“What’s up with that fart box guitar tone?” This is the response I received from one of my best friends when I sent him the promo video for the Bloody Hammers song “What’s Haunting You.” He is a producer, engineer, musician, sometimes front of house for a large metal band, and an overall audiophile. His brother, a band director and accomplished musician in his own right, said; “I kind of dig it.”

What’s the point of this? Well, first off, “it’s my hot body and I’ll do what I want.” Secondly, it’s to illustrate the point that music can sound totally different from one person to the next. This somehow brings us back to Bloody Hammers, who came around where there were a lot of traditional metal bands making it “big,” relatively speaking. While they were certainly lumped in with this crowd, they’ve always been a little different. A little more, let’s say “goth.”

This brings us to their sixth full length album in a little over 8 years. Despite reading this was going to be far more synth heavy than their recent output, I feel this is a little more riff based. Take the first track for example, “A Night To Dismember.” It begins with a simple, punk riff, hits quickly with a smoothly sung chorus, including the “whoa-oh” treatment, and is over seemingly as quickly as it began.

The punk vibe continues and is certainly prevalent in track 3, “Witchfinder General.” It’s over in a little over 2 minutes with a quick, punchy guitar riff, an audible bass, and Anders Magna somehow makes the title of the song catchy.

Even though it’s still a quick song, “Not of This Earth,” track 4, manages to pull off a slower crawl while keeping that punk back beat in the pre-chorus. However, that slow crawl is essentially only at the beginning, then the punk vibes take it back over.

The next to mention is track 6, “Waking the Dead.” You may be asking yourself if you’ve made it this far, “Does it sound punk?” Yes, yes it does. However, Anders displays a little deeper register in his vocals, which adds well to the chorus. He does the same on the track “Lucifer’s Light.” However, this track is not punk. Not even a little. This is where those synths come into play and take over for the first time.

That is, until the, you guessed it, the punk vibes of the closer, “I Spit on Your Corpse.” I really dig this track, specifically because of the chorus itself. Honestly, there’s not much more to it than that, though since the album is 11 tracks in 32 minutes.

Overall, this is a solid Bloody Hammers album, as all of them are. Sure, there are highlights in their discography, such as their self-titled debut and Under Satan’s Sun, but none of them are bad. They own their style and continue to write catchy albums. If you’ve ever enjoyed them, you’ll enjoy this. I certainly do.

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