Exodus to Hell

As well as being a mountain crisp Western Canadian beer, Hell's Gate is also the meaning behind the melodic albeit tacky Swedish traditional heavy metal band from Gothenburg, Helvetets Port, who released their debut full-length, Exodus To Hell back in April of '09. Quite frankly, I doubt it sold like hotcakes. Issued by High Roller Records, this quirky release is comprised of ten upbeat mid-paced rockers which lavish cheap thrills and a super eccentric front man's amusing turns of phrase on the unsuspecting with more theatrical flair than Norway's Flight and UK's space tridders/trippers Fury combined. As well, a couple of the tracks here invariably bring to mind Praying Mantis, a highly melodic NWOBHM legend which curiously fails to meet the eligibility criteria of the metal archives. (Ho-hum...) While no cause for celebration, this brief, half-hour release features a whirlwind of catchy riffs and topsy-turvy solos over a relatively compact rhythm section.

With "de rigueur" camp, HP's three members also opt for cheesy metal monikers, an apparently growing trend revolving around the whole eat, breath, sleep heavy metal identity. Thus, this port of call is made up of "Inquisitor" on bass, "O.Thunder" (O. Henry wasn't available) on the skins and Tomas Ericson, the over-the-top front man/guitarist who goes by none other than "Witchfinder". Oh, goody...

I hate to say it, but even with Enforcer's reputable Olof Wikstrand lending a hand with the production and engineering, Exodus To Hell fails to live up to expectations set by the Swedes' Metal Strike single, essentially a rough hewed three track demo released in 2006. With that out, I'm severely torn between Helvetets Port's pleasing melodies and Witchfinder's exultation, which borders on sounding downright creepy at times, such as with the opening verse to "Victim Of The City". Headless, this track is excellent in its composition, adequately living up the whole "new wave of traditional heavy metal" hype with its cranked up "Rich City Kids" (Praying Mantis) sounding riffs, tempo and optimistic undertones.

The opener, "Shogun", features a real intricate riff strewn with nifty hooks and harks back to Enforcer's "Katana" with its battle charged atmosphere and Samurai plot line. While not as elaborate and expedient as its Swedish counterpart, Helvetets Port plays on similar themes overall (ancient warfare, dabbling in the occult, womanly charms and spells, etc.) "Killers In The Sand" features some great lyrics about a zombie uprising in the desert but I have to say, Witchfinder kills me with his theatrics on the chorus, which happens to be partially in Swedish:

Mardrömssafari till helvetet
Killers in the sand
Mardrömssafari till helvetet
Messengers of death await

(insert Witchfinder's "Waaaaaaaaah!" here)

Compared to Metal Strike's crunch, Exodus To Hell's production is as smooth as a polished stone. As with Enforcer's From Beyond and Cauldron's In Ruin, all elements from the vocals to the drums are in harmony with each other. The bass sticks out well but not too much while the drums are quite simple and nothing too exclamatory on behalf of O. Thunder. Both he and Inquisitor appear to take a backseat to Witchfinder's creative lead however, and don't step out of their shell much. The real problem with this release is the vocals, and while I preach the importance of focusing on the music while ignoring an irritating singer, maybe I'll have to eat my words this time. The alternative's to suffer whenever Witchfinder opens his mouth while downplaying the atrociousness of what's coming out. Which is what I did in order to enjoy the great dropped note in the main riff to "Diamond Claw", which soon gives way to a disappointing interjection on behalf of his truly.

After having read the reviews for Exodus To Hell, I agreed on a few points, both good and bad. However, I feel the need to set the record straight in regards to the rather extreme ratings. With the first score (15%) much too low and the second (87%) much too high, I essentially can't bring myself to give it a passing grade -60% and up- as it fails to be commendable. Instead, I feel it rates slightly below. That said, this release isn't awful, it's just not great either. All because of one element: the ill-fitting vocals, pure and simply. Like the old saying goes, "For want of a nail, the kingdom fell". Now, in regards to the uber-retro cover, don't you half expect Q-Bert to just pop out at any given moment? I mean, I thought the cover to Metal Strike was pretty bad too, but I kept my mouth shut then.

Witchfinder's flowing, melodic guitar riffs and outside of the box lead playing compensates somewhat for his vocal shortcomings. Inquisitor and O. Thunder fill their roles well enough but like I said, follow Witchfinder's lead without improvising too much on their own. However, one welcome innovation on this release is the duo of tracks whose lyrics are completely written in Swedish: "Huvudlös gestalt" " & "Djävulens triangel". Performing in a band's mother tongue is a novel stunt comparable to fellow Swedes Lethal Steel and Portugal's Midnight Priest, who did likewise on their early recordings. On the grand scheme of things, I'm sold on a smattering of tracks ("The Shogun", "Dying Victim Of The City", "Fly By Night" and "Exodus To Hell") but also found an equal number of them bland and ridiculously fraught with Witchfinder's drastic, haughty vocals ("Helvetets Port", "Killers In The Sand", "Diamond Claw" and "Killed By A Reaper") While the opening riff to "Diamond Claw" is pretty cool and well-driven, on the whole those were a bit much in the end, even for an open-minded metal seeker such as myself. On a brighter note, much praise has been given to Helvetets Port more recent EP, Man With The Chains. In a nutshell, Exodus To Hell is fun for a couple of spins but gets old quick for the average NWOTHM fan. If you're not much into this genre, chances are you'll strongly dislike this release and want to throw chairs for all the wrong reasons. Either way, this is definitely different and off the beaten path, while also somewhat alluring despite its unbelievably corny overtures:

"You're walking to the city
a worthless move to drink
You see the made-up faces
that helped you make your choice
hello girls, what's up tonight?
there's no reaction!
why don't you come and sit with me?
- and no attraction!"

(HaHA!)

Here we have a band that wants to pay tribute to the early heavy metal scene of the 80s. Might seem like some kind of standard old school revival band on the surface. It's not standard fare however. Not at all. Out of the old school heavy metal revival bands of today, this is one of the oddest ones.

To understand this band and not just be puzzled about why it looks and sounds like it does, I feel you have to understand a bit about what they're trying to do. This is a Swedish band largely paying homage to the early Swedish heavy metal scene. Rather than looking back at bands like Iron Maiden or Judas Priest like so many other revival bands do, Helvetets Port pays tribute to bands such as Heavy Load, Jonah Quizz, Gotham City and Axewitch.

These bands didn't sound 100% like their British contemporaries in the early 80s. The early Swedish scene really had some unique qualities that I can't find anywhere else. The early Swedish heavy metal is quirky and strange in a way that's hard to explain. And it's this quirky feeling that Helvetets Port aims to capture. I understand this urge, and in theory I totally support such an endeavor. Problem is, Helvetets Port went about it all wrong and released one of the weirdest and most cringe-inducing metal albums I've heard to date.

Lots of the early Swedish bands, even the good ones, had some really bad aspects of their quirky nature. Gotham City's first vocalist wasn't only a pretty bad singer, he also couldn't speak English very well. Heavy Load was a bit like an awkward Manowar impersonation image-wise. Axewitch had a lot of strangeness going on with their songwriting. Jonah Quizz had these super-cheesy Swedish lyrics that wouldn't have worked in any other context. Hiroshima's material varied in quality a lot and was really strange when it wasn't that top-notch. The list goes on. But suffice to say, a lot of the bands they try to emulate weren't 100% standard fare. And some aspects of what they were doing arguably wasn't that good.

But in context it worked anyway. Gotham City's vocalist sucked, but it was charming. Jonah Quizz pulled of the Swedish lyrics better than pretty much anybody else (and that's hard), no matter how cheesy they were. Out of context, much of this wouldn't have worked so well. But in context, it added to this sense of genuinity that's all over these bands. It's hard to explain this but in conjunction with the context and the rest of the music, even the strange, bad and quirky things added to this effect.

Now, Helvetet's Port has none of this and that's where it fails. They seem to just have focused on all the bad strange stuff about the Swedish scene and forgot about what was actually good about it.

I can completely picture the train of thought that went into this.

“ So Gotham City's vocalist was bad? Let's also have really bad vocals. And then we add these cheesy Swedish lyrics that Jonah Quizz had. Except not nearly as good. Oh, and yeah. There's that questionable songwriting and general awkward feeling those other bands had. We gotta have that too! It was charming back then, if we do it now it will be super charming! Hey, listen to this riff, Heavy Load kind of sounded like this on a bad day. Man, we're super true! ”

- What Helvetets Port must have thought when making this.

And musically, that's what this really is. It's a melting pot of strangeness borrowed from the early Swedish heavy metal scene. It's an attempt to capture all the strange and crappy stuff that was charming in context back then, and then taking it out of context and taking none of the good stuff with it. The album has a few moments of being decent, but those are soon drowned out in some cringe-inducing attempt at being something this band isn't. And even when the music is decent, it never goes beyond decent. The songwriting is mostly pretty primitive. Guitars are serviceable at best, drums mostly just play along, bass isn't very interesting either. Were it not for all the crappy strangeness going on, there wouldn't be that much to complain about. The vocals are pretty bad all the time, but when the singer isn't fucking out completely, they're also not the worst I've heard.

What's so bad about this essentially boils down to two facts. First is that it's never really any good. When it's not off-the-wall crazy bad, it's simply primitive and substandard. Second is that when it gets bad, it does in fact get off-the-wall crazy bad with no saving graces. If it's not the singer doing some of the worst falsettos I've ever heard, it's the guitarist chugging out a riff that sounds like it came out and someone dropped it on the head as a baby, or whatever else is going on at the moment. There's almost always something strange going on here, and it's never good.

Something that deserves special mention for it's absurd crap-factor would be the Swedish part of the lyrics. Helvetets Port sing in both English and Swedish on this album (some songs are in English, some are in Swedish and some are mixed). The English parts of the lyrics aren't that great, but I've heard a lot worse. The Swedish lyrics however, take the shit to a whole new level. It's hard to explain this to people who don't speak Swedish, but I'll try anyway.

Let's start with one fact. Writing lyrics in Swedish is hard. Writing epic and fantasy-themed lyrics in Swedish is even harder. This is because Swedish simply isn't a fantastical, epic or even lyrical language. It doesn't lend itself as well to poetic and fantastical lyricism as other languages do. In some music genres, like punk, you don't need any of this when you write lyrics. Metal, on the other hand, almost always gets worse when done in Swedish. If writing lyrics in Swedish, great care has to be taken so that it doesn't get incredibly cringe-inducing.

This band however, is all about being as cringe-inducing as they can. And what they manage to pull lyric-wise is some of the most bizarre stuff I've ever heard. This is very hard to explain to somebody that doesn't speak Swedish, but the chorus of Djävulens Triangel literally had me, as a native Swedish speaker, awestruck at how bad it was. The rest of the stuff isn't much better either.

I guess one could see this as some form of joke. Problem is, it doesn't really work as that either. The reason for this is that this isn't really managing to poke fun at the strangeness of the early Swedish metal scene. This is due to the fact that even if it borrows a lot of the strangeness from it, the end result is so far detached from that scene that seeing the point of that joke won't be the first thing you think of upon hearing this. Most people I've talked to about this are simply puzzled regarding why this record is so damn terrible. And that's the other problem with seeing this as a joke. It's not really funny. It's simply awkward, puzzling and cringeworthy.

I know of bands that suck. But here we have one that sounds like they actually tried to suck (one of the guys involved with this album was in Portrait and should know better). It's almost like it was their goal to suck. And that just boggles my mind.

The old gods of NWOBHM can now be truly proud of their third generation Metalheads, their pride comes in the form of this young Swedish band, who decided to be true to the ones who created Heavy Metal back in the early 70’s.

Helvetets Port, in English, Hell's Gate, is a group of young folks led by their dominant leader, Tomas “Witchfinder” Ericson. Since 2000, they are following a role ,which they took upon themselves, to show the constantly developing Metal world how to create true, old rooted Heavy Metal – that is, of course, in the British way. Unlike their fellow compatriots, Enforcer, who also produce NWOBHM but with speed and even a thrashier approach, Helvetets chose to bring back the old roots that ruled the worldwide Metal scene back in 1980-1983. In addition, like many of the short-lived acts back then in the UK, they took many of their obscurities to make sure that their music won’t be too dry.

As far as the music goes, every true Metalhead, both young and old, can easily recognize the old Iron Maiden tunes and small melodic segments from the first two albums. Also you will find various reminders of Heavy Load, Witchfinder General and almost every possible NWOBHM act that lasted between 1980-1983 , and if you have a great knowledge of the old scene, you know that there were tons of acts.

The music is not challenging like the old Maiden, which tried to be more complex than any of the other groups in their early period, however, you will see that the guys put up efforts to make the music more interesting and the majority of the songs clearly present this effort. The band also matched their music with a vintage and colorful sound in order to establish a harmony, which abides by their old music influence. Their ways were by doing it the Marshall way and using a producer who knows the job, however young he is and that engineer is the lead singer of Enforcer, Olof Wikstrand. The outcome from all these ingredients is flowing and simple to enjoy melodic British steel music from the, never to be forgotten, days of the early 80s.

Highlights from this one: “The Shogun” which is very similar to Martyr’s and Tokyo Blade’s type of song, a very nice story of a young Samurai.

“Killers In The Sand” is galloping through the plains and reminds of awesome years that many of us Metalheads surely miss. This one is a bit obscure yet turns out to be a hell of a listen..

The flagship song is a speedy self-tiled, “Helvetets Port”, with a catchy chorus that brings out the band’s English name. “Diamond Claw” reminds everyone why this Heavy Metal sound is so great and how it’s able to take one farther if you let your mind go.

“Exodus To Hell” can be recognized as the band’s story since their beginning and why they enjoy what they do – Heavy Metal is the door. In addition to the great tracks the band produced two more tracks in Swedish, which their quality doesn’t fall from the others, take notice.

Now it's up to you – go fetch your old leather jacket, raise the English flag and listen to history being preserved. Helvetets Port tells you Metalheads that history should be embraced.