Bloody Hammers – Songs of Unspeakable Terror
Release Date: 15th January 2021
Label: Napalm Records
Pre-Order/Stream
Genre: Horror Punk
FFO: Misfits, The Cramps, Ramones.
Review By: Paul Franklin
In a world ravaged by an evil plague! With people terrified to leave their homes! One man, and his bride, bravely step up and foray into the unknown!….sort of!
Like the rest of us Bloody Hammers main man Anders Manga found a global pandemic to be a Jeff Goldblum sized fly in the ointment of 2020. With the planned tour of his darkwave solo project now laying lifeless and cold on the carpet, Anders and his bride/bandmate Devallia collected an assortment of constituent parts from their favourite punk classics (The Misfits, The Cramps, Plasmatics, etc.), retreated to the cellar and stitched them together into eleven slabs of Retro-ized Horror Punk.
With titles that sound as if they should be daubed across the cardboard sleeves of VHS tapes buried at the bottom of the bargain bin in your local 80’s video rental store, Songs Of Unspeakable Terror is a 32 minute, non-stop ghost train ride through the world of old school horror.
Slashers, ghouls, alien monsters, all the genres are covered with a twisted sense of humour and a tongue (possibly severed? possibly someone else’s?) firmly in the cheek. The driving power chords and rumble of opener A Night To Dismember calls for the inmates of an asylum to break out and go on a killing spree. Later Not of This Earth tells the tale of an extra-terrestrial landing on earth in search of human blood.
Musically Bloody Hammers keep things simple and straight to the point. The keyboards of Devallia occasionally rise from the mix to add some atmosphere and texture, but the majority of the tracks remain similar in both structure and pace, happily chugging their way through their 2-3 mins running time without deviating too far from the formula laid down by their influences.
So, although variety is not top of the agenda, there are some great tracks here. The superbly catchy Hands Of The Ripper is a riff-heavy, doomy beast that warns of a ruthless killer stalking their victims through the murky streets, or the The Ones Who Own The Dark, which highlights the macabre theatricality in Anders vocals to great effect. Think Ville Valo crossed with Vincent Price.
A break in tone comes from Lucifer’s Light which quietens proceedings by draping a shimmering gothic veil over the horror. It’s the tender love song between the beauty and the beast. Touching lightly on a Type O Negative vibe with delicate keyboards and vocals like an exquisite bruise on virgin skin.
On every ghost train, just when you think it is over there’s always one last thrill. Here that thrill lasts the two minutes it takes the magnificently truculent I Spit On Your Corpse to spill it’s scathing message. There is just so much feeling in the way Anders sings the lines ‘Your face I deplore….My patience is worn…I can’t wait any God Damn longer…To spit on your corpse’ you can’t help but grin and join in, imagining all those that deserve to be on the receiving end of such vitriol.
This is not the album Bloody Hammers had planned, but, you know what they say about best laid plans…and as the last notes of Songs Of Unspeakable Terror fade into the darkness, you can hear screams for more.
(4 / 5)
