HIEMS is a one-man, Avant-Garde Black Metal band launched in 1996 by Italian songwriter & multi-instrumentalist Alessandro "Algol" Comerio. "Stranger in a Wasteland" marks his third outing and is the sound of an artist confident in his craft. Recorded during lock-down, the music captures the dismal feelings of alienation and detachment, and translates them into malevolent, minimalistic and non-canonical black metal, infused with dark hard rock and ominous grooves. The album has nine songs.

"A Night on the Bare Mountain" is the first. The vocals are Black-Metal-ish, but are not quite fully harsh. The riff isn't what you might expect either...it's not a wall of sound, but rather a fairly simple riff, and the music doesn't move me much. "Death Unites Us" isn't much better. In fact, this barely registers as Black Metal. Take away the vocals, and it is more like rudimentary NWOBHM. The riffs are very simple an unimaginative. "March!" is more of the same...a slow, plodding song with a simple riff and not much going on to get the listener excited. So far, this album is falling very flat.

"The Rites of Terror" is about as scary as a little kid dressed up in a Halloween costume. The album really lacks that dynamic punch that can be present in any genre, plus the slow pacing isn't mixed up at all. "Better off Dead" at least has a change of pace and an almost Punk-like delivery. Finally, some energy and rage. The title track also has an interesting sound, and all is not lost so early. This song has some eerie ambient moments early, followed by a more harrowing sound later.

"Quietus" closes the album. Strangely enough, as the album moves along, it got much better. The first five songs sounded very similar, and had a boring delivery. But the final four were much more interesting. This song even has some psychedelic properties. In the end however, the album just wasn't interesting enough, especially to overcome the early mistakes. More songs like the final four however, and it could have been a much better album.