Motorjesus – Hellbreaker

7/10

Driven by high octane fuel and a sense of cleaning the grimy engine out with some classic sounding heavy metal Motorjesus deliver a somewhat confusing but entertaining album.

First things first, is Judge Dredd the metal superhero to write songs about? “Lawgiver” is a classic almost Judas Priest esque song. Classic metal. Double fighting guitars and swinging riffs, but I have to say that it is time to change superhero about now.

Apart from that small annoyance the album offers a wide array of songs. “Black hole overload” goes towards the Corrosion of Conformity direction. You have “Dead rising” that really leans towards Supercharger and “Car Wars” that is a full-on dirty Punk/early Hellacopters number.

What is going through the album is the dirt, shitty (in a positive way) sounding guitars that in most cases want you to take the album into a fast car and just flatten your foot on the gas pedal blasting the album away at 11.

At the same time as being dirty it has great layers in melody, backed by a loud and proud rhythm section.  It is nice to have the mix and almost not knowing what the next track will hold for you. Once you get to track 10, they put all these elements into 3:51 minutes, the last song before a pointless outro has, weight, speed, bassline, vocals from a 5-day whisky bender. Makes for a really good finish to the album.

This is by any account a nice album that showcases that mixing the cleaner melodic metal of the eighties and some dirty sounding Motörhead punk rock/action rock is not a bad idea at all.

Band: Motorjesus
Title: Hellbreaker
Label: AFM
Date of release: 2021-04-09
Rate: 7/10
Stand out track: Car Wars
Country of Origin: Germany
Playing time: 44 minutes