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SPEEDFREAK
Hellspeed Rock N’ Roll

Self-released (2024)
Rating: 7/10

Some albums require next to no imagination when it comes to listening to them. Hellspeed Rock N’ Roll is your basic, balls to the wall beer drinking biker metal played on 45rpm in worship of a leather clad Lucifer.

Speedfreak are a Mexican combo who do nothing by halves; the title track is like a speeded up version of Bathory but with extra beef and howl in the vocal department. I tend to lump this sort of rusty mayhem somewhere between Venom, Bulldozer and more recent gel machines Wasteland Riders; a chaotic concoction that isn’t as silly as you might think.

Driven by alcohol and virgins blood, tracks like ‘Son Of Man Collapse’, ‘Born To Be Evil’ and ‘Carnage Unleashed’ are genuine slabs of molten fury whose axework strikes like scorching streaks of lightning amidst a scene stenched by oxidized metal and hot, steaming tarmac.

‘Bastardizer’ makes you want to mount a bestial motorcycle and burn the horizon as seething riffs combine with howling bass and tumultuous drums. Meanwhile, ‘Speedfreak’ and ‘Midnight Freaks’ sprint like a black blazing stallion on speed. What really makes this opus even more entertaining are the lyrics, satanic sermons born straight from the fires of 1984 when this stuff was scary and dripping in what we thought was real goats blood.

Sure, I’ve heard and reviewed sixty-hundred and sixty-six similar bands, most of which I’ve forgotten about, and so add Speedfreak to the smouldering pile and for now, while it lasts, bathe in its hellish charm and chunder.

Neil Arnold

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