HEATHEN DEITY – Satan's Kingdom

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7.0

• Bands:
  HEATHEN DEITY
• Duration: 00:58:38
• Available from: 11/30/2024
• Label:

• Cult Never Dies

Over twenty-five years after the beginning of their musical journey, Heathen Deity return with “Satan's Kingdom”, their second full-length album. After the long-awaited 2021 debut with “True English Black Metal”, the British band now seems to have found greater stability and rhythm in their releases. Here is therefore a new work that does everything possible to follow the path of more traditional black metal, strengthening the foundations of the group's style and at the same time trying to broaden the expressive spectrum.
The sound of the album is once again rooted in a rather classic black metal, with a guitar riffing that clearly recalls the first Gorgoroth, especially in the more sustained songs. This approach, although far from innovative, is solid and demonstrates a stylistic mastery that is not surprising, given the long underground background of the group's members. Episodes like “Embrace the Essence of Satan – Ephesians 6:66” and the title track best represent this more direct and aggressive vein, with speed and intensity that hit the mark in their being channeled into functional structures. But “Satan's Kingdom”, upon closer inspection, is not a record that is satisfied with a single formula: the band in fact explores various registers, demonstrating a desire to diversify that sometimes rewards and sometimes leaves you perplexed. Among the most interesting moments, “Fucking Worthless” stands out, a midtempo with a melodic flavor which, with its martial pace, creates an effective interruption in the general fury of the album. It is a song that, while maintaining the black essence, suggests a different compositional sensitivity that quickly remains imprinted. At the opposite pole, we find an experiment like “Chapel of Filth”, an acoustic episode with a clean baritone voice which in the long run is rather cloying and poorly integrated into the general context. In a work so focused on the steadfastness of black metal, such a parenthesis seems more of a distraction than a real contribution. More interesting, however, is “Satanae Albion”, which with its epic tones and a Bathor-inspired structure, strikes with a crescendo that enhances the narrative tension of the piece.
All things considered, the main flaw in “Satan's Kingdom” is the overall duration: almost an hour of music which, although dense and generally well constructed, would have sometimes benefited from greater essentiality. Since it is already material that does not try to distance itself much from certain widely exploited canons, some tracks, if cut, would have made the album more streamlined without compromising its performance. Finally, even the title of the album seems a bit obvious and uninspired, although this could also be interpreted as a declaration of intent: a complete and ostentatious adherence to the roots of black metal. The cover has a completely different impact, which stands out for its visual quality and fits perfectly into a certain aesthetic tradition of the genre. When necessary, the band is therefore also able to show off an appreciable attention to detail, demonstrating – within a celebration of the founding values ​​of the genre which still manages to leave some distinctive mark – how in the decades spent in the underground it has been managed to gain a fair amount of authority, above all to remind us that, even in the era of exasperated experimentation, there is still room for a dark loyalty to the origins.