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BARBARIAN
Viperface

Hells Headbangers (2022)
Rating: 6/10

Italy’s Barbarian releases albums like movies such as Halloween shits out sequels… frequently! The title of Viperface doesn’t quite sit well with me, probably because it’s better suited to a track title rather than an album title, but this is the fifth full-length from a band who have mastered the art of churning out rusty, fast-paced metal.

My only issue here is the rather clanky drum sound which I’m not sure is intentional or not. Even so, like the rest of their albums, Viperface is a furious opus with streaks of blackened, drunken melody and a malicious onslaught of vocal snarls and sneers.

There’s some nice Gothic chants to the opening title track which provides a good tempo shift and catchy hooks, while ‘Chant Of The Inflicter’ features a truly gnarly bass but a steely, mid-tempo trad’ metal melody before clanking like an unhinged portcullis battered by orcs. However, that drum sound is bloody awful if I’m honest. I get that the drummer is known as Sledgehammer, but there’s something almost tinny and un-heavy about his clattering and it does affect the feel of this seven-track affair.

‘Whisper My Name’ is a fluent, chunky monster with fiery axe work, although a few tracks do start to melt into one another as generic mid-tempo plodders, so a bit of variety wouldn’t have gone amiss every now and then because while many tracks start well (‘A Feast For The Feast’) the gallop is predictable at which ever speed this iron horse strides.

‘Regressive Metal’ – title-wise anyway – attempts to explain no doubt why this album suffers from a no-frills attitude, but however much Blackstuff hammers his bass and Borys Crossburn inhales black smoke into his charred lungs, I just feel that with a few more tweaks this band could sound quite organic and evil. However, as it stands Viperface hurries like a Hellhammer-cum-Motörhead but without the nefarious edge in spite of its confrontational stance.

Neil Arnold

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