Une Misère – Sermon (Review)

Une Misère are an Icelandic metal band and this is their debut album.

Sermon mixes together gritty modern metal and violent hardcore, along with a touch of powerviolence, (and some other styles), and does so very convincingly.

It’s immediately apparent that Sermon is all about the heaviness. This is crushingly heavy and bleakly aggressive, channelling negative emotions into music that rips, tears, and cuts its way to the bone quickly and easily. Comparisons at certain parts of certain songs can be made to a multitude of different bands – from Slipknot to Sunlight’s Bane, to Whitechapel to Attan – but this is ultimately its own beast, and has a roar all of its own.

Mid-paced stomp and furious groove provide plenty for the listener to instantly grab hold of. There are hooks here aplenty, albeit of the barbed variety. The band’s songwriting is a balance of outright heaviness, sombre emotive undercurrents, and song-based instant gratification. It works more than it doesn’t, and Une Misère’s brand of aggression is very engaging and satisfying.

Although Sermon is basically powered by rage and anger, there are also moments of introspective darkness and doom-infused melancholy spread across the release here and there. The net result of this is a band that manages to avoid the pitfalls of potentially being a one-dimensional act, and instead offers up a collection of tracks that showcase modern heavy music with a heart as well as fists and teeth.

Violent, heavy, and full of darkness and energetic passion, Sermon is an unexpected treat.