Worship or Die, the newest album from Italy’s Hiems, is one of those albums that gets frustrating after awhile. On the one hand, there are some really killer tracks: the first real metal track ‘I’ is a blistering, 7-minute onslaught of midtempo black metal, and several other tracks like ‘Scum Destroyer’ and ‘W.O.F.’ are almost equally good. But then Hiems throws in weird touches that leave you scratching your head. ‘Adventum’ is just a minute or so of ambience and crying baby sounds (something which annoys the hell out of me), and the closing track ‘Race With The Devil’, while not necessarily bad, is a cover of a song by Scottish rock band Gun. The last few tracks also heavily utilize a weird xylophone-sounding instrument that honestly kills any momentum that Worship or Die still had going for it at that point. And that’s a shame, because the actual black metal songs on this album are quite good.

Hiems is, of course, the solo project of Forgotten Tomb bassist Algol. Musically it doesn’t really resemble Algol’s main band, although the vocals do tend towards the sort of blackened screaming that Herr Morbid emits. Several of the songs have kind of a blackened industrial feel, with the constant double bass drums combined with atmospheric, doomy riffing, along with production that is very up-front and bassy, but with a sufficient amount of black metal fuzziness. Certain riffs and passages on this CD also occasionally evoke the eerie, minor-key melodic style of Secrets of the Moon’s latest album or some of Satyricon’s more blackened moments on their recent releases. As weird as all that might sound, everything actually works together quite well.

So without all the irritating sounds and questionable decisions, this album is actually pretty good, but unfortunately, my spins of Worship or Die end up being limited for that very reason. Hiems does have an interesting and rather unique approach to black metal that I wasn’t really expecting, and they are definitely worth at least a listen.

» Buy Worship Or Die from Amazon.com