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Inter Arma is messing with us. The leadoff/title track on New Heaven is a discordant, nerve-jangling seven-and-a-half-minutes of Converge-meets-Mortician chaos—a feat in and of itself—that has almost nothing to do with the rest of the album. Upon hearing it, Inter Arma enthusiasts might think they’re in for a reprise of the band’s purposely ugly and abrasive 2019 album, Sulphur English, which vocalist Mike Paparo once described to me, in print and on the record, as “a middle finger.”
New Heaven is not that. Instead, the Richmond, Virginia extremity squad give us their shortest and most sonically diverse album yet. Inter Arma established their ability to combine seemingly incompatible subgenres as far back as their 2013 Relapse debut Sky Burial, but New Heaven might be their new pinnacle in that department. Exhibit A: “Violet Seizures,” a song defined by black metal, tribal drums, and ray-gun effects. Huh? Yeah. Maybe you can see where this is going. But probably not.
Inter Arma guitarist Trey Dalton has called the twisting, gleaming “Desolation’s Harp” the band’s “flirtation with brevity.” Even at four-and-a-half minutes, it feels like a couple of different songs in one, with a Maiden-esque harmonized guitar break peeking through the churning blastbeat brew. For another band, this would be an open-and-shut case of riff salad; in Inter Arma’s expert hands, it’s seamless.
The triumphant twin-guitar interplay of instrumental “Endless Grey” invokes Master of Puppets, then compounds its classic Metallica qualities with prominent bass courtesy of new member Joel Moore, who even takes an “Anesthesia”-style run that only serves to elevate an elegantly triumphant piece. Paparo channels the stentorian spirit of Sisters of Mercy scowler Andrew Eldritch on the pulsing “Gardens in the Dark,” while the band takes an ominous, cinematic turn through the fields of Nephilim. It’s a killer song that—much like the title track—is completely unrepresentative of the album as a whole.
“The Children the Bombs Overlooked” is New Heaven’s writhing centerpiece, a cannonade of war drums and detonating guitars seemingly designed to sound like a slow-motion apocalypse. And it works: Paparo resumes his Eldritch intonations before retching like a monster on the other side of an invisible wall, a witness to man’s self-destruction, voyeur to the whirlwind of arrogance and avarice that will usher in our demise. “Concrete Cliffs” alternately chimes and booms with a dreamlike quality before hammering you—and me, and everyone—awake with an unforgiving piston-riff. It’s like nodding off on painkillers and then being jolted awake by some dude running a jackhammer at the foot of your bed.
Like many Inter Arma records, New Heaven closes with a downbeat acoustic song. This one’s about a self-isolating backwoods type who may or may not be dying. It’s called “Forest Service Road Blues,” like a lost Mark Lanegan track, and it’s got a violin and everything. Like other songs here, it sounds nothing like the rest of the album. And it’s also one of the best.
