Hanzel Und Gretyl - Born To Be Hailed

The industrial metal band that everyone think are German but are in fact American. Yes, they write plenty of German lyrics, the band name refers to a Grimm fairy tale, and their synthetically-enhanced industrial metal stomp is a sound much associated with the Fatherland, but they are definitely All-American nonetheless. This album follows four years after '2012: Zwanzig Zwolf', which (confusingly enough) was actually released in 2008, but was still a welcome release in a year when quality industrial metal was very hard to come by.

The opening track "Hanzel Und Gretyl Fur Immer" is a ponderous crawl, but they soon rediscover their form on "Unterstutzung 87", an equal-parts hybrid of Germanic industrial and early-80s heavy metal, a combination previous mastered by the likes of Rob Zombie but few others. The leather-clad biker feel is upped further on "Blitzkriegerz Und Hellriderz", the kind of track that makes me think that Motörhead and Mötley Crüe's umlauts should have meant they sounded a bit German, not just an unimaginative attempt to look all hard.

"Hammerzeit" features some metal bashing noise and a more mechanical drum and guitar style, which is technically well-executed but sounds quite static and dynamically lacking compared with what came before. "Der Furor" is two and a quarter minutes of stop-start extreme metal fury, alternating vocal snatches with blasts of insanely fast guitar thrashing, reminiscent of Ministry's own trilogy of "TV" songs. Sorry, I didn't like those ones either.

"Born To Be Heiled" serves as the title track, centrepiece and a welcome return to a catchy metal groove. The band's tendency to use bilingual vocals works particularly well here, cries of "Get Up! Stomp Baby!" and suchlike meshing perfectly with the drawn-out "Töööööööööööööööt!". "Holy Shiza" rocks just has hard, though by now I think they're trying too hard to write songs in two languages at once - "So let Hölle freeze over" is forcing this Deutsche-Amerikanische Partnerschaft just a little bit beyond it's comfort zone.

"Mötorschwein" is disappointing, again trying too hard to sound like Ministry but seriously in the need of loosening up and letting the song carry itself forward. "I'm Movin' To Deutschland" is another highlight, embracing classic rock dynamics to the extent that it even features a retro organ and guitar solo. "Ironstar Outlaws" shows the band's sense of humour with a burst of banjo, though it's more often than not buried in the guitar riffs. I can't work out if rhyming "Wolf 424" with "Down To The Core" is evidence of brilliance or the ultimate act of contrivance, but hey, it caught my attention, didn't it?

The album ends with hard electronic stomp "More German Than German", which serves as one final attempt to totally confuse the listener as to which country this band actually comes from. But what does it matter? Hanzel and Gretyl have delivered another fine album, showing plenty of humour along the way. It hasn't quite got the consistent brilliance of 'Zwanzig Zwolf', but they haven't lost their touch, either, and with a decent pool of influences to draw from, it never gets dull either. Jan 02 2013