Ein Quintett aus Virginia, das viele Metal-Genres, Doom, Prog, Post, Sludge und Stoner verbindet.
INTER ARMA
They call it the Inter Arma Curse: For nearly two decades, as the boundless Richmond crew has emerged as one of the most inspired and fearless acts in or around American metal, they have endured an endless parade of complications, hurdles, and slights: visa problems in Russia, stolen passports in Europe, unexpected member turmoil in their ranks, and a pervasive paradoxical sense that they have either been too metal or not metal enough. It’s been forever Sisyphean, except they have sporadically crested the hill to make a series of visionary albums.
New Heaven – Inter Arma’s sixth album and their first set of originals in five years—is a compelling testament to perseverance, top to bottom. Its thicket of ever-dense layers of doom, death, and black metal occasionally let bits of light slip in, fleeting reminders to keep going amid the tumult. And Mike Paparo’s keen and empathetic lyrics about innocent victims of war, addiction, and social apathy affirm that feeling, as a survivor grimaces at the carnage behind him and presses ahead best he can. “You stared into the brutish jaws of strife’s heartless device,” he growls into a chthonic blitz during “The Children the Bombs Overlooked,” a late-album powerhouse. “And you turned your back to hell.” That forward march out of madness is New Heaven in an armor-plated nutshell.
