ALBUM OF THE DAY: WITCHERY — DEAD, HOT, AND READY
As much as I bitch about summer and hot weather, I have my yearly tradition to hail in the dread season. I get myself a cold drink, usually a nice wheat beer, and blast Brave New World and the air-conditioner. I’m not a complete sociopath; I’ll have the shades up so my apartment is light and sunny. It’s like the most comfortable igloo with the best ambiance.
But I decided to switch it up a bit this year. Summer is also the time for kitschy, joke meta,l and while Lordi’s last release, Babez for Breakfast, was unbearably mediocre, I have my arsenal of equally campy bands to make up for it. Some might protest to my inclusion of Witchery under this banner, but, come on now. The album is called Dead, Hot, and Ready, for God’s sake.
The entire album is fast-paced thrash with all the glorious, fun occult references you can handle. It’s like horror movie for your ears, made by boys who watched The Omen a few too many times in high school. (The original with Gregory Peck, I mean.) While Restless and Dead might stand out as their best, I prefer the hook-y, screeching fun of this record. The influence of NWOBHM is apparent with songs like “The Devil and the Damage Done” and the title track, but they still manage to retain those black metal undertones. Even if I can’t take them that seriously. Like, for example, the song “Full Moon.” It’s a song about werewolves. And while I prefer lycanthropes to other over-done supernatural beings (ahem, vampires), it’s still a goddamn song about werewolves! Werewolves that happened upon Accept, to better describe the song.
“Call of the Coven” is what Judas Priest could’ve sounded like if they’d chosen to go a little darker rather than dumbing themselves down for the American Idol crowd, while “Demonication” crashes along like the follow-up to “The Reaper” from their previous album. This second record, though, is more relaxed than Restless and Dead, and while the energy is the same, it allows for more exploration into their sound rather than a frantic explosion and race to the end, as the first seemed to be.
Plus, they come right after Winger on my iTunes, and it’s kind of funny and weirdly appropriate to go from, “I’m only seventeen, I’ll show you love like you’ve never seen,” to, “Far from grace, hell’s hot embrace.”
-LF
