Heaven Shall Burn – Of truth and Sacrifice

8/10

Three and a half years in the waiting. We get rewarded with 2 discs of hard music.
Good? Yes!

Room for improvement? You bet!

Much? No!

19 Songs split on two discs. Usually this means that there will be a lot of fillers or pointless noise wasting my precious time. But I have to say that this double act does not have so much of that. Sure, some of the longer songs (+7 minutes) could at times be a bit shorter and more enjoyable. And yes, it takes a few runs to take the album in. But give it a few laps and you will hopefully get the full experience as I think it was meant to be delivered.
These albums really have most of what I look for in hard music. It has tempo, aggression, diversity between songs, hard and heavy drums, pumping guitars and a full-on aggression feel for the (almost) full approx. 100 minutes of relentless delivery.

There is something in the songs during the whole album that is just feeling. I am not man enough to start taking techniques, sound or usage of instruments. To me, this sounds good, very good. But what it gives me in terms of sensations is a completely different thing. There are songs and albums that give you goosebumps, the feeling of complete freedom. Some, like this album just drains all built up aggression and tension in both my body and mind. It just hits the mark for that.

Going into specifics regarding favorite songs I have to go with one from each album that makes me tick a bit more than the others. “Protector”is my pick from album 1.
The soft intro going into the banging drums, generous tempo and the lovely melodic feeling through the verse. But going into the chorus you want to cry, scream and bang your head at the same time. 5 and a half minutes of pure joy.
From album number 2 I have chosen “The Sorrows of Victory”.
Almost gothic to start with, but this song has so many layers, so many turns all throughout it is an amazing 8 minutes of music.

What annoyed me the first few laps of this album slowly disappeared more and more. I stand by my opinion that the instrumental passages could have been both shorter and fewer. It takes the total experience down and hinders the flow of the creation somewhat. But the song songs are brutal.
There is not one single one of them I would change for something else. There is point and purpose with all of them. There is no point to have noise just for the sake of it. But I might be picky, there are maybe 5-10 minutes of static on these albums combined.
But in my book, it takes the total grade down a bit.

Band: Heaven Shall Burn
Title: Of Truth And Sacrifice
Label: Century Media
Date of release: 2020-03-20
Rate: 8/10
Stand out track: Disc 1: Protector, Disc 2: The Sorrows of Victory