HELLSPAWN - The Great Red Dragon (WM PSYCHO - CD 2012)
This is the second full length album from
Polish death masters Hellspawn and third recording of theirs, which I had a
pleasure to listen to and I must admit it is a real pleasure to be able to observe
how the music of this band has been developing and maturing through all these
years, since the release of their “Demo 2005”. And the word “maturity” is a key
here, I think, as really since the “Child of Hell” CD Hellspawn have grown up
and actually managed to fix everything what was wrong with their previous
album, so now they appear to be a damn vicious and lethal death metal force.
Obviously they still sound very Polish, but that is not an objection, but
rather a proof that the scene in this country is like a never ending mine,
where one can find really many, many great bands.
When comparing “The Great Red Dragon” to “Child
of Hell” I can only point out the positive aspects of Hellspawn’s development
and really this new album is much better than the debut. First of all, the
music itself has been bettered and as I already pointed it out, it matured. It
still is pretty intense, fast and brutal death metal, yeah, but the riffs are
just better, there are also more interesting and killer, as well as memorable
ideas and motifs, plus I can honestly say that the guitar leads, which are on
“The Great Red Dragon” are just excellent. But yeah, the riffs are really
great, the music is often very tight and extreme, but still quite memorable,
which is a good aspect of “The Great Red Dragon”, as there’s nothing worse if
death metal becomes just a mindless brutality, which leads you nowhere… Plus
it’s not just a chase with the light all the time through the album… Sure, the
fast playing is still dominating the most part of Hellspawn’s music, but
luckily this time the band managed to vary their songs, using the killer, slow
parts more often and this diversity made a very good effect. “The Great Red
Dragon” is really interesting, it is very intense and yet, it is has enough space
to really catch the attention and that is excellent thing. More so, I must
point out that finally Hellspawn has achieved a good production; the sound on
“The Great Red Dragon” is so great. I mean the lack of really killer and
energetic sound was probably the main failure on “Child of Hell”; meanwhile
“The Great Red Dragon” sounds crispy, but brutal and still very powerful. I
really like the guitar tone, as well as the way the vocals have been mixed and
performed. Actually I think I like everything about this album and since I
started to listen to it last week, I still enjoy the music a lot…
And an extra word should be said about the
artwork for the album and the lyrics. I like the fact that Hellspawn putted
Polish translations of their texts and I must say that the Polish version of
the lyrics from “The Great Red Dragon” are really, really good, maybe even
better than the English ones; but of course the band growls the English words
only and that is actually good, as I’m not a big fan of Polish lyrics in death
metal generally. So, if I can say anything for the end then it would be just a
word of praise and a total recommendation of this album for everyone, who’s
into this style of music.
Standout tracks: “Word Becomes Flesh”,
“Revelation of the Great Red Dragon”
Final rate: 83/100
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