Scottish one-man blackened speed merchant Hellripper, otherwise known as James McBain, has this morning released his fourth album, ‘Coronach’, after months of teasing. The album is the first since 2023’s ‘Warlocks Grim & Weathered Hags’ and another release on Century Media Records.
The album’s title refers to a Scottish funeral song that has been referenced in rock on several occasions, through Jethro Tull, Eternal Tears of Sorrow and Hate Eternal all writing songs around it at various points in their career. Hellripper has often incorporated elements of Scottish history, folklore and traditional music into a sound which has marked him out as one of the most exciting young prospects in British metal. Most tracks on the album are in some ways connected to this history, with the single ‘Hunderprest’, for example, telling Scottish vampire stories set to his usual thrashing ferocity.
A new sonic addition for this evening is something of a gothic sensibility alongside the blistering thrash and Scottish influence. On opening track ‘Hunderprest’, a sparkly piano melody pairs with a spoken word passage that is reminiscent of ‘90s Cradle of Filth at their most blasphemous, another band who take black metal influences and meld them with Priest-esque dual guitars and traditional metal flavour.
In giving the album four stars out of five, Kerrang!’s reviewer Olly Thomas writes that “‘Coronach’ is a reinforcement of Hellripper’s compelling vision, 45 minutes of scything magnificence both ancient and timeless. It might hail from the grimiest reaches of the underground, but it deserves to be celebrated by metal maniacs everywhere.”
Hellripper first exploded out of the underground in 2015 with an EP and in 2017 dropped their debut album ‘Coagulating Darkness’. This in turn was followed up by ‘The Affair of the Poisons’ in 2020, settling into a comfortable three year album title. McBain is joined live by a trio of musicians, with Andy Milburn on bass, Joseph Quinlan sharing guitar duties with the frontman and Max Southall laying it down with double-bass madness on drums. Combining the aforementioned Scottish influences with an old-school blackened-thrash style akin to early Sodom or Kreator, they also take influence from hardcore punk. They are at the vanguard of a retro-revival movement within British metal thrash but stand apart through their unique influences.
In her review found in Distorted Sound Magazine, Lucy Dunnett gave the album 10/10, commanding that you “hide all breakable objects in sight, blast the volume to a level you know is medically ill-advised, and succumb to the biting blackened speed metal power of HELLRIPPER as you listen to Coronach again. And again. And again.”
Hellripper have a busy touring schedule ahead on the back of the release of the album. Starting tonight, the band are touring across the UK beginning with dates in their native Scotland before reaching out into mainland Europe for festival season. The tour officially ends on 26 September with a date in Germany’s ‘Coastrock Festival’, the European rhythm interrupted partially by some trips to Mexico.
