Album Review: Bitch Hawk – Joy (Adrian Recordings)

Sweden has among the highest pedigree in the world when it comes to producing metal bands, and Bitch Hawk are no exception. When you combine a hugely successful songwriter who has written hits such as Icona Pop’s “I Love It”, an internationally renowned jazz guitarist, a highly skilled drummer and the singer of from ‘Satan Takes A Holiday’, an extreme metal band with a very punk attitude is not the first thing you might expect. But those are exactly the elements that make up Bitch Hawk, proving once again that disparate parts can combine in very, very interesting ways.

Bitch Hawk have brought a new dose of their extreme sound to the wider world with their brand new album Joy, released on November 2nd 2018 through Adrian Recordings. By the band’s own words, Joy is no ordinary album:

“Joy is for the oppressed, the beaten, smashed, abused and neglected. But also wankers, idiots, losers and primitive humans will surely find something compelling here. The Bitch Hawk has laid its second egg this year, and this time it’s so damned hard that it was a pain in the ass to deliver. But we’re very pleased with it. Looks great, smells OK, sounds brutal.”

Looking for something a bit different? A bit odd? A bit disconcerting? Then Bitch Hawk’s Joy should be on the playlists. Ten tracks that can be best described as metal, grind, punk and rock all squashed together and put through a blender without the lid on. It goes everywhere, makes an absolute mess and you just have to laugh afterwards.

Wild. That’s the word that describes the frantic style of Good News and Got No Time for You Tonight. Bitch Hawk play out of their skins and it appeals to the animal instinct in all of us. It’s filthy, it’s disgusting but like a multi-car pile-up, you can’t tear yourself away.

There is roughness to Joy but it’s constructed roughness, as if that was the plan all along rather then it just sounding as if it was recorded on a tape deck in a garage. Very punk, very modern punk but Bitch Hawk are as much about the extreme metal too. As Baby Love’s ends on an absolute raging level of heaviness backed up vocal roars that will wake the dead.

It’s something of a surprise, if you’ve not been paying attention, to see the band move in a different direction for EDM. A slow and moody doom track, it’s really solid and shows that Bitch Hawk really know how to craft memorable music on the heavier end of the scale.

The latter half of the album sees Bitch Hawk go for the throat with short, punchy extreme sounding tracks. Slime, Kall Varld, Get Up You’re Fine and Rikspsyk are as bile-inducing as anything you’ll have heard this year.

It’s fantastic how effortless Bitch Hawk make this level of intensity seem and that it wraps up with some serious groove on the title track is testament to the quality of this wild and uncouth release!

Bitch Hawk – Joy Full Track Listing:

1. Good News
2. Got No Time For You Tonight
3. Baby Love
4. EDM
5. Optical Character Recognition
6. Slime
7. Kall Varld
8. Get Up You’re Fine
9. Rikspsyk
10. Joy

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Joy can be picked up via Amazon, Bandcamp, Spotify and iTunes. You can find out more/keep up to date with news via Facebook and Instagram.