HAMMER AND ANVIL

I don't know if the co-writer and co-producer of the album Tom Bellamy can be blamed for this abomination, but after the magnificent The Dark Third and the utterly disappointing Amor Vincit Omnia, this Hammer and Anvil was a travel further into the great nothing for the British band.

The style follows the electro-pop-rock of Amor Vincit Omnia, but adding some heavy riffs which bring Rammstein to Mind (Fight Fire) and some rip-offs of other bands like Depeche Mode (Over the Top sounds just like the Martin Gore band) and China Crisis (Armistice, specially the beginning). Here is nothing to be found of the great heavy prog and psychedelic compositions of The Dark Third, leaving only the typical double vocals of Courtney and Alper as the band's trademark.

Best tracks: there is not a good song to be found here, really. But Open Insurrection has the most interesting instrumental development, although being a mediocre songs nonetheless.

Conclusion: Hammer and Anvil was a very bad album of electronic pop rock with a very worrying lack of inspiration, direction and musical coherence. It also contains songs which are almost a copy of other bands, which was a very bad surprise coming from a band which was able to make so incredible tracks like The Bright Ambassadors of Morning in the past.

Is not a surprise that the band disbanded only a year after this disaster!

My rating: *

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