DYING VICTIMS PRODUCTIONS is proud to present HELLCRASH’s highly anticipated third album, Inferno Crematörio, on CD and vinyl LP.
You wouldn’t have guessed it early on, but HELLCRASH would eventually – and patiently – refine their ancient attack, relatively “cleaning up” something still unclean. When they formed in 2013, a debut album was still a way off, but when it landed in 2021 on vinyl via DYING VICTIMS, Krvcifix Invertör proved HELLCRASH were a power-trio in the grand tradition of domestic legends Bulldozer, brewing a similarly sleazy (and EVIL) style of speed metal. And yet, despite another OTT cover suggesting otherwise, their second album announced that there was MUCH more brewing in HELLCRASH’s cauldron. Released in 2023, Demonic Assassination saw a fine-tuning of songcraft and a polishing of production that paid off in spades, now nodding more to later GBH, Carnivore, and Warfare.
Alas, a dozen years after their formation, HELLCRASH have pulled off the impossible and refined this attack even further with LP#3, Inferno Crematörio. Of course, another totally OTT cover graces the album, and somehow it makes absolute sense with where HELLCRASH are now going. Whereas its predecessor took various routes – sometimes more speed metal, other times more thrash, or even metalpunk before it was such a thing, often all in the same song – Inferno Crematörio sees a streamlining of their songcraft and a “deftening” of sensibilities, where energy is retained and even doubled through more dynamic playing and indeed an emphasis on dynamics itself. By and large, HELLCRASH here sound their most blackened, but “blackened” in the sense of evil thrash and speed metal imbued with more atmosphere: not “spooky” in the kooky sense, but definitely more sulfurous and sinful, brimming with a sense of space that sounds huge and intimate simultaneously. Likewise, the trio exhibit a newfound charisma that (spit)shines through this sulfurous surge, like Satan laughing as he spreads his wings. That everything’s not 666% overdrive all the time ably benefits these ten tracks – and concluding with 10-minute(!) epic in “Templars’ Curse” – resulting in a more thoroughly headbanging, maybe-medieval, and immediately memorable listen. And, truth be told, perhaps HELLCRASH’s best record yet…but only time will tell.
In the meantime, maniacs for such ‘90s icons like Zemial and Germany’s Desaster or especially such esteemed labelmates as NOCTURNAL, BLACKEVIL, and HEXECUTOR, you’re hereby commanded to reap the hellish bounty of HELLCRASH’s Inferno Crematörio!
