Hierophant

Controlled chaos?” Lorenzo pauses for a song before finally looking right through you with his piercing eyes and slowly answering: “yes, I like the sound of that, it sums up pretty much what they stand for. Chaos with a sense if you will.”

The guitarist and vocalist of the Death Metal Italian act HIEROPHANT isn’t one to bury you under bigmouth statements and empty words. But when he says he thinks Death Siege is “the best thing we ever did and the one album when HIEROPHANT really comes on its own”, you know he means it.

Since their previous album, and first for SEASON OF MIST, Mass Grave in 2016 – originally described as a “vicious” mix of black sludge and death metal – many things have happened. It started with the release two years later of a two-track EP called Spawned Abortions “a good indication of where we were going but still not quite there”.

The band’s fourth full-length Death Siege was written during the first months of the pandemic, from March 2020 until May 2021, a dark period described by Lorenzo as a “Fucking long process but it was worth it. Until then, we were maybe missing a bit proper song structures and arrangements. In retrospect, Mass Grave is more grind-ish whereas the new is far more metal and riff-oriented. The songs are longer and have more things happening in them, the album is overall far more ambitious and more, well, musical.”

Death Siege is full of war metaphors, lyrics about complete annihilation (‘Seeds Of Vengeance’, ‘Devils Incarnate’, Bloodbath Compendium’ etc.) and “fire, hatred and endless void. It’s like you know something awful it’s going to happen and sweep the plate clean but no matter how hard you try, you won’t be able to stop it. That’s how I want the listeners to feel when they listen to this record. DESTROY”.

Line-up:

• Lorenzo Gulminelli : Vocals, guitar
• Fabio Carretti : Bass, vocals
• Gianmaria Mustillo : Bass
• Ben Tellarini : Drums

This band is no longer active on Season of Mist.