Album Review : Inter Arma - New Heaven (2024)
There are bands you have to see live in order to understand. The Killers were one for me. I never got into their stuff and one day, my boy dragged me to their concert and I went "Oh, I totally get it now". Inter Arma is one of these bands. First time I heard one of their records, I didn't understand what I was supposed to feel. I caught them opening for Full of Hell last year and got that "oh" moment when I saw their frontman Mike Paparo furiously stomping the stage and howling away. New Heaven should put any confusion about to who they are to rest, though. It’s great.
Inter Arma are on the verge of something special.
New Heaven consists in eight intense, complex and cinematic songs that range from anywhere from under three minutes to seven minutes and a half. About two minutes into the opener, Inter Arma hit you with their first big dramatic moment in the record, an atmospheric guitar bridge that pulls away from the primordial discordance of their music like a like a spirit rising from the grave. The title song is full of big, larger than life moments like these that ramp up the ongoing anxiety and intensity up to a scorching climax. It has one foot in the present and another in the future.
The follow-up Violet Seizures is a completely different animal. It manages to be moody and catchy while featuring blast beats. Inter Arma’s drummer T.J Childers is really one of the shining stars on this record. He’s so dynamic and versatile, he can shift the mood of a song on a dime. Mike Paparo sounds completely different on this one also, going for the high screech rather than the cavernous, reverb drenched growl of the title song. Violet Seizures is a vaporous, but vivd and intuitive experience. It’s like nothing Inter Arma has ever done before.
Desolation’s Harp picks up right where Violet Seizures had left off with the obsessive blast beats. It's in your face and crammed sometimes discordant, sometimes melodic guitar riffs. Inter Arma really harness their Earth shattering power on it, but they’re capable of so much more. Endless Gray is somewhat of an interlude that features big, emotional arena rock guitars that don’t require vocals to tell a story. It’s a nice shift from the seismic Desolation’s Harp and provides a more accessible texture to their conventionally more complex and tormented sound.
Gardens in the Dark is another disorienting, but vibrant and cinematic change of pace. Mike Paparo sings CLEAN on this one. It features shoegazey swirling guitars and a metric fuckton of reverb that balance the irresistible catchiness of the song. It’s the most unique Inter Arma song I’ve ever heard. The Children of The Bombs Overlooked might be the BEST song I’ve ever heard by Inter Arma, though. Man, that song fucking rules. In a little over seven minutes, the band packs an emotional journey you can hardly find on full albums.
Paparo’s versatile and emotional performance and Childers' splendid drumming really anchor the song into this tortured emotional paradigm. It really feels like walking through a graveyard inside a war torn country and having ghosts swirling around you. It’s a song that radiates a very particular kind of emotion, but it’s quite strong and gripping.
Concrete Cliffs is another more conventional Inter Arma song. It’s choppy, obsessive, it alternates between powerful, in your face agression and mellower muggy and mysterious reverb heavy segments with the occasional clean vocals. It’s true for most songs on New Heaven, but Concrete Cliff is a good example of how Inter Arma created such an otherwordly, hypnagogic mood on the record. It’s not my favorite song on there, but it has such a powerful and unique, well-defined identity. It fits a precise mood, which is what was lacking to Inter Arma's music before.
The closer Forest Service Road Blues is another off-puting, Faith No More-inspired (Mike Paparo sings clean a little bit like a mix of Nick Cave and Mike Patton) ballad that would only possibly fit as a closer to such a rattling record. It’s a very simple song, but Paparo’s inspired and the elegiac strings provide a somber and crushing mood that feels completely appropriate. New Heaven is such a visual record. It evokes such finality. It’s the kind of record you listen to when the apocalypse is happening. It’s like nothing I ever heard before.
*
Inter Arma are on to something. It required moving away from their identity (and I believe it will require move further away from it), but they’re really on the verge of becoming a special band. Some of the songs on New Heaven are just begging to become the soundtrack of a Netflix show. It’s so heavy and unique and vivid and weird. The powerful and chaotic compositions are still part of their sound, but it might not be what they’re best at? Anyway, I though New Heaven was one of the most intriguing records we’ve got so far in 2024.
You won’t need to see Inter Arma live to get it. New Heaven is coming out on April 26 from Relapse Records. Get ready!
