Album Review: Ba’al – The Fine Line Between Heaven And Here

Artist: Ba’al
Title: The fine line between Heaven and Here
Label: Road to Masochist Records
Release date: July 18th, 2025
Country: United Kingdom
Format reviewed: High-quality digital recording

Album Review: Ba’al – The Fine Line Between Heaven And Here via Road to Masochist Records by Ask

The third full length album by UK based Ba’al is an epic adventure. During the first listen I am overwhelmed by the many elements, the unexpected turns and changes in style and tempo. What story are they telling? In what world am I? Am I repulsed or intrigued? When the last note rings out, I restart the album. I need to go back in and find out.

The general style of The Fine Line Between Heaven and Here is slow and smooth in a way that reminds me of North American depressive and atmospheric Black Metal. The production is clean and clear. From that pleasant bordering to bland soundscape, like overgrown grasslands just outside a large city, Ba’al deviates in so creative turns that the landscape sometimes dissolves around me, and I am left looking for the path. But then they reel me in again with a strong riff and I tag along with that feeling of having stumbled and imagined a hole in the ground that wasn’t really there. The more I listen, the more I realise those stumbles are the adventure.

The album is built up by six long tracks, flowing into each other as a cohesive journey with no real chapters, sometimes bound together with ambience or clean melodic patches. The atmosphere is enhanced by classical instruments that come and go. They are brought in carefully, mixed in and handled in a way that allow them texture and depth, which adds to the feeling of atmosphere.

The guitar tone ranges from the smoother corner of Black Metal to Death Metal heaviness to almost euphorically clean in arpeggios in classical style. The melodic elements also have a broad range from heavy riffs, though on the harmonic and smooth side of extreme metal, to neo classical, to almost childishly simple songs. The latter bring a feeling of grief and nostalgia that feel like the most sensitive nerve of the album.

The drum work is mostly slow and heavy, bringing a steady base to the changing flow of the music. The drums are mixed to blend in together with the bass, and form a safe groundwork for the wild excursions of the other instruments.

The biggest adventure of the album is brought by the vocals. The screams range from high pitch black metal shrieks to slow atmospheric fry scream to death metal growl to proper cookie monster bursts. Sometimes they are layered to give a feeling of several vocalists in the room. Sometimes arranged as call and respond. The abrupt changes in vocal styles cause some stumbles in the beginning, but as it goes, I get used to it and come to appreciate the variation. The changing vocals tell different aspects of the story. The real surprise and maybe biggest obstacle on my adventure are the clean vocals. They are unpolished and raw, yet melodic and sung with a hint of dialect that makes them feel painfully human. They bring a personal vulnerability and realness to the whole experience that repulse me the first time I listen. The more I get used to it though, the more the clean vocals become the emotional focus of the whole album for me. The shifts between realistic vulnerability, desperation and rage. The way they increase intensity into screams and then fall into full on metal growl as if giving up a futile attempt at preserving their frail humanity.

This is an album that requires time and a contemplative mindset. The real gems are in the obstacles. For the right listener, The Fine Line Between Heaven and Here, will bring hours of solace. 8/10

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8/10  To Greatness and Glory!
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