Y’know the feeling you got first time you heard, as a spotty stoned teenager, In Search Of Space or Chronicle of The Black Sword on your first introduction to Hawkwind after a phase of cassettes with Ramones and Sex Pistols and punk in the mid 80’s right at the tail end of the 80’s when Nordic bands like DarXtar and Dark Sun were still about jamming Hawkwind style dark space punk just about to release demo cassettes? Well that’s what Hazard Wings Interstellar Torment CD is like… the first DarXtar LP, the first Dark Sun demo cassette, etc. Its superfabulous, it is what I loved about Hawkwind and their followers in the Arctic North from the get-go, the “Chronicles” metal darkness punk, bands like Full Moon (the UK one), old issues of Ptolemaic Terrascope from the late 80s, Monster Magnet’s first few EPs and Spine of God album; just that raw, 80’s, Hawkwindness. Call it post-80’s, but these guys had never heard of anything but dark underground, but I swear it was punk enough to be 80’s, with a morbid fascination for Venom and early Bathory to boot; maybe Candlemass in an imaginary world. It was Dark, it was Space, and YOU, STONED YOUNG ANGEL-WITCH was trying to cast counter Enchantments with your runes and your Jim Morrison poster. At least that is what I did. And I had Rodney Matthews posters and 2000 AD and Eclipse and Pacific comics in a pile.
Time Will Be My Grave is pure space-punk unheard since Dark Sun teamed up with Nik on Ice Ritual meets K. Soren’s first DarXtar outing on Garage Land 1990. From there the songs blur a bit, from one track that sounds like Seeing It As You Really Are via more raw Venom-K. Soren-goes-Finnish punky spacerock. I love this album to bits and you better thank Jerry Kranitz for letting me review it. If you grew up in The Dark Ages, was a Witch, or a Viking mayhap, and lived off mushrooms and smoke, and did tribal dances to DarXtar and Full Moon, go ahead and buy the 2012 CD by Finnish spacepunk band HAZARD WINGS! This CD I have here is number 43 / 100 and is out on Krypta Records. The band consists of Vesa Moilanen on vocal/basss/fx, Eero Ruotsalainen on guitar, Heikki Romppainen on drum, and finally Heiko Schach guitar solos on two tracks. The cover art is a wonderful pre-digital age stipled ink piece I would gladly place next to a John Coulthart, Bob Walker, or any other Hawkwind cover sporting an 8-pointed Chaos Eye in the barren 80’s Flicknife mideival era LP covers, a black & white hand drawn Rapidograph stipled LSD brain fallout. Wondrous. Give me more of these guys.
Interstellar Torment is available in CD, LP, Cassette and digital download formats from the Hazard Wings Bandcamp site: http://hazardwings.bandcamp.com
Email at: moilanen.vesa@gmail.com
Reviewed by Christian Eric Mumford