Death Alley: Black Magick Boogieland

Former Devil’s Blood axeman gets his fingers dirty once more

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Despite heavy metal’s continuing diversification, a glut of bands have recently returned to the music’s roots, often with stunning results.

The most recent of these has to be Amsterdam’s Death Alley, a band who, in a just world, would be decimating your preferred underground dive on a regular basis with their fight-starting combination of blues boogie and sharpened heavy metal.

Featuring an ex-member of Devil’s Blood, guitarist Oeds Beydals, Death Alley have taken the fiendish magic that danced amidst the flames of that band and transformed it into something Lemmy would be proud of. Oeds plays like a man possessed with supernatural talent, revving the album’s engines on the speed-limit-breaking Over Under, soloing until his fingers are flayed on Dead Man’s Bones and riffing frantically on each track until the close of the snarling Supernatural Predator. Slap it on your deck and get down with the Devil.