Hellhouse was one of the world's first death metal bands. It was a one-man band that was formed sometime in the mid-80s by one of the members of the hardcore band Straight Ahead. He released only one demo called Burn for Peace in 1986 before splitting up. Being one of the first death metal bands in the world sounds really impressive, but as I've learned before, just because you were the first, doesn't mean you're the best. Unfortunately, that applies here as well.
First of all, I can hardly hear the drums. It just sounds like a faint rumbling and tapping off in the background. Even when they can be heard clearly, I'm disappointed to discover that their blast beats and rhythms are below average. The guitars consist of a bunch of heavily down-tuned shredding that has no rhyme or reason. The guy was less concerned with writing good riffs and more concerned with sounding as brutal as humanly possible. As I've said so many times in the past, brutality for brutality's sake is a fool's errand. All that will result from it is shitty music.
What really killed the demo for me were the vocals. I have the feeling the guy was unable to perform proper death metal growls, so he down-tuned them to absurdly low levels. Either that, or he recorded the growls of his dog and down-tuned those. It doesn't matter how he recorded the vocals, they're utterly incomprehensible and their performance is completely nonsensical. I have the feeling that the guy was trying to sound evil and menacing and whatnot, but instead his vocals sound cheesy and out of place.
Hellhouse further proves the notion that just because you're the first doesn't mean you're any good. The production sounds like shit, the drums are uninspired, the guitars are a lousy mess of down-tuned riffs, and the vocals exhibit a really bad case of trying too hard. If I had known the demo was going to suck this bad, I wouldn't have wasted so much time looking for it.
0 comments:
Post a Comment