### Hail Of Bullets: Warsaw rising

#### 26/08/09 || Habakuk

I guess you know who Hail Of Bullets are. If not, die. This Dutch All-Star outfit hit the scene with their debut album in 2008 and scored themselves a spectacular forum-deal with Global Domination that made the news on Global Domination. Obviously, the best way to move onwards from that point is keeping your standards high. And guess what the guys did? That’s right, kept their standards high. Lesson learned: Never change a running system, always dominate.

“Warsaw rising” contains three new songs as well as three live recordings from last years Party.San Festival in Bad Berka, Germany. In order to keep the tension high, I’ll start with the latter. If you’re not familiar with the songs, you should have already perished after the first sentence, so if you’re reading this nevertheless, be fair and die. “Red wolves of Stalin” (note the fitting song theme and festival name, woo hoo), “Nachthexen” and “The crucial offensive” are three of the best songs off the debut and the live versions are nothing to be ashamed of either. Great, great guitar tone and drum sound, and everything is as clear as you’ll get it on a live recording. Flawless instrumental and vocal performances, too, but Mr. van Drunen’s German song announcements and mid-song rants are too hilarious to go uncommented. His German is pretty good, but there’s no way a Dutch accent disguised with some Berlin slang will make it through… Also, am I the only one who thinks it’s funny to ask a German audience during songs about the Eastern front “crappy weather, huh?”? Oh well. Anyway, great stuff, and unlike most live “bonustracks”, these are no filler material but at least on par with the originals.

On to the new material…

“Liberators” picks up where “Nachthexen” left, moving from slow and melodic to a devastating uptempo finale. “Destroyer” is a Twisted Sister cover, and a pretty rad one at that. Slowly devastating and actually better than the original, it fits the band pretty well with its doomish flow. Complaints so far? Just the “you better stay out of his way” bit feels a little out of place to my ears. However, the title track makes up for that small glitch. Opening the 28 minutes EP, it embodies everything this band is about: Old school songwriting. Lots of simple and effective death metal drumming perfectly executed by GD‘s very own Ed Warby. A thundering production that’s they managed to get even better than on the excellent predecessor. Technical Wankery? Nope, thanks. Heaps of sawing riffs galore instead and, as if all this weren’t enough, Martin van Drunen’s bad-ass trademark grunts on top of it. Excellent stuff. Total war. A good reason to use every reviewer’s favorite means of handing out a not-so-subtle message: Letters highlighted in bold.

Bombs away!

- Information
- Released: 2009
- Label: Metal Blade
- Website: www.hailofbullets.com
- Band
- Martin van Drunen: vocals
- Paul Baayens: guitars
- Stephan Gebedi: guitars
- Theo van Eekelen: bass
- Ed Warby: drums

- Tracklist
- 01. Warsaw rising
- 02. Liberators
- 03. Destroyer
- 04. Red wolves of Stalin (live)
- 05. Nachthexen (live)
- 06. The crucial offensive (live)