BASSINVADERS – Hellbassbeaters

While not the flashiest or most noticeable instrument, the bass – and the person playing it – is certainly one of the most important elements of any song; you may not always notice the bass, but you’d definitely know if it was missing.

Hellbassbeaters is a new album from the amusingly-named “supergroup” Bassinvaders, and it aims to take the bass out of the shadows and put it in the spotlight. The mastermind of Bassinvaders is Markus Grosskopf, longtime bassist for Helloween. Grosskopf, along with noted bassists Peavy Wagner, Tom Angelripper, and Schmier are the main players on Hellbassbeaters, and big-name players like Billy Sheehan, Dennis Ward, Rudy Sarzo, Marco Mendoza, Joey Vera, Jens Becker, and Dirk Schlächter, to name but several also contribute. Three guest singers are also credited, as are two drummers.

You may have noticed a lack of guest guitarists in the above paragraph, but that’s not an oversight: Hellbassbeaters features no guitars of any kind, outside of the bass guitar of course. If you’re the type of music fan who can’t always pick out the bass in a song, with Hellbassbeaters there won’t be any fancy guitars – or fancy anything – to get in the way of the bass wizardry contained on the album’s 13 songs (14 on the European version).

With guitars taken out of the equation, Hellbassbeaters sounds pretty much like you’d expect: a Heavy Metal album without any guitars. While this lineup is extremely good at what they do – with the exception of the vocals, which are mostly bad – a good bass solo just isn’t as exciting as a good guitar solo. At a live show, the bass solo is usually the part where people go for refreshments; with Hellbassbeaters, you’ll be spending a lot of time at the beer tent, aka the refrigerator. Hellbassbeaters isn’t terrible, but you’ll really have to be a fan of the album’s lineup or a student of the bass to totally enjoy it.

That being said, Hellbassbeaters contains a handful of tracks, that even without guitars, manage to be fairly good: tunes like “Armageddon,” “Romance In Black,” “Boiling Blood,” and “To Hell and Back” (the bonus European song) are well-done and fun listens; you could almost imagine these songs being pretty cool with some guitars added in. “Eagle Fly Free” is good too, and since it’s a cover we already know how it sounds with guitars. It sounds good here, though. The less said about “The Asshole Song,” the better, however: it seems like it’s supposed to be a joke track, but the only people who had a good time are probably the people who played on it.

Hellbassbeaters is an odd album, almost a curio of sorts. It’s not that good overall, but fans of the assembled talent may enjoy it. You’ll definitely notice the bass, but you’ll notice the lack of guitars even more.