There have been a number of times that I have used the phrase “oppressively heavy” to describe a piece of music. This is usually my shorthand for thick, monstrous walls of noise that a band or musician might use to lambast the listeners.

But as I listen to Profound Morality from HERIOT, I realize that I have never before truly meant that phrase. Because friends, this is oppressively h e a v y.

Now, I want to clear up what I mean a bit. I don’t necessarily mean necessarily that this has the most blast beats and breakdowns or the thickest distortion or the most brutal screams—though it certainly has all of those elements in spades (especially the thicc distortion). Nor do I mean that it just pummels the listener with a barrage of unlistenable noise without ceasing. Certainly, there are louder, more violent, more brutal, more acerbic records out there.

But what makes Profound Morality stand apart is that the entire soundscape is drenched in an industrial fog so thick it might as well be solid. There are many moments of sparseness across these eight tracks, but they are somehow more threatening than the full-blown metalcore catharsis. The atmosphere itself sounds like it’s blowing the speakers, bursts of bass fuzz and drum hits trying to escape the sonic miasma—and ultimately failing. Songs combust like gas bombs, then are swallowed up by the tar-thick landscape of the production. It sounds a bit like I’d imagine Glassing would sound like if it were mixed with Nine Inch Nails and given the same production treatment as Low’s Double Negative.

Production aside, the music is absolutely stunning. They alternate between punishing heaviness and sparse, creeping atmosphere like it was set on a toggle switch, performing both with the same frightening intensity. The vocals are split between almost inhuman screams and clean vocals that are sometimes closer to a wounded moaning than singing. The stylistic center of the album is probably best described as a metalcore industrial fusion, but there are several moments of sludge, d-beat hardcore, and maybe even nu-metal. They package this blistering cornucopia of aggressive styles in a blitz of noise so intense and, yes, oppressive that it’s practically a shock that it’s only twenty-minutes long.

HERIOT might be newcomers to the heavy music scene, but their coming hasn’t gone unnoticed. The string of singles leading up to this record has earned a huge amount of hype. Profound Morality proves that they’ve earned every ounce of it.

Profound Morality is out now through Deathwish.

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