I’ve been eagerly awaiting the new album from TrollfesT ever since hearing them debut their song Professor Otto at Hammerfest almost a year ago, but Helluva is finally here and it has certainly been worth the wait.
Helluva tells the story of Professor Otto, old favourite Jegermeister, ShetlandsPaul and IslandHans travelling deep into the Earth’s surface with the guidance of the Sisters Of Spelunking (Steel Sarah and Camouflage Clair) to gather an army by mating Jegermeister with the biggest and baddest cave troll, Helluva – and of course, you also get to hear about all the trolls’ misdemeanours and adventures along the way!
What’s always good about TrollfesT is that whilst they already have a unique style and sound to their music, each one of their albums has its own unique style, and this is the case with Helluva as well, as this time round there’s a lot more brass to their sound. This is especially evident in Gigantic Cave (which is my personal favourite on the album, and features a seriously catchy chorus that you will DEFINITELY find yourself singing along to before long) and Fräulein Helluva, which is surely a song tailor-made for playing live as not only does it feature a sax and brass line that is begging to be danced to, the chants of “Fräulein Helluva” in the chorus will surely lift the roof with a bit of crowd-participation!
Indeed, the album is chock-full of awesome music and single Steel Sarah is another highlight, so there’s no surprise why they chose this as their first single from Helluva. The introduction is a little different to the norm for them, featuring a synthesised line before the full band joins in and progresses as ‘usual’, and it tells the story of Steel Sarah, who is a seriously badass troll who has to fight several snakes over the course of the song. I was also seriously stoked to hear the later track Hen Of Hades, as in a 2014 interview I did with Trollmannen and Mr Seidel, they mentioned the idea of making a song about a chicken, so it made me very happy to see they followed through with that idea and created a track as kickass as this.
All in all, this is another awesome album from the kings of True Norwegian Balkan Metal – TrollfesT always delivers, and Helluva is no exception to this. Make sure you pick up a copy of this awesome album and stick it on loud!
9/10
PHYSICAL COPIES
Order your physical copy of Helluva from here: http://helluva.noiseart.eu/
DIGITAL DOWNLOAD
iTunes: http://apple.co/2lMgY79
Amazon: http://amzn.to/2lM6JzC
DIGITAL STREAM
Spotify: http://spoti.fi/2mjJMCh
MERCH:
TrollfesT Webshop (Europe): http://trollfest.bigcartel.com/
Nuclear Blast (Europe): http://www.nuclearblast.de/de/produkte/bandmerch/t-shirts/xl/trollfest-helluva.html
Napalm Records (Europe): https://shop.napalmrecords.com/trollfest-helluva-t-shirt.html
