Heiress Nowhere Nearer

Released
11th October 2024
Label 
Indecision Records
Format

12 Inch

Grey / Black Splatter

£22.00

‘I was the wrong you raised, I was the first fire to smolder, I was the last forgotten, I was the first in drifting days, I was the last in fatal fears’ (The Wrong You Raised)

Heiress have been scratching a very particular musical itch for me ever since their early split EP with Narrows back in 2010.  Since the outset, the Seattle band have harnessed a unique blend of post-metal that draws on inspirations from doom, early 1990s’ death metal, and even classic heavy metal, while forging them in a crucible that is equal parts shaped by the competing dynamics of hardcore and sludge.

Throughout their evolution, Heiress have sought to balance aggression with reflection, discordance with melody, and heaviness with melancholy, to create a deeply atmospheric soundscape.  Over time the band’s pacing had become slower, ever more expansive, only to be interspersed with short cathartic eruptions to cleanse the palette, before locking into the unrelenting groove all over again.  Their song writing has always retained a lean, yet intricately detailed elegance.

Yet on Nowhere Nearer, the band’s fifth full-length, it feels like the band’s always present hardcore instincts have been given greater rein.  The velocity has been notably increased to a surging, more mid-paced tempo and the song structures are even more tightly constructed.  Their inherent, bone shuddering heaviness though is undiminished and there remain flourishes of hauntingly beautiful introspection, but a conscious attempt to relentlessly funnel their power though a more disciplined lens is evident.

And it works an absolute treat.  The guitar tone alone is utterly spine-tingling, underpinned by a powerfully limber rhythm section, the onslaught perfectly embodied by the fiercely fluid Take Me Away, the slab-like riffage of The Chain To Thread, and the seething oscillations of The Wrong You Raised.  Meanwhile, the ferociously roared vocals (courtesy of John Pettibone formerly of Undertow / Himsa) explore bleakly allusive themes of lost hope, misplaced optimism, and yearned for redemption.  This is Heiress distilled to their very purest form – balancing the meditative and the malevolent.

—Foundation Vinyl