Labyrinthine Heirs
Labyrinthine Heirs

Release Date: 03/28/2025 | Tracklist

I’ll never be able to understand how metal bands keep things sounding fresh in 2025. The genre has existed for 55 years and yet bands still find ways to make certain sounds or subgenres their own. Labyrinthine Heirs is a 4 piece avant-garde black metal band from Texas and their debut self-titled album is an absolute mind*** of the highest degree.

Right off the bat you’re hit with a barrage of chugging riffage that sounds so desolate that you’ll think you’ve just been transported to Silent Hill. In fact, desolate is exactly how I’d describe the entirety of the album. The riffs have a droney twang to them that evokes a feeling of confusion and disorientation. You might start to feel claustrophobic based on the pure density and heaviness of each and every riff. Panic starts to set in as you’re pulled underneath a sea of blast beats and technical fills. The vocals here are disturbing, almost sounding like a patient in an asylum coughing, spitting and screaming at you in the most agonizing way possible.

These guys really know how to make you feel as if you’re stranded on a desert island with no help coming in the near future. The time signatures of the riffs are always off beat and may sound sloppy at times but that’s the exact effect that Labyrinthine Heirs wants to have on the listener. It’s almost as if they took the most suffocating elements of Deathspell and mixed them with the far out, reverb laden build ups of Earth. It may sound like a quirky combination and it certainly plays out that way

Labyrinthine Heirs doesn’t even reach 40 minutes and the time flies by. The mark of a great album is being able to captivate the listener to the point where time means nothing. These guys will have you getting lost in the atmosphere that their oddball riffage, off kilter drumming and serial killer vocals create. It’s a flurry of avant-garde black metal that never gives you a chance to catch your breath. And right when you think you can’t handle it anymore…it’s over. But fear not, it’s the type of madness that you’ll want to hear again and again.

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3.9 excellent