Heathen Hoof - The Occult Sessions (2005)

Simple but cool cover. Me gusta.

Heathen Hoof are a Finnish traditional heavy metal band formed in 2002 and at least I am guilty of thinking of it as little more than another side project of Morningstar's Ari "Sinister Satyr" Honkonen, though with Morningstar and Minotauri disbanded in 2007, and most other projects except Kalevalan Viikingit earlier than that I guess it's safe to say it's currently his main project. But, anyways, this four song maxi-single is their first official release after a split 7"EP in 2003 and a number of promo tapes, of which I've heard not one yet.

As I said at the beginning, this is traditional heavy metal, which would probably be of interest to many in today's retro-heavy environment, lately old school heavy and power metal seems to be in vogue with kids at least here in Finland and as a positive side effect this enables the re-release of several sold out oldies and naturally will lead to cashing-in with a ton of mediocre disc-shaped lumps of pure waste-of-time, both old and new.

Heathen Hoof pic from MA.

That out my system, I can happily say Arska & co are not bandwagon hoppers (though if you know anything about the man you already knew this) but instead are making this stuff for the sheer love of it which is tangible when listening to the stuff. This is not the sort of technically perfect, polished, dickless, faintly-smelling-of-gay-bar heavy metal I grew weary of ages ago, it's more of a let's go and not think too much sort. That doesn't mean it'd be badly played, it's just not overcomplicated or too technical. Influenced mainly by old NWOBHM bands and early US power metal bands (but more by the first) the songs are all mid-tempo romps with pretty simple but enjoyable structures. The vocals are sort of crude but work much better than the high pitched squealing to my ears and fortunately they're not too heavily accented either. Think about late Morningstar to get an idea of them.

Limited to a 1000 copies and released in 2005 by NWN! I would guess this is pretty much sold out at the moment and I don't think a repress is coming either. One of the songs, the self-titled track, is included in the CD version of the 2011 album, 'Rock Crusader' and the tracks on the EP itself are familiar from the 2004 cassettes, which I presume to be sold out long ago. Good stuff if you enjoy your heavy metal beer-reeking, straight ahead and old school!