In feudal England, a heriot was a tribute paid to the lord of the land when a serf passed away. It was an undeniably oppressive practice, robbing poor families now bereft for the benefit of the already wealthy tyrant of the land. The heavy outfit Heriot from the UK practices a similar form of oppression, but in the form of their sonics.

One of my go-to phrases in describing music is “oppressively heavy.” But when I first heard Heriot, I realized that I have not known what it means to be so heavy that it’s oppressive. This is the kind of sonic density that squeezes your skull, that crushes your bones. It’s the sort of heaviness that dominates your attention and ceases the existence of all else.

Profound Morality, their debut, is only eighteen minutes long, but it leaves an impact crater far larger than its physical size, thanks to its unrelenting mixture of metalcore, industrial, post metal, old school hardcore, and even some glimmers of nu-metal.

For all of the band’s aggression, they know when to temper it. The record starts with “Abaddon” (named for the Hebrew archangel of destruction), an ambient track that bubbles and foams with spurts of industrial noise. But even in its dynamic calmness, there is an uneasiness swirling beneath the surface. That calm erupts violently with “Coalescence.” The guitars are distorted past the point of coherence, the drums furiously beat in machine gun double time, and the vocals shriek in a hellish scream. The onslaught is brief (I was shocked that the timestamp in the video was only thirty seconds), giving way to another subdued eerieness with moaning female vocals before erupting again at a slightly doomier tempo.

Throughout the record, they swing between these two extremes: bristling atmospheric passages combust into bursts of cruel heaviness. “Carmine (Fills the Hollow)” pairs near-noise-rock distorted riffs with a rapid D-beat hardcore drum beat. “Mutagen” is almost entirely ambient except for some heavily affected percussion and reverb-drenched clean vocals. “Enter the Flesh” nearly approaches death metal at the end with a chaotic lead guitar screaming over brutal down-tuned riffage.

The album closes with the title track, which is almost twice as long as any other song, despite the fact that it’s only four minutes itself. After shifting between atmospherics and crushing heaviness, this track blends them in earnest, throwing all of their industrial, metalcore, and sludge tendencies onto the tape at the same time to create a stunning microcosm of the album as a whole.

In a music climate where genre fusions have become the norm, it’s still somehow rare to find something that’s truly original. Profound Morality, even as nightmarishly brutal as it is, manages to be refreshing and maybe even a bit inspiring. If you have any inkling of enjoyment towards heavy music of any kind, set aside twenty minutes and let this record crush you.