It's a cold July in Australia, the year is 2018 and I've slapped on Spotify while moving houses and heard Behold the Bearer of Light, and Inferi, for the first time. I'm loading boxes into my car, now rock hard, and sobbing like some sort of emotionally deprived, sex pest vagabond - which was true. Fallujah had already cemented my love for melodic technical death metal, and now Inferi was the blackened addition I was yearning for - and this has kept them close to my heart ever since. Now we have Heaven Wept: an atmospherically, technically, and thematically rich conceptual triumph of an album that takes you through a story of collapsing spiritual comfort (right?). Irrespective of where you sit on the nature of the thematic content and the deeper question at large, if you take it as what it ought to be taken as, Heaven Wept is as compelling as it is enjoyable. Now, that says nothing of the majesty and divine nature (sorry, you Godless freaks) of the melodic, rhythmic and instrumental display that would, in some juicy irony, make heaven rejoice. I don't think a single 5-second part goes by that isn't enjoyable, both within the context of the song and passages themselves, but also just as little isolated motes of musical brilliance in and of themselves. Stevie's vocals are fantastic here and while normally the weakest part of a recent Inferi release... well... they still are... but this time they fit so beautifully well that I am no longer wholly hoping for Malcolm to insist upon an instrumental track: Stevie has always been stellar, but I just enjoy the instrumental so much that my selfish (and perverted) desire is for just more of that. Speaking on the quality of riff writing and memorable melodies, the boys have sculpted wonderful brilliance for almost 38 minutes straight. And I mean that. Don't believe me? First of all: don't even step to me like that, peasant. Second of all: just listen to it and thank me later. I will say: this doesn't sound like the Inferi I heard on that cold July day, but I'm about as hard as I was then and if that entices you... dm me first, then listen to Heaven Wept while I finish myself off.