HVRT - Cancerbloom - Metal Epidemic

HVRT – Cancerbloom
Release Date: 5th December 2025
Label: Crawling Chaos
Bandcamp
Genre: Death Metal, Black Metal, Sludge.
FFO: Black Breath, Entombed, Trap Them, Mammoth Grinder.
Review By: Mark Young

HVRT’s bio notes that they have approached this differently from everyone else. Now, this is a common statement, one that has taken over from ‘Harder than our last effort’ or ‘More Brutal than…’ as being the comment du jour. This is paraphrasing a lot, as their PR does a lot of heavy lifting in its description, some of which you have read before. It means that they have a lot to do in living up to this and so as you read on that they basically recorded it live in one room, then this piques my interest more. And it should grab yours too, because that approach pays off from the start. Starting with The Wait, the Weep, the Woe, their blend of grimy death kicks off with a collection of solid, blackened riffing and lead breaks that signifies an effective if slow burn start. Wohin mit der Scheiße von gestern? comes in next, opting to move with more urgency. Their guitar sound combines a thick edge without being overly distorted, resulting in some massive riffs. The outro section is a prime example of this, just prior to them kicking in the trem pick that sees them play the song out. Recording this live has really paid dividends for them, Sie sind hier blasts along at a fair old rate without you feeling like they are rushing anything in its delivery. It’s ambitious in its build and goes beyond just death metal or black metal. It uses those techniques to be sure, but to suit their own art. Heavy – yes. Well-thought-out – definitely. Corporate Serenade does beat a similar path as Sie sind hier, but not as a carbon copy. At times, it leans almost into post-rock in how it unfolds, but they never forget to anchor it with some crucial low-end magic. It’s that ability to pull those threads together and weave an effective piece of music that does all that you want from heavy music.

Take another relative high point, Lives Unlived. Restrained opening, delivered with an aching melancholia, and then it switches into this vital, roaring beast with an almost cheeky arrangement (listen to the song, which will make perfect sense. Honest). Even when the beats speed up, that vibe is still ever present, almost that it knows it is a good song, and it wants you to know that it is too. They know that each of the songs here should be on here, whether they are fast or slow, heavy or light. Zwitterlicht is another example, bolstered by a guest performance from Rebecca Möller (from Blood Specter) whose cleans provide such a powerful counterpoint to Stefan Braunschmidt’s super low vocals. The song itself makes super use of this combination and is just spot on.

Our final call is with the title track, Cancerbloom. Fittingly it does what you hoped it would do, be expansive, play up to their strengths of not being heavy for the sake of it and bring us a glorious finale that might just be the best song on the album. What we have is 11 songs that really do satisfy the promises made. They forge their own path, taking what makes heavy music so enthralling and make it theirs, leading to a top-class record.