I love when bands cut to the chase, don’t bury the lede, and just whip it out, slapping the thickest of riffs on the table for hungry ears to devour. If Heirophant’s fourth full-length is any indication, this band consistently rewards the impatient, offering up a mix of short, acrid blasts of grind and hardcore alongside riff-first salvos of rumbling mid-tempo death. “In Decay” falls in the latter camp, and these guys barely make you wait for sweet release. Thirty-five seconds of portentous guitar gloom gives way and the fucking riff to end all Bolt Thrower riffs slams home like a SCUD missile, which is to say Hierophant absolutely kill. But what do we call this mongrel of a hybrid-style? Flesh-rending hardcore? Militant death-crust? Grave-scented traditional grindcore (aka grind played the ancient way, the better way)? Hierophant share a member with fellow brutal Italian hardcore legends the Secret — which is as sure a sign of quality as any — and recorded their latest album, Mass Grave, with one of the dudes from Nails, which explains the fist-to-face factor. So who cares how we’re supposed to label their art — this is vicious, hateful, wonderful stuff, plundering the best sounds from the best bands and mixing in some shrapnel of their own, delivering a perfectly ripping blast of nihilistic noise. Listen along at home.

Mass Grave by Hierophant

Mass Grave is out 11/4 via Season Of Mist.