Band:	Herod
Album:	Sombre Dessein
Style:	Math metal, Post-metal
Release date:	February 15, 2019
A review by:	RaduP

01. Fork Tongue Intro
02. Fork Tongue
03. Reckoning
04. Don't Speak Last
05. Silent Truth
06. Mourning Grounds
07. There Will Be Gods

So Meshuggah and The Ocean had a child.

You may have heard about djent and have heard that it's quite heavy. But usually when it's heavy, it's either Meshuggah or something really close to mathcore, like Frontierer. Here we have a band trying to get it closer to sludge and post-metal. Herod did this mix for their previous album, They Were None as well, but here they do come a bit closer to The Ocean part of their sound, mainly because their new singer, Mike Pilat, was actually part of The Ocean and Sombre Dessein is released through Robin Staps's Pelagic Records. It was also mastered by Magnus Lindberg from Cult Of Luna.

Although their sound as a whole is a blend of those aforementioned two, the first half of the album feels more djent-heavy, while the latter seems more post-heavy, notably where a lot of the mellower atmosphere is built. The djent part is obviously a lot less noodly guitar soloing and more colossal and syncopated chug riffs with an added sludge oomph to the already heavy djent, so it's surprising when all of a sudden some parts actually feel like they barely have any bass in the one genre where the bass actually matters, with most of the focus being put on the guitars and the vicious vocals.

Definitely the biggest increase in quality of this Swiss band's music since their debut has come from the addition of Mike Pilat, whose vocal performance is among the highlights of the record, and not only that, but he performs guitar as well, so the guitar work of supposedly three people (add to that also Carcass's Bill Steer) creates some crushing riffs and mesmerizing polyrhythms, but outside of the vocals and the guitars, it feels like the other instruments are kinda lagging behind in how well they are represented. Also the bilingual (English and French) approach to vocals would have been more obvious if clean vocals were used more extensively.

Sombre Dessein suffers from some flaws, but it does showcase an interesting blend of genres and there's enough in how well it is written and performed for the flaws to be overlooked. Given how well they've matured from their previous record, I'm certain they'll fare even better on the next record. Essaie!