Hecate Enthroned is arguably one of the most celebrated bands to come out of the UK’s oft-forgotten ’90s black metal scene. It’s a shame the scene gets overlooked, as they pumped out some of the most theatrical albums of that time. Where would we be without the early ’90s offerings of Bal-Sagoth or the much-maligned (but incredible in their heyday) Cradle of Filth? Sure, it wasn’t as “trve” as what emerged from Scandinavia, it wasn’t as primitive as what was coming out of the States, but it had a unique penchant for melodrama and gothic romance. I mention Cradle of Filth as a reference point, and considering that Jon Kennedy (former Hecate Enthroned vocalist, RIP) briefly played bass for the band in 1994, it should come as no surprise that Hecate’s early material sounded similar to Cradle. Yet, what Hecate Enthroned accomplished in the latter half of the ’90s, at times, surpassed their big label peers. Does that still hold up in the modern age? Are they still lowkey doing the Cradle of Filth sound better than Cradle themselves?
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No… but, maybe, also yes (but that’s not me praising Hecate Enthroned; it’s me criticizing everything Cradle of Filth has done since 2000’s Midian). I’m not sure if The Corpse of a Titan, A Lament Long Buried, Hecate Enthroned’s seventh full-length, should exist, and the group doesn’t either. After multiple listens, I’m left scratching my head about it. Have you ever been in a meeting and thought “this could have been an email?” Well, that’s this album. The 54-minute runtime starts to show around the album’s midsection, because that’s when it starts dragging. It takes us until the seventh track (“The Gallery of Rotting Portraits”) before it sounds like the band actually wanted to record and release something. Hecate Enthroned don’t know who they are anymore, in that The Corpse of a Titan, A Lament Long Buried sounds like it could be the debut record for a hundred wannabe symphonic acts that will be here today and gone tomorrow because they don’t have a solid identity. It does not sound like a release by a band with over 30 years of history and legitimately legendary albums in their back catalogue.
To begin, the production is awful. I had to download my promo copy twice because I thought that my first download got corrupted, but no. It sounds like plastic trying to be something it isn’t. Much like mainstream modern metal slop bands like Lorna Shore and Slaughter to Prevail, The Corpse of… is laughably over-produced. Nothing sounds organic; the vocals are so processed they lose any human element they might have originally had. I don’t want to disparage the work that Joe Stamps put in vocally, he knows proper technique and his screams and howls sound good for what they are, but much like the instrumentals, there’s no humanity. Blame shouldn’t fall entirely on the band’s shoulders, as mixing/mastering/production duties were handled by Dan Abela, whose previous credits behind the board include the metalcore bands Bleed From Within and Silent Descent, so that’s just what this guy thinks heavy music should sound like. He’s wrong, mind you, but the band hired him, and he gave them what he was paid for.
I can’t pin my dislike for The Corpse of… entirely on the production work, as the songwriting itself is average at best. I can think of 10 to 20 other bands who play this same style of black metal, and if you were to put their logo on the album cover, I wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. It’s almost paradoxical; this sounds like everything else while sounding like nothing else at the same time because it’s just so run-of-the-mill and spiritless. Even the moments I enjoy, the strings and vocals amidst atmospheric passages, happen too often to really get me into the mood. The first two minutes of “Steed of the Still Water,” featuring sweeping orchestration with harsh vocals underneath it, create a nice vibe before the rest of the song kicks in. Unfortunately, that promising idea gets undone one song later (with the oddly titled “Pwca.” Is it Welsh? An Acronym? Who knows) because Hecate Enthroned use the exact same strategy again, this time with a female vocalist tossed into the mix. That’s fine, you can do two parts that sound like that, just spread it out a little, not one song right after the other.
The heavy music cliché we call “beauty and the beast” is usually applied to vocals, when pretty vocals are contrasted with “super scary metal vocals” that makes your grandma tinkle in her Depends? Well, that’s The Corpse of…’s problem, except it isn’t in the vocals; it’s in the music. Too many songs try so hard to have majestic, sweeping, and grand orchestral moments, purely to juxtapose against how br00tal the instrumental is about to be whenever these guys remember “Oh yeah, we’re a metal band, let’s play metal.” Their aspirations of being Summoning-esque fall flat. It feels like there’s no purpose for anything they do symphonically, considering most tracks would benefit from being more stripped down.
After five or six listens, I had to go back to Upon Promethean Shores (1996) and The Slaughter of Innocence (1997) to make sure that I didn’t experience a traumatic head injury because I could have sworn this band used to be fucking awesome. Turns out they used to be, but time is a cruel mistress, and eventually she comes for us all (I felt another grey hair come in as I typed that sentence). I don’t know what else I can say, other than like, you don’t have to do this. You can do the legacy act thing and tour on the strengths of your old albums and rake in the nostalgia bucks. You don’t need to contribute new material to the modern scene if you don’t have anything else to say. No one’s going to be mad at you for taking a victory lap and revisiting your glory days before you ride off into the sunset, but unfortunately I think the sun set a long time ago. It’s midnight now, the fire’s dying out, there’s no more kindling in the pile, and I can hear the wolves howling.
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The Corpse of a Titan, A Lament Long Buried is available now.
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