FRIENDS OF HELL
FRIENDS OF HELL "God Damned You To Hell"
By Dr. Abner Mality
I'll bet when Taz Danazoglou was a kid, he filled his notebook with devil pictures and pentagrams. Dude must be in his 50's now and nothing has changed, only now he creates music dedicated to devils and pentagrams. Whether it's SATAN'S WRATH, MIRROR or FRIENDS OF HELL, he's doggedly devoted to a primitive ooga-booga form of raw Satanism, the kind that was everywhere in the metal scene of the early 80's.
Well, it has a certain naive charm and he doesn't over-intellectualize Satan the way many modern black metal bands do. He has pretty much strong-armed FRIENDS OF HELL and taken control, getting rid of former singer Albert Witchfinder and replacing him with Hellbutcher from NIFLEHEIM. Albert seems more into strange and outre forms of expression these days, while Taz, Hellbutcher and the rest of FRIENDS OF HELL are into pure Satanic doom metal, If VENOM had decided to pursue a doomier, less frantic version of metal back in 1981, it would have probably sounded a lot like "God Damned You To Hell".
This is simple, rather primitive doom, reminiscent of WITCHFINDER GENERAL and early REVEREND BIZARRE. The album takes a while to get going and the first couple of songs seemed rather average. But things steadily improve and by the time we get to "Snakes, Not Sons", Hellbutcher's vocals have grown noticeably better and the songs a bit stronger and better structured. "Ave Satanatas" has a cool sleazy grind that is an album high point. Later songs like "Cross Inverter" and the very REVEREND BIZARRE-ish "All the Colors of the Dark" are quite epic. As far as lyrics go, the former track brought a smile to my face with its refrain of "Cross Inverter Has Returned/ Cross Inverter leaves no cross unturned". That's more likely to cause giggles rather than shudders.
FRIENDS OF HELL play the Devil's Doom...take it or leave it!