Unverkalt join forces with Sakis Tolis of Rotting Christ on ‘I, The Deceit’

After drawing closer and closer to the edge over the past decade, UNVERKALT are plunging into the darkness that’s always awaited below. The post-metal luminaries are still possessed by a cinematic vision, but their new album— the first for Season of Mist—throws back the velvet curtain in favour of a blackened veil. While wrestling with the weight of our accursed histories, Héréditaire now stands as their heaviest and most heartfelt offering.

“The contrasting elements at play in Héréditaire, from the gloomy to the raging and the eerie to the explosive, make it a compelling listen that rewards over time”, Dead Rhetoric writes in an 8/10 review. “Unverkalt grapple with the emotions and atmosphere with masterful tone and intention, eliciting a response that leave you reflecting on what you just heard and make you want to return to it once again”.

Now, Unverkalt are thrilled to release a new video for the song that serves as the emotional pillar of Héréditaire. Fueled by contempt for those content on watching the world burn, “I, The Deceit” radiates strength with support from the band’s Greek brother-in-arms Sakis Tolis of Rotting Christ.

“I enjoy discovering new, unique and compelling music in today’s overwhelming world of information, and I believe I truly succeeded with Unverkalt”, Sakis Tolis says. “This is an exceptional piece of art, worth every minute of listening”.

“‘I, The Deceit’” captures the stillness of those who let the world burn, not out of ignorance, but because it serves them”, Unverkalt vocalist Dimitra Kalavrezou says.

Order & Stream: https://orcd.co/unverkalthereditaire

Héréditaire marks a pulse-pounding new direction for Unverkalt. The album’s newfound heaviness traces back to humanity’s deepest and darkest origins. Each song peels back another layer of collective trauma that’s passed down to us through generations like a disease.

“Our new album is a lament for what is far older than our very existence”, Unverkalt’s guitarist and chief composer Themis Ioannou says. “It speaks of what seeps through generations, searching for an answer to one pervasive questions: What do we carry that was never ours?”

Emerging from deep within Héréditaire, “I, The Deceit” burns like an open wound. With each pinprick of strings, a guitar throbs in pain. The entrancing chorus doesn’t come washing down like a wave of relief but as a numbing agent for our impending doom.

“This song carries the weight of human indifference toward the destruction we wreck upon the world”, Kalavrezou says. “That cruelty unfolds not as a distant tragedy, but as something intimate, almost ordinary”.

“I, The Deceit” is fueled by simmering contempt. From deep within its heavy blackened atmosphere comes a gust of blast beats. “The world falls apart / And you just stand there / Watching it burn down”, Sakis Tolis growls with scorn, standing strong amidst the eye of the storm.

Héréditaire might close shrouded in darkness, but a crack of light does appear in the form of Kalavrezou’s enchanting cleans. “I want us to have one heart together”. Like memories, the cry of horns and pleas screamed in Greek stoke the air as the song burns toward its fiery finish, reminding us of all we stand to lose.

“Even in the suffocating stillness, there’s a lingering ache for truth”, Kalavrezou says. “For something uncorrupted. And in that storm, something might still feel true”.

UNVERKALT are drawn to the edge. Since emerging from the underground, the Germany by way of Greece post-metal band have balanced boundless atmosphere with suffocating heaviness. Their third album and first since signing with Season of Mist doesn’t continue in that direction so much as it plunges into the darkness that’s always been waiting below. Héréditaire lifts the veil from our cursed existence. What emerges is Unverkalt’s heaviest and most heartfelt offering.

“Our aim has always been to blend softer, more romantic elements with extreme chaos. With Héréditaire that time has now come”, says the band’s guitarist and chief composer Themis Ioannou. “This album is a lament for what is far older than our very existence. It speaks of what seeps through generations, searching for an answer to one pervasive question: What do we carry that was never ours?”

From the beginning, Unverkalt was born from an urge to give life to grief. In 2017, Ioannou started the band with vocalist Dimitra Kalavrezou in hopes of creating something that was slow-burning and visceral, crushing yet delicate. Their debut made good on that promise: “…so rivetingly beautiful that you will have to deepen to digest it”, Metal Hammer Greece wrote in awe of L’Origine du Monde. “Easily on the top-10 of 2020”.

The band’s second album followed three years later to further acclaim. While swooning between obsession and annihilation, A Lump of Death: A Chaos of Dead Lovers sharpened Unverkalt’s vision by pushing their avant-garde streak with more force. “Beyond being able to point roughly towards a couple of different genres, it is utterly impossible to compare them to any other artist out there making music in the same vein”,  The Sleeping Shaman admired. Echoes and Dust agreed: “It stands in its own right as a beautiful slice of filmic post-rock, a soundtrack without a movie beyond the one playing in your head”.

Héréditaire is still possessed by cinematic visions. Like a camera coming into focus, lead single “Die Auslöschung” appears through a thickening haze before it’s snapped out of a trance by drummer Christian Eggers’ fiery blast beats. The album shifts between colors, textures, even languages. Stirred by a mournful saw of strings, “Ænae Lithi” raises memories of the Great Fire of Smyrna that were handed down by Themis’ grandmother. But where previous albums took cues from French painting and European film noir, this one throws back the velvet curtain in favor a veil. “Oath Ov Prometheus” dismantles the myth of man as god’s perfect creation with Kalavrezou’s freshly blackened vocals.

“We love to experiment with every album”, Ioannou says. “With Héréditaire, we wanted to introduce extreme vocals because they bring out all these heavy feelings. It’s like they’re shaking you awake”.

While Héréditaire is a pulse-pounding new direction for Unverkalt, the album’s arc traces back to our deepest and darkest origins. Amidst the tremolo-picked wreckage of “Penumbrian Lament”, long-held beliefs are swallowed into the void of guitarist Eli Mavrychev’s death growls. “It’s all sorts of dead ideas / They cling to us all the same”, Kalavrezou whispers, only to break into screams on “Introjects” beneath Joscha Hoyer’s throbbing bass line. “The concept behind the record is tied in with the album’s overall heaviness”, she says. “Each song peels back another blackened layer of memory, trauma and suffering, which linger over us like ghosts: invisible, yet endlessly present”.

Kalavrezou’s mystifying cleans remain one of Unverkalt’s defining traits. Even when trembling beneath the monolithic riff of “I, The Deceit”, her contempt for those who stand by as the world burns is heated when forged alongside her Athenian brother-in-arms Sakis Tolis from Rotting Christ. But as the album draws to a close, Héréditaire ends shadowed in doubt for the future. “Bathed in lies / Can we make it better” she wonders before disappearing into the shivering wake left by “Maladie de ‘Esprit”.

“This album is not meant to resolve”, the band says, “but to dissolve patterns from those who came before, faceless yet familiar. The colors have drained. What remains is veiled in black, not as a symbol, but as a truth that covers everything”.

On Héréditaire, Unverkalt lift the veil on our cursed existence with their heaviest and most heartfelt offering.

Recording Lineup:
Dimitra Kalavrezou — Vocals
Themis Ioannou — Guitars, Keys
Eli Mavrychev — Guitars, Vocals
Joscha Hoyer — Bass
Christian Eggers — Drums

Guest Musicians:
Sakis Tolis — Vocals on “I, The Deceit”