Album review: Hatchet – Awaiting Evil

Nostalgia has to be done properly if you want it to work, and Hatchet stay on the right side of the border between homage and pastiche with Awaiting Evil, dragging the Bay Area noise into the modern day with straight faces.

They use great musicianship, too – not to mention a distinct lack of frills and production trickery. The original thrashers could rarely afford endless months in the studio adding layers of polish and overdub, relying instead on the “get it down and get it out” ethos that produced stark albums where the music could speak for itself, and while Hatchet clearly have access to better kit, they’ve not wasted time twiddling with the digital processing. Awaiting Evil is brilliantly plain and unadorned: the sound of five guys and their instruments and not a lot else.

That simplicity lets Hatchet‘s high-velocity musicianship shine through, with rumbling double-kick and rapid snare from the drums, a super-tight rhythm section of slashing palm-muted chords and driving bass, and exactly the sort of squealing minor solo work you expect and demand from a good thrash album. The voice of Awaiting Evil is also more than apropos, as Marcus Tormentor swings theatrically between a Mustaine-esque sneer and Tom Araya’s soaring dive-bomb falsettos.

Hatchet aren’t copyists, but – as mentioned above – they are definitely paying close homage to the thrash template. While they do a damned fine job of it, it limits them somewhat to all the attendant clichés of the form, be they musical, lyrical or visual. As a result, Awaiting Evil‘s tracklisting is heard to read without cracking a grin, with its “Frailty Of the Flesh”, “Frozen Hell” and “Storm the Gates”.

And as you might expect, Hatchet‘s lyrics are a lengthy game of that oh-so-eighties video-nasty Tipper-Gore-buzzword-bingo thing. Death! Evil! Satan! Death! Attack! Awaiting Evil is the musical equivalent of a Clive Barker novel, in other words – way too over the top to be really believable, but the payback you get from suspending your disbelief is big enough to make it well worth doing. Yes, it’s ridiculous … but it’s ridiculous in a very enjoyable way.

And top marks to Hatchet for their musical poker faces; while on the surface they’re an all-business band taking themselves very seriously, there are enough little hints and clues to show that they’re winking from behind the post-modern mask. The Tales From The Crypt whispers of “Frozen Hell” raise the flag, but the close-to-camp demonic characterisation in the outro of “Morlocks Tomb” seals the deal – Awaiting Evil is good clean scary fun.

It’s certainly the right time for Hatchet, with some of the big names of popular metal reviving the thrash tropes in the public ear; if they can pull this material off in the live environment, they’ll never be short of gigs to play. Just don’t expect to hear the next big thing; provided you come to Awaiting Evil with the right mindset – a hunger for some frantic speed riffing, fretboard wizardry and schlock-horror window-dressing – you’ll leave more than satisfied.