Hierophant – Peste LP

It was hard to fathom Italy’s Hierophant harnessing the potential to create a record heavier and more malicious than 2012’s ‘Great Mother : Holy Monster’, an already pummeling whiplash of American D-beat-inflected metallic hardcore. Lo and behold: ‘Peste’ manages just that as a superior, succinctly crushing assault, its tendencies largely erring on the side of European death metal. Hierophant spell out the desolation and desperation leveled by a war amid the id, ego and super-ego, all torturous, violent imagery and morbid, damning assertions that make it a pleasantly grim nightmare to suffer through.