The Heresiarch

I thought I was getting into something good with The Heresiarch, but Nupraptor’s cool name and promise of plodding doom misery turned out to be a red herring. Perhaps knowing that Matt St. Ours is the sole member responsible for all instruments, plus programmed drums, I should have lowered my expectations a bit, though the album starts out quite decently, just loses steam very quickly.

I’ll do the quick version and then the explanation: The Heresiarch is like listening to Maryland doomsters Revelation, but sadder. Here’s why that’s a bad thing: Revelation plodded through lamenting doom riffs on their first few albums in the early ‘90s, despite the fact that their tuneless singer was carrying most of the weight at those times. However, Revelation weren’t all bad, since all 3 members were capable instrumentalists who could craft a mean lead section or drop some interesting riffs, especially when picking up the pace. All of that is what I’d like to say about Nupraptor, except that nothing was learned 25 years earlier, when Revelation were actually making those mistakes. The riffs all sound desolate and lonely, sticking to very slow pace for most of each song; unfortunately, the drum machine accentuates that pace, keeping ev-ry-thing ex-act-ly dead on-the-beat, which is ridiculously boring, even when the riffs seem alright or a guitar melody appears. The vocals aren’t bad, sort of like an earnest Scott Reagers with similar Christian themes to Trouble, but the pacing messes everything up, since expression doesn’t matter much when all the vocal rhythms are the same.

Of course, I mentioned that the solos were better, and that’s true, the pace often changing, such as during the shuffling beat that brings ‘Burn the Believers’ into a circling lead and more interesting riff. Those changes of pace also mean that the vocals can change pattern too, at which point I’m usually fairly attracted to the sound, yet…again…none of this happens often enough. The boring sections go on for soooooooo loooooooong, gaining absolutely nothing from their repetition and making the “holy warning” lyrics stand out all the more. The poetry certainly shows some skill, though St. Ours shows so little emotion while singing about pretty emotional subject matter that I’m left trying to predict what his next line will be before he actually gets it out. I find that I’m right about 30% of the time, because his religious vocabulary is much larger than mine. Still, that’s more interesting than sitting through all the verses of the title track.

To sum up quickly, this 51 minute album feels like it has lasted an hour before it even gets to the first guitar lead. The rhythms and pacing kill any merit during the plodding slow riffs, while the mid-paced sections reveal decent guitar parts and a better vocal presence, though they generally seem reserved for solos. Unfortunately, the last song runs longest and contains the most exciting parts near its denouement, plus to get to it we have to listen to a narration of The Lord’s Prayer, so I suppose The Heresiarch could be a Christian allegory about having to suffer to achieve your eventual reward. However, I’m not very faithful and will probably just listen to Born Too Late again instead.