Heresy

From Hell release their debut album Heresy on Paper + Plastick which features excerpts from an interview with Richard Kuklinski (The Iceman) which was recorded by a psychologist from the prison in which Kuklinski is being held. The band creates ambiance with their music as Kuklinski waxes poetic about his life as a murderer between brutal tracks that combined elements of black metal, thrash, and hardcore. 

My go round with the album left a lot to be desired. As usual I’m covering an album where vocals aren’t easy to decipher, almost completely impossible to decipher aside from one or two words breaking through, and no lyric sheet to help guide me. That being said, when this happens all I’m left to really critique on is the music itself sans the lyrical.

There are only two tracks featuring excerpts from Kukliniski on them and both tracks has the band providing a slow atmospheric sound that meshes well with Kuklinski’s interview. “Do you consider yourself to be an assassin?” The psychologist asks Kuklinski. “Assassin. That sounds so exotic (laughs). I was just a murderer.” It sends chills up and down your spine the way Kuklinski casually responds. It also works that the band kicks in heavy after this remark, delivering a performance to match the interview with an emotional kind of dark brutality before slipping back into the low undertones of atmosphere, allowing Kuklinski’s interview to finish out the track.

For the rest of the album I had to go back in once to try and grab as many words as I could between the growling and screaming of the vocals, which was difficult, and then go back again and simply block out the vocals to grace the musical performance of the bands instrumentation.

Lyrically the band likes to talk about dark subjects, the kind in which you would relate to horror films. The name of the band is derived from a letter left by serial killer Jack The Ripper, and what connection, if any, that has to do with the Hughes Brothers film of the same name leaves me wondering, what with the whole love for horror movies part. “I’m alone” popped out on me in the track terror, but for the most part track titles were about as close as I could get to understanding the albums direction. Kuklinski’s self-alienation and non-ability to understand himself or his actions really tied in well with the themes of the album though.

Musically, when I had gone through my third go with the album, I found that I liked the way in which the band threw in breakdowns, reversal of styles, and even tossed in a bit of piano here and there. While some instances of the album sounded a bit muddled the majority of the album was fresh, the band changing up their sound mid-song really kept me on my toes and made me wonder how and why with the technique. They proved that they can be atmospheric on their excerpt tracks, theatrical, brutal, but that they had a sense of control that worked amidst the chaos of the album. It was definitely a strange ride but one that grew on me. Well worth checking out.