AUDREY HORNE Devil´s Bell | Weekly Heavy Metal Album Review

Released by Napalm Records on April 22nd, 2022

Quick Background

Audrey Horne are a hard rock band from Norway. The band took its name from Sherilyn Fenn's character in the cult TV series Twin Peaks. Although some of the band members play or have previously played in black metal bands like Enslaved and Gorgoroth, Audrey Horne's music is far removed from the black metal genre, and can be described as heavy and melodic hard rock, similar to bands like Van Halen, Deep Purple, Thin Lizzy, Iron Maiden, and Alice In Chains. 

Devil´s Bell

Devil´s Bell is the seventh studio album following 2018's Blackout. It features 9 songs in 49 minutes. Although there's no intro track, album opener "Ashes to Ashes" kicks off with a minute and half build up before getting into full blown hard rock delight. Do I hear a Ghost influence here? Regardless, it's one of the best songs on the album, very catchy and with a proggy edge. 

The title track was the first single out of Devil´s Bell. As we come to expect from those guys this track exemplify the album sound with twin guitars, catchy melody lines and the a solid rhythmic section. "Danse Macabre" is an homage to Deep Purple's "Stormbringer", such a cool intro and catchy melodies! Kudos to the rhythmic section on this one. 

More than ever the band in this album sounds like early Iron Maiden being covered by Alice In Chains. "Return to Grave Valley" for example is the best Iron Maiden instrumental song never written by the British icons. Not only in this song, but actually all over the album the twin guitars and guitar work are great to hear. In addition to many twin guitar moments, the riffs while simple are dynamic and there's a lot of changes, ideas and variations building on each other. "Toxic Twins" for example is a groovy high tempo song with a guitar solo section which is the best part of the song reminding me of "Master of Puppets" bridge into the guitar solo combined with Deep Purple. It's super cool. With just over 7 minutes "From Darkness"  is the longest song on Devil's Bell and closes the album with high energy and groove. 

The Picky Guy

While there are some very nice songs as already discussed, none of them blew me away. Then some of them even fell flat such as "Animal" and "Break Out". 

Wrap Up Opinion 

I still don't think Audrey Horne were able to replicate the impact that the debut album Youngblood had on me. With that said, Devil's Bell is still a good and fun hard rock album with call backs and references to classic hard rock bands from the 70's and 80's. For all of that I am still giving it 79/100, good album worth checking out for those into some old school hard rock through modern lenses. 

SCORE: 79/100

Genre: Hard Rock

Released by Napalm Records on April 22nd, 2022

Rating System

99 - 100 Perfect
94 - 98 Excellent
87 - 93 Great
82 - 86 Very Good
77 - 81 Good
66 - 76 Mixed
58 - 65 Bad

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