Heretic - Alive Under Satan

Heretic

Alive Under Satan

by JF "Thrashing Assault" Briard at 03 April 2015, 5:46 PM

HERETIC is a band that describe their genre as "Black and Roll"; the lyrics and vocal content is mostly Black Metal influenced, but the sound overall is more Punk/Rock-ish. All the songs are fairly shorts, being 2 minutes in average, except for the last song, which is longer and more polished.

"Berzerker" is a pretty straightforward track with simple but effective riffs, reminding me slightly of MOTÖRHEAD. "Mr. Chainsaw" is tied with the opener for being the shortest song here. A typical punk-ish sound, nothing really special. In "Demonic Slaughter", I'm feeling as if I'm listening to the same song for the third time. The sound quality is below average I'd say, there is a weird buzzing sound in their guitar distortion. "Forever Possessed" is mostly slower and heavier, which is a nice change of pace, but we can begin to see the lack of depth and variety. Gods n Slaves is yet another song that is mostly indistinguishable from most of the others on the album, with the same lyrical themes used. So far, no solos or leads are found, only average riffage.

"Give me Darkness" sounds about the same as the rest again. The bass riffs are nice in this one though, so that's something. "Seven Hails" is the other more slow and groovy song, with a very present bass sound, one of the more memorable song, this one works better and is actually decent. "The Devil is my Saviour" is the longest song; it starts with a nice twin guitars lead (?!) which is a definite welcome feature here and I'm actually surprised. Nothing spectacular, but it's catchy. The singer is actually trying to sing clean, it mostly works I'd say. In the final 30 seconds, when you think it's all over, they actually perform multiple solos; as if they crammed EVERYTHING they can do in ONE SHORT BURST! The better part of the album, no doubts about it. I just wonder why they waited until the very very end to amaze us…

As we can clearly see from the final moments of the album, the band DO have potential… But it's ruined by bad mixing, dull vocals and the fact that most of the songs are not very memorable and varied; it's a very bad sign when you struggle to differentiate and describe the individual tracks. It's at least consistent in it's sound, but the quality isn't really there most of the time. Save for the last two tracks, this is under average… That last song however shows that there is some redemption possible for future offerings of the band…!