MORRIGAN'S PIT REVIEW

To start in medias res, Heruka is an Italian fantasy black metal band. To be honest, this combination made me smile. So far I did not have luck with Italian bands and a fantasy black metal band sounded more than funny. To make the listeners even more confused the band is coming from Buddhism. But when the cd finally arrived from Sicily and after the checking the booklet and the biography I understood how dedicated and determined they were

The 24 minutes long mini album kicks off with an epic intro before the drum machine is turned on. I am sorry to start this review with talking about the drum machine but its sound is so obvious and actually in this case, it ruins the music. As I said earlier their style is fantasy black metal and that is exactly what they are are playing: epic black metal, following Bathory's path. It means grim black metal with lots of melodies and keyboards. I would say it's a mix of Bathory, early Satyricon and nowadays Dimmu Borgir, only their sound is terrible. The songs are varied, both tempo- and theme-wise (though they should have worked more on the drums) and the epic parts are great, so if they had a decent sound, they could have already been a lot more known due to the popularity of this kind of black metal these days. But the quality of the sound makes it almost a pain to listen to.
Adranos, who is the main man behind Heruka (songwriting, lyrics, bass, guitars, programming) is also responsible for the vocals and he sounds a lot like Dani Filth, just trying to be primal and more grim. They put a lot of effects on his voice and I wonder how much natural he would sound without it? It might do good to the music as well...We also got some deep, growling like "storytelling" vocals that help to make the songs sound epical (and their lyrics are in Italian!). Heruka is basically Adranor's one man project because guitarist Moha was just a guest on the album according to the cd booklet, while he is mentioned as a composer together with Adranor.

Their concept is great. The music, while it is not oustanding and many times it's built up from clichés, points to the right direction. But to make it really good, they would need to improve a lot on their sound and find a human drummer, whose dynamic beats would give more power to the music and could also play more varied drum themes. Their first album is in the making process and I am looking forward to hear it and hopefully these problems will be gone with it. Till then, I recommend this cd to only fanatic black metal collectors.