Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Hell is upbeat and the Devil plays a mean tune for the masses, whether you are in the gallery or in the seventh circle enjoying the restricted view but foaming at the mouth at all the associated demons that tend to your every whim and sell you over-priced memories, then Hell is the place where the saxophone plays dirty and the Blues wink happily at the thought of your captured soul.
Hell, so they say, is other people, yet somewhere between the two celestial realms lays a place where the heavenly delight of Ben Bostick resides, taking notes, observing the ritual dance and one that is influenced by the sirens that hang in the bar room, drinking, shuffling from foot to foot, and the smiles captured forever as they remember first hand when they took on the Devil and won a dirty fight.
Following on from Mr. Bostick’s eponymous debut would have been a tall ask, insanely brilliant, to capture the same intensity would have meant making the pact with the beast itself, however such treaties work when you are holding all the aces and the Devil doesn’t know the rules in play at the Hellfire.
To take on the fast and angry, one has to soothe the ache in between, and in Hellfire, the heat is pounding, close and wonderfully, excitingly, brutally sultry; energetic but completely lyrically dark, the seven circles of the Hellfire are cheering, but not in anguish, in celebration of a superb set of songs carried with beautiful timing and ceremony. Modern society may have deserted the thought of the old values of what it means to be a certain someone, whether in the tough old grizzled bear of a man to whom a beer is his just reward for braving the furnace and cauldron or the creativity in finding solace in the mountains; yet we still look to those figures with awe, we write songs about them and allow their distance to install in us a kind of romantic beauty that never fades.
It is in the bar room that the songs come to life, the lonely stranger at home with the “Hell yeah’s”, rising forth in unison as each one sheds a tear and grins with positive passion. In tracks such as No Good Fool, Blow Off Some Steam, the fantastic It Ain’t Easy Being Poor, Tornado, How Much Lower Can I Go and the superb album closer in The Outsider, Ben Bostick evokes the harsh conditions to which the ordinary Joe and the Blue Collar worker have been left behind, that Hellfire is nothing to be scared of because all around the world people everyday have undertook the journey through Hell, seen the Devil and punched the blowhard in the eye.
A follow of incredible standard to a classic that had already broken the mould and musical barriers, Hellfire is not a destination to be afraid of, it is a goal worth aiming for.
Ian D. Hall