Review: Hooded Menace Unleashes New Album, 'The Tritonus Bell'

Much of what drives this feeling is what doom is best known for – mountainous, thundering riffs, and The Tritonus Bell is absolutely overflowing with them. What’s remarkable is just how much this album stands out against its peers. By adding a heaping dose of old-school heavy metal flair, Hooded Menace have taken what’s already a genre known for being riff-oriented and upped the ante. Lasse Pyykkö and Teemu Hannonen have been delivering an excellent dual-guitar driven attack together for coming up on a decade, but this album definitely represents their best work to date. The sheer density of quality writing on here is astonishing – there’s not a song on the album (excluding atmospheric intro Chthonic Exordium) that isn’t, minute for minute, filled with some of the most catchy, memorable writing of 2021’s metal outings. Switching seamlessly between old-school groovy heavy metal passages and plodding, sludgy doomy bridges, each song carves its own heavy headbanging identity without ever sliding into repetitiveness. You would think that with this guitar-oriented sound that that the band would somehow have cost themselves on the atmospheric front, but not only does this album keep the listener headbanging the entire time, they still managed to fuse that with the anxiety and ominousness that doom is best at conveying.

There’s a lot of great things that can be said about the latest from Finnish Death/Doom band Hooded Menace, but the impression that is left with me strongest is just how fun it is to listen to. In an era where a lot of active bands have resumed the early 90’s metal aesthetic of taking themselves entirely too seriously, it’s remarkably refreshing to listen to a metal album that, front to back, puts a giant, dumb grin on my face. Sure, the album cover and overall aesthetic will seemingly present as a no-frills affair, but trust me when I say that this is some of the best metal of the year.

Deserving a special mention is vocalist Harri Kuokkanen, delivering simultaneously one of the throatiest, nastiest vocal deliveries of 2021 and also one of the most annunciated. Each snarl and growl is delivered with crystal clarity, an astonishing feat for just how evil they sound. You’ll be surprised at just how much of the album is perfectly understandable while losing absolutely nothing in venomousness.

Standout track: Blood Ornaments (the bridge about 5 minutes in that transitions from a clean section into a driving riff is, legitimately, one of my favorite things I’ve heard all year).

Tracklist:
1. Chthonic Exordium
2. Chime Diabolicus
3. Blood Ornaments
4. Those Who Absorb the Night
5. Corpus Asunder
6. Scattered into Dark
7. Instruments of Somber Finality
8. The Torture Never Stops (W.a.s.p. cover)

You can find Hooded Menace here:
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You can purchase The Tritonus Bell here.