UMUR "Human Remains" is the debut full-length studio album by UK heavy metal act Hell. The album was released in May 2011 by Nuclear Blast Records. Hell were active in the years 1982 - 1987 but because of a string of unfortunate circumstances the band didn´t get a chance to release a full-length studio album back then. Hell had signed a deal with the Belgian label Mausoleum, but two weeks prior to the recording of what should have been the band´s debut album, Mausoleum collapsed into bankruptcy. That event left the band disillusioned and as a consequence Hell disbanded in 1987. Lead vocalist/ guitarist Dave Halliday took the break-up especially hard and committed suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning shortly after the band had disbanded.

All tracks on "Human Remains" were written in the period 1982 - 1987 but re-recorded for this release. Several of the tracks were written of co-written by Dave Halliday. Second guitarist/Keyboard player Kev Bower brought in his brother David Bower to fill the empty lead vocal spot (former Sabbat vocalist Martin Walkyier actually layed down vocal tracks for the full album, but no one was satisfied with the result) and former Sabbat guitarist Andy Sneap to fill the second guitarist spot. As an interesting anekdote it was actually Dave Halliday who taught Andy Sneap to play guitar back in the early eighties. In addition to his membership in Sabbat, Andy Sneap is of course also known for his numerous productions for acts like Nevermore, Arch Enemy, Kreator...etc. "Human Remains" is also graced by a trademark clear, powerful and dry Andy Sneap production.

The music on the 11 tracks, 66:00 minutes long album is heavy metal with occult themed lyrics and imagery. Despite the modern production it´s obvious that these tracks were written in the early- to mid eighties and acts like Judas Priest and Iron Maiden can be used as references but it´s especially Mercyful Fate that Hell share a lot of similarities to. The manic, mad and theatrical vocal performance by David Bower does the occult lyrics great justice and while his high pitched vocal moments are few I still think he and King Diamond have a lot in common. But the instrumental part of the music also bears a lot of similarities to Mercyful Fate. The music is generally heavier, darker and more hard edged than many of the eighties contemporaries. The longest and most theatrical tracks like "Blasphemy and the Master", "Macbeth", "No Martyr´s Cage" and especially the keyboard laden and slightly progressive "The Devil's Deadly Weapon" are great tunes that show the diversity of Hell´s music but I think it´s the harder edged and more "regular" tracks like "On Earth As It Is In Hell", "Plague And Fyre" and "Save Us From Those Who Would Save Us" that really kicks some serious ass.

Other than a production that might sound slightly too modern for the material (I would have prefered a more raw and organic sound production) I think Hell makes a pretty successful comeback to the scene with "Human Remains". It´ll be interesting to see if they follow it up with a second album of material written today and how that holds up to this one. For now I´ll just enjoy "Human Remains" and rate it with 4 stars.

Stephen I stumbled upon many great reading throughout the net regarding 'Human Remains' being one of the best NWoBHM thing ever came out in 2011, so I reinforce my mind with an optimistic thought that this is gonna be a blast but don't know why, I left the room disappointed after couple of spins, maybe because of the hype, or maybe Hell was lacking some big hooks that a decent heavy metal band should have in most of their songs.

After that colossal musical score overture, Hell sweeps in with a superb riffs in 'On Earth As It Is In Hell'. A truly brilliant track and when I first heard this song, my first impression is 'wow, looks like this album is truly awesome!', but then when 'Plague and Fyre' left my mouth a bitter average taste and 'The Oppresors' is as bad as it is, my faith began to deteriorate. 'Blasphemy and The Master' picks up the momentum, the riffs are great, the whole song is pretty good, but then the track is too long without a significant subtleties, that's also what happened to 'The Devil's Deadly Weapon'.

'Let Battle Commence' is fast and furious, with fantastic riffs and fiery hooks, this song along with 'The Quest', are a part of huge things within' 'Human Remains'. 'Save Us From Those Who Would Save Us' is also blasted with very powerful rhythm, but unfortunately, those four tracks are basically the best I can get out of this album. 'Macbeth' is just ridiculous, I have to admit the riffs are nice, but the spoken part is unbearable and the whole track is too average, not to admit the boring length of song they carried. 'No Martyr's Cage' is totally disposable as well.

The overwhelming average tracks and four great tracks brought down to a simple math of around 60-65% total score or equal to 2.5 stars from my point of view. This one is completely overrated, if you're looking for a superior heavy metal album of 2011, look elsewhere. Vocal work is one of their strong commodity, at some point, I can sense that he's trying to be a metal version of Geddy Lee, but the guitar part aren't very good, or in other words, any session player can simply done that easily.

Buy if it's cheap, but definitely not essential.

adg211288 Although the band Hell were formed back in 1982 during the time of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, Humans Remains, which was released in 2011, stands as the group’s first full-length album. Back in the 80’s Hell never really got the break they needed and split up in 1987, and after that their singer/guitarist Dave G. Halliday sadly took his own life. Thanks to Hell fan and Sabbat guitarist Andy Sneap Hell is back with a new line-up and after all these years their debut album is finally released. So with the back-story out of the way and now set aside there comes the time to decide if it’s any good.

Who am I kidding, you can tell this is good right from the off. After the symphonic intro, Overture: Themes from Deathsquad, the first proper track is On Earth as it is in Hell, which is an absolute belter in traditional heavy metal style. A better question to ask when approaching Human Remains is just how good it is. For the most part the album is sheer quality 80’s style heavy metal. All these songs are old Hell songs re-recorded so before writing this review I decided to see what I could find online of the originals and let me tell you these songs sound a lot more powerful for benefit of a professional production, and the album is in no way dated. This is not a band trying to relive lost glories (because unfortunately they never really had them), but a band that sounds ready to claim a crown that was once deigned them.

I especially like that the album is not one dimensional. Traditional heavy metal can be all well as good as a standard affair, sometimes even being better for it, but when one bears in mind when these songs were written the music can be considered pretty forward-thinking. There are symphonic elements not just in the intro and also some progressive moments. They even go as far as to use bagpipes in the track Macbeth, which given the subject matter is very fitting.

When the songs get going there really isn’t anything to complain about, however I haven’t really found Human Remains to be a completely perfect experience. I dislike much of the use of sampled sound effects and voice over/spoken words (delivered sometimes as if this were a stage production, though note that the new singer David Bower is also a stage/TV actor, so maybe that’s to be expected) on the album and there seems to be a lot of those, which often makes the intro’s to the songs seem really drawn out and unnecessarily so as far as I’m concerned. Fortunately Human Remains has enough good qualities that my enjoyment of the album isn’t diminished much by their presence, because when these songs get going my God do they do it in style.

Naturally there are some songs that stand out as highlights over the others. For me Human Remain’s highlights are On Earth as it is in Hell, Plague and Fyre, and Save Us From Those Who Would Save Us (even though it has one of those drawn out intros, lasting about two of the track’s five minute duration), with the first of those being the finest thing on the album. Actually it’s easily among the finest trad metal songs I ever heard.

Human Remains is a great heavy metal album. While I wouldn’t call it perfect by any means (though it does come really really close!) it certainly is highly recommended listening, no matter if you were among the generation that first took note of Hell in the 80’s or a complete newcomer. Albums such as Human Remains prove that metal really is timeless and will never die and Hell prove that they can sound just as powerful in 2011 as they did in the early 80’s. In fact a lot of the younger bands of the moment ought to pay close attention to Human Remains, and maybe then they’ll learn a thing or three about how to make heavy music properly. My advice to anyone with even a passing interest in classic heavy metal? Get this one as soon as you possibly can.

(Originally written for Heavy Metal Haven, scoring 9.3/10)

Time Signature Plague and fire...

Genre: heavy metal!

Hell are one of the most influential and most underrated and undeservedly ignored bands of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal movement. Despite their amazing creativity, their compositions never made it beyond demos and similar releases back in the 80s. After a series of financial disasters and a tragic suicide and having been ignored by the music press at large, the band folded in 1987.

They reunited recently and rerecorded some of their best tracks, and in May, Hell is going to be unleashed upon Earth, as the band's debut album "Human Remains" will be released.

"Human Remains" is an awesome album. The tracks are timeless, and they sound just as good in 2011 with professional up-to-date production as they did with the underground production of the 1980s. This, I guess, shows that Hell were really ahead of their time back then.

We are dealing with traditional heavy metal, but with lots of twists and turns and several progressive elements and spacey stuff, like lost of changes, theatrical vocals and at times creepy keyboard effects and dark scary soundscape-ish and other weird intros to many of the tracks. I can also detect a lot of power metal, speed metal and thrash metal stuff on this album, but - keeping in mind that the tracks date as far back as 1982 - it is more a question of Hell having influenced power, thrash and speed metal bands than the other way round.

This is really a fantastic album, and just the fact that Hell's old tracks are on it (having been restricted to obscure demos up until now) is enough for a top rating. All the tracks are stunning; they are prime specimens of what metal should sound like.

"Human Remains" should appeal to fans of King Diamond, Mercyful Fate, Albatross and the like, but, really, any person styling themselves as a metal fan should at least check out this heavy metal masterpiece.

Time Signature Metal squad...

Genre: progressively inclined heavy metal

I agree with Certif1ed's very positive evaluation of this NWOBHM release. The music on this demo single is really something else, and, had Hell not been struck by one tragedy after another (first the label that signed them went bankrupt and then one of their members committed suicide), they could perhaps have been just as big as Def Leppard, Saxon, or maybe even Iron Maiden.

The thing is, while the NWOBHM bands had a lot of enthusiasm and spirit, and certainly a lot of charm, most of them were not very good, and one of the reasons why Maiden became so successful is doubtlessly that they were lightyears ahead of most other NWOBHM bands. Now, on this demo release, Hell display a very high level of musicianship, surely matching that of Iron Maiden at the time, and like Maiden, the music is somewhat progressively inclined. It's really tragic that Hell didn't amount to more (but they've reformed with the intention of releasing a full-length album - so that's promising).

Anyway, the "Save Us From Those Who Would Save Us" title track is an uptempo hard-hitting, almost thrashy, track which, as Certif1ed points out can be compared to the works of Mercyful Fate (unlike Certif1ed, I think Mercyful Fate's music is generally better than this track , but it certainly is in the same territory of dark and semi-progressive heavy metal).

The other track "Death Squad" is an amazing progressively oriented instrumenta with numerous twists and turns and tempo changes and harmonies that would later be taken up by black metal and melodic death metal acts. This is a really really interesting track.

The production cannot be criticized - actually, it is quite good for an underground demo recorded in the late 1970s or early 1980s. I can imagine that those who are perhaps too young to have experienced that sort of production may have a hard time seing the value and greatness in this release.

Anyway, I'd recommend this to all fans of traditional heavy metal acts like Maiden and Mercyful and also progressive metal heads. It's a rarity, to be sure, but you can actually hear the tracks here on MMA.