Now this is certainly old school! This record by a young band from Brazil is diving head-first into everything some of our old heroes stand for. HELL POISON’s third full-length has a very strong dark Rock’n’Roll touch to it that seems to be stronger than just the characterisation as Speed / Black Metal given by Encyclopaedia Metallum and other sources such as Spotify or Discogs. It rather sounds like a more elaborate and better produced version of something Conrad Lant might have had in mind after quite a few Brown Ales in his favourite Newcastle Metal pub and listening to a lot of MOTÖRHEAD (only the first albums in the classic “Three Amigos” line-up, of course!), before stumbling home drunk and scribbling down some VENOM lyrics on a stained notepad. This goes for the first three songs of the album, and for ‘Fire Deep Within’ and ‘Three Bottles Overnight’ in particular. The speed and rawness of the songs, especially ‘Fire Deep Within’ and ‘Wild Night Fever’, also remind me of DESTRÖYER 666. ‘Where The Sun Don’t Shine’ combines a more thrashy edge with guitar passages that again pay homage to Eddie Clarke’s guitar sound. ‘Lust Behind The Wall’ also has this element, with VENOM shining through as well. The musicianship of HELL POISON’s band mastermind Deathhammer and his two companions, however, is definitely more elaborate than the hellish noise Cronos, Mantas and Abbadon produced in their early days. Some other young bands spring to mind, too: MIDNIGHT are more chaotic, whereas HELLRIPPER fall into the same subgenre and sing about similar topics; James Mc Bain, however, plays his music at a more frantic speed and sounds a lot more like Black Metal than HELL POISON. German Black Thrashers SPEEDWHORE are creating an inferno of a similar kind but with slightly less comprehensible lyrics. ‘Nuff said, HELL POISON are ticking all the right boxes for you speedfreaks out there! The spirit they are conjuring is the essence of what old school or extreme Metal fandom is made of. Go for their music, it’s worth it – muito obrigado, fellas! More info at: www.facebook.com/speednhell, www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100063481655638