Clouding holy skies with Mexican mysticism, Hierophany represent sinister rebirth in more ways than one with Tenebrario.

Release date: December 12, 2025 | Serpent Sun Records | Facebook | Bandcamp

It’s a black Christmas indeed, especially with Hierophany waiting under the tree. Hailing from Mexico (¡ayyyy, mi gente!), this project arrives during the most holiest of times to inject some mysticism and melody into the atmosphere. Tenebrario – itself the Spanish word for a religious tradition of putting out candles around Easter, and rooted from the Latin word ‘tenebrae’ which means ‘darkness’ – is technically a debut album to the Hierophany name, but it has quite a pedigree behind it with IkanunnaBG being the chief instrumentalist, the band itself a permutation of his previous black metal project, Black Hate. Together with lyricist Magister Faust and drummer Robin Stone (one of these names is unlike the others), this new form the band takes is one of utmost power.

For all the cringiness that black metal offers, one really has to suspend disbelief and play along with a lot in order to enjoy it. While some bands really overplay their hand, which makes the creation-to-listener gap distractingly apparent, I actually don’t get that with Hierophany despite how dramatic and committed the band are. While I’m never one to interrogate how ‘trve’ a band or its members are, I get the sense that these dudes are, at least as artists, really about this life, passionately pursuing an ascendance of some sort I never would and in a country and culture mired by the conquest of Catholicism and erasure of the region’s indigenous culture and practices – for better or worse, black metal’s MO has always been ‘the more taboo, the better’. Now that’s a creation-to-listener gap that can be enjoyed – the world of artists’ making being so unlike your own that it’s enthralling, alluring, and maybe even tempting. Many people seek power of all kinds, and here is a band doing so on their own terms.

To get grounded for a second, there’s not much here you haven’t heard before – drums go brrrr, guitars go ooooo, vocals go grrrrrr, Satan go weeeee – but the presentation and execution on those sorts of reliable tropes is what makes Hierophany strong, a must-listen for modern black metal fans and a definitely-try-it for those closer to me and who are exceptionally picky with the genre. While melody takes them far, restraint is also pretty key. Like, I find a lot more juice in the slower escalation of “Communio Mortis” than most probably would. It’s bedazzled with a neat guitar solo, but aside from that, it maintains a pace I’d generously call a funereal march relatively speaking to common black metal sonic aesthetics. The eerie vocalizations in the middle that bridge the song’s two pretty disparate halves also tingle the back of my brain just right, and the monologue that sprouts from it moves that tingle into my spine:

‘The world was not enough for my appetite was too wild; the sea was not enough for my thirst shall not be fulfilled. fire was not strong enough to consume my devotion; the winds were not enough to carry the will of my Lord!’

See what I mean?

Honestly, one of the more powerful moments on Tenebrario is “Oficio De Tinieblas”, which is a penultimate ambience track that begins with a person’s breath shuddering as if shivering, destitute and hopeless in the shadow of something much larger than them, then labored as if becoming directly influenced by it. Meaning ‘office of darkness’, this track sells you on the atmosphere that Hierophany have spent the previous 25 minutes building – in fact, it makes me wonder if this track should have introed or at least come second within the list as it’s a great mood setter. It ends with harmonic chanting and bells, a gradual foreboding build-up over nearly nine minutes that boldly puts theme first and doesn’t feel wasted. Listen on headphones and, hopefully, feel as engrossed as I was.

Still, despite all that, Hierophany are no black metal slouches – they are great at what they do. “Ars Moriendi” pounds and drives Tenebrario to its ideal scene of black metal tumult, curling your ears with cinematic intrigue and the start of an unsettling story of death, transformation, and possession. It’s absolutely worth mentioning here that Hierophany‘s lyrics and vocals are primarily in English with some Spanish and Latin asides, delivered with ferocity and meditative calm alike, giving a sort of old-timey feel with the mixture of languages as if on the precipice of modern times. “Beyond The Sacred” dances into frame after that with the ritualistic pomp you’d expect of this kind of story with chimes and distant drums ushering in incorrigible, immutable battle between that which we can’t see. It’s dark, it’s mischievous, it’s, most importantly, entertaining as hell.

Hierophany achieve greatness by taking many things that should reasonably go in most listeners’ negative columns and spinning them to positives, to elements within their music that work well in their favor. Tenebrario isn’t particularly unique, sure, but the totality of it is certainly greater than the sum of its parts, and the experience of the band’s members speaks to that sort of discernment they’re able to pack into their art. Simply put: they know what works and what doesn’t, it’s apparent. If allegiances to dark forces don’t turn you off and you appreciate the drama of it all, this is an album that should creep onto your AOTY list like a serpent into a garden.