Heretics have released "Smell the Ashes", the third single from Of Poets and Prophets, the album they have been assembling since Via Appia.
The album is built around discoveries and the awe that follows them. This song is not: the title points at the opening scene of Half-Life 2, and the band follow that dystopia with fast, heavy sections into a finale they always heard as the closing track of the record. Orchestration runs through almost the whole song, which is new for them, and it is what makes this the largest thing they have recorded.
The video is behind the scenes footage rather than a performance: the album sessions, rehearsals, the photo shoot, the shoot for the first single. It also carries an announcement. Thomas Langehenke, who has played drums since the band started in 2009, is leaving to put his time elsewhere.
They come from Verne, outside Paderborn in North Rhine-Westphalia, and have never had a label: two EPs, Free 'til Death in 2015 and Talent for Violence in 2018, a split the year after, and one album, Via Appia, in 2019. "Cerberus (Terzet for a Hellhound)" opened this campaign earlier in the year. Fabian Marx sings, Dennis Schnitzmeier and Tim Lobner play guitars and Santiago Vadillo Sánchez bass.