Birds of Prey is one of those super groups that over the course of three albums has failed to live up to its own pedigree. The band’s third outing; The Hellpreacher sees them tackling a full length concept album with the music carrying on in the familiar southern death n roll sound.

The album starts off in decent fashion with the one-two punch of Momma and Juvie both coming across as workmanlike sludgy death n roll songs with that whole Southern vibe but whatever little momentum there is, is broken up by a rather pointless instrumental As the Field Mice Play. This is followed immediately by the two best songs of the album. Alive Inside has a nice familiar groove to it and is catchy in a hardcore meets sludge kind of way while Tempt the Disciples has a mid paced groove and some awesome drum and bass playing by Dave Witte (Municipal Waste) and Summer Welch (Baroness). After that though, the album falls into a dark deep monotony. The songs all mostly sound the same with its southern rock meets death metal guitar tones meets the occasional hardcore beat (like on Taking on our Winter Blood) or the sludgy thrash of False Prophet.

The concept of The Hellpreacher is all about a man who was raped and abused as a child going on to become the leader of an apocalyptic cult and then leading the cult to its inevitable end. The music should have had some of the apocalyptic fervor of the lyrics but the band is content to stick to very average death n roll. Erik Larson, after playing the drums and contributing some guitars on Sulphur and Semen is back to playing guitars full time on this album but seems a bit dull. The rhythm section of Welch and Witte is terrific right through but none of these songs are really all that special.

The Hellpreacher comes across as an album that could have been great but somewhere in the songwriting things went a bit wrong. What the band has ended up with sounds underdone and very bland.



Label - Relapse
Year of Release - 2009