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I want to like this a lot more than I do. Hellhound are a Japanese band who play chugging, wailing old-fashioned Heavy Metal. The songs are solid, the riffs are air-guitar worthy, and the production is raw and heavy. All the pieces are here.

Almost all of them. The fatal flaw of this band is the vocals of guitarist Norio Sato, who has a ridiculous falsetto squeak that genuinely sounds like a muppet. For the sake of the good music, I have tried to overlook the vocal silliness, but I can't. There is no way this can ever be mistaken for anything badass when it sounds like the vocals are being performed by fucking Elmo. It's a shame, because this would be a pretty kickass album with any kind of decent singer, but as it is this rates as no more than a bad joke.