Plenty of bands these days know how to be fast and "brutal," but they do so only knowing how to direct them, not how to truly command them. It's the sort of thing that separates a band like SUFFOCATION, for example, from the hordes of imitators that have taken pages out of their book over the years turned them up to eleven. Thing is, sheer musical muscle does not a classic make, and most fans want more than mere competence. That's where Poland's HERETIQUE steps in.

On their second release for VIA NOCTURNA, the quintet channel the collective energies of brutal Death/Extreme Metal into a blistering and insidious offering to the dark. Treading similar ground to groups like IMMOLATION and DEICIDE, "De Non Existentia Dei" is relentlessly grim and foreboding as it winds through the cavernous, hellish landscape its music creates. Celaj and Peter's guitars snarl and wail as they riff with almost frightening precision and speed on songs like the Black Metal-tinged "From The Black Soil" and "Sweet Stench Of Rotting Human Flesh." Meanwhile, their searing leads burn hotter than whatever came out of the Ark of the Covenant in that one Indiana Jones movie. Heavy stuff, indeed.
However deadly their intent, though, these are no mindless butchers. Strzyga and Celej's vocal tradeoffs are harrowing in their effect, the seamless alteration between the equally fearsome growls adding to the dynamic of already-challenging offerings like the devilishly fast "Spiritus Antichristi" and the creeping majesty that is "Dimensions."

Most strikingly about the album is how one can more or less "get the jist" of what HERETIQUE are going for musically, but still not completely expect what's coming next. After the initial opening salvos, you'd probably expect a song like "Dying In Hate," for example, to be just as angry as its title suggests, but the song's intense grooves and boiling fury take priority over the sheer blackness of its depths in a way that is very satisfying. Likewise, the band's plunge into unhinged Thrash/Black Metal on "Spiritus" is at once a logical continuation from "Unknown Whispers" while also going for the throat in a way that is more direct and unwieldy than what has come before it. It makes for an extremely exciting and satisfying listen for anyone who digs fast, heavy, and aggressive Death Metal.