Hades
The Downside (Metal Blade)
by Martin Popoff
These likable, savvy, no-bullshit working guys from Jersey are still busy remaking and reliving a metal past that is obscure and flavorful enough to make their “old” new material useful in the everything-everything metal 2000s. A whole lot of writers and reviewers couldn’t cop to Hades‘s first reunion album, SaviorSelf, and I suspect they’ll be lining up to declare the shite wence again. What they’re missing is the concept that this band is from a metal generation even older than their ’80s product, knowledgeable fans of the ’70s and the ’80s, dissing the ’90s, and writing at a level that, on the surface, is dated, but will prove to be timeless. But enough acrobatics… The Downside is indeed a Pandora’s Box of retro mindgames, but in being that, it chooses doom, dirt, organics, and an interesting and discerning sampling of power and prog over other equally, less, or more viable salad bar items. So track after track sets an atmosphere, a tone, maybe reminding you of either a characteristic or experimental track from a Bay Area thrash band, albeit with mature, substantial lyrics. Metal Church, Solitude Aeturnus, Crowbar, Testament, Overkill, Nevermore, Soundgarden… it all swirls to mind. And to be fair, your main influence is old Hades and Non-Fiction, displaying the fact that these boys, despite choosing a difficult pigpen right smack in the middle of everything – indeed own their own arresting, unarguable and scientifically discernible shade – even if it takes a spectrometer to verify it.
