UNVERKALT are a Greek-German five-piece who emerged from the Athenian underground in 2017 and have since relocated to Berlin. Formed by guitarist and chief composer Themis Ioannou together with vocalist Dimitra Kalavrezou, the band defines itself as post-metal / avant-garde metal, and across two full-lengths — L'Origine du Monde (2020) and A Lump of Death: A Chaos of Dead Lovers (2023) — they built a reputation for cinematic, doom-laden, film-noir-soaked soundscapes carried by Kalavrezou's ethereal clean voice. Héréditaire, released on February 27, 2026, is their third album and their debut for Season of Mist. It is also a considerable departure.
The concept of Héréditaire — French for "hereditary" — is inherited trauma: the beliefs, griefs, and ghosts that pass silently from one generation to the next. "What do we carry that was never ours?" is the question Ioannou places at the heart of the record, and the band answers it with nine tracks that peel back blackened layers of memory and suffering. One of the album's most haunting pieces, "Ænæ Lithi," even reaches back to the Great Fire of Smyrna in 1922, drawing on memories Ioannou's grandmother carried through her life. The whole album is a wall of grief and emotion — and writing this review late at night, my tired brain wants to dissolve completely into UNVERKALT's music and be carried away by it.
Compared to its predecessor, Héréditaire is less gothic and far more extreme. The cinematic post-metal / avant-garde foundation is still there, but it is now infused with unmistakable black metal elements: blast beats, dirty tremolo guitar riffs, and — for the first time in the band's discography — harsh screaming vocals. Dimitra Kalavrezou genuinely pushes herself on this record, stepping out of the ethereal zone she had perfected and venturing into screams that cut through the mix with real venom. The transformation is remarkable, and it works because her cleans remain as mystifying as ever; the contrast is the point.
The visual side deserves a mention too. The cover art, painted by Themis Ioannou himself, breaks from the band's earlier aesthetic and ties together the whole campaign: every single cover and the album sleeve share a unified visual language — paintings of deadly figures looming over human bones. It looks striking, and it matches the music perfectly.
Opener "Die Auslöschung" sets the tone immediately, fusing atmospheric melancholy with fast black metal fury. Between those extremes sit "grief passages" built on thick mid-tempo guitars, where Kalavrezou's voice fights to push through the dense wall of sound. "Oath Ov Prometheus" follows with a rush of fast atmospheric black metal, its vocals shifting between clean and screamed lines, dropping into a slower middle section before returning to full speed and closing on a melancholic, ethereal melody. "Ænæ Lithi" is a different beast — a pure post-metal piece carrying a slight touch of Greek traditional music, slow and deeply affecting from start to finish. "A Lullaby for the Descent" opens with an acoustic passage before crashing down on the listener with emotional vocals and crying guitars. "Penumbrian Lament" is the fastest track on the album — essentially pure black metal in its screams and riffing, with a post-black metal passage in the middle that offers a brief breath before the storm resumes.
"Introjects" channels the album's central concept directly, throbbing bass and tremolo riffing carrying Kalavrezou's screams about inherited beliefs that were never ours. "I, The Deceit" then delivers the album's monumental centerpiece, featuring guest vocals from the legendary Sakis Tolis of Greek black metal pioneers ROTTING CHRIST. Fellow Athenians and Season of Mist labelmates, the two acts share a deep understanding of atmosphere and weight, and Tolis' ritualistic presence elevates the track into something genuinely ceremonial. The closing pair — "Death Is Forever" and "Maladie de l'Esprit" — lets the album fade out not with resolution but with doubt, keeping the mood honest to the concept: this music refuses easy catharsis.
Héréditaire is not the record anyone expected from UNVERKALT, and that is exactly its strength. It is heavier, darker, and more emotionally raw than anything they have done before, and it takes real artistic courage to pivot this sharply on a debut for a label as visible as Season of Mist. They succeed because the black metal tools are used in service of emotion rather than genre orthodoxy, and because the band's cinematic, romantic core is still intact beneath all the new weight.
Thanks to Season of Mist for the promo.