While they’ve always pushed the intricate balance that defines post-metal, Unverkalt are now plummeting over the edge into the black below. Their upcoming third album and first since signing with Season of Mist descends into humanity’s deepest and darkest origins. Héréditaire lifts the veil from our cursed existence. What emerges is the band’s heaviest and most heartfelt offering.
“Our aim has always been to blend softer, more romantic elements with extreme chaos. With Héréditaire, that time has come”, says Unverkalt’s guitarist and chief composer Themis Ioannou. “This album is a lament for what is far older than our very existence. It speaks of what seeps through generations, searching for an answer to one pervasive question: What do we carry that was never ours?”
As they begin this dark descent, today, Unverkalt are releasing a haunting video for the stirring lead single from Héréditaire. Though it starts as a slow burn, album opener “Die Auslöschung” emerges from the envoloping haze as the band’s first song to pair Dimitra Kalavrezou’s heavenly cleans with hellish harsh vocals.
“‘Die Auslöschung’ is both bleak and immersive”, Kalavrezou says. “Carved in blackened textures and hypnotic pacing, the song channels both personal and collective collapse, setting the tone for what is to come”.
Héréditaire comes out February 27, 2026 on Season of Mist.
–Pre-order: https://orcd.co/unverkalthereditaire
–Pre-save on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/prerelease/5ndUNl3HyjsagbOuQCrakn
Unverkalt are still possessed by a cinematic vision. “Die Auslöschung” opens Héréditaire like a camera coming into focus. However, though rendered in crisp detail, the scene that the band paints is bleak. Beneath a smoldering bass line, riffs rise like smoke from freshly scattered ashes. “When did this darkness fall?” Kalavrezou sings as if trying to climb out of the shadowed rubble.
On previous albums, Unverkalt took cues from French painting and European film noir, but Héréditaire throws back the velvet curtain in favor a veil. “Die Auslöschung” begins to peel back the blackened layers of traumatic memories that are passed down to us like a disease. “He said enter the wide gate and walk the easy path to destruction”. As the pounding drums give way to a fiery stream of blast beats, Kalavrezou breaks into a scream so piercing it can be felt all across our shared history.
“I enjoy discovering new, unique and compelling music in today’s overwhelming world of information, and I believe I truly succeeded with Unverkalt”, says Season of Mist labelmate and Rotting Christ frontman Sakis Tolis, who’s featured on the monolithic “I, The Deceit” from Héréditaire. “This is an exceptional piece of art, worth every minute of listening”.
Catch Unverkalt in Suttgart, Germany early next year when they co-headline Club Zentral with Hippotraktor. Get tickets here.
The video for “Die Auslöschung” was directed by Themis Ioannou at RAWBITE Studio
Additional video credits:
Cinematography & Editing – Themis Ioannou
Produced by – Unverkalt
Camera Equipment Support – Marcus Sander
Lighting – Hariolf “Harri” Lemke
Costume Design / Styling – Sister Jane, & Gestuz
Tracklist:
1. Die Auslöschung (6:06) [WATCH]
2. Oath Ov Prometheus (5:40)
3. Ænæ Lithi (5:34)
4. A Lullaby for the Descent (5:11)
5. Penumbrian Lament (6:02)
6. Introjects (5:25)
7. I, The Deceit (feat. Sakis Tolis) (5:47)
8. Death is Forever (4:50)
9. Maladie de l’Esprit (5:34)
Unverkalt are drawn to the edge. Since emerging from the underground, the Germany by way of Greece post-metal band have balanced boundless atmosphere with suffocating heaviness. Their third album and first since signing with Season of Mist doesn’t continue in that direction so much as it plunges into the darkness that’s always been waiting below. Héréditaire lifts the veil from our cursed existence. What emerges is Unverkalt’s heaviest and most heartfelt offering.
“Our aim has always been to blend softer, more romantic elements with extreme chaos. With Héréditaire that time has now come”, says the band’s guitarist and chief composer Themis Ioannou. “This album is a lament for what is far older than our very existence. It speaks of what seeps through generations, searching for an answer to one pervasive question: What do we carry that was never ours?”
From the beginning, Unverkalt was born from an urge to give life to grief. In 2017, Ioannou started the band with vocalist Dimitra Kalavrezou in hopes of creating something that was slow-burning and visceral, crushing yet delicate. Their debut made good on that promise: “…so rivetingly beautiful that you will have to deepen to digest it”, Metal Hammer Greece wrote in awe of L’Origine du Monde. “Easily on the top-10 of 2020”.
The band’s second album followed three years later to further acclaim. While swooning between obsession and annihilation, A Lump of Death: A Chaos of Dead Lovers sharpened Unverkalt’s vision by pushing their avant-garde streak with more force. “Beyond being able to point roughly towards a couple of different genres, it is utterly impossible to compare them to any other artist out there making music in the same vein”, The Sleeping Shaman admired. Echoes and Dust agreed: “It stands in its own right as a beautiful slice of filmic post-rock, a soundtrack without a movie beyond the one playing in your head”.
Héréditaire is still possessed by cinematic visions. Like a camera coming into focus, lead single “Die Auslöschung” appears through a thickening haze before it’s snapped out of a trance by drummer Christian Eggers’ fiery blast beats. The album shifts between colors, textures, even languages. Stirred by a mournful saw of strings, “Ænae Lithi” raises memories of the Great Fire of Smyrna that were handed down by Themis’ grandmother. But where previous albums took cues from French painting and European film noir, this one throws back the velvet curtain in favor a veil. “Oath Ov Prometheus” dismantles the myth of man as god’s perfect creation with Kalavrezou’s freshly blackened vocals.
“We love to experiment with every album”, Ioannou says. “With Héréditaire, we wanted to introduce extreme vocals because they bring out all these heavy feelings. It’s like they’re shaking you awake”.
While Héréditaire is a pulse-pounding new direction for Unverkalt, the album’s arc traces back to our deepest and darkest origins. Amidst the tremolo-picked wreckage of “Penumbrian Lament”, long-held beliefs are swallowed into the void of guitarist Eli Mavrychev’s death growls. “It’s all sorts of dead ideas / They cling to us all the same”, Kalavrezou whispers, only to break into screams on “Introjects” beneath Joscha Hoyer’s throbbing bass line. “The concept behind the record is tied in with the album’s overall heaviness”, she says. “Each song peels back another blackened layer of memory, trauma and suffering, which linger over us like ghosts: invisible, yet endlessly present”.
Kalavrezou’s mystifying cleans remain one of Unverkalt’s defining traits. Even when trembling beneath the monolithic riff of “I, The Deceit”, her contempt for those who stand by as the world burns is heated when forged alongside her Athenian brother-in-arms Sakis Tolis from Rotting Christ. But as the album draws to a close, Héréditaire ends shadowed in doubt for the future. “Bathed in lies / Can we make it better” she wonders before disappearing into the shivering wake left by “Maladie de ‘Esprit”.
“This album is not meant to resolve”, the band says, “but to dissolve patterns from those who came before, faceless yet familiar. The colors have drained. What remains is veiled in black, not as a symbol, but as a truth that covers everything”.
On Héréditaire, Unverkalt lift the veil on our cursed existence with their heaviest and most heartfelt offering.
Recording lineup
Dimitra Kalavrezou – Vocals
Themis Ioannou – Guitars, Keys
Eli Mavrychev – Guitars, Vocals
Joscha Hoyer – Bass
Christian Eggers – Drums
Guest musicians
Sakis Tolis – Vocals on “I, The Deceit”
Songwriting credits
Composed by Themis Ioannou
Lyrics by Dimitra Kalavrezou and Eli Mavrychev
Lyrics for “I, The Deceit” by Dimitra Kalavrezou and Joscha Hoyer
Recording credits
Recorded and engineered by Unverkalt
Drums recorded and engineered by Christian Eggers at Noir Surge Sound
Production credits
Produced by Themis Ioannou
Vocals produced by Dimitra Kalavrezou & Eli Mavrychev
Mixed by Joshua Barber
Mastered by Lasse Lammert at LSD Studios
Cover art
Themis Ioannou
Follow Unverkalt:
Official Website: https://unverkalt.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Unverkalt/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/unverkalt/
Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@unverkalt/
Bandcamp: https://unverkalt.bandcamp.com/music/
X: https://x.com/Unverkalt/
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCr8Fv2aEhLNPjN4zFPoPFfg
Apple Music: https://music.apple.com/artist/unverkalt/1524174404
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/55vU7DZVwI4ks0NpfKDAvK/
Tidal: https://tidal.com/browse/artist/20499985
Last.fm: https://www.last.fm/music/Unverkalt
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