Hooded Menace - Fulfill The Curse

February 22, 2009

Reviewer: Jesse

In a word; crushing.  Hooded Menace’s debut album on Razorback Records can be accurately summed up in that single, eight-digit word as everything about Fulfill the Curse is a pummeling and destructive venture into dirty and heavy-as-all-fuck doomy death metal.

Did I say heavy?  Guitars don’t get any thicker or heavier than this.  If they did, then this cd would fall through the floor of this apartment.  Down-tuned to the bowels of the earth, the guitars and bass on this album just flat-out pound the speakers into submission.  The production is perfectly adjusted to this however as the subtle higher notes that come in above the rhythm still sound clear, yet buzzed in their own way.  Vocally, I feel dirty myself after listening to this album.  The closest thing to an actual dead body, vomiting out the words in a lazily horrific way, the growls that Leper of Berzano spew out are nothing short of awesome and give Fulfill the Curse as much character as the signature guitar sound does.  Both fit together so fluidly that I envision a zombified sea-creature crawling onto the shore, seaweed wrapped around its head and black liquid pouring from eyeless sockets and a toothless mouth.

Having said that and retaining most qualities of a death/doom, Fulfill the Curse is still quite energetic and creative.  At times, they’ll take their plodding riff and amp it up a notch until it induces a full headbang from anyone listening, such as in the case of the title track, “Arcane Epitaph” and “Beauty and the Feast.”  “Grasp of the Beastwoman” has a very nice section of riffing that gives the song a very epic feeling.  This is not an album that Hooded Menace wanted to produce full of stagnation or indecipherable songs.  The doom is in full force, yet each song has plenty of personality.  None is more evident of that statement than “The Love Song of Gortho, Hunchback of the Morgue.”

One thing I have to comment on the cover art and inner booklet.  I absolutely love the black and white, horror-themed ink-style.  It seems like I’m always seeing something new on the cover.

Overall, Fulfill the Curse is an exceptional and impressive debut from these Finnish horror junkies.  Take several aspects that I completely love: death, doom, grit, nasty growls, heavy, dirty guitars and put them together in a horror-themed package and you’ve got a winner in my book.  Every song has something to offer that you never would have expected from this style.

Release Date: October 1st, 2008
Label: Razorback Records

TRACK LISTING

1. Rotting Rampage
    (Menace of the Skeletal Dead)
2. Fulfill the Curse
3. Grasp of the Beastwoman
4. Laboratory of Nightmares
5. Beauty and The Feast
6. The Eyeless Horde
7. The Love Song of Gotho,
     Hunchback of the Morgue
8. Arcane Epitaph
9. Theme From Manhattan Baby

Total playing time: 52:32

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