Starting originally as a crust punk band, Swedish Death metal bruisers Bombs of Hades have ‘The Serpents Redemption’, their second full length effort after a few split releases ready for your entertainment. The band features Jonas Stalhammer, whom is notable for his bass work with genre forefathers God Macabre/Macabre End and also his vocal duties with The Crown and Utumno. I am happy to report that BOH still have their ballsy approach, they have developed to include every range of SweDeath there is and by this I mean rot ‘n’ roll, crusty d-beat speed and pure rotten death metal, a real treat for the old school purists.
The album title track has real momentum, it is fresh and exciting and gnarly due to that aforementioned crust influence. In and around the album BOH produce your death metal rotten style but still manage to create a sound of their own without becoming a pure Entombed clone. It’s very hard to distinguish bands in this field, there are of course a lot of them around at the present moment, but BOH have something that’s a little bit dirtier, much like Bastard Priest I suppose. This second album does prove that that have upped the song writing stakes, there is more quality control most certainly, it’s not all about bashing the hell out of instruments and making a noise, the arrangements have some direction, but make no mistake, BOH are very purposeful.
Available in all formats, ‘The Serpents Redemption’ is an exciting release, it follows the path of all things that you would come to expect when you mention old school Swedish death metal, their trick is the ability to produce that dirty side of the music. Carnage is maintained throughout this album, there are no weak tracks or areas where you feel there is something missing, but critically that is the paradigm, wanting something that little bit different is now a requirement with this very popular genre, however, I wouldn’t change BOH’s style just yet, I am still enjoying it too much and after listening to this album numerous times, their opening tune ‘Crawl Away and Bleed Forever’ describes an action that could well be resulted if you get too close to this band.
(7.5 Paul Maddison)
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