Due to those curiosities of life, I had the opportunity to review here in VOICES (it has happened to me a couple more times with a couple of other bands) the first full-length by HEATHEN PEACE from 2024, titled “Civilisation Ends Here…”. It was the debut of a band that arrived to show a type of Black / Death Metal that stepped on the borders of ferocity, rawness and melody. Well, the Dutch are back this 2026 with this new full-length titled “Total Fucking War”. An album that opens with a ferocious track called ‘Total Fucking War!’ Naturally, a song full of a lot of aggressiveness and that gives us a slap in the face from its beginning, although, in the middle, it plays a bit with emotions through a guitar solo. It continues with ‘Rise Of The Suebian Warlords’, the second track, a song that wants to keep that war standing and that again, explodes into melodic and epic guitars, showing a bit of that dualism of fury and pain of war. ‘Apollyon’ is somewhat the continuity of an escalation of battles that HEATHEN PEACE wants to win, making use of that characteristic image of the god Apollyon. ‘Heath Dweller’ is a track more characteristic of galloping horses, emphasizing that epicness of the album. Because this is an epic album. Full of war stories. It continues with ‘Spells Of Ishtar’, once again reinforcing the central idea of the album on the theme of battles and war, calling upon Ishtar. Then we continue with ‘The Ides Of March’ which I think needs no thematic explanation, but musically raises the technical level of HEATHEN PEACE. We reach the penultimate track of the album, ‘Parade Into Centuries’, which keeps the same dynamics as the rest of the album and the same pattern. And the album closes with ‘Heathen Peace 476’, an instrumental quite charged with epicness and some guitars that dominate and close the battles, the victories, and the scenes around the theme of the album. This is without a doubt a great album, I liked it more than “Civilisation Ends Here…” and it shows a band with two more years of battles under its belt (The band also released two flexi disc 7″ EPs connected to the new album: ‘Total Fucking War!’, coupled with the HADES ALMIGHTY cover ‘The Dawn Of The Dying Sun’ and ‘Heath Dweller’, which additionally offers the previously unreleased track ‘Jupiter Pluvious And The Miraculous Rain’ – Frank). More information here: www.facebook.com/heathenpeace, www.facebook.com/cosmickeycreations