Heaven Shall Fall – Beneath The Waves EP

If you like energetic riffs, power-chords aplenty and crazy live shows then you can’t go a second longer without this release in your life. Hailing from Southampton, Heaven Shall Fall have put their hearts and souls into creating powerful and hard-hitting songs you will love since 2012, and the passion really shows in this debut release.

Opening track Not A Knight In Shining Armour, Just A Man With A Gun jumps straight into the action, no nonsense with chugging chords and visceral vocals over the bittersweet knives edge of high-pitched wails or strained guitar strings and low, demonic pulses of the drum beat. This may seem heavy and hard-going, yet the harshness is intersected with beautiful, melodic vocals creating a sweet, pleasing to the ear juxtaposition.

This is seen throughout this release, but does it get boring? Hell no! The mob keep it interesting by mixing it up and bringing in their metal influences, seen in Welcome to Hell Sweetheart and most notably I Stole The Stage featuring sweep-picking, or shredding, all the way through and infectious, dark hooks keeping the release both fresh in sound yet hailing back to their metal roots. Both feel slightly lighter with a lot more melody and shouting over gutturals also showing the musical range this mob can cover, and offering something different in a music scene inundated with generic pop punk, hardcore and metalcore.

Beneath The Waves goes off the beaten track completely starting with spine-chilling off-key synth over crashing drums and chords creating a cacophony of “oomph” before spiralling into an out of control mix of wailing guitars, ear-piercing screams, with vocals and drums so loud they almost burst your ear drums. The mix is beautifully precise with interludes of saccharine sweet piano highlighting just how eclectic and crafted with love this track really is.

Closing track Broken Home starts slowly leading up to an epic climactic finish, really ending this E.P with a bang and cementing their mark on the unsigned music scene with driving chords slowly rising to an insane amount of shredding, drums starting from a patter to the embodiment of crashing thunder, heartfelt lyrics executed perfectly by the dual power of singing and deep, ear-splitting screams. This track has it all, metal, metalcore, melody and an “mmm” factor when the interlude of keys and strings slowly rises to an onslaught of power with hair-raising gang vocals and instruments working as one.

Showing that it isn’t about being signed or backed by anything in particular, Heaven Shall Fall have shown that all it takes is passion and true dedication to create a masterpiece within their respective genre. It’s not often I say it, but I was blown away by this release. Its not all about what’s obvious in a song, it’s about how all the little things fit together and these lads have shown that they have perfected all the little elements.