Lucifer's Hammer-Beyond the Omens

Shadow Kingdom Records
2016

Serving as the follow-up to the highly-acclaimed "Night Sacrifice", "Beyond The Omens" is the first full-length album from Santiago's Lucifer's Hammer. With a grand total of eight songs and a run-time that just breaks the 40 minute mark, "Beyond The Omens" is also one of 2016's BEST heavy metal releases! This Chilean' metal band's long-overdue debut album is EVERYTHING that there was to love about the gem that was 2013's "Night Sacrifice" only with better musicianship and songwriting as well as a slightly more polished feel. It's a mind-boggling mystery, but somehow the guys in Lucifer's Hammer took what was already a killer sound (and a damn fantastic style of true heavy metal!) and they made it a dozen times more lethal! And that my friends is no easy task. Not in the least! With "Night Sacrifice" I found a true heavy metal band that took it's cues from not only the "N.W.O.B.H.M. scene, but cult U.S. metal bands like Salem's Wych, Graven Image, Sinister Angel, Griffin, Warchylde, Heathen's Rage and DarkStarr!". That wicked band was young and hungry and the two members of the band (vocalist/guitarist Hades and drummer Titan) made it their mission in life to resurrect the golden greats of classic heavy metal and the N.W.O.B.H.M. movement and then pump as much fury and energy into the whole process as humanly possible. Here it is some three years later and that same strong and passionate band has really come into their own on their full-length debut. Having originally released "Night Sacrifice" in the same year in which they formed it's only naturally that this group would have grown as far as musicianship and songwriting is concerned. But the strange thing is Lucifer's Hammer almost sounds like a band that has magically been reborn. Yes, Lucifer's Hammer has grown from a two-piece band into something a bit more well-rounded and fierce. On the f**king spectacular "Beyond the Omens" lead guitars were expertly handled by one Hypnos (Sebastian Inzunza). But given that admission, "Beyond the Omens" is very much the work of one heavy metal band that lost it's extra weight and got leaner despite the added muscle! It's a case of subtraction by addition. Not that it actually matters in the end. What matters most is what an album like this one means for metal fans both young and old. In "Beyond the Omens" the metal community has another flashing sign that good old fashioned heavy metal is alive and well. This time-honored style of metal isn't going anywhere anytime soon thanks to bands like Lucifer's Hammer. And that's a good thing. Scratch that. It's a GREAT thing! A really GREAT thing!! But then again so is this album!!!