Review by Sonny for Friends of Hell - Friends of Hell (2022)

Fantastic! My old friend Sami Hynninen (aka Albert Witchfinder) is back with a new doom metal band, presumably named after Witchfinder General's second full-length. We've not heard much from the Reverend Bizarre legend since he left Spiritus Mortis in 2017, so when this came out of the blue I was exceedingly excited to have some new material at last. The reason I'm so fond of Witchfinder is that he truly "gets" doom metal and with his new band he seems to be mining the traditional doom scene of the eighties and early nineties with more than a few nods back to classic Black Sabbath. It seems to be no coincidence that the band are named after a Witchfinder General album. The new band is a four-piece which, as well as Witchfinder, features fellow Finn, former Impaled Nazarene and Sentenced bassist Taneli Jarva along with Cypriot tattoo artist and ex-Electric Wizard bassist Tasos Danazoglou on drums and completing the lineup is Greek guitarist Jondix.

The songs on Friends of Hell are fairly short and relatively punchy for doom metal, but this was not uncommon on early trad doom albums and is in sharp contrast to Witchfinder's material with Reverend Bizarre. Lyrically and thematically we are in B-movie, schlock-horror territory with song titles like Shadow of the Impaler and Into My Coffin, which again is very much par for the course with a lot of trad doom albums. The distorted riffs are pretty damn good, hardly original, but entertaining as hell with a really nice depth to the guitar sound. Albert Witchfinder has some limitations as a vocalist, but I actually think his voice really suits the material, as it did with Reverend Bizarre - not everyone needs to be a Messiah or Rob Lowe. The rhythm section isn't bad, although they don't shine through the mix as much as they could, this is only a minor niggle and is not a huge distraction.

All in all, if you are in the market for some new straight-up trad doom with a cheesy occult theme then you would be hard-pressed to find a better example than Friends of Hell.