful. The choruses are especially stirring and well done, and he even pulls off a rather traditional sounding ballad on "Nothing," to close out the album. The man's voice is positively soul searing. I can't even pick standouts; they're all just too damn good. No, there is no performance here to technically rival songs like "Highlander," "Cry of a Restless Soul" or "Pure," but we do have a collection of songs that the man puts an absolutely wonderful performance into anyway, so throw away any preconceived notions of the unreachable standards set by Heiman's previous band and enjoy this one for the Heavy Metal masterpiece of the modern day that it is. There are a few songs that aren't quite as strong, like "Hypnosis," but really, for the most part even those are still good enough to not worry about skipping. Listen to this, listen to it now, and do it without any hesitation.

And please, folks, support the Resistance Against Jon Schaffer (RAJS). It is a blooming and promising cause that I really cannot advocate any more strongly. One day the evil tyrant will fall, and a new renaissance of Heavy Metal will rise again!