Hang The Bastard 'Hellfire Reign' LP

A few short weeks ago I went to see my old mate Robert Moron play with his current band Narrows in some shithole in London. It was in the uber fashionable Shoreditch zone of London, where people generally look like THIS and/or THIS. Thankfully though, the occurrence of a hardcore show in the cultural centre of this zone meant that the bellend ratio was reduced to a slightly less offensive level for the evening. Thank god.

There were three bands that played. The first I missed all but the first song and I have no idea who they were. The second band were called HANG THE BASTARD. Now, I acquired a split 7" with them on a year or so ago, but it never really struck me as anything too special and as such I wasn't expecting too much from them. I guess that's how life is generally though - high expectations are rarely met, whilst low expectations are easily exceeded. And the latter was certainly the case for me that night. Hang The Bastard blew me away. I don't know whether it was the duel guitar with Slayer t-shirts and bandana style approach, the bassist who looked like he could have been in a metal band playing working men's clubs in the 80s, the singer's Leeway t-shirt, or just the fact that a full metal assault was happening upstairs from some Friday night hipster fancy dress party... but somehow everything seemed perfect, and the band ripped the fuck out of the venue. I was so impressed that I came right home and ordered their debut LP, 'Hellfire Reign', which turned up a couple of weeks later.

Now, I can tell that these dudes are pretty well grounded in both hardcore and metal. But from an aesthetic point of view, the metal influence is much stronger. The cover of the LP is maybe a bit dodgy, but hey... hipsters would hate it, so I can't complain.

The record itself is on split blue and green vinyl. There were 400 on this colour. There were also 100 copies on black, but they sold to all the people who had the sense to have been listening to this band for a lot longer than me.

Ok, so anyone who knows me knows I am not the biggest fan of metal. But I make the odd exception, mainly if its hard and dirty. This band takes moments from a lot of bands I do like, or used to like a few years back, and puts them together on one record. It's interesting stuff, and I haven't managed to pull myself away from this record for the past two weeks now. And remember - you heard it here last.