I think it’s safe to say that US band Hellwell like reading horror literature and pulp fiction. It’s also safe to say that Manilla Road fans will be hugely interested in this three piece as it is, basically, a Mark Shelton side project and as he plays guitar and sings it has both those highly distinctive pointers in the music. This is despite the band being seemingly named after the keyboard player E C Hellwell. So if you add in their very John Lord-esque Hammondkeyboard style high in the mix and further add in the kind of thunderous drumming that you usually reserve for a death metal band you have Hellwell. In short: Progressive, epic, rather thumpingly heavy metal steeped in tales of elder gods, zombies and murderous innkeepers.

The problem is that, really, even after repeated and focused listens there is something a bit disappointing here for me. It is all very laudable and excellently played as would be expected, and they are clearly setting out to be the kind of storytellers that Manilla Road are, too. Each song is its own tale and you even get a closing trilogy and I really should love this stuff. It should be so up my street its unreal. So why isn’t it?

Songs. Always the songs.

This is virtually all slow to mid-placed riffing beneath all enveloping Deep Purple keyboards (though never quite doom mind you) and with searching guitar lines cutting cleanly beneath. The vocals are distinctive but have only been given a limited land to explore within the framework here and it all kind of struggles to evolve from a single shape. There are of course moments of excellence. The melody and vocals on ‘Keepers of the Devils Inn’ are excellent and the same goes for ‘Deadly Nightshade’, but it will always get bogged down in a morass of that heavy mid-placed riffing and keyboard that I ended enduring for the vocal melody lines and hoping that they would sustain me to the next part.

However, all this moaning does require a bit of further context and hope. This is classy progressive heavy metal a laManilla Road, Hammers Of Misfortune, Slough Feg et al. I have many albums by all these bands and love some of them to bits (Crystal Logic, The Bastard and Hardworlder to name but three) but it is always a bit hit and miss with me and when it misses me it is never because of quality but because for me somehow the stories swamp the music in my brain and the lasting impression is of the tale being set to background music. For example I reckon few fans of Slough Feg will be likely agree with my assessment of their last album The Animal Spirits as suffering from that but for me it did.

So if you are fans of those band, give this a look. Production, playing and imagination here are all quality. It is heavy, dense and brave. Just for me I can unfortunately only file it as a fine project that falls short on engaging songs.

(5.5/10 Gizmo) 

http://shadowkingdomrecords.bandcamp.com/album/beyond-the-boundaries-of-sin