According to Enneagram theory, the personality type known as the Iconoclast (Five with a dominant Four wing) is associated with a drive to explore an emotional landscape, "often by deliberately entering dark, esoteric, or disturbing arenas of thoughts." Emotionally they are agitated and unsettled, their ideas imbued with nightmarish qualities, and they often exhibit eccentric behavior such as odd speech or unusual mannerisms. Just about all of the above can also be said of Iconoclast, the fifth-full length from German metalcore masters Heaven Shall Burn.

Produced by Heaven Shall Burn guitarists Alexander Dietz and Maik Weichert, and mixed by Tue Madsen (Himsa, The Haunted), this concept album is a full-frontal assault on the senses that merges brutal, heavy vocals, melodic but energetic guitar breakdowns, and unrelenting machine-gun drumming, all sandwiched between forlorn piano and violin instrumentals to create a sound that's truly iconoclastic. The band also manages to fit a cover of Edge Of Sanity‚s „Black Tears‰ on the album, which fits quite well with the overall theme -- sonically and lyrically.

Bischoff's screaming vocals tell a tale of a group of assassins known as Iconoclasts who are given the task of hunting down and killing the murderers of God. Much of the album however is given over not to a discussion of the assassins, but to their prey. On "Murderers of the Murderers" he sings of humanity's self-inflicted downfall: "we've raised ourselves to gods/ we drank the seas and wiped away horizons / everything we loved has bled to death by our own knives", and later on "The Disease" he you says "all have seen the suffering/ you all knew it, you all know it/ but your eyes lie to your heart/ morality corrupted and profit conducted". Heavy stuff, and a heavy sound that's well worth a listen.

Favorite Track: "Forlorn Skies"

Michael Fiegel is a freelance writer and graphic designer. His diverse background includes journalism, radio copywriting, technical writing, game design and music reviewing. He is best known as the creator of the Internet cult sensation, Ninja Burger. He can be reached at aeon@aeforge.com or at his website, www.aeforge.com.