Band:	Bloody Hammers
Album:	Lovely Sort Of Death
Style:	Doom metal, Hard rock
Release date:	August 05, 2016
A review by:	ScreamingSteelUS

01. Bloodletting On The Kiss
02. Lights Come Alive
03. The Reaper Comes
04. Messalina
05. Infinite Gaze To The Sun
06. Stoke The Fire
07. Ether
08. Shadow Out Of Time
09. Astral Traveler
10. Catastrophe

Lovely Sort Of Death is a lovely sort of album. Bloody Hammers fits in with New Wave and old school goth rock much more than with Black Sabbath, whose essence the imagery on the cover clearly invokes, and I've admittedly found it hard to detach from my expectations of something heavier and doomier, but Bloody Hammers has an addicting sound of its own.

Lovely Sort Of Death prides itself on creepy, haunting atmosphere conveyed to us by way of brooding post-punk-inspired goth rock. Through much of this album, Anders Manga croons gently with a breathy, subdued spectre of a voice or croaks deeply in existential despair. His vocal delivery, along with the ever-present synths and spacious echoes, create a very bleak but soft, enveloping atmosphere. The band's sound is dark and mysterious, but not heavy or jarring as it very well could have been had they attempted to incorporate more metal elements. I feel like I'm listening to Type O Negative covering Tears For Fears, or perhaps The Misfits trying to write a movie soundtrack.

Bloody Hammers occasionally breaks into deep, distorted celebrations of what can only be described as doom, whether battening down the hatches in the middle of "Masselina" or letting off tension after a quiet build-up. Unfortunately, the "heavy" sound is still quite thin, and requires a few more layers or some bass to endow these segments with as much power as they need to pop; moreover, I don't believe that Manga's voice is up to the strain of covering harsher vocals. The raw, hoarse yells in "Bloodletting On The Kiss" almost take me out of the atmosphere because they can't generate the requisite sort of aggression or energy, and the fast-paced "Stoke The Fire" sounds like nothing more than filler from a Deathstars album. "Ether" plays the classic doom card pretty convincingly, but Bloody Hammers definitely functions best when gentle, understated, and atmospheric, especially on the fantastically grim "The Reaper Comes" and "Lights Come Alive."

Bloody Hammers takes a few missteps with chord progressions and a few of the songs are resoundingly forgettable, but Lovely Sort Of Death has a beautifully calm atmosphere and some genuinely memorable tracks that make it fun to play through and easy to return to.