review by: Roberto Martinelli

The Bastard is one of those albums that, when you hear it, immediately makes you realize that you're listening to something unique.

Stylistically, the album can mainly be considered a heavy metal opera. The band's main gun is the twin guitar harmony. If you're familiar with The Lord Weird Slough Feg, you'll know what kind of harmonies are on this album, although the music on this album is less vigorous and even "happy" than that of the aforementioned band, being instead melancholy and reflecting the overall misanthropy of the story.

It is certainly no coincidence that Hammers of Misfortune is the baby of Slough Feg's second guitarist, John Cobbett. The inclusion of Mike Scalzi (Slough Feg's founder and leader) on clean male vocals and guitar make the comparison to San Francisco's essential Celtically inspired metal band.

The sound of the album is not straight up heavy metal by any means, as some black metal beats and guitar parts surface here and there. Added to this are some acoustic songs that, unlike many metal albums that feature such acoustic breaks, don't seem foreign to the rest of the songs. The material on The Bastard all flows together excellently.

The general mission of this album is to tell a story about the bastard son of a king, who has been raised by forest spirits. The man seeks to take the throne from his estranged father. The Bastard is aided by a dragon, whose part is sung by Janice Tanaka. Three of the members of this four piece do vocals, with the only harsh ones being done by John Cobbett, the voice of the King.

As the main focus of the album is to present a flowing piece of work, the individual tracks themselves aren't set up primarily to be stand alone songs. Perhaps one result of this is the total absence of solos of any kind (there are many instrumental parts, however).

The albums only weak point of any magnitude are the harsh vocals, which, matched with the coherency of the lyrics and the way they are phrased, end up sounding a little corny at times. This is really an afterthought when considering the album's multitude of strong points, the not least of which is an eminently compelling piece of work. When you hear it, you'll want to smack yourself on the forehead and wonder why no one had thought of doing this before.

The whole package is made even more attractive by the gorgeous digipak in which the CD comes, decorated with woodcut illustrations that were commissioned expressly for the album. This will definitely be a fine addition to your collection.