Hell United Kingdom

"Hell are one of the most influential and most underrated and undeservedly ignored bands of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal movement. Despite their amazing creativity, their compositions never made it beyond demos and similar releases back in the 80s. After a series of financial disasters and a tragic suicide and having been ignored by the music press at large, the band folded in 1987.

They reunited recently and rerecorded some of their best tracks, and in May, Hell is going to be unleashed upon Earth, as the band's debut album "Human Remains" will be released.

"Human Remains" is an awesome album. The tracks are timeless, and they sound just as good in 2011 with professional up-to-date production as they did with the underground production of the 1980s. This, I guess, shows that Hell were really ahead of their time back then.

We are dealing with traditional heavy metal, but with lots of twists and turns and several progressive elements and spacey stuff, like lost of changes, theatrical vocals and at times creepy keyboard effects and dark scary soundscape-ish and other weird intros to many of the tracks. I can also detect a lot of power metal, speed metal and thrash metal stuff on this album, but - keeping in mind that the tracks date as far back as 1982 - it is more a question of Hell having influenced power, thrash and speed metal bands than the other way round.

This is really a fantastic album, and just the fact that Hells old tracks are on it (having been restricted to obscure demos up until now) is enough for a top rating. All the tracks are stunning; they are prime specimens of what metal should sound like.

"Human Remains" should appeal to fans of King Diamond, Mercyful Fate, Albatross and the like, but, really, any person styling themselves as a metal fan should at least check out this heavy metal masterpiece.

(review originally posted on metalmusicarchives.com)"