Heavenwood - The Tarot of the Bohemians (2016)

Heavenwood decided to go all out with its fifth album, and not only come up with an interesting tarot concept for the titling and lyrics, but also deliver what must be their heaviest and most dynamic album yet. Not to say that they're not still incorporating all of the Gothic and doom metal elements you've come to expect, it's not a far cry from 2011's Abyss Masterpiece, but this one actually beats up on the listener with a selection of really heavy guitars, riffs that draw upon a lot of groove metal or thrash in addition to the stable of influences they already had. You'll also notice that the drumming here is just massive compared to their older recordings, with lots more double bass hammering and just a lot more going on which accents the busier guitars.

Fear not, they'll still blaze off into some gorgeous, sorrow-stricken melody, and the vocals still have that mix of weighty growl and bark which juggle between the British death/doom influences and the more gritty Goth guy sound. But where you've got that, they'll use the ramped up intensity to thunder it right into your skull this time. There's also a little bit of a progressive metal swagger in spots, just in how they form some of the choppier guitar patterns, The Tarot of the Bohemians feels like its ready to take on everything, that the Portuguese band is keeping up with everything going on around it and up to the challenge of modernizing, not unlike how Greece's Nightfall evolved itself through the years. This is essentially like mid-ought's Paradise Lost if it were given steroids so you could listen to it at the gym, its tender and mournful moments boxed in on all sides with heaving, hawing beefcake guitars. You were never going to see a fight in a Heavenwood pit before this album...

Or maybe not even a 'pit' at all. But through that, they keep some of the exotic mystique that bled through their sound on Abyss Masterpiece or Redemption, and the album still seems distinctly rooted in their sound, but an ironclad version of that which is much more taxing to perform. Hell, in "The Emperor" they start slowly blasting to a tremolo picked death metal riff! And you'd think that they shouldn't even try to touch such an idea, but it fits in quite flush with the Gothic architecture of their overtures. I do think some audiences might find this a little much if they were expecting Swallow 2: The Stomaching, it does have a bit of the brickwall vibe of a lot of anything goes modern metal albums, but in the end it's a welcome and formidable progression by a band willing to explore further shores than those that lapped at the lake on the 1996 debut.

Verdict: Win [7.78/10]

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Heavenwood - Redemption (2008)

A decade would pass before Heavenwood would release their follow-up to Swallow, a hiatus that didn't change their sound much. In fact, I think Redemption is a natural follow-up to the sophomore which actually improves upon the production values. This just sounds much huger and more atmospheric than their older material, probably because of newer recording techniques available to them, but it's really dense and effective and might even be the best SOUNDING album they've put out, though not the most memorable. Yet from all technical aspects, the tone on the rhythm guitars getting beefier, the leads and melodies far better infused into the rest of the material, and the synths and ethereal voices and such used to build atmosphere just feel seamless here rather than the rough novelty they once were.

It opens with a decent banger in "13th Moon", although it doesn't quite escalate to anything beyond the basic verses/chorus, and then there are several other really catchy tracks here like "Me & You" or "Fragile" which sound like souped up material that might have once appeared on their debut Diva. The band even experiments with getting a bit heavier on "Bridge to Neverland", its great riffs and exotic leads marking one of my favorite individual tunes the band has ever pulled off, or "Her Scent in the Spiral" which is somewhat similar, with ominous gutturals. These tropes are reverberated through the rest of the album, more or less, but that doesn't make them any less effective, and unlike the slightly amateur vibes you could feel off their process on the old albums, they really seemed to know what they were doing here, and put together a mix that can keep up with whatever else was going on in these bold new times, with a few small surprises like the dingy vocal harmony in "Foreclosure" which reminded me a little of old Alice in Chains.

I didn't quite feel much impact off this album, but on the other hand if I were recommending any of their albums to younger or modern audiences, it would be this and the follow-up Abyss Masterpiece. Not that Heavenwood has ever disappointed me, they are a wise group to never bite off more than they can chew, and evolve themselves slowly with nuances and minor details that keep them fresh while honoring what they had created before. Redemption is certainly heavier and less accessible than Swallow, like they were righting the ship back to its original course, and while it's not my favorite of their outings it does have an evergreen, consistent quality to it which is just as welcome today as when I first heard their return.

Verdict: Win [7.25/10]

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Heavenwood - Swallow (1998)

The cover to the Heavenwood sophomore always freaked me out, I mean not so much the devouring of the reptilian tail and possibly its owner before that, but the weird, fish-scale like texture of the skin of its consumer, glistening in sweat or slime or something. Is it swallowing it's OWN tail? No idea, but there's nothing quite so disgusting or oblique about what the Portuguese had written here, Swallow is a decidedly more commercial more effort than its predecessor. They do retain the growled vocals in places, and the doom-like chugging progressions on the record's heavier moments, but this is way more of an upbeat disc that pays tribute to Sisters of Mercy, late 90s Moonspell, and you might even find some parallels with Paradise Lost's One Second which had come out between this band's first two full-lengths.

Swallow still brings the hooks, and if you enjoy those names I just listed, I can imagine you'll get some mileage out of this one. There's way more of a rocking impulse to the guitars, and they use far more of the clean vocals than otherwise, which can occasionally be a mixed bag, but work for the most part, even if they don't come off as that unique alongside other European Gothic rock/metal bands of this period. The guitars are threaded with more cleans, effects and such to give it that contemporary, modern Goth feel, but they also maintain the use of synthesizers, whispers, etc, and I actually find them pretty tasteful through th album, whether it's the sampled choirs in the bridge of "Soulsister" or elsewhere. Once in awhile they will still churn out a more low-ended piece reminiscent of Diva, like on "Rain of July", but even that has a little more pep to it and maybe even some Lake of Tears/Cemetery vibes, especially the riffs and vocals, which can never be a bad thing for me.

The one I can't say for this sophomore is that it resonates for long with me...I mean you could argue tha it's even catchier in places than the debut, but for some reason there are melodies from that one which my brain traces a thread directly to whenever I think of the name Heavenwood. This is more of a serviceable album which was clearly riding on the trends of its age, but not at all shallow, and if you still love throwing on your copies of Skeleton Skeletron, Irreligious, and Sentenced's Down then this is one I could whole-heartedly recommend. Just don't stare at the cover so long. Eww.

Verdict: Win [7.5/10]

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Heavenwood - Diva (1996)

Although Moonspell should be credited for breaking Portugal out onto the international metal scene, it seemed as if there were a fairly long drought after their arrival, arguably until the black metal band Gaerea showed up and garnered buckets of underground praise. But that void is deceptive, because there have been a decent number of bands popping up over the decades, and a few of them were contemporaries of the aforementioned. So right around the time Fernando Ribeiro and crew were bridging the gap between black metal and Gothic metal, there appeared Heavenwood, another group with a focus more on the latter intertwined with some doom influence via Paradise Lost and the rest of the British scene. These guys were a wholly respectable outfit, relying on nothing but their music and melancholy and little theatrics.

Diva is their first and one of their finest offerings, an album that sits somewhere between Icon, Irreligious and Darkseed's Spellcraft on the Gothimetallurgimeter, a creation entirely of my own that I promise I will never mention again (though I retain the right to break such a promise). Beautiful, mournful melodies are splayed out over simpler chord patterns, with a pronounced growl vocal that certainly sounds like a blend of Holmes and Ribeiro, but also gives off some slightly higher, emotional shouting and some dripping, gothy backups. There's a Romantic quality to how they write their tunes which reminds me a little of On Thorns I Lay from Italy, but here you've got the presence of a keyboard rather than a violin. They're also not afraid to engage with a bit of dynamic range, granted the instrumentation remains consistent, but say "Flames of Vanity" gives you a bit of a pickup with the shuffling beats before it soaks down into the tears and gloom, and then "Since the First Smile" has this slower, rolling, tribal quality to the drums which really makes for an epic escape with the synth swells.

Production-wise, this album mostly holds up, but I think there are a few minor flaws, like the lead guitar sound can feel a little too thin, it needed some more weight and effects. The growls might also have been mixed in better, but for a debut I can't expect terribly much. The drums sound very good, the bass lines occasionally pop up below the solemn crush of the chords, and I can't fault a record like this which so effectively conveys its emotions, with catchy melodies that still rattle around in my head whenever I reflect back upon this niche of Gothic/doom. Diva arrived at a time when it probably could have had a bigger impact than it did...groups like Moonspell or Lacuna Coil were blowing up and Heavenwood might have followed, but I think the band might have lacked a little of the 'star power' or narcissism so many fans drool over in their music, rather they are really just a bunch of guys who happen to be quite good at this Gothic/doom metal style, and the antithesis of the album's title.

Verdict: Win [8/10]

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Heavenwood - Abyss Masterpiece (2011)

Outside of the obvious exception (Moonspell), Portugal has yet to really draw much attention unto its metal scene, whether that's by a sheer lack of individuals bearing the resolution and ambition to see it through, or a general lack of interest in the international space. That said, the 90s saw a number of Gothic, death/doom hybrids with ample potential, namely Desire and Heavenwood. The latter put out a pair of solid, memorable efforts in Diva ('96) and Swallow ('98), then took a 20 year hiatus before casting themselves back into the struggle that is the underground. In 2008, Redemption turned up, a rather forgettable return to form, but not without its moments.

Through Abyss Masterpiece, their fourth full-length, they return to the summit of accessible songwriting they achieved with the debut Diva, pleasurable enough listening for those that have not abandoned or eschewed the primary concepts of good Goth metal: sad, driving chords that are glazed in melodic overtures or symphonic swells, deep clean vocals and the added gravitas of the death growling. Normally, bands are hit and miss with this vocal hybrid, but Heavenwood excel in balancing the pair with a fluid, immersible contrast as opposed to dorky awkwardness. They also possess the ability to hit hard and hit often, even more so than their more somber, 90s records, and this results in an album balanced to evoke both sorrow and anger in equivocal concentrations. Tracks like "The Arcadia Order", with its escalating orchestral maneuvers and grunting climax, or "Goddess Presiding Over Solitude" and its chugging digs, are born of thunder uncommon to this genre, and its welcome.

Of course, you gotta travel a little deeper for some truly memorable impressions, and I found these in the fiery gloss of "Winter Slave", charging "September Blood" and the sluggish epic "Poem for Matilde", but the wealth of the 60+ minute track list is dynamic and emotionally powerful as it weaves through apertures of controlled terror and elegance. A few of the tunes, like "Leonor" with its guest female vocals, felt a little swollen and unnecessary, and several of the chord progressions throughout Abyss Masterpiece are too predictable, but on the whole you're getting a fine tuned experience with much polish in the production department. This is certainly a more symphonic affair than Diva or Swallow, but if you're seeking out some solid Gothic metal or a more subdued alternative to the cataclysmic swelter of Hollenthon, Therion and the recent Septic Flesh material then you may damn well want to give this one a spin.

Verdict: Win [7.5/10] (where words and love duel)

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