If you’re a long term fan of Heavy Metal, there’s a good chance that the Cloven Hoof name is one that you will remember harking back to the late seventies, early eighties surge of fresh young bands from the UK that were branded the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal. These were the bands that helped to imbue the scene with harder, dirtier roots, and along with a punk attitude, influence thrash, speed, and a whole host of still surviving metal sub genres. Like so many other bands of the era, Cloven Hoof have broken up, reformed, shed and changed members, and like contemporaries Angel Witch, is down to one original member. That’s not necessarily a criticism; I mean, is Motorhead any less Motorhead for the fact that it’s only constant is Lemmy? It is with this latest incarnation, that ‘Resist or Serve’ is released.
From the first note of ‘Call of the Dark Ones’, shot through with Lovecraftian lyrics, you can feel the tradition that runs throughout the whole album. Vocals are clean and powerful; the rhythm section is pounding; the riffs go through fast time changes, and the guitar work precise and technical. This same power blasts through ‘Hell Diver’ and ‘Deliverance’ with its anti-religious extremism sentiments, whilst ‘Brimstone and Fire’ keeps the head banging momentum going. Pretty much every heavy metal staple is touched on in this album, ‘Valhalla’ being a screaming tale of Norse warriors, a theme that goes all the way back to Led Zeppelin’s ‘Immigrant Song’, whilst ‘Mutilator’ and ‘Anti Matter Man’ play on the themes of horror and Sci-Fi respectively, the latter with a heavy slice of comic book super heroism thrown in. Each play fast and heavy one after the other, each laden with hooks to get hair flying, and I’ve little doubt that if the band were booked at festivals like Bloodstock they would go down a storm, there being nothing too extreme or controversial present to scare anyone away.
What Cloven Hoof does they do very well, and I’ve no doubt it’s a sound that will play well with traditionalists new and old alike; the fact that they are on a German label with this sound, and the continuing popularity of metal in that nation coming as no surprise. What they need, in my personal opinion, is to introduce something unique to make sure they aren’t lost amongst too many other bands with a similar sound. This is not any particular sub genre of metal, it plain and simply is Heavy Metal with a capital Aitch and Em, harking back to an age where as a friend of mine once so concisely put it, “when metal was metal, punk was punk, and everything else was shit.”
(7/10 Spenny)
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