AUTOKRATOR — Hammer Of The Heretics (review)

AUTOKRATOR — Hammer Of The Heretics album cover

Album · 2018 · Death Metal

4/5 · 2022-03-29
siLLy puPPy

AUKTOKRATOR caught the extreme metal world’s attention with its first two albums but didn’t exactly bring heaps of unanimous praise. One of the so-called caverncore death metal bands that followed in the footsteps of 90s bands like Immolation and Incantation with the modern reverb-drenched distortion of bands like Portal, Grave Upheaval and Mitochondrion, this French band entered the bizarre world of surreal blackened wind tunnel death metal which is not appreciated unanimously! With droning hornet swarming distortion that oscillated in and out of tune, the band’s first two albums featured a too-hard-to-swallow approach for many old school death metal fans but were celebrated by the more extreme underground metal heads for its uncompromising evil as fuck stylistic approach.

After four years and two albums of dabbling in this experimental sub-section of death metal, AUTOKRATOR showcased a stylistic shift on its third album HAMMER OF THE HERETICS which retained the blitzkrieg barrage of guitar / bass rampaging and tech drumming prowess but moved on from the incessant hypnotic droning effect with more variations of melodic riffing and an expanded menu of percussive assiduousness courtesy of the prolific metal drummer Kévin Paradis whose stylistic approach seemed custom made for this explosive branch of the death metal universe. The band had more time to take the AUTOKRATOR sound to new levels of confidence and the results indicated a much more sophisticated album without sacrificing the brutality or bleakness of the previous works.

HAMMER OF THE HERETICS is another concept album this time based on the French Inquisition which was inspired by the band’s Occitania history of the Templar Knights and infamous episodes of Catholic church overreach which started in the 12th-century Kingdom of France. The lyrics while like most death metal are unintelligible but presumably narrate the tales of this dreadful period of European history. The sole exception is the track “Le Sang Impur” which features lyrics form the French anthem “La Marseillaise” written by Calude Joseph Rouget de Lisle. Given the subject matter shift, this third installment of the AUTOKRATOR canon does not feature those Roman Empire themes and therefore stays clear of the incessant military march drum rolls of the first two albums however they can still be encountered especially on the frenetic closer “Inquisitio-Denunciatio-Exceptio.”

With the debut of drummer Kévin Paradis whose resume includes a multitude of extreme metal bands such as Agressor, Benighted, Dead Talking Mind, DeadlySins, Gorsed Noctis, Mithridatic, Serocs, The Seven Gates and Svart Crown, AUTOKRATOR entered a new chapter of its existence which allowed the established caverncore sounds to become more versatile in its subtle navigation through the chaosphere without losing the hardcore brutality and dungeony doom effects that the band had made its own. While the opening track “Against Flesh and Blood” may on the surface sound like AUTOKRATOR on auto pilot, the advancements make themselves clearly understood as the track progresses with a wider range of chord progressions in the riffing process and a greater involvement of the atmospheric backdrop as a musical element rather than just a mood generator. Add to that an expanded percussive drive that given Paradis’ notoriety in the metal world got AUTOKRATOR noticed.

While production was ramped up on “The Obedience to Authority,” on HAMMER OF THE HERETICS it becomes even more nuanced and used to create those seamless slides from different modes of operation. The swarms of angry hornet guitar distortion are tamed into moments of contrast while non-caverncore death metal riffing is allowed to get on stage and strut its badass shit. The result of these expanded modifications allows the album to become even more diverse and covers a wider range of sonic attacks however in the process loses some of the evil as fuck cavernous dungeon finesse. All in all this is yet another excellent discovery in the AUTOKRATOR extreme metal factory and although this is the point of where many find the band hitting its stride, i have to say that i am one of those that actually loves the otherworldly effects of the first two albums however i cannot deny that the band needed to move on as not to become stale and in that regard HAMMER OF THE HERETICS finds the band taking things to the next level in a most admirable way.