Son of Jor-El / Hellhawk

I’m still fairly green when it comes to the independent world of sludge, a genre typified by its rather odd partnering of muddy doom textures with thrashing punk rock riffs. But it seems I chose a fairly good place to start in Son Of Jor-El, as they are a band that keeps things fairly thrash oriented and come across as a darker, swampier version of a couple of crust bands that I’ve encountered from the late 80s. They have a tendency of partnering up with some fairly other good bands that share their underground ideals, of which Hellhawk is in congress for this go-around.

“Doomsday Massacre” is actually very crunchy as far as sludge songs go, and comes off as something closer to the mid-tempo thrash that became common in the later 80s. Although the vocals are pretty guttural and sound like a shriller version of David Vincent’s handiwork, this sounds like something that might have been heard on “South Of Heaven”. It goes from being moderately fast to being an all out thrash fest by the end, complete with dueling guitar solos that sort of resemble a King vs. Hanneman interchange, albeit more bluesy and akin to their primitive work on “Show No Mercy”.

The accompanying song by Hellhawk, titled “Deathwrath”, is an even odder journey down the road of genre cross-pollination. The riff work has some clear tendencies towards the pre-thrash riffing style of Iron Maiden, but presented in a low end, bass heavy fashion that sounds more akin to Saint Vitus during their “The Walking Dead” and “Hallow’s Victim” era when they were playing clubs with Black Flag. The vocals are essentially a perpetual gang chorus, perhaps not all that far removed from what would be heard out of Discharge if the vocalist’s line’s were doubled by 2 or 3 backup singers from start to finish. This is definitely presented in more of a punk manner, and is pretty primitive and predictable, but damn is that principle riff catchy.

For those who tend to like a large amount of punk/crust infused into their thrash metal, aka those who go for stuff that follows in the footsteps of S.O.D. and D.R.I., this is definitely something to sneak a listen to. Perhaps some time down the road Son Of Jor-El will put out something with more content on it, though my guess would be they won't go beyond an EP as this band seems to release stuff in small bursts and probably would fall short of an LP by 4 or 5 songs. But they’ve definitely got the ability to trade blows with acts like Crowbar if they can throw together enough songs.