Heretics have released Of Poets and Prophets, their second album, without a label behind it.
The gap is the story. Via Appia came out in 2019 and the pandemic took away every chance they had to play it, so this is the first record the German band will carry in front of an audience in the way a record is supposed to be carried.
The title splits the lyrics in two. Poets covers the cultural half, mythology and video games; Prophets covers the scientific one, with songs about black holes and the accelerating expansion of the universe. Titans of Cruelty sits outside both as an attack on organised religion, and A Shell Around the Sun joins the halves through science fiction and gave the cover its idea.
They describe it as epic death metal built on melody rather than brutality, faster than the debut but full of tempo changes, with synthesizers on Cerberus and orchestration on Smell the Ashes. Amon Amarth and Kataklysm are audible in the riffs and Fleshgod Apocalypse in the arrangement.
Jannis Mayr, who has worked on God of War Ragnarok and Destiny 2, painted the sleeve. Tim Lobner mixed and mastered it.