“Do you believe in Jesus? Well, you’re gonna need him…”

Swedish death ‘n’ roll mofos Jesus Chrüsler Supercar blew me away with their debut long player, 2013’s ‘Among The Ruins And Desolate Lands’, and if that vicious slab of noise was a spree killing then its follow-up, 2016’s must-have ’35 Supersonic’, was a premeditated exercise in cold-blooded rock bludgeoning. How could the nefarious band members – Robban Bergeskans (vocals/bass), Nicke Forsberg (drums), Pär Jaktholm (guitar) and Tobbe Engdahl (guitar) – ever hope to top that? Well, they’ve gone for broke with their third album by being in league with Satan himself.

Named after the ultimate anti-establishment figure, ‘Lücifer’ is an eleven-track horned beast of a record that grabs the band’s grubby take on the legendary Stockholm Sound and rubs its nose ever-blacker in the filthiest, most glorious sonic hell this side of the Seven Gates.

That Stockholm Sound? It comes, as it did on the previous two albums, via the Scandinavian supremacy of über producer, Tomas Skogsberg (The Hellacopters, Entombed, I could go on for days). Drummer Nicke’s brother, Fred Forsberg, mixed the record and, in the search for a thuggish American tone to throw into the muscle car melting pot, Brad Boatright (Converge, Corrosion Of Conformity) undertook the mastering. The results are MASSIVE.

This record is housed within four gargantuan walls of guitar. From the opening seconds of the album’s opening (and title) track, no listener will dare keep his or her head still lest they be judged by El Diablo himself. Wood splinters, foundations shake, and auditory canals take an unholy amount of abuse as shit-kicking, brain cell-killing tracks like ‘Flesh ‘n’ Bones’, ‘High Times For Low Crimes’, ‘Never Sleep Again’, and ‘Boogeyman’ grab the speakers by the throat with zero intention of letting go.

Side One of the record – entitled ‘First Testament’ – motors along like Dennis Hopper has wired up a bomb to it, but Side Two – ‘Second Commandments’ – does offer the briefest moments of respite: the speeding strut smudged into a sludgier swagger on tracks like ‘Straight To Hell’. A major tour with heavyweights Clutch can do that to a band, I guess. Album closer ‘Black Blood’ is a revelation too: a murder ballad of grandiose proportions that I imagine few would have thought possible from this eight-legged, turbo-charged behemoth of a band. The impressively-titled ‘You Can’t Spell Diesel Without Die’ restores the balance on this fearsome flip-side, however.

For fans of Motörhead, Entombed, and Chrome Division, and just about anyone who likes their music as badass as Beelzebub, and their many guitars chugged like their many beers. It’s Death Race 2019 and this is the soundtrack. Buy it and play it like you stole it.

Buy Lücifer Here

Author: Gaz Tidey