Cinematic Black Metal – Review of Héréditaire by UNVERKALT

Zur deutschen Version geht es hier.

Band: UNVERKALT

Album: Héréditaire

Genre: Post-Metal, Black Metal

Duration: 50:11

Release: February 27, 2026 (via Season of Mist)

When you deal with Metal bands a lot, you inevitably listen to a lot of music. Some of it is good, some of it is strange, some of it you don’t like, and then there are those pieces of music that are so different that their sheer uniqueness makes them monumental. Admittedly, such albums have become rare, not least because of the sheer volume of new releases, but in Héréditaire by UNVERKALT, I am lucky to have found just such an album. 

The band, most of whose members come from Athens and are based in Berlin, had previously attracted attention mainly with “softer” Post and Avantgarde Metal pieces, and the first single from the new album, Die Auslöschung, already impressively demonstrated that the winds have changed for this band. As the album’s opener, the song impressively illustrates how good their songwriting actually is. Die Auslöschung feels like emerging from a wall of fog and heading straight for a dark abyss. With the use of intense drumming, you plunge down this abyss and are confronted at the end with a collapse of being that emotionally anticipates the entire album.

The album also has a partly radical emotionality that I have long missed in this scene. This is particularly evident in the third song on the album, Ænæ Lithi. Although this song is less explosive than others on the album, the pain and despair behind the music are almost palpable. The song tells the story of the great fire of Smyrna, and the inferno set to music here drags us into abysses that are both frightening and moving. The hopelessness of the victims, the burden of memory for those left behind, and the struggle with fate are conveyed here so rawly and authentically that you almost feel like you are experiencing it yourself. This shows what UNVERKALT masterfully achieves: the view of the individual’s emotions does not come from outside, the listener is not a mere observer, on the contrary! We are thrown into the middle of a whirlwind of emotions and have to realize that we always carry our emotional baggage with us, whether we are aware of it or not.

I find the use of different languages to be particularly effective in supporting this! Although the majority of the lyrics are written in English, there is no shortage of Greek interjections, which are skillfully placed. Nothing is as real as the feeling conveyed through one’s native language, and the fact that UNVERKALT deliberately switch languages here to make their point is a huge asset to the respective songs and the album as a whole. Admittedly, if you don’t speak Greek, you won’t be able to understand everything word for word, but that’s not what matters in the soundscapes created by UNVERKALT. The album is so intense, so dark, so real that you can grasp what is being conveyed even without the relevant language skills.

Speaking of Greek: when you think of Black Metal and Greece, the name ROTTING CHRIST has to come up. In singer Sakis Tolis, UNVERKALT have found a truly fitting feature partner for the monument I, The Deceit, which serves as an additional emphasis on the demands UNVERKALT place on themselves in the seventh track of the album. The song is an infernal piece of epic heaviness that I simply can’t get enough of. In a world that seems to be collapsing, Tolis screams his anger at us, while singer Dimitra intones the appropriate lament. It is a song that perfectly captures society’s helplessness in the face of the catastrophic state of our world and at the same time acts as a mirror for our own inaction. Like everything UNVERKALT does on this album, this song is pure songwriting perfection.

Overall, the album captivates with so many details and immense skill on the part of the musicians involved that it’s almost unbelievable that it doesn’t seem overloaded at all. Like its predecessors, Héréditaire is a cinematic work with a lot of atmosphere, but at the same time, UNVERKALT have also found a formula to become even harder. However, the band doesn’t get lost in any gimmicks. On the contrary! The extreme meets the gentle here, forming the foundation for an absolutely genuine album that stays with you for a long time. All in all, this is definitely an album that will be among the top 10 metal releases of 2026!