Despite its stunning physical beauty, New Zealand has long been an ominous fortress of black/death supremacy, and Heresiarch have defiantly stood on the battlements ever since the release of their Hammer of Intransigence EP in 2011, with their looming presence growing even more formidable after the release of 2014’s Wælwulf. Given the strength of those EPs, we have been eagerly awaiting their debut album, Death Ordinance, which will be released by Dark Descent Records on July 7th — and now we finally have music from the album to share with you.

The song we’re premiering today is “Storming Upon Knaves“. It’s the second track in the running order of Death Ordinance. It follows the opener “Consecrating Fire”, which is a slow, stunningly bleak decree of doom that evolves into a militaristic march. You get the sense near the end of “Consecrating Fire” that things are ramping up… and sure enough, all hell breaks loose when “Storming Upon Knaves” begins.

Each song on Death Ordinance serves a deliberate purpose, not only in the album’s lyrical narrative but also in summoning visions of events through their sound, and “Storming” is indeed the operative word for the track you’re about to hear.

It’s a brutal, black paroxysm of furiously pummeling drums and barbaric, swarming riffs with a deep, grinding tone and a maniacally surging thrust. You can imagine bone splinters and smashed skulls piling high in the wake of this juggernaut war machine.

The fury is segmented by bursts of sledgehammer pounding, even more frenzied and eviscerating riffs, and a completely deranged solo, while the savage words come in a torrent of tyrannical roars and bestial howls. The penultimate line of the song’s murderous lyrics proclaims, “Those who flee the hammer, shall abide the forge”. True enough — you can run, but you can’t hide from the force of this raging assault.



Photo by Jake Skipper

Misanthropic-Art is responsible for the stunning cover for Death Ordinance. You can now pre-order the album from Dark Descent at this location:

https://darkdescentrecords.bandcamp.com/album/death-ordinance

In other Heresiarch news, they will be coming to the U.S. and Canadian west coasts for a tour with Ritual Necromancy in June. The events page for that is here, the tour flyer is below, and the schedule is set out here as well:

June 1st – San Diego (Til – Two Bar)

June 2nd – Los Angeles (Complex)

June 3rd – Oakland (The Golden Bull)

June 4th – Sacramento (Starlite)

June 6th – Portland (Twilight)

June 7th – Seattle (The Highline)

June 10th – Vancouver (Covenant Fest)*

*Heresiarch only

Heresiarch on Bandcamp:

https://heresiarchofficial.bandcamp.com

Heresiarch Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/heresiarchcult/