Tales from the Crypt

I was intrigued by the Merciful Fate – like, occult layout and the “join the coven” imagery of “Tales of the Crypt”, so without knowing anything about Lucifer’s Fall from Australia, I asked Sun & Moon to send me their album. The album came in a nice digipack limited version, with only the title of the tracks and where they were taken from, some photos of the members and a thank you text written by the band. So I was ready for some occult, Merciful Fate – like Black Metal but I was surprised to find out that Lucifer’s Fall is a Heavy Metal band and, to be honest, a very good one. They exist since 2013 and this album is a compilation of older hard to find or unreleased material and it was released in December of 2018.

So, the band has no connection to Merciful Fate apart from the imagery, but they are deep inside the occult sound. They present a very nice mixture of old school, traditional Heavy Metal with heavy Doom, Sabbath – like influences, especially with the second part of the album, that is the tracks coming from the “Cursed Visions – Dungeon Demos III” demo. What I also liked very much were the 70ies rock touches that you can find here and there. Moreover, you can find some very energetic tracks showing pure NWOBHM influences, like “Trapped in Satan’s Chains” or “Unknown Unnamed”. Also the listener can find some Motorhead – like tracks as “Dirty Shits Dirty Music” or the full of energy “(Fuck You) We’re Lucifer’s Fall”. The tracks, depending on the style of the track, have the proper duration so that they don’t become boring but also to be completely and properly evolved. As it is quite obvious, the Doom tracks are longer, but with their interesting changes and the liberating solos, achieve to be very interesting.

The sound is not the same throughout the album because the tracks come from different releases and different periods of time. For sure, everything in here is raw and primitive. However, this style of production, on one hand it does not make the listen difficult as you can listen to every instrument, something really important for a Heavy Metal release. On the other hand, this primitive approach fits to the style of the compositions and transmits that nostalgic, old school feeling to the listener. The performance of all the instruments is very good, even into the rehearsal tracks, with the guitars to be the instrument that gets the listener’s attention most. The vocals are harshy, bassy vocals, more brutal than what I would prefer to listen but not bad. The lyrics are written in English and the refer to Satan, apocalypse, magic, witches.

The album sums up with three cover tracks. I think that they chose the three bands that can describe their style and influences perfectly. The first one is “Cromwell” by Reverend Bizarre, which represents their Doom influences, the second one is “Stand Up and Fight” by Exciter which represents the more energetic style and the last one is the most representative one, “Angel Witch” by the great Angel Witch. I guess that the material found in this album is a good example of the band’s music style, so if you would like to get to know Lucifer’s Fall, this release is a good start. Also, this release would be very interesting for their fans who can find material that they couldn’t find before. I liked the album, especially the more Doom – occult part, and I think they deserve your attention.