I've spoken often on the blog about "lightning moments", when music reaches out and strikes me down with wonder, awe, and love. One of the strongest such moments I can remember was the first time I heard HAAST's Made of Light. The album is, to this day, one of my favorite albums and still routinely "shocks" me with how much I feel when listening to it. After its release, me and the band got to talking and this ended up with Heavy Blog using our Patreon funds to help make the next HAAST album come to life. This naturally means that I've heard Dreams of Home, the aforementioned next album, several times and let me tell you, the lightning is definitely back.
Today, I am very proud and excited to premiere the second single from the album, "Denail in the Lion's Den". It has everything I love about HAAST - big drums, echoing chords, and boisterous, emotion laden vocals. Their skill at skirting the lines between doom, post-metal, alt metal, and post-rock is very much on display here as well, with the track oscillating between moody atmosphere and rich catharsis. Fueled by a dogged, vociferous anger at the state of things, "Denial in the Lion's Den" channels that hard to describe derision one sometimes feels at how messed up the world truly is. Tune in around the five minute mark for one of the most absolutely moving HAAST passages; listen to that guitar line build as the narration reaches a haggard fever pitch and then bathe in the catharsis of the crescendo as it breaks over you. This all captures that hard to pin down, somehow motivating and moving anger that you are all probably familiar with.
Dreams of Home will be released later this year and we'll make sure to keep you posted once pre-orders are available. Bless the lightning!