HEMELBESTORMER

A blue ring-shaped galaxy, two black holes on a collision course, a pantheon of Etruscan gods: Hemelbestormer do not do small. The Belgian four-piece rose in 2012 from the hardcore, doom, and black metal scenes, and every record since Portals (Consouling Sounds, 2014) has reached further out, from A Ring Of Blue Light (Ván Records, 2018) to the colliding black holes of Collide & Merge (Ván Records, 2021). The Radiant Veil (Pelagic Records, 2025) hands the sky its gods. Eight tracks run from Usil, the sun, to Satre, the underworld and the heaviest of them all, and a single harsh voice breaks in halfway through the second song before vanishing again.

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A slow arpeggio is set going, and the band keeps adding to it, one layer at a time. The bass steps forward to carry the melody, analogue synths gather underneath, and glimmering post-rock guitar rides above, until a burst of black metal tremolo or a stretch of dissonant dark ambient cuts across it all. Cinematic in scale and high-ceilinged to the point of grandeur, and somehow it works. Sludge chug keeps it grounded, and voices turn up only as guests. Crushing weight and eerie beauty share every song. Filip Dupont writes nearly all of it alone, years before the band records it, and keeps watch over the titles, sigils, and symbolism that travel with them.

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WHAT TO EXPECT

Hemelbestormer play in the dark, and the stage belongs to sigils and sound. A drone settles in the breastbone and stays there while slow arpeggios turn over it until your pulse has changed tempo without asking. Then the mass arrives: drums at a slow, heavy gait, guitars stacked into one dense body of sound that you feel in your teeth. In the middle of it a single bright melody surfaces, small and stubborn, and refuses to go out.