This band surely does not need any introduction anymore. It’s them who made the whole Black Metal scene more accessible to an ignorant audience, with both positive and negative aspects in consequence. My personal opinion – no, I won’t go deeper into this subject. Let’s say that, despite the catchiness and commercial aspects, this band created a handful of acceptable compositions in mean time, especially during the earlier years. Lots of pulp too, unfortunately, but – no, I promised myself to censure…
Let’s go to the record immediately. Hammer Of The Witches is quite a lengthy piece of s***, stuff, I mean, clocking almost one hour. And let’s admit: each time that shows persuasion, conviction, honesty, not?! No matter rrr…
I assure you, that lots of ‘fans’ of this band will just adore this newest effort. It comes with all those ingredients that made the band that characteristic in the past: fast outbursts, icy screams, orchestral keyboards, thrashing riffs, timeless rhythm structures, traditional melodies, many tempo-changes and quite a huge, rather technical diversification in structure, additional female voices, and so on. You know, it’s that what does typify this band for sure. Whether you like it or not, it’s that simple.
[And let’s be honest: some people pretend to dislike this band, but just adore the likes of Dimmu Borgir or Satyricon; but aren’t they just the same kind of self-repeating, degressing sh*t?]
Dani Filth and his renewed crew will not convince the opposites with this new album; that’s a surety. But the ‘core’ fans, and probable quite a lot coming from the new generation, will notice that this stuff is pretty attractive for sure. My personal opinion does not count right here (note: Satyricon’s debut, and the stuff before, belongs to my horniest dreams, but they too failed to satisfy my everlasting pleasures, so don’t come complaining about ‘how pure the initial scene’ might be, because they f*ck too!), so my most objective part of being a reviewer says: Hammer Of The Witches is quite all right. There are several fabulous pieces, including several cool, thrashy solos, monstrous riff structures or orchestral passages, and lots of bands that pretend to be ‘true’ aren’t even able to come near the compositional qualities. It’s that simple… So: seen from auditive point of view, this album is quite all right. No further comment; it does not deserve my full energy anymore, but making abstraction of my prejudgements, I cannot but stipulate the technical craftsmanship of this effort. Damn yeah, Mr. Filth still kwaaks like a molested duck, but that just is part of this (funny) game…