Heretique – Bestias Hominum

Heretique is something rather interesting from a sociological point of view – It is a Polish five-piece band that has been around since 2007 and has somewhat consistently been releasing new material since that time. So far it has added up to Three Full-length Albums, one Demo and two Singles – Pretty much on par for the course for the average Metal band I reckon. But that is not the interesting part. That would be their chosen musical approach, which, I suppose, could relatively charitably be called a catch-all approach. Every source I have found that I could potentially cite (even, to a certain extent, the band members themselves) point out that Heretiques sound is that of Black/Thrash/Death Metal – Meaning that they have mixed and matched aspects of the three biggest Metal genres in existance historically (aside from Heavy Metal itself, naturally). 

Now, unsurprisingly due to the sheer amount of years the band has been active, this approach seems to be working for them. They have managed to cobble together various aspects of each of the genres into a coherent and catchy whole, creating a sound far more self-sustaining than I initially had assumed possible due to the conflicting modus operandi of each of its three parent genres. It is angry, relentless, massively distorted and support their litanies of blasphemy quite well, seemingly bred from the notion that the lowest common denominator between the genres will be the jumping point for the sound for Heretique – Quite simple and logical, given more than a cursory thought. 

This brings us to Bestias Hominum (Latin for ‘Beasts Of Man’), their latest Full-length release containing a grand total of nine tracks as well as a single interlude, adding up to a runtime of nearly thirty-eight minutes. Thirty-eight minutes of ear-grabbing, powerful tracks each of which kept close to the industry standard of between three and five minutes – Effective in their own right, and most certainly some music I would see being able to fill out most slots at most outdoor festivals in and around Europe. 

My only real gripe with this is, especially to people who have read my ramblings before, an old one – By merging several genres together (three in this case), they dilute what makes each of them unique and by doing so removes much of their appeal. This results in an album that had broad market appeal (as hinted above this would most certainly be a band that could liven up a festival due to this exact trait) but is lacking any real character of its own. Case in point, I played the album through four times while writing this, and I sadly doubt that I would be able to recall any of the tracks by name after I am done. Nevertheless, do check them out if they end up play a gig near you – I know I will. 

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