The Bastard

Great album. Not exactly what I expected based on reviews but loved it nonetheless

All of the things that metal bands do that make it fun are in this album.Goofy, operatic set up with grandiose singing telling a D&D style story of demons and enchanted axes, etc.The story is genuinely interesting and musicianship is excellent. Sure it's a little silly but it still rocks plenty hard. It satisfies the serious and goofball elements that only a metal opera can do. No reason to be tongue in cheek or ironic in one's enjoyment of this album.

How I went 14 years since it's release without noticing it I will never know. Thank you Spotify for recommending this beast. A massive, sprawling concept record of the highest order. Check out the equally excellent follow up "The August Engines".

Comes as a digipak. Both the cover and the booklet seem to have this shine to it, and the font used in the book can be a little difficult to read.

This was one of those albums that within the first thirty seconds of it's opening I just knew that I loved it. I'd already been a fan of Mike Scalzi's main band Slough Feg for years but this was the first thing I'd heard by John Cobbett's Hammers. The grandiose mix of prog concept album story and fantasy concepts with some truly astonishing heavy metal is absolutely intoxicating. It creates the kind of unconscious physical reaction that only good metal can illicit, the sudden clenching of the fists and desire to strike a ludicrous pose without taking the time to check if anyone's looking first...for example...not that I do that. Ahem.Anyway, the vocals are another high point of this album with Cobbett, Scalzi and bassist Janis Tanaka interweaving characters and melodies into recognizable themes and motifs as the album progresses. The story that the album tells could be straight of a 1980's fantasy film which just adds to the charm.So, to sum up, it's awesome, buy it.

Da mir die Band bis dato unbekannt war, habe ich einfach mal bei einem Angebot zugegriffen und muss sagen, dass ich mehr als angenehm überrascht bin. Auch wenn der progressive Metal nicht zu meinem Lieblingsgenre gehört, so muss ich sagen, dass ich das Werk von Hammers of Misfortune sehr gerne gehört habe und höre.

Perfecto