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Bombs Of Hades: The serpent's redemption
06/11/12 || gk
I discovered Bombs of Hades fairly recently thanks to their split with Usurpress and there was something about the band’s crusty d-beat influenced death metal that really took a hold of me. The music on that split pretty much demanded further investigation and I found the band’s debut album “Chambers of Abomination” to be an impressive, no frills effort. “The Serpent’s Redemption” is the band’s second and latest full length and I have to say, I’m one satisfied customer.
The album starts with Crawl away and bleed forever and its infectious riffing, changes in tempo and dare I say it, “catchy” growls are pretty much a perfect introduction to the band and the remaining 7 songs. The band is pretty relentless in their songwriting. That’s not to say that the songs all blur into one another or even that the pace is always at Mach 5. Just that there’s a sense of never letting up even when the tempo slows down or even during the acoustic ending to “Darkness, my soul”. “Burn” is another great song with a strong and memorable chorus and a slightly more pronounced d-beat influence as it goes through a kickass lead guitar section and ends with a jagged and memorable groove.
Title song The serpent’s redemption breaks up the album as the mid way point and comes with a slightly unusual and unexpected eastern sounding melody that creeps its way through the first half of the song and then transforms into a powerful riff for the second half. “Forgotten in graves” abandons all sense of melody and goes for the jugular with its frantic d-beat approach. “Incubus descending” plays out like a brutal tribute to Swedish death metal and they throw in a little homage to Venom and Skull collector is short, chaotic and vicious. The album ends with the epic “Scorched earth” that lasts for just over 10 minutes and is just about the perfect ending to “The serpent’s redemption”.
Jonas Stålhammar’s vocals are the highlight for me. His growls sound vicious but clear enough to understand what he’s saying. Stålhammar and P-O “Wolfie” Söderback handle the guitars and seem to have an infinite supply of ideas and riffs but also more importantly, the ability to convert them into great songs. I had high expectations for this album and Bombs of Hades has pretty much exceeded all of them. This is high quality old school Swedish death metal with a crusty d-beat vibe. Every song here is memorable, the songwriting is immaculate and the energy is infectious.
“The serpent’s redemption” is one of my top death metal albums of 2012 and honestly if you like death metal at all then you need to listen to Bombs of Hades.
- Information
- Released: 2012
- Label: Blood Harvest Records
- Website: Bombs of Hades MySpace
- Band
- Jonas Stålhammar: vocals, guitars
- P-O “Wolfie” Söderback: guitars
- Butch Eckman: bass
- Magnus Forsberg: drums
- Tracklist
- 01. Crawl Away and Bleed Forever
- 02. Darkness, My Soul
- 03. Burn
- 04. The Serpent’s Redemption
- 05. Forgotten in Graves
- 06. Incubus Descending
- 07. Skull Collector
- 08. Scorched Earth
