If the saw is the law then the saw of hell should be hot but it would appear from this to be a cold saw! I saw Hellsaw (oh enough) support Shining on their last excursion to the UK and noted at the time they were a band with promise and I was obviously not the only one thinking so as Napalm Records have gone and picked the Austrians up. The group’s last album ‘Phantasm,’ numbers from which they were airing on the Shining support came out on Folter Records and passed me by but what strikes me very much about their Napalm debut is the maturity and diversification it exudes, along with its evident ice cold demeanour.
After a nice acoustic guitar opening, ‘A Suicide Journey’ slices in with meaty weight behind the heavy production. Grasping a fine sense of melody, guitars run up and down the scales, drums hammer and vocals from Aries shriek admirably behind it all. There is a sense of majesty as well as a pagan sort of vibe flowing through this and it certainly is no case of simply playing as fast and brutally as possible, it builds up atmosphere that has a lot of depth to it, kind of like the deep dark forest illustrated on the cover. A staple favourite, human-culling, black metal theme is ‘The Black Death’ and Hellsaw pepper their tribute with the words “rotting corpses” followed by a beefy death grunt sounding like the last gasp from shutting down lungs. Ranging from fast instrumental assaults to a mid-paced groove this one rottenly rocks and rolls thrusting its gauntlet clad spikes in your face for good measure.
The sign of a good black metal album is one that makes you pound fists, bang your head and look for a knife to stab the sofa as it has been winding you up by falling apart and you want to put it out of its misery. Luckily mine is surviving as I am not allowed anything too sharp where I am but Hellsaw really do make me want to destroy things. ‘Cold Aeon’ has that frosty Immortal cleave about it with more maturity and the booming drum that hits like a march to war suddenly coming into the song makes it really stand out. ‘Psycho Pastor’ (got to love the title) tells a story and the spoken word intro again adds diversity from any atypical cut and thrust. I lose the story but it goes nicely psycho and this reminds a bit of Kampfar with a nice bouncy rhythm to it.
I absolutely fucken love ‘I Saw Hell’ it really is a pure belter of a number and if anything goes on the cover-mount CD’s of any magazines it needs to be this one. It has a killer chorus, rampaging blasts that pile on hell for leather and a particularly vicious and clinical delivery about it. Luckily they manage to follow it up with some good songs and I have to admit that this is one hell of a lot better than I thought it was going to be and it is evident that the promising band I saw a couple of years ago have really stepped up a few notches. If you like good, harsh, melody driven, icy and well played black metal you should check them out now!
http://www.myspace.com/hellsawmusic
