Well, I'll be damned!
Within the usual CD's of bland indie, street punk and hard rock sits a dark disc from Sweden's darkside entitled 'City Of the Damned' and sporting lightening, skeleton figures, graves and demons, so this was never going to be an album of love songs!
Raise Hell were formed in 1995, originally under the banner In Cold Blood and thus far spawned three albums before this, their forth offering to Satan, er, the music listeners...
Following on from the cover art that has a train with the most devilish of features, the first song is called 'Devil's Station' and starts off with a crack of thunder and the rattling of chains, which is atmospheric, and quite frankly bloody unnerving to say the least! We have some great thick metal riffing before the vocals kick in like a rasping Danni Filth literally forcing each word into your ears whether or not they are welcome. Next song is the title song and starts off slowly and almost melodic – don't get me wrong it's not Bon Jovi melodic, but compared to some of the more darker and deeper tracks it's almost as welcoming as a mother's bosom – there are even hints of Iron Maiden here, which is a pretty high compliment.
Now to me clowns are funny guys doing random acts of simple tomfoolery in order to get a cheap laugh, and yes, we've seen the cult horror Killer Klowns, and even Stephen King's character in IT is far from entertaining for kids birthday parties, oh, and there was also the serial killer John Wayne Gacy who was a clown at the local hospital, but by and large clowns are pretty harmless; even if they do have their dark days I would never think of them crawling, so I'm particularly interested at the lyrical content of 'Like Clowns We Crawl', and I can only think that perhaps they got the analogy wrong. How do you crawl with massive shoes, a flower, and a horn? Well, I may never know as Jimmy Fjallendal's lyrics aren't the easiest to decipher so the jury's still out on that one! Answers on a postcard please!
'Reaper's Calling' is a slightly slower thrash song, and we are told that "You can't believe it! Open your eyes!" Musically Raise Hell are very entertaining and this is shown with the intro to 'Ghost I Carry', however when the vocals start there is too much of a tendency to switch to a quick chugging thrash riff. 'My Shadow' is an anthem of a thrash song with heavy thick riffs from Jonas Nilsson, and hyperactive drumming from Dennis Ekdahl, all great stuff and the best track on here. Not surprisingly, 'To The Gallows' is not a love song. I know, you could easily have made that mistake.
The album closes with the tinkling of a piano and just as I'm thinking that things are getting interesting, the repetitive riffs start up, however this evolves into almost a sing-a-long, if there is such a think with this sort of genre!
Raise Hell may have difficulty in the fact that the vocals aren't as sneering or snarling as most of the other bands in this genre, and although fairly competent, the band don't stand out, nor give us anything original that a whole list of bands before them have already done. Come on lads! You Scandinavians are meant to be burning churches and murdering each other, I know you're not Norwegian, but you still have enough dark days in winter to come up with something truly terrifying!