we'd like to think that the reason that the compact disc was invented was to help us out with rediscovering all those bands whose recorded output consisted of one-off, lowish pressings here and there... although you invariably liked what you heard (perhaps having piratically taped it off peel, or having discovered a lonely 7" in the singles rack, usually in replay records bristol in our case), the virtually herculean task of tracking releases down in the pre-internet, needle and haystack world meant their authors' talents would lie unappreciated unless and until philanthropic endeavours brought about the overdue cd reissue. luckily, the knights in shining armour in this case are bus stop records from over the water, and we can't thank them enough.
if you weren't really paying attention to the hellfire sermons between 1988 and 1993, you weren't the only ones. we were distracted mainly by the shared heyday of, disturbingly, both sarah records and earache... indeed, looking back now, many things from a decade or so ago become cluttered memories - you begin to be unsure as to whether they really happened. did bristol rovers really put together a couple of confident pushes up the first division table ? did the good people of the united kingdom really vote for a government that was gleefully promising to privatise the railways ? could the hellfire sermons really have been as searing as we'd thought, their legend enhanced in every passing year by the sheer impossibility of finding the original material ? to put you out of yr misery, the answer to all three of those questions was "yes", and re the hellfire sermons, it turns out there were 5 singles and a flexi, half of which we had managed to hunt down in the underworld of secondhand vinyl over the 15 years since. all else remained a mystery until now, when the dozen tracks in question, plus a clutch of unreleaseds, were assembled as this official discography, the portentously-titled "hymns: ancient and modern". so while the other great merseyside bands of all time (off the top of our heads carcass, half man half biscuit & echo and the bunnymen) all managed to release a slew of cds in their prime, hellfire sermons have, as ever, taken a rather less obvious route. nevertheless it was worth the wait.
first single "freak storm" starts us off, interestingly peaking with a chorus which owes at least something to echo and the bunnymen (no - really - check out "the puppet" before ya disagree), before its flip "rachel clean" shines with the jangly charm of their post-c86 counterparts at the time (the windmills, for example - wonder whatever happened to them). then it's on to their debut for the then-ignored but now-permanently acclaimed esurient label, "H.O.N.E.Y.M.O.O.N." which, its 3 songs originally mastered unbelievably quietly, gains much from cd clarity: interestingly, after the tempered, arrhythmic title track, the excellent "quicksand" sounds not unlike esurient's other brittle stars, the claim. the third single, however, brings back our most juddering memories. while "not nailed down" was the obvious, strangulating, uptempo A side - the fall aren't far away, and a witness are hiding in the bushes - it was when young and impressionable that we first heard its companion track, "best laugh i've ever had" on a long-since busted compilation tape (broken largely - we lie not - by excessive rewind to this tune). "best laugh" remains a cast-iron colossus of an indie-pop song, propelling a mccarthy style guitar line at medium pace with oblique lyrics at turns caustic and nervous smiling through every strummed chord. and as the narrative thread of its lonely but defiant protagonist is bruised by rhythmic changes and enhanced by handily placed backing vocals and even a backing shout, the music encapsulates the guitar scratchiness of ooh, i don't know, early wolfhounds. stirring stuff.
the spiky "callaghan" was next, not seemingly about our former prime minister (although its central character claims he was once a politician) but instead the story of a superannuated ken mckenzie a la only fools and horses' uncle albert: it came from a shared flexi with the keatons, whose own skewed talent you can read about here. and then comes the second song from back in the day that still cuts us up totally. "covered in love" came out on bristol's then-new dishy label in 1992 and saw the sermons move further away from their jangly beginnings as vocalist colin pennington began to enjoy shouting his way through songs, his curdling yelps made even better by the continuing quiet passages that surrounded them. "covered in love" still makes us involuntarily dance as it shifts from unprepossessing guitar pop ("couldn't sleep for an age / and i woke up with a headache..." ventures pennington mournfully) to quickfire mayhem - "people say that i'm crazy!" he yells with evident glee, pulling the guitar bass and drums up with him as he leaps from the bed, and you see where last night's headache probably came from. "sacred skin" on the other side, which seems to combine the themes of third world poverty and motor accidents, was nearly as good, but the quality of the record (er, high) combined with its impact on the pop universe (um, none) probably finally sent the message out loud and clear that the world wasn't listening, and it wasn't going to listen. undaunted, the 'sermons cranked out another 7" for dishy: "sarasine" (like the shrubs' "ballet gorilla", the devil in its hair) and "no hands" continued the new formula, the former another primal scream invigorated by pennington's vocal battery, the latter cynically exploiting casual "la la la la"s by allowing them to be swallowed by a phalanx of evil guitars which welled up from beneath them.
"say what you think / say what you want... hey! you! are you listening to me ?" - "lovespoons"
all told there are seven bonus tracks, culled from disparate studio sessions and / or the odd compilation, and they make it amply clear that the hellfire sermons had much more where the 7"s came from. "gentleman caller" (like the orchids' anti-poll tax "underneath the window, underneath the sink", a tale of hiding from the doorbell) and "blows rain down" are slightly earlier, more conventionally arranged janglers from the top drawer. and of the four tunes here from the "covered in love" sessions, "bill and sarah" is probably our favourite - it adds yet another hellfire classic to the canon as it bowls along with a fine mix of big flame / great leap forward guitars, but also managing to retain an indie-pop flavour throughout to keep feyer ears content - we'd compare the primed guitar noise toward the close with early wedding present if we didn't think you'd hit us for it. we should also mention "real life seams" which has the tough task of closing this cd but does so admirably - it is simply alive with most of the thrills of the new wave '78-'86, from gang of four to the shamblers of yore, and once again it packages up all their skills into a single song.
we can't help but notice that two of the many records spread out across the centrefold insert of the cd's sleeve are the go-betweens' "best of" and the jactars' "pull the plug" album, and that juxtaposition in itself tells you quite a lot about how the hellfires went about their sublime business, i.e. taking the melodic beauty of the best independent pop and then subverting it by mid-song detours into noise and angled guitars. hellfire sermons, by the end, clearly had more in common with other fiery north west of england spirits (as well as jactars, the fall and a witness, perhaps also the likes of twang) than the janglier bands that might have helped set them on their merry way.
"help yourself to all the things / i've worked hard to earn" - "penny pinching cathy"
how apposite, as lesser bands, not least from liverpool itself, revel in greater attention. as the bunnymen sang, "too many seekers, too few beacons". without doubt, but hellfire sermons were one of the latter. fact.
This piece came from In Love With These Times, In Spite Of These Times