You can trust Louder Our experienced team has worked for some of the biggest brands in music. From testing headphones to reviewing albums, our experts aim to create reviews you can trust. Find out more about how we review.

Avatar have nothing to do with James Cameron’s leggy blue CGI creatures, though it wouldn’t be surprising if this crew did dwell in some otherworldly parallel. Fronted by death-roaring Johannes Eckerström (if you can picture The Joker had he become a pirate and joined Kiss, that’s him), Avatar concoct the kind of part-industrial, part-hardcore groove metal that, when it works, can satisfy melodic and brutal cravings alike.

Accordingly, the high points on Hail The Apocalypse are very high. The title track especially, sounding like a groovy, more tune-focused Slipknot, will have you half happily dancing, half violently moshing.

A sense of freakshow theatre permeates, with a macabre menace creeping into the mischievous Vultures Fly. Elsewhere, machine-gun guitar and blastbeats spear the likes of Death Of Sound straight through your face. It’s just slightly trying to find that the melancholic, clean vocals, while effective in places, can sometimes water down the overall effect.

Nevertheless, Hail The Apocalypse packs a healthy quota of heavy, groovy satisfaction.

Polly is deputy editor at Classic Rock magazine, where she writes and commissions regular pieces and longer reads (including new band coverage), and has interviewed rock's biggest and newest names. She also contributes to Louder, Prog and Metal Hammer and talks about songs on the 20 Minute Club podcast. Elsewhere she's had work published in The Musician, delicious. magazine and others, and written biographies for various album campaigns. In a previous life as a women's magazine junior she interviewed Tracey Emin and Lily James – and wangled Rival Sons into the arts pages. In her spare time she writes fiction and cooks.