It has been years of waiting leading to a debut album from Philadelphia’s Heavy Temple. They have since their dawning amassed a not-insignificant catalog of short releases — their self-titled EP (review here) in 2014 was followed by 2016’s Chassit EP (review here), and there was that same year’s take on Type O Negative‘s “Love You to Death” (discussed here) and last year’s P-Funk covers split with Wolf Blood benefitting Black Lives Matter (discussed here) — as well as a likewise not-insignificant amount of alumni. Founding bassist/vocalist High Priestess Nighthawk has overseen multiple full-lineup changes for the three-piece now comprised of herself, guitarist Lord Paisley and drummer Baron Lycan, and would seem to have hammered out the sound she envisioned for the band on the road rather than in the studio. Heavy Temple arrive at their first full-length with no shortage of anticipation and with years of touring behind them and performances as festivals far and wide, among them Psycho Las Vegas, Shadow Woods, SXSW, going back to Eye of the Stoned Goat 2 (review here) in Delaware in 2013.

Lupi Amoris, which sees release through Magnetic Eye Records, is the beneficiary of this experience. Recorded by Will Spectre at Red Water Recordings (points for another Type O reference) and mastered by Dan Randall at Mammoth Sound with striking, symbol-laden cover art by Alex Reisfar, the five-song/33-minute offering follows a theme recasting the folktale Little Red Riding Hood — at least mostly; I’m not sure how opener “A Desert Through the Trees” ties into the narrative, but neither have I seen a lyric sheet — as a tale of feminine empowerment and realized sexual agency. Through “The Wolf,” “The Maiden,” “Isabella (with Unrelenting Fangs)” and “Howling of a Prothalamion” — the latter term refers to a wedding poem — and indeed the prior leadoff cut, Heavy Temple bring the payoff toward which they’ve been working for years. When they issued Chassit, I argued in favor of it being their debut LP for its flow and the complete-feeling sensibility underlying the songs. It was more than the sampling an EP designation implied. Listening to Lupi Amoris half a decade later, the difference is abundantly clear. In sound and style, in the substance and breadth of its songs, Lupi Amoris brings Heavy Temple to a new level entirely.

The imagine of “unrelenting fangs” is a standout, but not necessarily the whole of what Lupi Amoris has to offer. “A Desert Through the Trees” fades in smoothly and builds up quick with a post-Songs for the Deaf weighted-fuzz shuffle, slowing its roll to open wide in the verse before a winding transition that calls to mind half-speed The Atomic Bitchwax leads to the chorus. The song is spacious, vital, full and melodic. Layering of vocals adds further character, and in the second half’s guitar solo, Lord Paisley unfurls the soundscape-minded intent that becomes one of the record’s strengths, blending atmosphere and momentum atop the strong rhythmic foundation of the bass and drums. Much of the focus here will inevitably be on Nighthawk, who is a powerful and charismatic presence in the songs as well as the driving force behind the band, but the contributions of neither Paisley nor Lycan should be discounted when it comes to taking the proceedings as a whole. Everybody’s performance has stepped up, and if this is to be at last the permanent lineup of Heavy Temple — something no less awaited than the record — it would only be to the benefit of the group and their listenership alike. One must keep in mind that while Heavy Temple as a unit have been together since the end of 2012, this incarnation only came together in 2019. In some ways, they’re just getting started.

And given what they achieve throughout Lupi Amoris, that’s an even more exciting prospect. “A Desert Through the Trees” caps furiously as a preface for some of what the nine-minute “Isabella (with Unrelenting Fangs)” will offer later, and “The Wolf” fades in its wah-echoing guitar over the first minute-plus as an intro before the bass arrives to mark the beginning of the creeping groove that ultimately defines the track. It’s a righteous riff in the tradition thereof, and the vocals duly howl upward from the mix, flourish of harmony arriving late in the guitar but no less welcome for its arrival, the band showing a patience of craft that underlies their more forward aspects and only continues to serve them well as “The Wolf” surges its transition directly into the feedback-and-guitar-and-bass beginning of “The Maiden.” The centerpiece of Lupi Amoris might also house the record’s most scorching progressions, pushing, shoving, running all the while, and the vocals join the wash late to emphasize the point, capping cold with quick noise before “Isabella (with Unrelenting Fangs)” takes hold, a psychedelic guitar winding in to build upward toward the eventual marching verse.

Immediately the spirit is looser, the focus more on swing. The nod. And fair enough. At 4:14 into its total 9:30, the drums drop out for a moment and Heavy Temple begin a slower, more thoroughly and willfully doomed stretch. It’s another minute-plus before howling vocals — lower in the mix at first — arrive, but as the song moves past the six-minute mark, a chaos of crashes and vast-echo guitar crescendos and recedes. There’s a pause. And then the guitar goes backward and the drums go forward and they jam their way back into the central riff so long left behind and top it with dual-channel shred and end cacophonous as is their apparent wont, leaving only the key-laced “Howling of a Prothalamion” to close out. Those keyboards bookend the instrumental finale, which likewise offers bounce and gallop, ebb and flow enough to summarize the proceedings on its own while pushing outward from where the prior song’s apex left off. The ultimate moral of the story here is that whatever Heavy Temple do to follow Lupi Amoris, they’ve got their work cut out for them.

One hesitates to speculate on direction or forward intent. It may be another seven or eight years before there’s a follow-up to Lupi Amoris. Or it won’t. And their sound may push into the sinister outer reaches that “Howling of a Prothalamion” hints toward in some of its riffing, or their next outing might find them moving along another path entirely. Universe of infinite possibilities. Another record may never happen. What matters is that after years of hammering out who and what Heavy Temple are and stand for, the accomplishments of this first LP can’t be undone, and they not only justify the band’s wait-until-it’s-right approach, but make a dodged bullet of their possibly having done anything else. There’s a fair amount of year left, and again, universe of infinite possibilities, but this is the best debut album I’ve heard thus far into 2021. Recommended.

Heavy Temple, Lupi Amoris (2021)

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This entry was posted on Friday, May 28th, 2021 at 8:55 am and is filed under Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.