Blanket Hill started in 2017 and have been one of Luxembourg’s most active bands ever since. They already released two EPs in 2015 and 2018, and spent lots of time touring Europe, including England, Austria and the Czech Republic. It seemed as nothing could stop Blanket Hill until the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic. But instead of giving up, the band took advantage of the situation to finally work on their first longplayer to be released in October 2022.

The info sheet describes Blanket Hill as a mix of modern hardcore and old school heavy metal. So I thought this might be just another metalcore act, but this first impression was wrong. My first contact with Blanket Hill was in 2020 with their single Defcon One, a song about racism that confronted the listener with an incredibly high amount of anger. Nevertheless, on The Courage Of Hopelessness the band presents a much broader musical spectrum. The opener Omnicidal offers a mix of groove and stomping, which is more familiar from hardcore. But since the band has two musicians (drums and guitar) who also play in the thrash metal band Fusion Bomb, the strong metal influence does not surprise. Sign Of The Jackal and Neighbourhood are excellent tracks that could have appeared on eighties albums from Sacred Reich and Nuclear Assault. One of the best tracks on the album is Prison, which features singer Sandra Wolter of modern metal band Parity. Her very expressive voice combined with the shouts of Blanket Hill singer David Masion complement each other splendidly in a song with earworm character. This track has the potential to become a band classic. In the middle of the album, there is a somewhat strange, but not uninteresting instrumental called Aku No Hana, mixing electro and ethno, but then it goes full steam ahead again. I would especially like to highlight Granite City Blues, definitely a tribute to Slayer. Just listen to the guitars. The groovy The Withered Heart, which is underpinned with synths, is a track you definitely should not miss either. The album finds its conclusion in Elogium. As you would expect from a piece with this name, things get sluggish here, and even this style is mastered perfectly by Blanket Hill.

I have to say that I am very thrilled with The Courage Of Hopelessness. In the last decade and a half there has been a flood of metalcore bands that could hardly be distinguished from one another. Only a few bands have managed to make this genre so diverse by not being afraid to think outside the box. Blanket Hill have created an album that is bursting with power and manages a playing time of three quarters of an hour without a hitch. You can expect a lot more from this band in the future.

12 songs

44:18 minutes

***** ****

Genre: hardcore / thrash metal

Label: Nuclear Family

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