Check out my organ…
You may well find The Horrorgans lurking somewhere in California wishing that everyday was Halloween, and playing in graveyards and cellars to a packed out crowd of the undead. There are many bands that play Psychobilly, Horrorbilly, Goth/Punk or whatever else you want to label this brand of music, however The Horrogans are the best unsigned band in this genre. Fact.
The title track starts off with blazing guitars and the eerie sound of the organ, to which you will soon become familiar with, before the vocals kick in through a verse that has just a drum beat and the thick bassline. Nick’s vocals have a similarity to Billy Idol and a little Glenn Danzig which comes off really well, against the Punk music and morbid lyrics, that you have to pose the questions: Is this what you’d get if Alkaline Trio added keyboards and got Mr Idol to quit singing about white weddings, Devil’s Playgrounds and wanting more, more, more, and instead sung about death and the undead…?
‘Right Outta Me’ is fast paced and thunders like a stormy night, raining down with a Punk rock backbeat and speeded up Rock’n’Roll riffs. Things then slow down for the slightly more mournful tune of, ‘Burn In Flames’ which is a bit more like Type O Negative but with heavy organs instead of deep metal riffs. It’s the soundtrack to any decent wake.
My favourite here is next song, ‘Through These Veins’ with a great organ loop, and chugging guitars, once again The Horrorgans prove that they have no middle ground, it’s either a slow sombre ballad, or like this one fast tempo, full throttle rock with a dark edge. At one point Nick sings, “So many choices // Let’s watch this fucker burn!” This leads nicely to, ‘Never Feel Again’ whereby the keyboards border on spooky fairground, and the lyrics almost go Screamo in the odd places. Great stuff!
In the rare occasion that we get a mid-tempo song the music has a sideshow, haunted fairground (again)kind of quality, and whilst in, ‘Jezebel’, the song appears upbeat, the lyrics are about a devil woman (no, nothing like the Cliff song…). The guitars then have a more Metal feel in, ‘Born To Die’, and there is even a hint of Motorhead here. There is a nice drum beat in, ‘So C’mon’ which is a sing-along tune that is quick and Punchy. Then the last song, ‘Downtuned Composure’ is very much like, and could well have been written by, Alkaline Trio. With the raw Punky touch of the aforementioned band, it brings down the lid to the coffin on this album nicely.
All in all this is a great album, and with the band playing gigs all over the place, and also having been recently added to the Halos N’ Horns Festival at Halloween (headliners being Korn), the band are certainly on the up and up. This can be a difficult genre to succeed in, purely because it’s so far from mainstream, but you know what? Fuck mainstream, this is great stuff. I look forward to the follow up album, by howling at the moon with Shakira…