Release year: 2024
Label: Gangstarockers Records

Have you ever heard of The Trailblazers? If you’re not from Finland, I’m wagering the answer is no. They were a Finnish rockin’ band, whose style of music was somewhere between neobilly and psychobilly. The reason why they’re relevant to this here review is the fact that not so long ago they decided to continue under a new name and with a slight change in expression, moving further into the field of psychobilly.

Enter Hellblazers. As the name implies, some traces of the old remain, even though the band is new. Now, I guess it’s up to everyone familiar with the material they produced as The Trailblazers (which is available on Spotify, BTW) to decide how much of the old can be heard in the music and if this new material could as well have been released under the old moniker. But for all intents and purposes, Hellblazers is a new act and Welcome To The Devil’s Room is their debut album.

Of course, considering Hellblazers share two out of three members with now defunct The Trailblazers, this doesn’t sound like a new band. Not in the sense that there’d be any kind of stylistic or musical fumbling, any kind of immaturity or lack of focus. This sounds like a bunch of guys who’ve been at it for a while. Which is exactly what it is, of course.

Within the spectrum of psychobilly, Welcome To The Devil’s Room lands somewhere on this side of the second wave. You can certainly hear classic acts of the late 80’s and early 90’s in the mix here and there, and the DNA of the band is heavily indebted to the second wave, but overall the sound is more modern. Think something like the punked up bands of the mid-to-late noughties – but nowhere near the extremes of the Brazilian crazies (Os Catalepticos and that whole school of insanity).

What this means is mostly mid-tempo songs with melodic yet hard riffs, prominent slapping bass and a killer swagger in the rhythm section. The vocals are a gruff, gravelly snarl, but even in this department melodicism hasn’t been forgotten. Whilst not sounding particularly old school, it’s obvious that Hellblazers come from a place of respect to the fundaments of psychobilly.

There’s actually something very Finnish in the sound. Listening to, for example, I Don’t Fit In, I can’t help but think of Vulture Club, a Finnish band who were most active during the late noughties and were a particularly impressive live band. This is not the only song which reminds me of Vulture Club: Vagabond also has something similar in it. The guitar tone as well.

Overall though, Hellblazers don’t sound too much like any particular band. But at the same time, you’d be hard pressed to call their sound original. For anyone who’s been into psychobilly for a couple of years, this sound is instantly recognizable and accessible. But I say that in a good way: taking a very familiar blueprint, Hellblazers create a high quality product out of it.

Particular favourites include Every Day Is Halloween with a pretty killed riff and a catchy vocal melody. Instagram is another highly catchy song with a scathing commentary on today’s shallow social media trends. But as good as the song is, I wonder if it was absolutely necessary to end the album with an alternate version of it (titled World Today)?

Welcome To The Devil’s Room is a solid and thoroughly enjoyable album. It may not be a classic to be and certainly isn’t a trailblazing album for the genre – pun, of course, intended. But it is a good album, and pleasantly one that doesn’t succumb to neither self-serving old school retro nostalgia nor skate punk with a slap bass. At least a couple of years ago, these seemed to be the two kind of psychobilly you’d come across.

So, The Trailblazers are dead (or at least dreaming) and Hellblazers is here. Based on this debut effort by the latter, it’s easy to see this as a step forward. Hellblazers comes across as far more focused stylistically, whilst retaining the knack for catchy songwriting one could hear in The Trailblazers already. All of this results in album most worthwhile for fans of the style.

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