New Orleans, Louisiana-based death thrash trio Herakleion will release their punishing new EP, Necroverse, on September 13.
Thousands of metal albums will be released worldwide this year. Necroverse sounds like none of them. With an obsessive dedication to a bygone era, Herakleion set out to make their second studio offering the hard way. “We didn’t want to use any digital or computer assistance at all,” notes drummer Speed Wilson. “It was important that we did it the way bands used to do it; live, to tape, without a click. The record needed to sound like a band, not a collection of perfectly placed blocks.”
To accomplish this, they enlisted producer Pete deBoer (Blood Incantation, Devil Master, Spectral Voice) to oversee an entirely analog production. For six days in October of 2023, deBoer tracked the band live at Sonic Ranch Studios in Tornillo, Texas, like it was 1989. The recording was done on an API Legacy Plus, a Studer 24-track tape machine, and a full complement of analog outboard gear. “The goal was to make a recording that sounds closer to what’s in our record collections, than to what records sound like now.”
The results achieve what Herakleion intended. Necroverse spews forth five tracks of living, seething death thrash that serves as the listener’s vessel from the world of mortality into the realm of the dead. It is wholly out-of-step with the current trends in metal. Thematically, these songs don’t focus specifically on death, but more so on the morbid curiosity that humanity has with the moment where one crosses over into the realm of death. Each song touches on a different instance that attempts to rationalize that moment where life ceases and the journey through the realm of death begins.
In advance of the EP’s release, today the band unleashes first single, “The Tomb.”
Elaborates Wilson, “‘The Tomb’ was the first song written for what ended up being the Necroverse EP. We were intentionally writing something slower, since all we had up to that point were fast songs. During this time, I was re-reading the short story of the same name. It all came together quite quickly. Maybe a couple days, total.”
Necroverse EP, which features cover art by Noah Meihoff, will be released on CD, LP, cassette, and digital formats. Preorder on Bandcamp.
Tracklisting:
“What Is, Was, And Will Forever Be”
“The Tomb”
“Where Crows Dare Not Go”
“Blood Of Nessus”
“Into…Necroverse”
“The Tomb” video: