HELLFUELED - Volume One
October 3, 2005, 19 years ago
(Nuclear Blast)
These pastiche bands are often quite the blast, Sweden’s Hellfueled rocking proudly and powerfully like a combination of Black Label Society and butt-shakin’ Pantera. The production values are a skull-fry, the writing perky, brisk, very catchy, the drums a tangle of sizzling cymbals, the overall package very, very electrocuted of guitar. The thing everybody’s gonna notice immediately is that Andy Aikman sound exactly like Ozzy on about two thirds of the tracks, and then just a little different elsewhere. Seriously, I played a little game with this and convinced myself Ozzy could issue the first three tracks on this as the next Ozzy album and the most suspicious remark one would hear would be to the effect of, “Boy, Ozzy’s definitely had a few technical tricks applied to his voice to make him this accurate and powerful at the high end of his range.” Us hacks would remark on how Zakk really means business, and that they’ve really found a kick-ass producer. “Best Ozzy material since No Rest!” It’s obviously in Aikman’s voice to sound like this, but then he totally cops all of Ozzy’s pretty anachronistic vocal melodies as well. Geez, these lyrics could even be Ozzy’s (check out ‘Midnight Lady’). Still, damn, I’m finding it hard finding records I can unconditionally groove to over and over again, what with all the difficult NWOUSHM and note-dense grind around, and this, well, I just keep reaching for it.
