Review: Heaven Shall Burn - “Invictus” (2010)
Germany’s Heaven Shall Burn are one of the few metalcore bands that I can actually tolerate, largely because of two things. First, HSB’s ferocious combination of melodic death metal and all-out brutality separates them, at least to my ears, from the vast majority of their metalcore peers, and secondly, frontman Marcus Bischoff’s throat-shredding vocal assault is easily one of the most uncompromisingly vicious that I’ve experienced in any metal band. Invictus is the band’s 6th full-length, and the third installment in their “Iconoclast” series of releases, following 2008’s Iconoclast and 2009’s Bildersturm DVD. After the last few full lengths it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Invictus pretty much follows the same formula that has served the band so well on previous albums.
With each new album, Heaven Shall Burn seems to merely fine-tune their musical output for maximum destruction and intensity. The drumming in particular seems to get more intense and complex with each release, while the guitar playing seems to grow increasingly faster to the point where each song on Invictus is a blur of pummeling melodic riffing. At it’s best, Heaven Shall Burn is like an audio injection of adrenaline, the kind of thing you fuel up with before a psychotic chainsaw rampage. Fortunately, on Invictus the level of intensity is dialed up to 11 for pretty much the entire duration of the album, with very little breathing room over the course of the album’s 10 primary songs.
That can cause things to start getting monotonous towards the end of the album, especially with a couple weaker tracks towards the end, but honestly, with great albums like 2004’s Antigone and 2006’s Deaf To Our Prayers, all I really ask for from a new Heaven Shall Burn album is a few killer new tracks, and Invictus certainly delivers on that front. Opener ‘The Omen’ is not as good as Iconoclast’s ‘Endzeit’ was, but it’s still pretty potent. ‘Combat’ and ‘The Lie You Bleed For’ are both excellent, and show Heaven Shall Burn experimenting with electronic elements like they did on Iconoclast’s ‘Murderers of Murderers,’ something that I’m very happy to see. ‘Sevastopol’ is another standout, while the final track ‘Given In Death’ is an experiment with female vocals which only sort of works, but is certainly an interesting way to finish out the album.
I’m not sure where Heaven Shall Burn is going to go with their next few albums, as their style seems to have solidified itself over the past few releases into its current form, as exhibited on Invictus. The bits of experimentation on their recent albums indicate some interesting avenues to explore, but if Heaven Shall Burn instead decided to instead shoot for a Vader-like consistency and lack of change, I’m sure many of their fans would probably not have too much of a problem with it.
