Album Reviews

Hail Death
Black Anvil – Hail Death
6.5
 on
Thursday, June 5, 2014 - 20:36
submitted by
Thomas

I came across a couple of articles that said that these guys aren’t considered true because they mix elements of thrash and hardcore into their black metal. Or make that trve… if you spell it wrong, it apparently makes it even more true than just true. I honestly didn’t even know people still cared about whether or not a band is true…  well, other than a handful of dorks who spend life in their bedroom, which they transformed so that it resembles the dungeon of a medieval castle.

Anyway, onto the album… “Hail Death” might have been a mess with everything that’s going on… chugga chugga riffs, atmospheric parts, arpeggios, d-beat, blastbeats, clean vocals layered on top of the more typical black metal vocals… you know, the kind that sound like the dude has a massive loogie lodged in the back of his throat? But I have to hand it to Black Anvil, they managed to incorporate all the different elements in a solid way and wrote an album that has a nice flow to it. Moments of moody riffage evolve into blistering shredding before turning into a bleak interlude that then again becomes more fierce and so on and so on.

Sure, the vocals are ridiculous like with all black metal bands and listening to “Hail Death” while the sun is shining outside makes absolutely no sense, but if you’re a fan of the genre (how much did it cost you to make your bedroom look like a dungeon?), then you could be a lot worse off than with Black Anvil. Hail death!

Tom Dumarey
Tom Dumarey

Lacking the talent to actually play in a band, Tom decided he would write about bands instead. Turns out his writing skills are mediocre at best as well.