HERESIE

After perfecting their Rock In Opposition spin on chamber music with their debut "1313," UNIVERS ZERO obviously asked themselves "how can we REALLY turn up the creepiness factor?" and "how can we scare the fecal matter out of the listening audience?" On their second full album HERESIE the band went through a slight lineup change. They lost bassist Christian Genet and replaced him with Guy Segers. Both Emmanuel Nicaise and Marcel Dufrane jumped ship leaving the original septet down to a quintet. Several of the musicians are multi-instrumentalists so the sound of this second album which is almost twice the length of the debut does not feel like it's lacking in sounds.

As we approach Halloween in the US, I can not think of a more jarring and freaky sounding album than HERESIE. It was composed to incite the strongest fear factor that music can evoke. When listening to this I am still amazed at the miraculous playing technique where this band of skilled musicians can soar from passage to passage changing tempos, beats, rhythms and moods like a meandering flock of birds in the sky each knowing the precise nanosecond when the others change course. But the most amazing thing is how soundtracky this whole affair feels. It is a musical road through hell where feelings of maggots in your veins, ebola infected zombies chopping down your door with axes or screaming babies unable to escape the burning nursery ward of a hospital quickly creep into your jittery consciousness. The music oozes and punctuates like the shower scene in "Psycho" and it thrills and pacifies only to ratchet up a sonic frenzy of doom and dread and a gleeful celebration of the reign of the thorns of a dead rose.

For my money, I find this second release a tad better than the debut and that is one tall order for it was one mighty original and demented recipe for musical madness. HERESIE ups the ante severalfold and maintains its pace throughout its entirety. Even music that is designed to scare such as doom and black metal rarely achieve what these Belgians have on this pure acoustic sonic assault. I highly recommend getting the newer remastered version because the bonus track "Chaos Hermetique" is as essential as the original three tracks that punished the world in 1979. It sounds like it should have been part of the original track listing and adds an extra 12 minutes of depression to your life! What is wrong with me for liking this so much? I always have to look for monsters under my bed after listening to this one but the good news is they usually turn out to be the cute cuddly kind from Monsters Inc :-P