Ba'al - The Fine Line Between Heaven And Here
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BA’AL – THE FINE LINE BETWEEN HEAVEN AND HERE LABEL: ROAD TO MASOCHIST RELEASE DATE: JULY 18th 2025
Once an inferno of smoke, molten metal and flame, of poisoned waterways crawling sluggishly through slag heaps and waste, the air heavy with the stench of chemicals…every raindrop carrying soot within its heart. Its towers have toppled and its flaming maws grown cold, yet still it stands, a monument to blood and sweat and tears. A wound cut deep into the landscape and a scar upon the moor but surrounded by the windswept grasses and forests of oak. Snakes bathe on sun warmed rock amongst the heather, while the last furnaces roar in the valley below. A place of contrasts and complexities, of history and future dreams, the resilience of mankind and nature side by side. A cradle of stories…a home.
Ba’al were born in Sheffield, they grew and live amongst its inner city streets, in the shadows of its industrial past – but with the beauty of the Pennine hills just beyond its outskirts; one part of their hearts concrete and steel, one part moor and rill. This setting, this borderland between two states of being, this dichotomy of environments provides the stage for their second album, The Fine Line Between Heaven And Here. Drawing on their personal experiences the band have explored themes of grief, depression, suicide, substance abuse and existential dread; invoking the intensely human struggles that are played out against this backdrop of disparate elements and in every other place our troubled species has carved out a home.
The Fine Line Between Heaven And Here opens with ‘Mother’s Concrete Womb’ – a thing of beauty that emerges from enshrouding mist, a city slowly awakening…bursting into life. Furious black metal, shuddering riffs, peaks of intensity and emotion, melody drifting like soft rain, so many different elements and all so beautifully entwined, all vital to the gargantuan presence of this song. And that is the pattern that the album follows, with each track being an epic journey in its own right. Dreaming melodies bleed into sinuous riffs and caustic vocals shear through vast chord patterns, the tumbling rhythms of ‘Floral Cairn’, a cry for compassion and a more caring world, collapsing into the splintered visions of ‘Well Of Sorrows’ and the horns that bring such gravitas to ‘The Ocean That Fills A Wound’…there is so much! So much and all so deftly handled. The progression that Ba’al have made is breathtaking and this album is a watershed moment for them. Exhilarating, exhausting, elemental, emotionally draining and overflowing with too many moments of magic to mention, each song is immeasurably expansive - no matter the length of their individual durations, they seem to hold so much more than is possible. That this is Ba’al’s finest hour is an understatement of almost ludicrous proportions.Recorded and mixed by Joe Clayton (Conjurer, Dawn Walker, Mountain Caller, Ithaca etc) and mastered by Brad Boatright (Kylesa, Vastum, Obituary, Night Demon etc), the same team that brought such a richly textured darkness to the last Ba’al release, the Soft Eyes EP, The Fine Line Between Heaven And Here sounds magnificent. This album deserves the perfect sound and that is exactly what it has been given. Adorned in the stunning artwork of True Spilt Milk Designs (Urne, Allfather, Ante-Inferno etc) The Fine Line Between Heaven And Here will be released on double gatefold vinyl and CD digipack on July 18th by Road To Masochist. This one is special.
Genre: Blackened Post Metal
For fans of: Crippled Black Phoenix | Harakiri For The Sky | Inter Arma | Sgaile Line-up:
Joe Stamps - Vocals
Richard Spencer - Bass
Nick Gosling - Guitar
Chris Mole - Guitar
Luke Rutter - Drums
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