Vehemency Having gone through various phases during its lengthy career, from the classic heavy metal of late 80s to the blackened death metal of late 2000s, Satan’s Host is now back with the original singer from Metal from Hell era, namely Harry Conkling. The result on By the Hands of the Devil is something like a mix of the two previous approaches, combining the darkness and Satanism of black metal and heaviness of death metal with Conkling’s clean heavy/power metal vocals.

And quite an interesting and successful combo it is. There are few bands who truly interest me in the field of power metal singing, but when it’s mixed with the utterly dark instrumentation and atmosphere, it all works. The eponymoys ”By the Hands of the Devil” makes sure of this already with its adventurous song progressions and epic chorus. Other noteworthy mentions of the album’s first half are ”Demontia” and the interlude-of-sorts ”Bleeding Hearts of the Damned”, the latter being a hypnotic, ritualistic and beautiful wandering amidst clean guitars and tom drums. I’m not able to spot as good tracks on the second half, but The Beatles cover ”Norwegian Wood” is a little surprise there, being an upbeat and folkish piece with church burning lyrics. I drank of the blood, Dark Lord Satan...

With a modern and in-your-face clean production, and an overdose of rather clinical and unnecessarily precise blast beats, By the Hands of the Devil might not have the charm of the scruffy Metal from Hell that I personally really like, but this album is clearly a well-thought whole that maybe runs for a little too long, but comprises some quite damn good compositions nonetheless. This could turn into a vital record for some of those who merely enjoy the most extreme of metals and despise classic high-pitched clean singing, because his/her opinion might just change after hearing By the Hands of the Devil. The album has been in relatively frequent rotation and will continue to do so - a sign of a good record.