The Italian project HERUKA is around since the beginning of the millennium, but have not released too much stuff to date. There’s just a demo and an EP in their vita, both more than a decade ago. So HERUKA really had plenty of time for the songs of their first album “Deception’s End” to ripen. Yet, either the time still was not enough or the songs are too average to gain ripeness. From the first notes of the album, HERUKA know how to bore the listener with uninteresting and overheard stuff somewhere between melodic and symphonic Black Metal, somewhere between fish and fowl. Sometimes I recognized some nice moment or melody line, just to find out within seconds that I heard it before much better on other albums, mainly from IRON MAIDEN or DISSECTION. In other moments the wanna-be epic parts are a real annoyance and the at times artificial drum sound is also a pain in the ass. So, after listening to “Deception’s End” a few times, I can only state that this album is absolutely redundant, especially if you own “Storm Of The Light’s Bane” and one or two more melodic Black Metal albums. Maybe some real fanatic of the genre will dig HERUKA, for them I advise checking either www.facebook.com/herukaproject or www.facebook.com/narcolepticaprod