Heaven Shall Burn – Veto (2013)

August 24, 2023

Admittedly, metalcore, deathcore, melodic death metal, all of this stuff – it is not in my wheelhouse. The reason I’ve decided to check out this album is the intriguing album art. It is rather still, serene and beautiful, and not something that I would ever expect to represent something that tries to be so heavy and aggressive as this.

Unfortunately, where Veto falls for me is it’s enormously compressed production, which whilst not exactly rendering it unlistenable (it seems to be a very popular album), is just completely unnecessary. This kind of music does not require such a huge, blown-out, “wall of sound” style production. It feels like its being used to hide short-comings and amplify the impact but in fact it’s really just damaging the delivery immeasurably. It’s a shame because there are some excellent drumming and riffing performances in this distorted bowl of treble soup.