Dark Heresy – Abstract Principles Taken To Their Logical Extremes – Re-Release Review

A hidden gem from the 90s underground, Dark Heresy’s Abstract Principles Taken To Their Logical Extremes was an album way ahead of its time and has finally been carefully restored, remastered and immortalised for vinyl and digital by Jaime Gomez Arellano (Ghost, Paradise Lost, Cathedral).

Like the death metal version of fellow countrymen Sabbat, these anti-Christian pagans from the UK were a complete anomaly in their respective genre and, sadly, Dark Heresy’s lasting legacy primarily boils down to just this one album.

But, what an album it is!

With concepts as complex as their compositions, these avant-garde, progressive death metallers seemed to throw every single idea into their alchemic mix, culminating in a bewildering experience that managed to be both beautiful and brutal in the same breath.

Basically, Dark Heresy sounded like an unholy union between Carcass and Testimony Of The Ancients-era Pestilence (by way of 70’s jazz-fusion perfectionists The Mahavishnu Orchestra!), with their approach to songwriting proving difficult to pin down. The result has ensured that Abstract Principles Taken To Their Logical Extremes‘s remains an utterly unique experience to this day.

“Hole”remains the most diverse song on the album (and that’s saying something!) featuring an expert fusion of death metal and baroque swing/jazz, a combo which simply has to be heard to be believed. A disparate mix of genre, mood and influences, Dark Heresy’s Abstract Principles Taken To Their Logical Extremes is so wilfully obscure that it retains  the power to enrage the purists. However, those braver souls who revel in the ambiguous and the enigmatic will surely embrace Abstract Principles Taken To Their Logical Extremes with open arms. 8/10

For those in the know, this album has long been an obscure treasure and has now been unearthed and preserved on heavy wax in the way it was always meant to be presented. The album comes with band interviews, liner notes and lyrics, furnished in a lush booklet along with a collection of old gig flyers and never before seen photographs of the band.

Dark Heresy’s Abstract Principles Taken To Their Logical Extremes was re-released on 26th April 2019 via Svart Records, in collaboration with Secret Trees – the label imprint run by Mat McNerney (Grave Pleasures/Hexvessel).