Friends Of Hell - Friends Of Hell (Vinyl/Record)

Solid Purple USA edition x 400

Are you feeling doomed yet? You definitely should be. As we wallow in mankind’s ongoing plunge into the abyss, Friends Of Hell have arrived to provide the perfectly monstrous soundtrack. The brainchild of underground diehard Tas Danazoglou (Satan’s Wrath/ex-Electric Wizard), and featuring the revered vocal talents of Finnish doom legend Albert Witchfinder (Opium Warlords/ex-Reverend Bizarre), Friends Of Hell are the thuggish, gruesome antidote to modern metal’s blank-eyed sheen. This is the real, filthy deal, executed by musicians with pure and noble intentions.

“I had the original idea to form a band with Jondix (FOH guitarist) as we’ve shared this vision ever since we met in the early 2000s,” says Tas. “Whenever I make a band I think about my friend Taneli for bass, if the bass position isn’t already taken by me! Having known Albert from years ago, from the Electric Wizard days, he instantly came to mind as singer. We all talked about the band and agreed upon the direction we wanted to take. We’re all into the same stuff, more or less, when it comes to heavy metal.”

This new and unapologetically gnarly evocation of heavy music’s scabrous first principles is born in full-blown and fervently grim splendour on the band’s self-titled debut album. Friends Of Hell draws from the most seminal of doom sources, saluting the great works of Pentagram, Candlemass, Saint Vitus and Cathedral along the way. But something nastier and grubbier lurks within the Friends Of Hell sound: a viscous, blackened streak that owes its leathery scars to Venom, Bathory and Hellhammer. The resultant hybrid makes perfect, horrifying sense, as songs like rampaging opener Out With The Wolves and the harrowing crawl of Gateless Gate conjure devilry, disgust and riff-driven destruction in equal measure. Heavy as hell but defiantly gritty and underground in spirit, Friends Of Hell avows that the old school is the only school.