Review: Hellbastard - "The Need to Kill"
Despite being often recognized for their role in helping shape the budding crust punk scene of the 1980s, it was the metallic crossover thrash style of their 1990 LP Natural Order that garnered Hellbastard the accolades that have stuck through two decades despite a 15-year hiatus. As such, it only makes sense that upon the band’s 2008 reunion and subsequent revival, the same approach be taken for their comeback album, 2009’s The Need to Kill. Opening with a brooding “Enter Sandman”-esque guitar lead and rather unsettling series of labored whispers, Hellbastard spends the entire three minutes of their first track building into the following song “Going Postal.” With its flittering double-bass and piercing metal squeals, Hellbastard shows little resemblance to their anarcho-crust upbringing while describing the forces that push people to the brink of homicidal insanity. “Anthropological Angst I” is a strange 20-second hillbilly-sounding interlude that leads into the thrashy “Stop Your Wh...