Jason Crews is the owner and editor of INFRARED MAGAZINE and a Dallas–Fort Worth-based music journalist and concert photographer. Through INFRARED MAGAZINE and JASON CREWS PHOTOGRAPHY, he covers rock, metal, country, and live music with a focus on album reviews, artist features, concert coverage, and photography. His work is driven by a genuine passion for music and helping artists connect with new audiences through honest writing, strong visuals, and meaningful storytelling.
Rating: 8 / 10 Stars
HKSPK Is: Jim – Vocals/Lead Guitar, Leon – Rhythm Guitar, Arne – Drums
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REVIEW – There is an irony built into the title Heimkehr. The German word suggests a return home, something familiar waiting at the end of a long journey. HKSPK use that expectation as the foundation for an album about what happens when the person who returns is no longer the same person who left. Home may still be there, but war, loss, anger, memory and experience have changed everything around it.
Formed in Brandenburg, Germany in 2023, HKSPK consists of Jim on vocals and lead guitar, Leon on rhythm guitar and Arne on drums. The trio followed its 2024 debut Holy Scum with the 2025 EP The Human Butcher, gradually moving beyond the deliberately raw character of those early recordings toward stronger melodies, clearer production and more developed arrangements. The band remains completely independent, handling its own writing and production as well as the recording, mixing and mastering process.
Scheduled for independent release on September 11, 2026, Heimkehr contains eight tracks and runs just 25 minutes and 21 seconds. It is a compact record, but HKSPK use that short runtime to cover considerably more territory than the length might suggest. Black metal provides the cold atmosphere, death metal supplies much of the physical weight, and elements of doom, melody, punk, hardcore and thrash repeatedly enter the picture without softening the record’s attack. The album was recorded, mixed and mastered by HKSPK at Room13, with a limited physical edition of only 50 CDs available through Bandcamp.
“Prelude” establishes the mood with a dark, slightly epic introduction that was deliberately composed in the same key and tempo as “Torture.” The two tracks flow directly into one another, allowing a spoken passage to serve as the bridge into the first real explosion of the album. When “Torture” arrives, melodic black metal quickly gives way to faster riffing and high-pitched screams. It is short, direct and aggressive, immediately showing that HKSPK are not interested in padding their songs simply to make the album feel larger.
The story behind “Torture” also introduces one of the more unusual qualities of Heimkehr: its willingness to place dark humor beside genuinely serious material. The song turns an otherwise harmless encounter with a locust into an exaggerated moment of fear and panic. One voice sees something ordinary while the other interprets it as a catastrophe. That disconnect becomes the entire engine of the song, showing how quickly fear and misread signals can distort reality.
“White Secretions II” pushes the humor even further. The track reconnects with the band’s earlier “White Secretions I” while recounting an alcohol-fueled night following a late performance in Leipzig. Beer, tequila and the miserable consequences of the trip home become the subject of one of the record’s crudest and most self-deprecating moments. Beneath the absurdity, however, there is also continuity. HKSPK are deliberately looking backward at their earlier work before Heimkehr begins moving toward much heavier subject matter.
“Sonnenjäger” marks the first major change in tone. The song combines images of war, destruction, nature and mythology while introducing a mysterious figure that can be interpreted as fate, death or hope. Musically, HKSPK lean more heavily into classic death metal here, using thick riffs and a broader, more epic atmosphere. It is one of the tracks that demonstrates how much ground this album covers without losing the coldness at its center.
“Kill The Weak” strips things back down and attacks from a different direction. This is the record at its most punk-driven and confrontational, mixing black metal with hardcore, thrash and a deliberately provocative chorus. The band makes clear in its own track notes that the repeated phrase functions as an aggressive mantra rather than a literal instruction. The result is one of the shortest and most immediate tracks on Heimkehr, built to hit hard and leave quickly.
From there, the album turns inward.
“Rot In Despair” is the emotional center of Heimkehr. HKSPK describe it as their most personal and emotionally intense song to date, built around despair, isolation, mental exhaustion and the frustration of watching people ask for help while struggling to accept it. The song grew from a jam session, and its verse relies on only two chords. That reduction becomes one of its greatest strengths. Rather than overwhelming the listener with constant speed, HKSPK allow repetition and atmosphere to create the pressure. The track gradually becomes heavier and more expansive until its emotional weight feels considerably larger than the arrangement that produced it.
“Rain In The Face” moves from personal despair into historical inspiration. The song draws from motifs associated with the Lakota figure Rain in the Face without presenting itself as a strict biography. Instead, HKSPK build a narrative around a warrior wounded at a young age, shaped by captivity and repeated encounters with death, and ultimately consumed by revenge. The most important element is what comes after that revenge. There is no satisfying victory. The retaliation does not erase the loss, and the wider conflict remains unresolved. Cold, driving black metal supports the story, giving the track a relentless quality while the lyrics move toward shame and futility rather than triumph.
That lack of resolution leads directly into “Heimkehr,” the album’s six-minute closing statement.
The title track brings together memory, comradeship, emptiness and the lasting consequences of everything that came before it. The idea of returning home should imply safety, but HKSPK deliberately dismantle that expectation. The destination may still exist. The people may still be there. Yet nothing feels the same because the experience of getting there has altered the person returning.
The song also carries a more personal reflection on HKSPK itself. Shared paths, setbacks, disappointment and ruptures within the band’s own history become part of the larger idea of homecoming. The familiar place offers no automatic comfort because memory follows you through the door. The battle may be over, but the damage remains. That is why “Heimkehr” refuses to deliver a triumphant ending. It closes the album on an unresolved note, leaving the listener with the sense that surviving a journey is not the same thing as escaping its consequences.
That progression is what makes Heimkehr work particularly well as a complete record. The album begins with short, aggressive songs and flashes of dark humor, then steadily opens into heavier, more melodic and atmospheric territory. “White Secretions II” looks backward toward the band’s early material, “Sonnenjäger” broadens the death metal influence, “Kill The Weak” pulls punk and hardcore into the attack, “Rot In Despair” introduces emotional reduction and atmosphere, and the final two tracks transform the album into something far darker and more reflective.
The bilingual songwriting also gives HKSPK a stronger identity. English and German are not treated as separate versions of the band. They simply become different tools depending on what the song requires. The German-language material carries a particularly strong narrative weight, while the English tracks often deliver their ideas with greater immediacy.
There is a noticeable development here from the band’s earlier material. HKSPK have not abandoned the underground aggression that defines them, but Heimkehr shows a band becoming more deliberate about how that aggression is used. The production is clearer, the arrangements have more room to breathe and the emotional ideas are given enough space to actually matter. According to the band’s own press materials, the album represents clearer production, more mature arrangements and a more serious lyrical focus than the releases that preceded it.
What ultimately makes Heimkehr interesting is the contrast. HKSPK can tell a ridiculous story about a disastrous post-show drive and then turn around and confront mental exhaustion, war, vengeance and the inability to truly return to the person you once were. That mixture could easily feel disjointed on a longer record. Here, the short runtime makes the mood changes feel restless rather than unfocused.
Heimkehr begins like an attack and ends like an aftermath. The riffs remain important, but by the time the final song fades, the album is no longer simply about heaviness. It is about the cost of carrying experiences with you long after the immediate violence, anger or chaos has ended.
HKSPK have created a record that grows darker as it progresses and more thoughtful the longer it plays. The destination may be home, but Heimkehr understands that sometimes coming back is only the beginning of dealing with what happened while you were gone.
For more information on HKSPK, visit:
www.HKSPK.de
www.Facebook.com/HKSPK666
www.Instagram.com/HKSPK_Band
www.YouTube.com/@HKSPK-Official
www.Spotify.com/Artist/HKSPK