Hooded Menace: For Whom The Bell Tolls

It’s strange to categorise a band fourteen years and seven albums deep into their existence with releases through such esteemed record labels as Season of Mist, Relapse Records and Profound Lore Records as ‘underground’ – yet here we are with HOODED MENACE. The Finns, led by creative driving force Lasse Pyykkö, have bludgeoned their way to the top of the international death/doom scene, yet despite the regard they are held in by those in the know they still feel like a shared secret, spoken of in hushed tones rather than loudly celebrated. Perhaps that comes as a harsh reality of playing a niche sound in an already underappreciated genre, perhaps it’s a result of Pyykkö‘s steadfast refusal to fall into a hard-touring lifestyle – whatever the reason, though, HOODED MENACE have never quite managed to shake the ‘underground’ tag, never quite managed to break into the upper echelons of extreme metal. But, if there’s any record in their stellar catalogue that could push them to a new level of acclaim, their newest offering, The Tritonus Bell, is it. 

Their sixth record, and second through Season of Mist, The Tritonus Bell is arguably HOODED MENACE‘s most accessible album to date. But douse your torches and lower your pitchforks, this accessibility doesn’t come from a sonic 180 – there’s no abandonment of brutality, no catastrophic swing into the realms of traditional doom, no lack of horror-obsessed lyricism. There isn’t even a massive change in style, not really, anyway. The core elements of what makes HOODED MENACE, HOODED MENACE, remain – the sombre melodies giving rise to atmospheric brilliance, the riffing skull-crushingly heavy at every turn, the glass-gargling vocals telling tales of the Blind Dead – all the key points are still present, and just as strong as ever. What gives The Tritonus Bell that little something special, though, is the heavier emphasis on the roots of Pyykkö‘s inspirations. Amid the bludgeoning death/doom riffage and atmospherics, within the newest offering from the Finns there also lies bursts of speed, melodies that harken back to the glorious 1980s, guitar licks that are less extreme metal so much as traditional metal through and through. It’s not a wild departure for HOODED MENACE so much as a doubling down on an understated aspect of their song-writing, but the end result leaves you wondering why the band haven’t been headlining stages for the last decade.

“The traditional metal influence has always been there, because that’s where I come from – from the ’80s. But it has taken me six albums to really figure out how to really blend that traditional metal influence with the HOODED MENACE sound,” Pyykkö explains on the musical evolution and refinement of HOODED MENACE‘s newest offering. “But it’s also what I mostly listen to, and that’s how it always goes – the music I’m listening to most of the time comes through in my writing. It also comes significantly from the joy of playing [traditional metal] – I’ve had a new interest in guitar playing in the last few years, I jam along with a lot of those 80s records and it’s just so much fun to play. When I started writing The Tritonus Bell, the joy of what I liked playing crept through.”

Pyykkö‘s writing hasn’t developed in a vacuum, though. As he explains, following HOODED MENACE playing at their slowest on Darkness Drips Forth, there was a real desire within the band to bring the pace up – not to thrash levels or any other such silliness, but just to something a little more energetic than a primordial crawl.

“Darkness Drips Forth was just so slow, almost like funeral doom. As much as we’re still proud of that album and we like those songs, I don’t think any of us really enjoyed playing those songs – they were just too slow! That made us want to go for a slightly faster pace on Ossuarium Silhouettes Unhallowed and even faster on The Tritonus Bell. [The new sound] has a lot to do with what we like to play and how we feel about it, but that doesn’t mean we have to exclude all the death/doom stuff from our sound. It’s something I’ve figured out how to blend nicely.” Pyykkö continues to explain on the evolution of The Tritonus Bell. “Now we have Harri [Kuokkanen] on vocals, he obviously sang on the previous album as well. But his voice is far more dynamic than my vocals, he sounds so much better on the faster tempos – or mid-tempos in our case! – than I do, my vocals are too deep and I can’t keep up. I think with having Harri on board, I don’t have to hold back, I know that whatever I write is going to turn out great, it’s not dependant on my vocal abilities.”

In conversation with Pyykkö there is a very real excitement about The Tritonus Bell. Of course, it’s a rarity to talk with an artist who is blasé about their new material – but even so, without a shred of arrogance or ego Pyykkö sounded incredibly pleased and joyous when discussing the new album – he sounds like a fan discussing his favourite album, rather than an artist peddling the same old, tired platitudes to the press. “I honestly believe this is the best HOODED MENACE album – and sure, we have the same thoughts with every album, but this one just has such a special feeling to it. We’ve refined our sound more than ever before, and it just sounds so fresh to me; that’s why I’m so excited about it. It’s a very special album to me, and I believe we’ve done more than achieve just another solid album.”

The Tritonus Bell isn’t all evolution and trad metal riffing, though. Fans of that classic HOODED MENACE sound will still find an abundance of gloomy brutality to enjoy, and, as always, Pyykkö has included his nods to The Blind Dead – the Spanish horror movie franchise that inspired HOODED MENACE‘s early lyricism and much of their artwork. The influence on the cover is obvious, but while Pyykkö is keen to hold his lyrical cards closer to his chest these days, he does acknowledge that The Blind Dead‘s influence on The Tritonus Bell goes beyond the cover artwork. “There’s one song – I’m not telling anyone which one it is! – but there is one Blind Song. I want to include at least one Blind Dead song on every album, even though there’s only four Blind Dead movies. This one of more about the atmosphere of the movies than retelling the story, though.”

There’s no arguing the fact the HOODED MENACE operate in a very tight niche, even for heavy music. The bastard child of death metal and doom metal rarely appeals to casual fans of either genre, rather living in a space where brutal doesn’t always mean breakneck speeds and, despite the tightness of the niche, there is still a vast range in scope from the melodious, melancholic stylings of SWALLOW THE SUN on one end of the death/doom spectrum to the low-and-slow gore-drenched riffing of AUTOPSY or ASPHYX. However, with such a stellar back catalogue under their belts and with a new record as genuinely exciting and ground-breaking within their niche as The Tritonus Bell, it would come as no surprise to see HOODED MENACE break into the top tier of extreme metal in the wake of their sixth offering. As exciting as it is crushing, The Tritonus Bell represents a new dawn for HOODED MENACE – and their doubters can scatter into dark.

The Tritonus Bell is out now via Season Of Mist.

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