Nightborn releases their new EP, featuring four brand-new songs, as a follow-up to their 2022 album ‘Unhuman’. The band explains, “With ‘Hammer of the Herertic’, the idea was to experiment with different approaches and themes in each song, while maintaining that fast, dynamic, skull crushing beat that defines the Nightborn style.”
The first track, “Impenitent Ones,” is a straightforward, rhythmic, and chaotic thrash piece, with shrieking vocals designed to inspire instant headbanging, opening the EP with intensity. The theme of the song is autophagia. The second track, “Hammer of the Heretic,” is a more traditional thrash song but maintains the high energy, introducing a groovy and melodic midsection. The theme explores revenge by heretics against their inquisitors as well as bearing elements that relate to the philosophies of the occult. The third track, “Pulls of Darkness,” opens with an acoustic section and transitions into realms of melodic black metal at times, while still retaining Slayer-like riffing. The song delves into the allure of darkness that exists within every human being that we cannot escape. The final track, “The Undertow,” is a hard-hitting blast-beat-driven song that moves into death metal territories, with a hard and heavy groovy midsection. The theme of this song addresses pure hatred toward theocratic dictatorships and their inevitable fall.
For the recording of the EP, the frontman Arda used an extremely rare Ken Lawrence Explorer guitar, the only one of its kind in the world. This guitar played a crucial role in the creation of this EP, sparking inspiration. On each song, Arda, tried a different style of singing.
The aim was to create an atmosphere to grasp unrelenting, speed-driven thrash/death mania. The EP includes all music and lyrics written by Arda in classic Nightborn fashion, with Simon McKay (The Agonist) performing the drum parts, which were recorded and mixed at Chris Donaldson’s studios. Hubert Wiecek (Ex-Decapitated, Dieth, Blasphemer) handled the bass parts, and the EP was mixed and mastered by Remi LeGresley (Grizzly Productions) in Montreal, Canada.