ALBUM REVIEW: Coronach – Hellripper

The Goat Kvlt must have been up to some diabolical metal sacrifices, because Scotland’s HELLRIPPER have delivered yet another colossal album in their latest release, Coronach. The blackened speed metal mastermind James McBain truly knows no bounds when it comes to ripping epic riffs from the vast highlands – or the grey Aberdeen slabs – beneath his feet.

When you started with Complete And Total Fucking Mayhem, traversed the occult, French murder and witchcraft scandals, and a whole lot of Scottish folklore wrapped in thrash that gave METALLICA a run for their money, where do you go next? To that, HELLRIPPER clearly said: everywhere. Coronach gets personal. It has riffs with more backbone than a blackened snipe eel, frothing fvkkstorms with a v and a k, twinkling piano and violin experiments, and far more black ‘n’ roll swagger than should be allowed in eight tracks.

The riff comes first, always. And then come the tales of vampiric priests, body snatching, the reality of evil, and lethal horse diseases, to name but a splattering of the Scottish folklore plucked from HELLRIPPER’s idea notebook for their fourth studio album. Hunderprest whams on the first notes of the album, rammed to the fretboard with thrashing charisma, frenetic pacing and a vampiric thirst for darkened, screeching undertones. Named after the McBain clan’s war cry, Kinchyle (Goatkraft And Granite) bounds in next, a personal reflection on what it was like growing up in non-postcard Scotland. This feisty, rocked-up anthem will find you with a beer in one hand, a crowdsurfer’s foot in the other, very much expecting the McBain clan to charge forth and join you in the pit.

Another track soaked in black ‘n’ roll bounce is Blakk Satanik Fvkkstorm, where HELLRIPPER’s axe knocks a load of furious shredding down your windpipe as rabid screams recount Robert Louis Stevenson’s gothic horror tale of Thrawn Janet. All the good, dark Scottish stuff. The rock ‘n’ roll spirit never bubbles too close to the rim, as The Art of Resurrection and Baobhan Sith (Waltz of the Damned) slam on some darker flavours of the macabre. A haunting piano and string intro opens The Art of Resurrection, before blackened thrash storms back in, laced in the moonlight’s glare and an unnerving sense of impending doom. But that could be because the song is about Edinburgh’s infamous 19th-century bodysnatching.

It gets crusty in Mortercheyn, inspired by James’ time growing up in a punk scene and his love of the raw subgenre. The pace is tormenting, there is a delicious amount of raspy “bleh”s, and there’s even a cowbell – the pulsating metronome of death. Because when you get a fever and need to improve a song, specifically a crust song about a lethal horse disease, more cowbell is the only prescription, according to the Scottish rifflord (or perhaps he should now be called the cowbellmonger). One of the hardest things James has had to do in HELLRIPPER so far is: sing. And he saves this for the final track, the title track…it’s his funeral. But only because Coronach is the lament typically sung at Scottish funerals, because, as it turns out, the wallowing, clean vocals from the Scotsman are almost as glorious as his sharpened snarls.

Hide all breakable objects in sight, blast the volume to a level you know is medically ill-advised, and succumb to the biting blackened speed metal power of HELLRIPPER as you listen to Coronach again. And again. And again.

Coronach is set for release on March 27th via Century Media Records. 

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