Hemelbestormer – The Radiant Veil (Review)

Hemelbestormer are a post-metal band from Belgium and this is their fourth album.

I rate Hemelbestormer highly, and you should too. 2016’s Aether, 2018’s A Ring of Blue Light, and 2021’s Collide & Merge are all massive slabs of instrumental post-metal/doom, and I heartily recommend them. The Radiant Veil is cut from the same cloth, providing the refined listener with 66 minutes of expressive and atmospheric music to explore.

The Radiant Veil offers up a compelling mix of post-metal, post-rock, doom, and progressive metal. There’s even a fleeting black metal influence that can be felt in places. The record sits somewhere between the apocalyptic and the spacefaring. It is imbued with a deep cosmic grandeur, with resplendent melodic colour and progressive sci-fi intricacy. It’s also dark and epoch-ending, graced with affecting melancholic emotion and doomgaze finality.

Hemelbestormer’s music is rich and well-developed. With textured detailing that comes from knowing how to make the most of your talents, each of the songs takes the listener on a journey across worlds of splendour and threat. You embark upon this astral expedition with the necessary tools to survive, but you need to make sure you use them properly. Helembestomer are your capable guides across this vast and imposing starscape, and they steer the listener through chasms and skies in search of wonders.

The worldbuilding across the album is well-realised, and the songs all have their parts to play in allowing The Radiant Veil to flow as well as it does. Hemelbestormer craft music of such atmospheric depth that’ll soon find yourself adrift in the outer reaches of the universe, just taking in all of the sights and sounds.

Unexpectedly, the second track – Turms – actually features vocals from the singer of Caspian. More unexpectedly, there are harsh vocals in Cel, although I’m not sure who from, (presumably one of the band?). In the grand scheme of the album’s arc the vocals are only there briefly, but they’re impactful and well-performed.

On their fourth album Hemelbestormer manage to continue their upward trajectory. They have ascended to the heavens once more, and they’ve allowed us to come along for the ride. The Radiant Veil is a record that shouldn’t be missed by fans of bands such as Amenra, Pelican, Russian Circles, Year of No Light, etc.