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Hellfueled > Memories in Black > Reviews
Hellfueled - Memories in Black

A Pleasant Surprise. - 85%

Hozz, July 24th, 2007

I hadn't heard of this band before stumbling upon their 3rd and newest offering, "Memories in Black", and I must say I've been pleasantly surprised. I listen to loads of albums, and most of them leave my playlist about as fast as they enter, but this one's stuck for a while now.

I'm not exactly sure exactly why I enjoy this album, but it has a certain... something that I just can't seem to put my finger on. Maybe it's the sludge-rock inspired, yet fist-pumping riffage in the opening track "Rewinding Time", the Monster Magnet-esque (and aptly named) "Monster", the many, many Sabbath praising moments on the album... I could go on, but still not get any closer to a conclusion.

Singer Andy Alkman has a voice not unlike that of (insert your own cliché here) Ozzy Osbourne, and while I've never been particularly fond of the Ozz-man's voice (Dio FTW), Alkman delivers on this album and is pleasing to my ear even when his squeals do go a bit off tone.

The guitars, by Jocke Lundgren, are well executed with some lovely riffage, a few briliant harmonic bits (I'll leave why having only one guitarist when your album has this many harmonies is a bad thing to another rant) and some pretty good, but mostly forgettable solos.

Henke Lonn (Bass) and Kent Svensson (drums) both do their respective jobs well and leave nothing to be desired while at the same time not exactly revolutionaizing the genre either.

The music, though, is the real strong point of this album. There's a lot of great songs on here, and very little filler. The quality stays strong on the album just about all the way through. Classic Heavy Metal, it'll please fans of everything from "modern" Ozzy over Astral Doors to classic Sabbath and its derivatives (the likes of Crowbar and Down etc.). In some places (eg. "Down" ), it reminds me of the first Bloodbound album (only this album isn't 90% filler), with a powerful pump-your-fist verse and a grand, melodic chorus. Skip forward a song and Lundgren throws in a riff that sounds like it's been lifted straight off of Slash's Snakepit's classic '92 offering "It's 5'o'clock somewhere", yet it's been tainted by (again) that same Sabbath "sludge-rock" vibe that constantly soars over this album. Brilliant stuff.

"Again" is the closest we get to "modern" rock song and/or a ballad, and several of my mates mistook this for an Ozzy song on the first listen. Obvious single choice if there ever was one. I could go on, but song-by-song reviews suck. I'll just say that Queen of Fire opens with a pretty killer riff and, again, sounds very much like something Zakk Wylde and Ozzy could've come up with.

I do realize I started out declaring that I'm not particularly fond of Ozzy and then went on to praise an album while comparing it to his work more than anything else, but as I said, it has that... something... That makes it stand out from the gazillion other hard rock/heavy bands out there right now. Check it out.

Standout tracks: "Rewinding Time", "Monster", "Again", "Face Your Demons" spring to mind.