Artist: Allhelluja
Title: Breath Your Soul
Type: Album
Label: Scarlet Records
My first impression on receiving this wasn’t good; I thought there was a typo on the cover, but it actually is called ‘Breath Your Soul.' This is the follow up to the highly rated ‘Pain Is The Game’, the album which truly put Allhelluja on the map, certainly in their native Italy where they were beating Lacuna Coil in year end polls, and deservedly so. The follow up has had something of a troubled birth, with guitarist and founding member Massimo Gajer leaving the band last year, but any thoughts or worries that this would not be up to scratch are wide of the mark.
Allhelluja seem to have adopted a slightly harder and more standard ‘balls out’ rock approach to ‘Breath Your Soul’ and this is evident in first ‘proper’ track ‘Face To Face With The Devil’, a charged up monster of a track, sounding rather like Phil Anselmo fronting Stone Temple Pilots, all driven by a dirty great riff from new guitarist Tommy Massara. Vocalists GL Perotti and Trevor mix things up nicely with the majority of songs featuring a mix of ‘clean’ vocals and demonic growls, always matching the music perfectly. The album is quite varied in style. ‘The Black Jar’ is pure driving music, something to put your foot down to, whilst ‘Bloodtrip’ is a big bongful of Stoner/Doom. ‘I’m The Zero’ draws from every corner of their influences, Sabbath, Pantera, Clutch, you can hear bits of everything, yet the end result is a sound all of their own that attacks you from all angles. There are three cover versions here. King Crimson’s ‘21st Century Schizoid Man’, and Black Sabbath’s ‘Into The Void’ are excellent; the latter’s growled vocals giving it a whole new intensity that the original lacked. The real treat here though is the final track, a cover of ‘Profondo Rosso’ by Goblin. This was the theme to Dario Argento’s classic horror ‘Deep Red’, and it’s an iconic piece, often regarded in the same way as John Carpenter’s Halloween theme and The Exorcist’s ‘Tubular Bells’. It’s a very faithful rendition, given the obligatory modern rock treatment, and whilst I admit I am a fan of the likes of Goblin and Zombi anyway, it’s a real gem, and worth having the album for alone!
‘Pain Is The Game’ was a pretty hard act to follow, but in ‘Breath Your Soul’ they have managed it with ease. Allhelluja once again seem to have raised their game, the line up changes injecting some fresh life and ideas into a unit that were not particularly lacking in the first place. There’s no real filler over the 14 tracks here, and the end result is an album that’s as heavy and tight as an obese nun. Allhelluja say,”Breath Your Soul is a way to say stop for a moment and explore your inner self. Good things will happen after.” If that’s what they’ve done here, all I can say is that it’s worked!
http://www.myspace.com/allhelluja
http://www.allhelluja.com
Lee Kimber
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