Hooded Menace - The Tritonus Bell (2021)

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Hooded Menace - The Tritonus Bell (2021)

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Here’s a question: Is it possible for death-doom to be fun? One word describes dying and demise, while the other suggests condemnation through acts of destruction, rack and ruin. While it’s not exactly an upbeat descriptor, it does appear to track for an extreme metal subgenre that takes pride in a morose funeral aesthetic and riffage that feels glacial and lugubrious.

Finnish outfit Hooded Menace know this fact all too well. The press release for their sixth album, The Tritonus Bell, goes to great lengths to comfort devoted fans and hardcore aficionados of the death-doom sound, insisting that the band has not ‘lost their way’: the record is described as “up-tempo (but never fast),” with strong influences from “early Candlemass and Cathedral,” alongside “Paradise Lost, Autopsy, Asphyx, and Winter.”

So far, so good. But here’s the thing: That glorious album cover almost gives away the ghost. With painted artwork from legendary artist Wes Benscoter (AC/DC, Black Sabbath, Slayer), The Tritonus Bell looks like something ripped straight from He-Man and Masters of the Universe: bright, electric hues of lapis lazuli, spectral trails of captured souls, the grimmest of grim reapers, and a giant cartoonish greyskull-come-bell with missing teeth…

~ newnoisemagazine.com