After the brilliant “Condolences” in 2017, spook horror band Wednesday 13 return with another slab of Halloween infested rock that even more so than ever, further combines the horror film aspect with the heavy groove rock that has become their signature.
“Necrophaze” is immediately an attention grabbing title and asking Wednesday himself in a recent interview we did on where the name came from stating that, “Someone was like, ‘You’ve been writing these necrophillia songs since you started, how much longer can you do this? And I’m like, ‘Well I guess I’ve been going through a necro phase for a long time“, makes a lot of sense when you go through the album from start to finish. There’s a real sense of concepts and collectiveness in this thing where each song leads right into each other and containing all the best aspects of what Wednesday 13 does. While “Condolences” musically was going in this direction of grabbing all these best features that make the band so much fun to listen to, here on “Necrophaze” it’s done even more so with the addition of extra nuances, background sounds and film exerpts. The addition of Roy Mayorga throwing in the keyboards really adds to the whole atmosphere and the creepy vibe is upped an extra few notches just to give the whole album a real cinematic feel.
The intro title track is brought in by none other than the legendary and original shock rocker himself, Alice Cooper which Wednesday himself expressed a lot of excitement for by saying in our interview that “Having Alice on our record was the prize of the goal“. Like an authentic 80’s horror/thriller movie, it starts out slow before launching into a nice groove rocker with the trademark Wednesday 13 snarl and riffs stamped all over it with authority.
A little Rob Zombie comes into play with the industrial tinged “Bring Your Own Blood“, a party rocker with a danceable beat to it. “Zodiac Killer” references the infamous San Francisco serial killer and the added synth sounds coming from the keyboards just adds a whole other dimension to this track. “Monster” features the fabulous vocals of Cristina Scabbia from Lacuna Coil, providing the melodic side of the song while lead single “Decompose” is a heavy but sombre affair but still representing a lot of what Wednesday 13 are about.
Just a little under the half way point and things take a slight detour into different territory, marked by the spaghetti western themed interlude “Be Warned” before transitioning into “The Hearse” which contains what could be perceived as black metal elements forged within a real spooky, sludgey number. The operatic-like keyboard sounds in the background combined with the double kicks highlight a lot of the creepiness of this song and it may be considered one of the more heavier songs by the band yet.
“Tie Me A Noose” is a little harder to get into despite some of the killer riffs and a wailing guitar solo that screams 80’s nostalgia but it didn’t grab me like most Wednesday 13 songs usually do. “Life Will Kill Us All” brings in the pop rock side of the band that has become almost a second signature of the band, following on from the Murderdoll days. I’m not normally a fan of this style of music but there’s an undeniable catchiness to the whole thing in the way Wednesday 13 presents it. Same with “Bury The Hatchet” where the pace is a little quicker, there’s a little of that punkiness to it which again just adds to that hook factor.
Closing out the album is the main theme track to what could be considered a sort of conceptual horror soundtrack if you will with Alice Cooper returning to lend his gritty voice again before the fun W.A.S.P. rocker “Animal (Fuck Like A Beast)” featuring Children Of Bodom frontman Alexi Laiho as a guest ends the album. It’s another winner with “Necrophaze” as far as I’m concerned and with the horror aspect given a real cinematic treatment this time, this may very well be one of the best from the spook horror specialists yet.
8/10
TRACKLIST
Necrophaze (Featuring Alice Cooper)
Bring Your Own Blood
ZODIAC
Monster (Featuring Cristina Scabbia)
Decompose
Be Warned (Featuring Jeff Clayton)
The Hearse
Tie Me a Noose
Life Will Kill Us All
Bury The Hatchet
Necrophaze Main Theme (End-Credits)
Animal (Fuck Like A Beast) (Featuring Alexi Laiho)
