Walk into your local record store (no, don’t browse some online entity, actually go there) and find the metal section. Cast your eyes across the array of bold cover art and, somewhere amidst the collection of iconic covers both old and new, you’ll spot the awesome Five Milligrams artwork for The Heretic Order’s latest offering, ‘evil rising’. Drawing on heavy metal’s most fantastic tropes, it sees a demon emerging from hell surrounded by naked maidens, the Heretic Order’s now-familiar logo gazing down from next to a blood-red moon. It’s an arresting image, and one that nods gleefully to heavy metal’s storied past, and it should be enough, even if you’ve never heard the band before, to have you charging to the till, the album under your arm and a bundle of notes clutched in your sweaty palm. Fortunately, art is not the only strong point when it comes to The Heretic Order and, as long-time fans already well know, the band deal in epic heavy metal with a crooked smile and plenty of power.
Right from the start ‘evil rising’ gets your blood up with the eerie, cinematic ‘prelude’ setting the scene nicely before Lord Ragnar and Count Lavey unleash the furious riffola of the title track. Yes! This is what we want from the Heretic order and they deliver in spades with a track that draws from Sabbath and Priest in equal measure, Lord Ragnar’s demonic rasp delivered over riffs so chunky they threaten concussion. Throw in some blistering solos and you’ve got the makings of a classic heavy metal track – the sort that long-haired urchins everywhere will be playing their mates and throwing the horns to for years to come. No less impressive is ‘Unholy War’, on which Ragnar channels an evil combination of Dio and Lemmy, his whiskey-roughened howl still hitting the high notes on the irritatingly addictive chorus. You might imagine that it can’t get any better, but when the band unleash the chugging maelstrom that is ‘hate is born’, you’ll struggle to control your darker urges as Lord Ragnar’s vocals slither from the speaker and the guitars harmonise in a taut display of Maiden-influenced dexterity. Awesome on record, even better live, this is The Heretic Order making good on all the promises made during their last spate of touring, their songs charismatic, catchy as hell and heavier than the devil’s first almighty dump of the day. Speaking of which, the mid-tempo ‘omens’ has a tough, foot-on-the-monitor sound that makes you want to head-bang yourself straight into a neck-brace and we’re only five songs in. It’s as if the band have spent the last year or so absorbing all of their greatest influences, only to spit them out, Heretic order style, to create an album of instant classics. The first half comes to its demonic finale with ‘mortification of the flesh’, a suitably sanguine tale of scarification delivered with a nod toward ‘hallowed be thy name’ and benefitting from an absolutely ferocious performance from Doctor Pain, whose arrival roughly one minute in will have fans spitting out their beer in delight.
Kicking off the album’s second half, the epic ‘under the cross of pain’ offers a pretty fair idea of what would happen if the Scorpions were to cover a Judas priest epic, the band clearly revelling in might and melody in equal measure. After two longer songs, ‘straight down (to hell)’ really delivers the goods with its surging riff and killer chorus marking it out as a sure-to-be-live-favourite, Ragnar’s sneering vocal topping an absolutely cracking riff. Keeping the riff-quotient satisfyingly high, ‘the mask’ is a hulking slab of Sabbath-esque metal delivered with more than a hint of sulphur by a band clearly enjoying every hell-bound minute of the recording process. A dark vision of horror informs the immense ‘the forest of the impaled’, a fast-paced monster that comes across like a condensed, heavy metal fantasy only for the choral epic ‘the scourge of god’ (featuring a scene-stealing soprano turn from Charlotte jones) to up the ante still further as the band deliver a track that draws the line between vintage Sabbath and Therion’s operatic antics… with cowbell. At nearly nine-minutes in length, it is a monstrous work out, but the band allow the track to ebb and flow nicely, and it maintains the interest right to the end as it dissolves into sounds of eerie torment. It leaves only the acoustic-led ‘visions’ to see the album out and this it does on a high, the band once more allowing their evil muse to run riot amidst sabbath-esque riffs and Priest-infused lead work. It brings the album to a perfect conclusion, leaving the listener bathed in the hellish aura of the band’s deliciously dark vignettes.
The Heretic Order are one of those rare metal bands where everything is done right. Eerie make up? Check. Blistering solos? Check. Arresting artwork? Check. Lyrics that tread a fine line between tormented and tongue-in-cheek? Check. The band have it all and they understand both the value of melody to keep the songs catchy and a show to keep their performances memorable. With a cleaner production than their live show might have you expect – more Maiden than Motorhead – ‘Evil Rising’ sets its sights firmly on the classic Maiden and Priest albums of yore and, with a number of intensely memorable tunes on hand, finds itself sitting comfortably among them. A brilliant album from start to finish, ‘Evil Rising’ is one of the most frantically fun albums I’ve reviewed this year. 9
