Cloaked in complete anonymity with no discernable members or place of origin, THE HERETICS FORK is a brutal death metal band that may hail from New York – at least that is where the label P2 is located. According to the label which also doubles as distribution:  "This musical entity lives up to its name - the equivalent to the torture device. A brutal unforgiving punishment that chokes the light out of you and leaves you only in despair. The down-tuned guitars submerges your head underwater, while the resonant echoing snare hammers down the nails on your writhing pale flesh and the gurgling guttural vocals are your internal muffled thoughts wishing it would all end."

This description is not far off, as the 27 minute pummeling opens with a sample of tortured whimpering and plows into a slamming passage of blast beats and heavily distorted tremolo picking on "Realms of Unmitigated Anguish," with plenty of gargly sounding gutterals and grooves to keep the seasoned brutal death fan satisfied. "Sarcosanct Disembowelment" continues the beatdown with another sample of the same nature and more blast beats over the wall of noise that is their guitars – that's all you can really call these poorly recorded riffs. This genre isn't exactly one to tell notes apart, but the tremolo picking on this record is one monotonous drag and you can only truly tell what the guitars are doing when the slams stop and the grooves come in.

"Abyssal Submergence" shows off some diversity with more down-tempo grooves to level things out. "Unhuman Engorgement" contains much of the same formula, blasts, skankbeats, breakdowns, overall a violent undertaking. "Vespers of Torment" seals the deal with more of the same thing.

THE HERETICS FORK is your standard brutal death metal band that will do the trick for most fans of the genre and there is plenty of talent to be found here, but the band clearly suffers from recording issues. The poor volume control on drums and shoddily recorded guitars make the tormenting mood of the whole thing even more torturous – which may or may not be what you are looking for.