Artist: Hellcrash
Country: Italy
Label: Dying Victims Productions
Formats: LP / CD
Year: 2025
With ‘Inferno Crematörio’ the Italian trio known as Hellcrash delivers its third full-length instalment, and, frankly, this is a logical continuation of what the band has been doing for over a decade already. With its never-ending admiration for Venom, Motörhead and Bulldozer Hellcrash has not quite been enjoyed for their sheer musical audacity. On the contrary, Hellcrash has been one of those forces that has made the preservation of old-style, muscular and non-trendy Heavy Metal its holy task. Those who have been into the band before will be treated to more of the same and that is exactly why you came back to Hellcrash.
Although ‘Inferno Crematörio’ has a few slight shifts in store, it is hardly anything worth mentioning. Hellcrash didn’t quite flip the script but instead insisted to venture further into the world of blasphemous Rock-‘n’-Roll. Venom and Motörhead are still the main dish on this third album, but on the one hand there are a bit more Sodom-like riffs and on the other Hellcrash sounds tighter and more melodic than before. Consequently becoming somewhat of a NWOBHM-fuelled German Speed Metal band, or vice versa.
For sure it is still the case that if you’re looking for originality or anything that’s remotely adventurous, Hellcrash might be among the last bands for you to check out. Yet, that doesn’t mean the band is not developing. When comparing ‘Inferno Crematörio’ to the previous released material it is clear that the tours and shows the band has played over the last years paid their dividend. Not only does the music sound a bit tighter in the sense of transitions and overall fluency, especially in the song writing department the band took obvious steps forward. Words like “maturity” are almost blasphemy when it comes to this sort of bands, but in a sense that is exactly what we’re witnessing here.
Without losing anything of their earlier primal energy or spontaneity, Hellcrash has definitely outdone themselves when it comes to the overall presentation. They didn’t drop much of their initial jumbled sound, but it is abundantly clear that now the band is just aiming for a sound that reflects their own musical heroes out of those vibrant 80’s instead of not being capable of anything else.
As a whole, more than before, Hellcrash feels like Speed Metal-version of Venom. You could just take any track of the early Venom records and speed them up a tad and you’ll have a song that perfectly fits on ‘Inferno Crematörio’ both in musicality and overall atmosphere as well as feeling. And I am pretty sure that is nothing less than the biggest compliment you could give the band.
