No denying I jumped on this when it came in. Been six years since the last Damnation’s Hammer album ‘Unseen Planets, Deadly Spheres’ and also that long since I last caught them live. So hopefully this album will help them escape the ‘one of the best kept secrets…’ curse. Because you kind of want to shout about them a bit.
Opener ‘Sutter Cane’ has a brief whoosh of a cold wind, a few heavy, foreboding chords with a lovely saw edge to them before a dark melodic guitar sets the scene to dark. Then the riff really begins; choppy, jagged, heavy and almost with a groove and the almost maniacal vocals of Tim Preston, the long bearded mad preacher that always seems to follow you. Do you read Sutter Cane…?? It’s a great, tight as hell but open sounded song; you can hear the bass of Jamie Fowler digging away in the engine room, briefly taking the lead with drummer Gary Bevan really driving it. The riff is excellent, menacing and the leady work from Ady Fernell excellent. Follow up ‘Do Not Disturb The Watchmaker’ again has that great hammer riff, a fantastic lead and the vocals twist everything into the edge of insanity with their expressive nature and a neat little spoken cameo from Aaron Stainthorpe. Damnation’s Hammer just have this sound; start somewhere around Celtic Frost’s ‘Monotheist’ add an almost thrash vein, hammer it out in a doom/death metal style and add that certain something that just sounds like Damnation’s Hammer. The production is spot on, letting every instrument be heard and the energy within the juddering, pounding music burst out.
Third track ‘Outpost 31’ (you know, right?) has the sinister and familiar sound of a helicopter in a bitter, barren landscape. A slow melody as the riff slowly rises and the Norwegian voice calling its desperation (a neat, odd appearance by Fenriz apparently!). Yes, Damnation’s love their horror, their science fiction, their mysteries of the cosmic dark. It’s a bleak number somehow, again the voice dragging you into the tale and the music closing the escape route. Eight minutes of terror that just fly by on adrenaline and riffs. Excellent indeed.
We then get, I’m guessing the twinned songs of ‘Into The Silent Nebula’ and ‘The Silent Nebula’. The former is snaking, ominous number; it surges into a choppy, thrashy beast like being caught in an irresistible force pulling you into some cosmic Hell. The latter a wonderful, eerie instrumental where the slow riff and the dark, melodic theme use sound to bring a sense of vast stillness and intolerable silence.
‘The Call Of The Void’ drags us out of this into an hallucinogenic universe, a turbulent place of tempo changes and the crushing sense of insignificance. ‘The Hex iv’ is a slow casting, which seems to ask questions and get no answers even as it pushes the tempo. ‘The Moon And The Waters…’ lead us out, choppy waters closing over us…
And quiet descends.
Damnation’s Hammer have their sound and it is so good. It is at once energetic and ponderous, built on the chugging and choppy riff, the up-front bass and the off kilter vocals that forever leave you on edge. It’s a world of horror, mystery and mind expanding and collapsing revelations. It’s a group of musicians so in tune with each other that the music moves relentlessly, parts pushing to the fore here, others falling back there as though breathing.
Give this a serious, serious listen people, you won’t be disappointed.
(8.5/10 Gizmo)
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