Band:	Hellripper
Album:	The Affair Of The Poisons
Style:	Blackened speed metal
Release date:	October 2020

01. The Affair Of The Poisons
02. Spectres Of The Blood Moon Sabbath
03. Vampire's Grave
04. Beyond The Convent Walls
05. Savage Blasphemy
06. Hexennacht
07. Blood Orgy Of The She-Devils
08. The Hanging Tree

There are one-man black metal bands that take inspiration from thrash metal, and thrash metal bands that take inspiration from black metal, sometimes even one-man thrash metal bands. Or are they all just taking inspiration from Bathory and Hellhammer?

And yeah, it turns out there are other one-man blackened thrash metal bands other than Toxic Holocaust. This one is spearheaded by James McBain and comes from Scotland. Other than a previous full length, since 2014 the project also released a dozen or so splits, EPs, and a compilation of some of those. But that's about all the biographical information you need to know. What you need to know is that, so far, if you heard a Hellripper album, you kinda heard them all. Maybe even just half, or less, of an album counts. Whether that's consistency or lack of creativity, that's up to you. I think it's a bit of both.

The Affair Of The Poisons's eight songs don't even get to the half-hour mark, so you know this will be a short (and hopefully sweet) one. In other words, it doesn't waste time on bullshit. It wants one thing and one thing only: to pay its dues to Motörhead and Deströyer 666 and every band that rightfully claimed the umlaut. Compared to a lot of the blackened thrash/speed metal bands, this one clearly loves Motörhead more, but at times it leans closer towards Slayer, sometimes it's Venom. Sure, it sounds more modern than either of them, but it's still almost elusively indebted to them. And even if you may find something like some Iron Maiden-esque harmonies at points, there isn't much change throughout the tracklist.

The album does have slower moments, but never slow songs. The vast majority of the runtime of this album is spent over the speed limit. So if the album has anything going for it, it's the massive amounts of energy. Also the vocals are always on the blackened raspy edge. The isn't much interesting going on with the drums or the bass, but the guitars themselves do much of the heavy-lifting of this album. You know, riffs, solos, harmonies, all that jazz. Well, not jazz. And in Hellripper's defense, they're all pretty good, especially the solos. The only track that is more obviously different than the rest of the album is the closing track, with its slow and doomy intro, the increased blackened edge, colder atmosphere, and acoustic outro, it's definitely a bit of a change of pace from the rest of the album, but one that is still clearly in line with the rest of the album regardless.

Even if there is really nothing new here, it's still quite amazing that Hellripper is the work of one man. But after so many releases, I do wish there was a bit more maturation in the sound. The songs are great for what they are, but I wish I had some more moments that made me think "I didn't expect Hellripper to do that!". Until then, they're on the high end of "serviceable".