Hell

Artist: 
Album Title: 
III
Release Date: 
Monday, June 24, 2013
Distribution: 
Review Type: 

Hell? Welcome!

This project is a solo-outfit by someone called M.S.W., and under the Hell-moniker, he recorded two full lengths, all of them released on cassette format only. This third one, ingeniously called III, will be released on vinyl as well, albeit in a very limited edition of 472 copies only.

III consists of two tracks, both of them clocking close to twenty minutes each. Mourn starts semi-acoustic, somewhat Americana-alike, integer and rather sober. After three minutes, the melody changes, even though the acoustic fundaments stay. It’s after four minutes and a half before electric guitars and drums join in. together with a quasi-heavenly female voice, the sphere floats into a more sludgy concept, with those operatic vocals giving a very special touch, and then, suddenly, at minute # 6, the whole spices up with more up-tempo instrumentation and blackish vocals. Then again the female voice, followed by a blackened explosion, yet still with a pronounced Sludge / Doom sound. And this variety continues. Further on some samples, mournful Neo-Folk passages, pounding Drone with Saint Vitus-alike guitar distortion, and so on, with a focus on instruments and only very few vocals. Decedere, the other track, is comparable. It starts acoustic, yet of the melancholic kind, almost neo-gothic, but with a slightly creepy and dense atmosphere. It takes five minutes before the electric guitars and drums appear; this turns the whole into another apocalyptic and grim Doom / Black / Sludge nastiness, especially when the sulphuric grunts are introduced again (though limitedly used). The metalized intensity is more obvious in this creation than it was in Mourn, with that dirty, sleazy and ultra-droning Sludge-noise predominating the whole. Towards the end, then again, Decedere turns back to the initial semi-acoustic structures of utter desperation.

It is a challenge to examine this LP, but once you get through it, after a couple of try-outs, you might like it. My ‘problem’, however, is the lack of cohesion. Using Drone, Sludge, Black Metal, Post-Rock, Doom etc. all together isn’t that completely new anymore, but in some cases it’s less unstructural. Yet again, one might enjoy this trip through dimensions from beyond.

81/100