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!!!

Lucifer's Hammer-Night Sacrifice (Demo MMXIII)

Shadow Kingdom Records
2014

Initially a 2013 self-release/independent recording, with Shadow Kingdom Records doing the right thing by stepping in and snagging up this Santiago-based traditional heavy metal band's 3-track demo for a (limited-edition) cassette run (which seems fitting enough as seeing as it looks as this remarkable slab of true heavy metal was a limited-run, cassette-only release to begin with!*), "Night Sacrifice (Demo MMXIII)" showcases the efforts of this two-man heavy outfit to re-create the perfect eighties metal recording! Or at least that's how I take it having now listened to this demo a half-dozen times through! Now, technically-speaking Chile's Lucifer’s Hammer, who are not to be confused with the black/death metal band of the same name from Westland, Michigan**, are not a strict, by-the-numbers, eighties metal band. As that would entail total Priest/Maiden devotion and nothing else it would be far too restrictive, and not to mention hardly fair at all given the sweeping nature of their work, to simply start and finish with those two heavy metal heavyweights! Rather, the band, which features Hades on vocals and guitars and Titan on drums, draws their sound 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!  All of which adds up to a mini-album that could have been a long-lost nugget from another time and another place! From the vocals, which seem custom-crafted out of pure fire on a number like "Night Sacrifice", to the actual music on hand here for Lucifer's Hammer sole-release this is one band that SCREAMS "Huge Potential"! With any luck this demo will just be the first of many as nothing short of pure heavy metal thunder runs thru the bloodstreams of this epic release from this highly-talented two-piece! For now, while you wait until (from the looks of it)  February for the limited-edition cassette re-issue, you can download this great demo from the group's bandcamp page below.  


http://shadowkingdomrecords.bandcamp.com/album/night-sacrifice-demo-mmxiii

*The Metal Archives does make mention of a hand numbered (and limited to a mere 40 copies!) CD-R being released by the Argentinian label The Power Cage Records, but (for all intensive purposes) this was/still is a cassette tape release.

**Besides the difference in genres, which is quite the huge gap anyway(!), this Lucifer's Hammer from Chile reportedly took their name from a Warlord song (which would be more then appropriate!) whereas their U.S. counterparts took name their name from the 1977 apocalyptic novel of the same name by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle!