Band:	Heretoir
Album:	The Circle
Style:	Blackgaze, Post-black metal
Release date:	March 2017

01. Alpha
02. The White
03. Inhale
04. Golden Dust
05. My Dreams Are Lights In The Sky
06. XIX XXI XIV
07. Exhale
08. Eclipse
09. Laniakea Dances (Soleils Couchants)
10. Fading With The Grey
11. The Circle (Omega)

Of all the different metal genres, the ‘blackgaze’ or ‘metalgaze’ niche is one that I’m perhaps most neutral to, which is why when an album comes along that makes a more lasting impression than just ‘enjoyable’, there’s all the more reason to savour it. Having made several comparison to Heretoir’s The Circle when outlining my mixed emotions concerning their new release Nightsphere, it felt appropriate to dive into what makes The Circle such a standout release.

Heretoir aren’t the most active of bands; formed in 2006, they’ve only just released album number 3 this week, and while Nightsphere came 6 years after The Circle, their sophomore album also only arrived at the end of a 6-year interval following their self-titled debut. Heretoir was an intriguing album, arguably their most black metal release, but also one containing a lot of more tranquil or melodic content. Rough around the edges, it nevertheless hinted at untapped potential, and the Germans put those six years to good use in crafting a sophomore album to be proud of.

Brief introductory tracks can be a mixed bag on records; the logic is sound, in trying to set a tone for a record while also allowing the first ‘proper’ song to get immediately under way, particularly if it’s going to be released as a single, but such introductions can feel fairly throwaway if not well executed. “Alpha” is one of my all-time favourite examples of a prelude-style opener; there’s such tender emotion in the warm synths and the sad guitar motif, it immediately sets expectations high for the album as a whole. Heretoir then shift tack while still sustaining the momentum with “The White”; this song opens with warm tremolos and moves straight into a delicately crafted verses, but they really demonstrate their ability in the second half, which is dominated by an intense, crunching syncopated rhythm, soaring guitar lines and the emphatically enunciated refrain: ‘Illuminate!’

“The White” makes for a powerful, emotionally charged opening to the record; however, considering how the opening to this review focuses on metalgaze, it’s not really part of that genre. It’s after this song that the more gazey textures appear in the band’s sound, starting with “Inhale”, a track that, while featuring powerful percussion, has a lot of warm tremolo guitar and synth layers. The use of ‘blackgaze’ as a label for this album doesn’t always feel pertinent, as while the light textures inspired by post-rock and shoegaze appear frequently, the blackened parts are less prevalent, but “Inhale” does incorporate blasts and shrieks in portions. The most predominantly blackened song on The Circle is “Fading With The Grey”, the explosive penultimate track on the record, on which session drummer Tobias Schuler (of Der Weg Einer Freiheit, pre-empting the guest appearance of DWEF vocalist Nikita Kamprad on Nightsphere) blasts away relentlessly in the first half in tandem with sorrowful guitar leads and bleak soundscapes, before everything slows down for a huge, grandstand climax.

At the other end of the spectrum, “Golden Dust” mostly eschews metal altogether, allowing the band’s frontman David Conrad an opportunity to show off his full clean singing range as the song traverses post-rock tremolos, dainty clean guitar arrangements and eventually euphoric, celestial soundscapes (all with Schuler pushing things along with liberal double bass use). It’s the beginning of a lengthy lighter stretch on the album; if there’s anywhere that Heretoir could have maybe cut down the 65 minutes of runtime on the album, “My Dreams Are Lights In The Sky” already feels like a ‘respite’ track, so immediately following it with a full-on ambient interlude in “XIX XXI XIV” causes the album to drag slightly. The other potentially disposable track is the lengthy yet relatively unmemorable “Laniakea Dances (Soleils Couchants)”, although this song is noteworthy in featuring Neige, foreshadowing the seeming influence Alcest would have on Heretoir’s next album.

After the lightness of the album’s first half, Heretoir do turn things in a darker direction in the closing stretch, starting off with the slow, fierce-sounding beginning of “Exhale”, which alternates these intense, grandstanding moments with ethereal intervals and blackened assaults. “Eclipse” is notable for opening and closing with more syncopated riffing in the vein of the climax to “The White”, but it arguably makes more of an impression with its bright-sounding sad lead guitar melodies in the chorus. Finally, after the emotional journey that is “Fading With The Grey”, Heretoir have time for one more evocative song, arguably saving the most passionate song for last in the form of the title track; from the sorrowful strings in the introduction, through the intense, memorable central guitar motif and gloomy soundscapes, “The Circle (Omega)” makes good use of its 9 minutes to give a real sense of finality to the album that shares its name.

The Circle is an album that shows what blackgaze, and metalgaze in general, is capable of, but it also doesn’t confine itself to a single musical approach, and is very successful when it mixes things up on the likes of “The White” and “Exhale”. In a metal niche that I find to be generally populated by relatively disposable releases, The Circle manages to be essential, and has come to be something of a benchmark that I evaluate new releases by (including, perhaps unfortunately for Heretoir's sake, their subsequent release).