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HELLCRASH
Krvcifix Invertör

Red Wine Rites (2021)
Rating: 8/10

In 2013 this merry bunch of sadists got together and released a demo entitled Ready To Burn In Hell, and two years later a second demo was recorded with the title Heavy Metal Inferno. Now, I’m not sure what band members Hellraiser (vocals / guitar), Skullcrusher (bass) and Nightkiller (drums) do in between Hellcrash, but they’ve certainly taken a long time releasing this debut platter.

With an amateurishly cool cover featuring a satanic entity clearly inspired by Slayer’s Show No Mercy (1983) and an introduction lifted from classic 80s heavy metal movie Trick Or Treat, we are already on the right track for what could be a cult gem when it comes to current releases.

Hellcrash hails from Italy and their style of metal is very much buried knee-deep in rust, rancid blood, more rust, leather and satanic piss and alcohol. Think Venom, Bathory, old Sodom and Destruction, Tank, and of course Motörhead, throw it all into a melting pot, stir with a trident, apply a dash of toad, eye of newt and wing of bat, and dive in to the swamp.

‘Krvcifix Invertör’, ‘Satanic Heresy’, ‘Raped By Satan’… you get the message – a toiling cauldron of black speed sickness and fire. What we get is a manic, zipping, reckless, loose n’ lethal punked-up fury straight from the Bathory bathtub of total destruction.

‘Evil Executioner’ is the sort of song I tried to record when I was 14 with my cousin on a shitty guitar and a loo roll tube for added vocal echo! Even so, the simple design is effective as early Voivod is thrown at you amidst a further hail of nuts, bolts and punky pus. Then there’s a heap of Bulldozer to digest, all of course mined from that classic Venom drunken gloom as lyrics are barked in snappy fashion over a mesh of raw, thin choking black fumes.

Satan is everywhere on this perverse expression. ‘Hordes Of Satan’ comes with a frenzy of crash n’ smash drums and motorcycle guitar zoom, while ‘Into The Necropolis’ pukes up further rusty chunks before scampering by on another hoarse vocal spit and speeded up Lemmy bass.

This is just one big tin can junkyard of a record; a bag of bones, bolts and nails n’ beer cans as the deadly ‘Alcoholic Brigade’ billows and combusts. And wretched fumes are cast skyward as closer ‘Mephistopheles’ shits, farts and blows its way to a sorry halt, around 48 minutes after opener ‘War Against Christ (Satan Or Die)’ mashed our faces with its wiry mesh of cut throat slice n’ dice black thrash. It’s all fast and delivered with the subtlety of a piranha testicle feast – hacking, stabbing, pinching, tearing and eventually maiming in its bloodlust.

Despicable from beginning to end, Hellcrash certainly live up to their untidy moniker of mess while seething and snapping at the heels. But while bereft of originality there’s enough toxic fumes here to keep you high on the sounds reverberating below.

Neil Arnold

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