Band:	This Gift Is A Curse
Album:	Heir
Style:	Black metal, Hardcore, Sludge metal
Release date:	March 07, 2025
A review by:	musclassia

01. Kingdom
02. No Sun, Nor Moon
03. Void Bringer
04. Death Maker
05. Passing
06. Seers Of No Light
07. Cosmic Voice
08. Vow Sayer
09. Old Space
10. Ascension

When we last heard from This Gift Is A Curse, they had sculpted A Throne Of Ash; nearly 6 years on, the Heir to the throne has emerged, and this new release is very much a gift, not a curse.

The Swedish ensemble are one of the more prominent bands to be frequently labored with the black metal/sludge metal/hardcore trifecta of genres (the fusion of which is crying out for a genre name of its own), particularly with the increased exposure that resulted from A Throne Of Ash’s relative success. In the intervening half-decade, This Gift Is A Curse have been slowly assembling what has shaped up to be something of a magnum opus, with Heir (the first album released without founding drummer Johan Nordlund, who has been replaced by Riwen’s Christian Augustin) spanning 66 minutes. Albums lurking within the genre overlap mentioned above typically veer on the shorter side due to the overwhelming aggression of the constituent styles; are TGIAC able to maintain interest across the entirety of Heir?

Back in 2019, A Throne Of Ash was nominated in the sludge metal category of the Metal Storm Awards, but this time around, black metal is by far the primary genre on display, to the extent that the aforementioned style fusion feels less relevant to the discussion. The album commences in an onslaught of semi-dissonant blackened tremolo and blast beats; “Kingdom” is relentlessly infernal, only letting up steam around the halfway mark for a creepy clean bridge that offers just enough time to catch one’s breath before the black metal fury surges forth again. Later cuts such as “Death Maker” and “Seers Of No Light” are similarly uncompromising with their hellish black metal onslaughts, although the latter is more multidimensional, containing calmer atmospheric lulls, thicker mid-tempo grooves and maddening cacophonous layering of vocals.

There are 10 tracks on Heir; to reach that hour-plus runtime, there are inevitably some longer cuts here, with four songs crossing the 8-minute barrier, and it is these tracks that allow TGIAC to deliver elements of variety. The first of these on the tracklist is “No Sun, Nor Moon”; some may find the repetition of the album title across the song’s duration to be excessive, but the mixture of lighter meloblack riffs, murky sludgy trudges and full-blooded blackened violence is an effective one. Coming right after, “Void Bringer” expands the album’s horizons further, from the eerie, spacious atmospheric opening and the greater use of slower, quieter passages, through to elaborate guitar texturing in the song’s louder passages and the heft of its mid-tempo beatdown riffs.

The muted production of the introduction to “Void Bringer” offers a bit of a prelude for what is ultimately the most remarkable track on Heir; “Cosmic Voice” opens in very similar fashion, but the initial mechanical drum rhythm is then sustained and repeated throughout the large majority of the song, pounding away beneath twisted synth textures and harsh roars. “Cosmic Voice” sounds very much like a metallic re-interpretation of the classic Portishead track “Machine Gun”, and it’s an experiment that pays off handsomely, standing as one of the highlights of the album.

The core concept of “Cosmic Voice” is quite relentless in its execution; “Vow Sayer” is relentless in a different way, featuring blast beats for the overwhelming majority of its runtime in tandem with another onslaught of sharp black metal riffs. However, there is a faint hint of melody in these riffs, and the final two tracks (both featuring Livmødr’s Laura Morgan as a guest vocalist) are both a bit more accessible in their tone. While “Old Space” is spacious, crawling and ponderous, “Ascension” overcomes a blistering opening few minutes to reach a climax that effectively does ascend, soaring with warm tremolo layers propelled by one last barrage of blasts. There’s something about the execution of the black metal on these final few songs that reminds me tonally of Walk Beyond The Dark by Abigail Williams, and after the oppressive harshness of the early stages of the tracklist, this expansion of the band’s range is welcome.

In truth, Heir has relatively little to do with sludge metal, and even less to do with hardcore; it’s a modern black metal album at its heart, and a truly furious one at that, yet This Gift Is A Curse are clearly in their element in this style, as those 66 minutes tend to fly by while listening to this record.