Hierophant, if you cast your mind back, started out as a metal-infused hardcore act. Nowadays their hardcore influences are barely a memory, like the small pale scar that might remain at the base of your spine after you’ve had a vestigial tail removed. ‘Mass Grave’ is frankly filthy, a grotesque wad of coughed-up death metal that nods towards the likes of Autopsy, Bolt Thrower and Incantation as is drips slowly down the walls. Veering between merciless blasts and the clumpy, cloven-toed grooves of the title track things are unremittingly ugly and utterly without mercy, surging forward with such violent fury it’s a wonder the studio was left standing once recording had finished.
