Did you ever think when a hearse rolls by that someday you are going to die?
Oh yes. Time to stop weaving bleak tapestries on your gloom loom, apply your black nail varnish, leap into your snug black velvet underpants, don your cloak of deepest night, pick your skull-topped cane out of the umbrella rack and step out into the fog-shrouded moonlit night to roam the cobbled streets of your Transylvanian town.
Ladies and gentlemen, please rattle your bones and make assorted spooky noises in appreciation of the Bloody Hammers Under Satan’s Sun; 2014 didn’t get any more gothic than this.
I had no idea that opener ‘The Town That Dreaded Sundown’ was a film, let alone two films, until minutes ago. Based on the unsolved 1946 Texarkana Moonlight Murders. It’s a great opening track, stately and purposeful right from the off, a whole B-movie in a song.
Under Satan’s Sun gets gnarlier by turning up the Hammer Horror factor to 13 for ‘Spearfinger’, a local legend about a witch picking off unwary country folk. There’s real metal bite here, a song to punch the air to; although not while you’re driving in heavy traffic, as I now know. The atmospheric lovers-over-a-cliff* ‘Death Does Us Part’ is a good change of pace, pretty and melodic with some very good black lacy keyboard touches by Devallia**.
I am very taken with the slo-mo metal of ‘Moon-Eyed People’, which is a great track with lyrics of pure gibberish, but hey, they sound good in situ which is the point. I like the guitar growl here. Unfortunately the cover of Alice Cooper’s ‘Second Coming’ is a misstep.
Bloody Hammers nail down the lid on Under Satan’s Sun with three great tracks^. ‘Welcome To The Horror Show’ is everything I want them to be, fantastically serious, fantastically silly and very overwrought – music to Munsters cosplay to.
The title track is another goodie, with more metallic crunch stirred into the mix. The production is particularly good on this track which highlights Anders Manga’s dark vocals. ‘Dead Man’s Shadow On The Wall’ ups the tempo to good affect as the riffs get crunchier.
I really enjoy Bloody Hammers, their sound is great, just enough sweetness to help tamp the grave dirt down. This is music that I love now and I wish I could have had as a teenager, it would have extended my goth phase from 6 months unto infinity. It is intrinsically daft, impeccably played and excellently crafted. It makes me want to drink pints of cider and black for the first time in 28 years^^ and squeeze into my black jeans.
Under Satan’s Sun is a really good LP, I would rate it a notch below Lovely Sort Of Death and not just because of the cover nudity^*. If you like your music moody and your horror hammy, then don’t hesitate – just be sure you’re back indoors before sundown.
1053 Down.
PS: Because I like you:
PPS: because I ordered this direct from Napalm Records back in 2016 there’s an awesomely Germanic Napalm Records catalogue inside. My eye was taken by the astoundingly metal liederhosen and dirndls. How cool?
*retrospective spoiler alert!
**the lady half of the husband and wife duo.
^that’s a passive aggressive way of me saying that the last two tracks on Side 2 are bobbins.
^^a tipple that I abandoned after throwing up all over my favourite 2000AD T-shirt and staining it beyond repair. I blamed the blackcurrant juice and to this very day I have eschewed it.
^*9 nipples, 4 lady gardens. Just saying.