Today, ancient black/death upstarts Hell Strike stream the entirety of their highly anticipated debut mini-album, Hellstrike, at heavily trafficked web-portal NoCleanSinging.com. Set for international release on July 17th via Chaos Records, hear Hell Strike‘s Hellstrike in its entirety exclusively HERE.
Featuring members of Ascended Dead, Ritual Necromancy, and Bloodsoaked among others, Hell Strike is a new band with an old sound. The idea of Hell Strike started like most bands: it was at a metal show where Charlie Koryn, Johnatan Quintana, and José Luis Rodríguez met and talked about jamming some old songs. Even though the members are spread between Seattle and Portland, the distance wasn’t an issue, and rehearsals started at the end of 2017.
The next year, Hell Strike had a handful of practices, but every trek was always a productive one. Just around then, Jon Reiner joined the band, and a few more practices took place. Then, mid-2018 saw a long hiatus due to the schedules of the members’ other bands, and it wasn’t until December 2019 where the songs they’d been working on finally got recorded.
At last, that recording emerges as a six-song/24-minute mini-album: Hellstrike, essentially a self-titled record of sorts. Here, Hell Strike surge and crunch with eldritch energies, back when the cauldron of extremity was slowly stirred between death metal and black metal. More specifically, the mini-album stands firmly on a foundation of early 2000s black/death and early-to-mid ’90s death metal, recalling the likes of Sadistic Intent, Grotesque (Sweden), The Chasm, Necrophobic, Mortem (Peru), and Order From Chaos among others.
Familiar yet foreign at the same time, Hellstrike is indeed a gnarly first strike for Hell Strike!
Hear all of it for yourself exclusively HERE, courtesy of NoCleanSinging.com. Preorder info can be found HERE at Chaos Records‘ Bandcamp. Cover and tracklisting are as follows:
Tracklisting for Hell Strike’s Hellstrike
1. Cadaveric Requiem
2. Chains of Frost
3. First Born of Fire
4. Morbid Abnormality of the Ages
5. Re-Abortion
6. Transylvanian Funeral
HELL STRIKE is:
Charlie Koryn: drums / background vocals
Johnatan Quintana: lead guitar / background vocals
José Luis Rodríguez: lead guitar / vocals
Jon Reiner: bass / vocals