Band:	Heaven Shall Burn
Album:	Invictus (Part III: The Final Resistance)
Style:	Melodic death metal, Metalcore
Release date:	May 21, 2010
Guest review by:	Ag Fox

Disc I
01. Intro
02. The Omen
03. Combat
04. I Was I Am I Shall Be
05. Buried In Forgotten Grounds
06. Sevastopoll
07. The Lie You Bleed For
08. Return To Sanity
09. Against Bridge Burners
10. Of Forsaken Poets
11. Nowhere [Therapy? cover] [bonus]
12. Given In Death
13. Outro

Disc II [DVD] [Defending Sparta - Live In Vienna]
01. Forlorn Skies
02. Counterweight
03. Voice Of The Voiceless
04. Endzeit
05. Buried In Forgotten Grounds
06. The Disease
07. Architects Of The Apocalypse
08. The Omen
09. Unleash Enlightenment
10. Of No Avail
11. Black Tears [Edge Of Sanity cover]
12. Behind A Wall Of Silence

Ah? Metalcore. A genre we all love to bash about to show how superior we are. Or not. My dear reader, if you can just take off those glasses clouded by stereotypes for the moment.

This is death-infused metalcore we are talking about, folks! Devoid of those good cop, bad cop vocals, Heaven Shall Burn is actually more brutal than the majority of metalcore bands and modern Gothenburg acts that seems to have a loyal following. The riffs here blaze like an inferno with melody and the vocals by long time member Marcus Bischoff come across as extremely angry while Matthias Voigt attacks the drum kit relentlessly, just the way metalcore is meant to be. Breakdowns for the sake of breaking down are absent, it's straightforward face melting hammering all the way. Wait? not all the way. Invictus does know the term "slow down", such as in "Buried In Forgotten Grounds" which is a piano interlude and when the onslaught begins again it just feels that much heavier. Or take it to another level where "Combat" features some trance beats. Bet you didn't expect that, did you? As a result, each song has been given an identity of its own rather than letting all of them sound too similar. Admittedly, it's not the most successful attempt and some flow has been sacrificed at certain places but it certainly is better than a lot of others out there. Throw in guest appearances of band members from Deadlock in the last track (excluding the outro), Heaven Shall Burn actually surprised me a little.

The end product is an album with quite a considerable number of moments. Major pitfalls so often associated with this genre have been avoided, but there are still some kinks that need to be ironed out, such as the Therapy? cover which sounds extremely sugary relative to all the other tracks, and more work is needed in the song writing department to further develop each song's identity without compromising on flow and aggression. They are, however, very much in the right direction and this is still a fine piece of head banging material.