A pick‑slide screams like a match across sandpaper, and the fuse is lit. “All Is Well In Hell” detonates with a double‑kick barrage that feels less like percussion and more like structural failure, hurling you into Ben Rankin’s purpose‑built inferno. Rankin tracked every instrument inside a suburban Canberra bedroom, yet the mix hits with festival‑stage authority: guitars roar in tectonic layers, snares crack like tyre‑irons on concrete, and synth risers boil beneath the fretwork like pressurised magma.
Metalcore touchstones flash by Asking Alexandria’s whiplash tempo shifts, A Day To Remember’s shout‑along hooks but Rankin filters them through stubborn DIY grit. The verses ride a pelting tremolo riff while his fry scream vents decade‑old grudges (“six names on my blacklist, one note in my throat”). Then the chorus detonates: clean vocals soar over open‑hand crashes, as if the song itself rolls its eyes and leaps off the ledge, convinced the flames below will break its fall.
Production flourishes elevate the spite‑to‑anthem alchemy. A mid‑track false stop leaves two beats of dead air just enough for your pulse to lurch before a downtempo chug lands like a wrecking ball; sub‑drops rattle ribcages, yet the mastering (Levi Russell’s handiwork) keeps cymbal wash from drowning the spite‑speech. New plug‑ins widen the guitars without sanding off their serrated edges, and the low‑end stays tight enough to survive Bluetooth car stereos without mush.
Clocking in at 3:22, “All Is Well In Hell” is calibrated for the replay button: unload, exhale, repeat. Rankin wrote it “for my personal amusement,” but he’s built a pressure valve for anyone whose patience burned out at the drive‑thru queue or on the wrong end of a ghosted text. Crank it loud enough, and even petty fury sounds like victory fireworks over a smouldering skyline.
