More Norwegian bed-hopping band members form new liaisons in the black metal dating agency; it really is like a soap opera isn’t it? Well after the Gorgoroth debacle which culminated in God Seed for a few seconds before Gaahl decided he had enough of the whole thing and pulled the towel from under it, what’s a man to do? Well form a band based around his own pseudonym, King Ov Hell and get on board some other friends to help and declare the band ‘Satan’s All Stars’ (I think Satan’s cheerleaders would be a better declaration of intent but there you go). Without Gaahl on the team it was never going to be easy for Mr O’ Hell to get a famous rasper but he went through his dating diary and pulled the best name out the hat, giving old Shaggy another excuse to not record a new Dimmu Borgir album. They obviously needed some extra musicians even if there was not a snowflake in hells chance of letting them appear on the album cover and pulled Teloch, Frost and Ice Dale into the studio to quickly hammer out a debut album. So is it any good?
Well considering the talent involved it would be hard for it to suck but then again one could have said that about the latest Gorgoroth album and look how that turned out. In a way I didn’t really want this to succeed due to the whole silliness surrounding events and the fact that the whole thing strikes as an exercise in narcissism but grudgingly I have to say that this is not a bad album. The main reason that this isn’t half bad in my opinion is that it does not particularly sound like any of the players other ‘main’ projects, however that is not to say that it is not reminiscent of certain side projects but I will get to that later.
Things are kept quite straightforward, there are just eight numbers here and the album only comes in at about 37 minutes keeping it all accessible. As ‘Devil’s Harlot’ cracks one out in a mid paced fashion, emphasis is clearly concentrated on Shagrath’s rasping vocals and damn fine and craggy they sound too. Instrumentation is left to chug around them and sculpt the obligatory frosty atmosphere. This is nothing spectacular but quite competently executed. Samples are left between each and every song adding to things and every trick is utilised to keep them inventive, torture, chanting chorals, demons, wolves howling and other assorted clichés abound. By second number things click and the word Immortal is plucked out my head and there is no detracting this notion. Well what we have here is a track that does sound like it escaped from ‘All Shall Fall’ and then one also takes note of King and Ice Dale’s involvement in ‘I’ and this sounds a bit like the bastard child of the two projects with Shagrath doing a fine job of sounding uncannily like Abbath in places. After this somewhat slow sermon we finally get a faster paced number ‘Invoker’ and the galloping charge really is welcome before it slows and glistens courtesy of Ice and Teloch’s (errr) ice laden guitar twists and turns.
The songs concentrate on melody and every number is etched quickly on the memory, in doing so this is far more accessible than the likes of Gorgoroth and the band sound as though they are having a lot of fun here and are perhaps not having to particularly prove anything to anyone or conform to any strictures within their sound. Production is quite glossy and the raw and primitive side that true black metal practitioners are perhaps looking for is on the whole lacking here, although the odd number such as ‘Acts Of Sin’ do come across as particularly feral.
With Ov Hell and Troll hitting so early in the year one wonders what exactly is going to come next. There are no mentions of anything in the way of tour dates for Ov Hell yet and perhaps they are waiting for reaction on the album but the feasibility of shows is inevitable and they have announced a booking agent to contact. On the strength of ‘The Underworld Regime’ I would certainly go and watch them; they are bound to play The Underworld itself if they come to London and the opportunity for puns around this are impossible to ignore.
http://www.myspace.com/ovhell
