Left Hand Black – Lower Than Satan

Left Hand Black hail from Gothenburg and have been around since 2019, they play as you will very early on in this latest album find out, Horror Punk in the vein of The Misfits with a spattering of The Living End thrown in to the mix.

Lower Than Satan is the follow album up to their 2020 self titled first album.  Having not done my research on this and not particularly having the time to (I know, totally unprofessional isn’t it, but us old punks have never been ones for rules), this is a fresh ears listen with no baggage to add to the melee.

My copy of this album as 16 tracks long, an additional track called ‘Left Hand Black’ added on the end, not totally sure what that meant, but was cool.  Any way that might have meant to be between myself and the promo, and should I have even mentioned it? Oh well I did it now.  So barring myself being black balled (ouch) for sharing secret information, this is what I thought of this hellfest of an album.

Lets start at the start and see if we make it to the end without little bloodshed, ‘Into Your Grave’ hits the airwaves with a no holds barred Misfits sound, even down to the vocal  (make your own mind up if its Graves or Danzig), bouncy pop horror stuff that as far as I’m concerned doesn’t matter how much it sounds like another band, its still gonna get you dancin and singing along at a gig.  And for the most part this album gives you this all the way through its core, but there are some additional quirks that give this Swedish version of Blitzkid or The Other, take the squeezing in of a some pretty cool accelerated rock licks that appear in songs like ‘When I Hear You Scream’ or ‘Tonight We Hear You Bleed’ or the most ridiculously catchy choruses like in ‘Murder You’ which insanely simply repeats the title, then you guessed it ‘She’s Gonna Kill Me’ does exactly the same, but they still have you singing along and fucking enjoying it too!, then beyond all this ridiculously predictable stuff, they also throw in some pretty damn cool buzzing bass riffs, chainsaw guitar and tommy gun drums in songs like ‘Black Blood And Love’, ‘Werewolf By Night’ and ‘Frankenpenis’.  

To sum it up, this is 15 tracks in less than 30 minutes and your left feeling fully charged and ready to go!!

No this is not going to smash down any musical walls, but what it does is exactly what you want it to do, entertain and there is nothing wrong with that ever! In my book.

This album brings new meaning to the words “Punks Not Dead”, no “Its dead, 6 foot under, but still kicking and screaming its fucking way out!!!!” 

Left Hand Black will be playing Hell Nights tonight, 31st October, together with The Other, BZFOS and The Fright!

run on over to Sick Taste Records and bag yourself a multitude of coloured vinyl offerings of this album.

Or you could go stream it on Spotify and then go buy it.

Otherwise go check out the band and all their shenanigans on FACEBOOK