The mutation that started with the death metal infusion into Inter Arma‘s ritualistic sludge metal on 2019’s Sulphur English didn’t appeal to everyone. The pounding rhythms of songs like “Citadel” and “Howling Lands” saw the band melding some punchier pummeling to their elongated dirges, pulling me in as a newcomer to the band. Since diving into their body of work, fantastic experiments like the one-song prog excursion The Cavern speak of a restless band with a thirst for exploring. Both the hazy desert feel of Sulphur English and the at times show-off nature of The Cavern are important to New Heaven, as it turns out. New Heaven shocks from its first seconds by throwing its most dissonant foot forward in a jarring and feverish outburst. But before you think that Inter Arma have suddenly turned into a dissodeath band, I’d like to point out some significant differences. The band haven’t let go of the tight grasp they have over rhythm, and this takes some long strides into making the material on this album heavy, yet easy to follow. The production is also a saving grace here, as unlike the buzzing swarm of sound of the genre this band has decided to wade into, New Heaven instead stings and backs off in turns to let the pain throb and dull. The drums are as softly produced as ever, and the guitars run the gamut of dissonant yet intricate, rumbling backup and even harmonic. While the MENA influence of the viciously tense “Violet Seizures” and the yearning melody of “Desolation’s Harp” rarely let up the intensity until the end of the latter song, a dual harmony of bright guitar playing foreshadows yet another mutation to come.
“Endless Grey” is a jammy instrumental track that signals a change into something that I can best describe as a nightmare version of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. While still recognizable as Inter Arma, this curveball puts a spin on a record so cold by suddenly injecting it with a ton of emotion. Much of this feeling is owed to the versatile vocals of Mike Paparo, and he never misses a beat, neither when spewing venom nor while laying on the blues. The overall dark mood of the album is still retained as it stumbles in the dark towards its gloomy ending. That the album feels cohesive with good flow despite its twists is a feat, and the fact that this is the band’s shortest album at 41 minutes always creates the temptation to start it over as soon as its last note fades. The only flaw I can find is that the two penultimate songs don’t have quite the same pull as the first few, and some additional work to make the back half of the album flow even better would have been nice. In particular, the album can feel like it loses steam at midpoint because of how intense its opening numbers are. But this is a nitpick, and while there isn’t much instrumentally that sees the band showing off new skills apart from the cold dissonance, it’s how the pieces of the band’s sound fit together that makes the album stand tall next to its siblings. New Heaven trades the forest fires for a cold snowed over city where children hide from the threat of being bombed. As harsh a turn as it is, it shouldn’t fail to rouse emotion.
