Hell
Curse & Chapter
Nuclear Blast
25 November 2013
by Rob McAuslan
The slightly clumsy play on words in the title aside, there are few missteps in this second album to spring following the rebirth of NWOBHM legends Hell. Resurrecting a long-lost band is potentially fraught with issues around quality, but their last release laid those sort of fears to rest quite handily and lead to some truly excellent live shows over the last couple of years.
In just four weeks time, arguably the “most metal” (whatever that means) of the UK summer festival season takes place: Bloodstock Open Air. To get ourselves in the mood for a weekend of wearing denim vests and drinking mead out of horn, we’ve put together a gigantic Sunday Spotify Slaylist, featuring the best of this year’s line-up.
Well, he survived – and here’s the final proof. In the last of his three reports from Hammerfest IV, David Keevill pretends he didn’t have a permanent hangover, and reviews Oaf, Cerebral Bore, Mortad, DripBack, Hell, Amon Amarth, and – of course – Saturday night’s headliners, the almighty Skindred.
This time next week, our intrepid representatives at Hammerfest IV – The Hammer of Thor, will be slowly trying to recover from a weekend where the level of attention paid to the many heavy metal bands playing is directly (and inversely) proportional to the levels of booze being imbibed by them. How do we know they’ll be getting smashed rather than getting their mosh on? Well, because even if you headline your event with Anthrax and Skindred, we know for a fact that whenever more than one Thrash Hits contributor ends up in the same room at Pontin’s in Prestatyn, someone ends up puking. That’s not us trying to sound like a bunch of lads-on-tour kerrrrayyyzzzyy drunks either – that’s the raw statistics of Hammerfest talking.
In any case, we figured we’d put together a Hammerfest-themed Spotify Slaylist to start getting them in the mood nice and early.
Times are tough. The economy is up the spout, your next payday is weeks away, and those blissful who-cares-about-next-week feelings that Summer festival season bring are even further away in the distance. Thankfully, Hammerfest IV is set to strike in March to alleviate that Spring slump, and what’s more, if you enter our competition to win a set of FOUR weekend passes to the event, you might be able to bust down to Prestatyn without even having to pay an entry fee.
Obviously, we previewed the three headliners – they’re the ones that sell the tickets, after all – but there are some awesome bands on the undercard as well. There’s always moaning that there’s no metal at Download Festival. These people obviously haven’t or are unable to read the line-up. That means that they probably won’t read about these 12 metal bands either but here’s some metal anyway. Stick it up your arse!