Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Artist: Cloven Hoof
Label: High Roller Records
Release: 2014
Runtime: 48:32
Rating: 4.5/5
Cloven Hoof are considered metal’s old guard! Really, the first generation of metal bands on the planet. The so-called New Wave of British Heavy Metal, which lit a wildfire across the British Isles at the turn of the seventies into the eighties. It’s wonderful to see quite a few bands from that era enjoying a springtime renaissance today. Excellent new studio albums have recently come out from Hell, Demon, Blitkrieg and Satan. Now Cloven Hoof are here too. With barely their fifth album, mind you, but you have to keep in mind that the band lay completely dormant through the nineties.
After Cloven Hoof released their fourth studio album »Eye of the Sun« in 2006 and made a sweeping shake-up of the lineup, in which bassist Lee Payne is the only original and founding member since day one, with the legendary Russ North up front on vocals, it first looked like they’d entered a period of stability. And yet, no! North’s exit from the band in 2010 was the sign that something was off, even though the band had been touring Europe more intensively again through 2008 and 2009. Without North on vocals, the band released the EP »Throne of Damnation« in 2010, for which Matt Moreton came back to handle vocals, just like on the album »Eye of the Sun«. Moreton had to leave the band permanently because of health problems. Grotesque enough, but true (sadly) is the fact that Russ North will never sing for Cloven Hoof again either. After the man was brought back into the band’s permanent lineup in 2012, he soon had an almost »deadly« falling-out with his longtime comrade, the band’s boss Lee Payne, and left Cloven Hoof for good, saying he’d never come back and wishing Payne the best of luck in all his future musical endeavors.
Payne, who meanwhile carried out another thorough shake-up, once again completely changing the lineup, has finally managed to find trustworthy collaborators and kindred spirits, with whom he could head into the studio with a clear conscience to record new material, which later? Became, of course, the album »Reisist or Serve«. In 2011 he was joined by the excellent singer and lead guitarist Joe Whelan and the “auxiliary” guitarist Chris Cross, and in 2012 the lineup was completed by the new drummer Jake Oseland.
And the product? Lee Payne knows exactly what he has to deliver. »Resist or Serve« keeps the brilliance of the most authentic ties to the golden days of the NWOBHM, when metal was young, a wild call of rebellion and defiance of conformity, hungry to conquer the musical globe, while also delivering the hallmarks of modern sound production. The sound is alive and gritty, the guitar phrases form a catchy, massive wall of sound that crushes unstoppably in its distorted, saturated core! At the same time, Payne is such a seasoned master that he understands and knows how to recapture the typical character of the old-school vibe that’s unique to the NWOBHM wave and its best-known bands. Alongside the recognizable pomp, he’s managed to catch a palpable »punk« dirtiness in the sound, which sticks to the representative sound of the NWOBHM’s elemental days.
Joe Whelan’s vocals are clean, commanding, explosive, convincing in every register. The lyrics are typically steeped in the occult, witches, questions about life after death, and of course Cloven Hoof are hurtling toward cataclysm and doom. In short. The album’s atmosphere is dark and sinister. Cloven Hoof bring their great sense of musicality and keen grasp of the melodic principle into a galaxy of polished guitar harmonies laid down in thirds. The middle instrumental sections are seasoned with superbly slick solos, which the two guitarists trade off with featherlight ease. There’s a heap of detail, and the solos carry the polished, distinctive character of both guitars’ work. Intros are often decorated with extra sound effects (the sinister, creepy Mutilator), and the guitarists also add guitar ornaments of colorful solo passages to the openings and endings of songs, and Cloven Hoof succeed tremendously by restoring the fundamental hallmarks of their own music, which are rooted in the cult first three studio albums released in the eighties.
Clearly, band chief Lee Payne chose his collaborators truly carefully this time. And with vision, he achieved an extraordinary goal. »Resist or Serve« is a phenomenal new studio album from Cloven Hoof. It radiates freshness, inspiration, the band’s untamed rebellious attitude! Even at a mature age, when you’d expect the guys to finally »get serious«.
»Resist Or Serve« is a classic, rock-solid heavy metal record that really has everything a true classic heavy metal album must have to enchant you instantly with its conviction and authenticity. It blasts you straight back to 1980! The band embodies all this tremendously effectively with brilliant ideas for crafting predatory guitar riffs, a coherent sound that reflects the excellent chemistry among the quartet, a great deal of perfection in the decorative elements (guitar passages), and crafty mood shifts, which the band delivers, among other things, by changing the basic tempo (rhythm) several times within a song. That’s also the guarantee of the album’s outstanding dynamic flow and the way events unfold.
The band promises a new European tour this year. »Resist Or Serve« is an album that gives a real lesson to freshly baked metal bands, extraordinarily inspired and, most importantly: with it, Cloven Hoof have kept all the hallmarks of their metal recipe, upgraded it with a partial update of their sound, and thus confidently carried their musical character into a new decade of creating. This year marks exactly 35 years since the band’s formation! Let’s just hope that this creative inspiration doesn’t die out, that the band releases the next album within three years of »Resist Or Serve«, and that we won’t have to wait another eight years, which passed between the new album and its predecessor »Eye of the Sun«. The fundamental difference between the predecessor and the new album, though, is that »Eye of the Sun« didn’t radiate such an authentic bond between the band and its musical beginnings, say the debut “Cloven Hoof”, as »Resist or Serve« does.
Lineup
John Whelan – vocals, guitar
Chris Cross – guitar
Lee Payne – bass guitar, backing vocals
Jake Oseland – drums & percussion
Production
Cloven Hoof
Tracklist
- Call Of The Dark Ones
- Hell Diver
- Deliverance
- Brimstone And Fire
- Northwind To Valhalla
- Mutilator
- Anti Matter Man
- Cycle Of Hate
- Premature Burial
- Austrian Assault
