Lordi : "Screem Writers Guild"

 

For a long time I would ignore this band and write them off as a Gwar rip off. This Finnish band has more in common with Nightwish sonically than any of the harder music coming from the country. The pumped up guitars have the big production value to thank for their heft. It is more of a rock song on steroids than metal. A fact the band themselves might not argue. Then they go more disco , in the vein of Ghost than metal at all on "Unliving Picture Show". Their lead singer's have raspy voice does restraints in terms of the tones he can summon with his vocal cords. With a more dynamic singer other vocal color might take this song in a more commercial direction so it's a blessing and a curse. They are very polished in what they do, though a dated cheese factor abounds.  

"Inhumanoid" just kind of rocks past me and fades into the background with little to hook me in. "Thing in the Cage" has a more interesting melody. Once again, their singer's voice makes the songs sound the same as his rough-edged voice that is marked by his thick accent. Their sound is not as dark as their image, which I think is what Gwar always go right their sound stood up against the image they projected. This sounds the most problematic with "Vampyro Fang Club" which making a happy song about vampire's is pretty dumb. Thematically similar to Iced Earth's "Horror Show' album, Iced Earth did a better job of taking your on a tour of the horror archetypes. "the Bride" is hard to listen to with it's 80s hair metal balladry. The redeem themselves by getting heavier for "Lucyfer Prime Evil" 

"Scarecrow" is another song that is too happy for it's good with it's middle or the road arena rocking. By the time we get to "Lycantropical Island", things have gotten to a place where this might as well be Loverboy or Foreigner, which it really is the European version of those bands dressed up for Halloween.  This reaches almost a Ghost like level of silly on "the Castle of Dracolove". Musically they are more like a darker Journey on "Heavengenance".  The chorus is dumb and the album begins to take a turn in a direction that is almost hard to listen to. This builds to the power ballad "End Credits" puts his vocal flaws under a microscope. I will round this down to a 6 as it's hard to get through and midway into the last song I really could not take anymore. If you dress up like monsters and write songs about monsters I should be your target audience, so something is wrong here. The album is well done in terms of effective production and instruments being played with the vocals as the biggest weak link,.