HUNTRESS — Spell Eater (review)

Album · 2012 · Heavy Metal

5/5 · 2012-05-17
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Spell Eater is the debut full-length album by US metal act Huntress. The female fronted act has previously released an EP called Off With Her Head in 2010 but has gone through a couple of line-up changes since then. Initially taking the whole line-up of another US band called Professor with the addition of Jill Janus, Huntress’ line-up now only includes the guitarists from Professor, Blake Meahl and Ian Alden. Joining the line-up is former DarkBlack drummer Carl Wierzbicky and former Skeletonwitch bassist Eric Harris. Spell Eater was released in April 2012, following quite a lengthy build up since the December 2011 release of the album’s lead single Eight of Swords.

Huntress plays traditional heavy metal, but there are several tracks on Spell Eater that also draw on thrash metal. We’re not talking an album that brings anything particularly new to the table, but maybe there’s a reason why it’s called ‘traditional’ heavy metal. After all why break a winning formula?

Unfortunately prior to publishing this review it has come to my attention that they album has had some mixed reactions, and sadly the negative side of those reactions often seems to be more about Jill Janus’ image than anything. I wanted to write this without bringing image into it but I’ve decided that’s impossible (mostly because some of the stereotypical reactions annoy me), so I’m going to get my view on this out of the way now before I talk about the music proper. It’s true that in most of the band’s photos Jill cuts quite the scantily clad look, which will no doubt on one hand draw some people to her and Huntress, but on the other make people think the band is hiding a lack of talent behind a hot female with little clothing on. The latter is simply not true. Jill Janus may show a lot more skin than some are really comfortable with, but she also certainly has the vocal skills to back it up with. What we are talking about is one of the best albums of traditional heavy metal you’re likely to hear in 2012.

And Jill Janus is in fact the main reason for that. While she’s got a great group of musicians behind her on Spell Eater delivering some killer riffs and leads it’s this lady’s vocals that make all the difference. Unlike the majority of female vocalists in metal acts, Jill does not sing pop (Sirenia, Skylark etc), nor does she sing opera (Tarja, Xandria etc). Jill Janus sings metal. And she sings metal really damn well, better than most men I dare say. With vocals ranging from an aggressive and gritty approach to more melodic lines to the odd bit of growling that can go towards both death and black metal styles, there isn’t a twist and turn on the album that she doesn’t handle. Her performance is sensational all the way through and we’re definitely talking the same level of calibre as the likes of Bruce Dickinson (Iron Maiden), Hansi Kürsch (Blind Guardian) or Matt Barlow (ex-Iced Earth). I know those are all male, but with the style of vocals Jill delivers, much like with growling, gender is pretty much irrelevant. These are very much heavy metal vocals and there is no better way to describe them. Of course if you want comparisons to be made to female vocalists then you need look no further than Marta Gabriel (Crystal Viper) or Kate French (Vainglory). I’d say Jill Janus has even more aggression in her vocals than either of them though.

The production of the music is clear yet not as polished as some other modern heavy metal albums I’ve heard, but neither is it totally retro sounding. I think they found the perfect balance here already so it shows off the band’s skill as musicians perfectly without coming across as being too manufactured.

One thing I will say about the songs though is that nearly all of them required at least three listens in order to properly click with me, and a couple of them took even more than that. It’s only really that single Eight of Swords that is an immediate attention grabber. But once I’d given Spell Eater several full spins more of more tracks began to stand out until at last the whole album sounded of the same sort of quality as Eight of Swords did right from the off. Although I can single out Eight of Swords as the album’s true jewel because it does stand out faster than all the other tracks, there’s not a track here that doesn’t have its own merits both musically or vocally. From the opening aggression and great riffs of the title track to the infectious Senicide or the use of black metal growling in Sleep and Death to the stunning vocal control displayed by Janus during Aradia, Spell Eater is an album that, once given the proper time for it to sink in, will have you coming back for more and more. The band’s prior EP barely even hinted as the power that Huntress was going to go on to have with this debut. Believe the hype, because Spell Eater is one of those albums that, as Dark Forest’s Dawn of Infinity did for me in 2011, came out of nowhere and blew me away.

And yet it still feels very much more than just a top quality heavy metal album. Albums have excited me before in the past but never quite to the level of what Huntress just did with Spell Eater. I think it’s for that reason that this review was one of the hardest I’ve ever written. While Huntress may be just a bit too much rooted in traditional values musically (though I have no problem with that) to be accepted by the wider metal crowd in today’s metal scene of many metalcore and so called djent bands making names for themselves I don’t think it’s unfair to say that Huntress have put out a debut to rival the greatest metal debuts of all time. Spell Eater is an aggressive, catchy and passionate slab of heavy metal and if there is such a thing as ‘true’ metal then this album certainly is it, not to mention that in Jill Janus the band has a vocalist of the highest calibre, possibly even the best heavy metal vocalist to hit the scene in years.

While topping this beast may be difficult for the band, I have no doubt that Huntress are the band leading the way among the growing number of female fronted heavy and power metal bands who have been releasing albums in 2012. This is an absolute must-buy and a top-tier score is well deserved. If people don’t give Spell Eater a chance just because they don’t agree with the band’s pagan ideology, their (or rather Jill’s) image, which honestly isn’t at all unfitting to her lyrics, or simply think they’ve received too much hype from the metal press to be worth listening to, then it is their loss and theirs alone. I rarely swear in my reviews but this time I will make an exception; Huntress are metal as fuck, and their naysayers need to deal with that. If you don’t at least acknowledge this as more than a scantily clad female fronting at metal band, then I highly doubt that you either really like or understand heavy metal. Not really.

9.8/10

(Originally written for Heavy Metal Haven (http://metaltube.freeforums.org))