Review by Rick Eaglestone for MPM
Twelve years. One man. An unbroken torrent of blackened speed metal fury. And now, for the first time, the full weight of Century Media Records behind him — James McBain arrives at his fourth Hellripper album with something profound to say, and Coronach is the most complete and most ambitious statement he has yet committed to record.
There are certain constants in blackened speed metal: the white-knuckle riff, percussion that hits like a car crash, a vocal that sounds forged inside a volcano. Those qualities are stamped into every corner of the Hellripper catalogue — from Coagulating Darkness through The Affair of the Poisons and Warlocks Grim & Withered Hags — making no effort to conceal themselves, and rightly so. That sound is the lifeblood of everything McBain does. Aberdeen-born, a true one-man wrecking crew who has been carving his path through metal’s darkest forests since 2014, he has proven himself with each successive release to be one of the most compellingly individual voices the underground has produced in a generation.
Hunderprest — the album’s first single and the right choice entirely — opens proceedings with a chaotic deluge of dissonance. There is no preparation, no warning, no mercy. Rooted in the legend of the vampiric dog-priest of Melrose Abbey — a sinful chaplain who hunted with his pack of hounds in life and rose from the grave to terrorise the living — the track bristles with intent and delivers an absolute wealth of blackened thrash tones from the first second to the last.
Kinchyle (Goatkraft and Granite) represents the album’s first genuinely head-turning moment. More personal in lyrical scope than anything McBain had previously attempted — drawing from his own emotional terrain rather than the annals of Scottish folklore — it is such an earworm that the effect is almost alarming. McBain cites Running Wild, Motörhead and Opeth as touchstones, and the influence of each is detectable in a track he has described as among the most straightforwardly rocking he has written in some time. He is not wrong.
The Art of Resurrection delivers the album’s first genuine moment of surprise, opening with a beautifully constructed piano and orchestral prologue — quite unlike anything else on the record — before erupting into a crushing riff and a blood-curdling scream. It is a masterstroke of dynamic contrast, establishing just how vast the range of this record truly is.
Baobhan Sith (Waltz of the Damned) is, without question, the album’s crowning glory — and for this reviewer, the most genuinely inventive track Hellripper have ever recorded. Drawing on the Scottish folklore of the Baobhan Sith, a sinister female faerie creature said to have lured four hunters to their deaths, McBain has done something extraordinary: he has written a waltz, or at the very least a track whose chorus moves in genuine waltz time. The result is both unsettling and infectious in equal measure — an atmosphere that begs for a rain-soaked Highland hillside video shoot, firelight, shadows, and something terrible emerging from the dark. The guitar work here is the finest on the entire album: purposeful, personal, and utterly assured.
Blakk Satanik Fvkkstorm takes the mantle into the album’s second half with complete, scorching anarchy. The shortest track on the record, it is nothing short of an all-out assault — rooted in crust punk foundations and drenched in a sinister atmosphere that calls to mind Watain alongside the raw aggression of Martyrdöd.
Sculptor’s Cave opens on a grooving bassline before building into something pulsating and relentless. Inspired by Burke and Hare and their grave-robbing exploits in Edinburgh, the lyric revels in desecration with a dark humour that is distinctly and brilliantly Scottish. The riff work here showcases McBain’s prowess as a multi-instrumentalist at the very height of his craft.
Mortercheyn is a hard listen in the best possible sense. A crust track at its core, drenched in an atmosphere that sits somewhere between the black metal menace of Watain and the raw aggression of Martyrdöd and Skitsystem, with hints of Whiplash and Agent Steel threaded through the guitar work and an unsettling ambient undercurrent that pushes the boundaries of what a Hellripper track can be. The title references the disease spread by the Nuckelavee on the previous album, deployed here as a metaphor for the decay and downfall of the world. The sense of rot and menace it creates feels entirely genuine.
The title track Coronach closes the album at eight minutes and forty-eight seconds and is a genuine event. Built around the Walter Scott poem of the same name, it centres on the funeral of an ambivalent and mysterious figure — a man whose heroic public life concealed many dark secrets. McBain draws on late-eighties thrash, Bathory, Gallowbraid, Atlantean Kodex, Iron Maiden-style harmonies, classical references, and the haunting wail of bagpipes fading into the distance. When it finally ends, the full gravity of what you have just experienced settles over you. This is a coronach in the truest sense: a lament, a ceremony, a fitting and extraordinary tribute to close on.
Named for the vocal lament traditionally performed at funerals in the Scottish Highlands, Coronach is a record that demands and rewards repeated listening. At times it feels like being pulled through a time machine of Scottish history and mythology — the folkloric detail McBain brings to these eight tracks is extraordinary, each play revealing something new.
Coronach Track Listing:
1. Hunderprest
2. Kinchyle (Goatkraft and Granite)
3. The Art of Resurrection
4. Baobhan Sith (Waltz of the Damned)
5. Blakk Satanik Fvkkstorm
6. Sculptor’s Cave
7. Mortercheyn
8. Coronach
Line-up:
Hellripper:
James McBain – All Instruments & Vocals
Hellripper live and video performance line-up:
James McBain – Guitar & Vocals
Joseph Quinlan – Guitar
Andy Milburn – Bass
Max Southall – Drums
Website: https://www.hellripper.com/
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/6FfZaHz07OsknWNdtdan5R
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hellrippermetal
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Hellripper1/
Bandcamp: https://hellripper.bandcamp.com/
8/10
