Style: Noise rock, post-industrial, drone (Mostly harsh vocals)
Recommended for fans of: The Body, HEALTH, Swans
Country: Denmark
Release date: 3 October 2025

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When writing for a tightly-knit blog like ours, the quirky habits of your peers become readily apparent and tend to lighthearted in-jokes: my co-writer Cory, for example, has never met a sentence that’s too short; Claire is a seemingly endless font of believe-it-or-not lore; and Andy thinks all music is a 6/10 (yes, even that album). Latest to join our Pantheon of Writer Oddities is the idea that I Stockholm Syndrome myself into liking weird experimental music. In a concerted attempt to understand oblique or artistically dense points of view, I end up in a sort of musical analog to ‘the beatings will continue until morale improves’. So imagine how tickled I was when the latest Heathe record, Control Your Soul’s Desire for Freedom, landed at my proverbial desk with the note ‘The type of music for Dave to Stockholm himself into liking’. Will the Danes’ blend of experimental noise rock and drone take control of my desires, or must the aural beatings continue until scores improve?

Dire, industrial, and hypnotic, Control Your Soul’s Desire for Freedom is cemented in texture and percussion. Opener “Black Milk Sour Soil” begins with standalone throaty shrieks, brashly imposing its will onto an empty canvas. Subtle orchestration briefly joins in before thrumming synthesizers bring a sense of pace and rhythm to the blood-curdling vocals; Control’s central songwriting conceits of repetition and evolution are established through the opener’s layering of ideas. Dynamics abound as tracks like “My Gods Destroy” and “Uproar Taking Shape” are ferocious and bellicose while “The Truth Hurts” and “Black as Oil” are in places subtle to the point of near silence. Woven throughout these compositions are lyrics that revolve around the modern decay of the Earth at the hands of climate change, whether it be allusions to rising sea levels on “Black Milk Sour Soil” or the lambast of greedy corporations at the end of “Black as Oil”.

One’s first impression of Control hinges entirely on the shrieks that introduce the opener, a central vocal feature across the record’s runtime. With thoughtful placing and appropriate mixing, they could be used to great effect, but their presence on Control is agreeable at best and grating at worst. Once “Black Milk Sour Soil” settles into its ideas and introduces hauntingly compelling chants, the wails feel entirely appropriate, but beginning the record with nothing but these vocals at an ear-piercing volume, ahem, sours the experience. “Valencia’s Next” is a breath of fresh air in comparison as its guttural barks provide some much-needed contrast to the record’s deluge of banshee wails. There is something to be said for Heathe’s point of view on Control, but the message is difficult to engage with when delivered in such an abrasive and tiring manner.

While the extended song lengths and use of droning ambience remain from Heathe’s debut, On the Tombstones; The Symbols Engraved, the context and approach are wholly different on Control, most readily apparent in its clever use of groove. “My Gods Destroy” opens with a killer rhythm replete with bassy synthesizers and persistent hi-hats to engender a ritualistic affect as it builds in intensity. At its climax, the juxtaposition of brazen horn outcries with blown-out drum hits is ascendant, engulfing the entire Earth in righteous flame. “Black Milk Sour Soil” is more skeletal in its approach to rhythm, but carefully puts its barren, thumping beat in dialogue with hauntingly chanted vocals in its second half. “The Truth Hurts” takes an even more subtle approach to meter: after a glacial introduction, clanking bells attempt to claw themselves from the grasp of soft, ominous chanting in vain; the vocals are then joined by grimy, glitchy instrumentals that punch holes in the reverberant clatter.

The exploration of beat, texture, and noise is paramount to Control, and as such, pieces live or die by their ability to evolve around these elements. “My Gods Destroy” is the most successful example, bookended by a lively, rolling groove; its center is filled with a continuous construction and deconstruction, building into an absurdly huge climax and then bathing in the pyrrhic afterglow. “Black Milk Sour Soil” follows a similar bookending structure as the track eventually breaks down its myriad layers to the standalone shrieks of ‘CONTROL. YOUR SOUL’S. DESIRE. FOR FREEDOM.’ “Uproar Taking Shape” patiently builds around bright horns into playfully devious drumwork, bucking Control’s songwriting trends by luxuriating in a similar space for an extended time before dropping out entirely in a surprising compositional about-face.

Control’s first compositional stumble is “The Truth Hurts”. Its extended ambient introduction is met by deliciously seedy percussion in its middle section, but the last third feels aimless as it’s not quite able to convincingly move its ideas forward. The worst offender, though, is the closer “Black As Oil”. Concluding on a powerful monologue calling out corporate greed, the track does little to earn its ending as it meanders without purpose for most of its seventeen-minute runtime. “Black as Oil” could work in theory as a closing track, as “Uproar Taking Shape” doesn’t feel quite appropriate as a closer, but its extended length and tepid structure leave the record on a disappointing note.

Control Your Soul’s Desire for Freedom’s greatest strength lies in its rhythms, forming the backbone of forward-thinking compositions led along by textural exploration. Among its clever use of percussion, though, are songwriting stumbles and a persistent shrieking vocal performance that substantially flag my excitement for the record by its end. Given the radical change in direction between their debut and Control, I’ll be eager to see where Heathe take their sound next; a bit of compositional prudence and playing to their strengths in layering will all but ensure future success.

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Recommended tracks: My Gods Destroy, Uproar Taking Shape, Valencia’s Next
You may also like: Neptunian Maximalism, Kayo Dot
Final verdict: 6/10

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Label: Virkelighedsfjern

Heathe is:
– Filip Dybjerg: bass, synths
– Simon Westmark: drums
– Andreas Westmark: guitars, keyboards
– Martin Jensen: guitars, vocals
– Oskar Sørensen: keyboards, vocals
– Simon Mariegaard: drums