Review: This Gift Is A Curse – Heir
This Gift Is A Curse’s “Heir” is a monolith of modern extremity, a 67-minute descent into a world where black metal’s frostbitten fury collides with sludge’s suffocating weight and hardcore’s unrelenting aggression. From the first, dissonant chords of “Kingdom,” it’s clear that the Swedish outfit isn’t here to play nice. This is music as a force of nature! The band’s ability to weave together crushing riffs, hypnotic atmospheres, and moments of sheer, chaotic violence is impressive and creates songs like “No Sun, Nor Moon” and “Void Bringer” which are sprawling epics and sonic assaults. The production is razor-sharp, ensuring that every note cuts through with brutal clarity. Yet, for all its ferocity, “Heir” is never just noise for noise’s sake. There’s a method to the madness, a sense of purpose behind every shift in tempo, every dissonant melody, every crushing breakdown.
What makes “Heir” so devastating is its refusal to let up, its willingness to drag you through the muck and mire of its own making. The album’s middle section, anchored by the haunting “Passing” and the sprawling “Seers of No Light,” is where the band truly flexes its muscles. The former is a brief but chilling interlude, a moment of eerie calm before the storm, while the latter is a masterclass in tension and release, its dissonant melodies and crushing rhythms building to a climax that feels less like a resolution and more like a surrender. The band’s ability to balance brutality with atmosphere is what sets “Heir” apart from so much of the extreme metal pack. This album makes you feel the weight of its darkness in your bones.
Yet, for all its strengths, “Heir” isn’t without its challenges. The album’s runtime is daunting, and its unrelenting intensity can be exhausting. There are moments where the sheer density of the music threatens to overwhelm, where the line between oppressive atmosphere and outright fatigue blurs. But this is less a flaw and more a testament to the album’s ambition. This Gift Is A Curse aren’t interested in making things easy for you. They’re interested in making you feel, whether that’s through the apocalyptic fire of “Cosmic Voice,” the slow-burning despair of “Old Space,” or the all-out sonic annihilation of “Ascension.” The latter, in particular, is a song that feels like the album’s mission statement: a relentless, crushing finale that leaves you breathless, bruised, and utterly spent.
In the end, “Heir” is an album that doesn’t just push boundaries – it obliterates them. It’s a record that feels like the culmination of everything This Gift Is A Curse have been working toward, a statement of intent from a band operating at the absolute peak of their powers. It’s brutal, it’s beautiful, and it’s utterly uncompromising. If you’re looking for extreme metal that challenges as much as it crushes, that immerses as much as it devastates, then “Heir” isn’t just a gift; it’s a revelation.
