It's nice day for a fright wedding...
The Others started off as a German Misfits cover band, and one look at their make up along with a quick listen to their music and you will notice the obvious similarities. It is certainly no wonder that these scary guys decided to go solo and bring out their own material – it is certainly entertaining!
Following on from their debut album 'They're Alive!', 'We Are Who We Eat' is it's professional cousin. The artwork, design and band make up sends a shiver up your spine, and this is before you put on the record and here the eerie atmospherics of first song, 'Passion For The Kill', that starts off with a morbid voice over before the drums fire in and the song rocks out with all of it's German gusto. You can almost picture Rammstein's lead singer stood there fist-clenched as he shouts out the vocals and drips with blood. If I didn't know better then I would have described them as a cross between The Misfits, Billy Idol and Rammstein...
However like in 'In The Dead Of Night' lead singer Rod Usher's vocals don't seem to be powerful enough to deliver deep vocals. There is a slight rock'n'roll feel in 'The Last Man On Earth', and 'Hallows Eve' - the later really kicking in and making you grab the nearest corpse to dance with. Some songs are a little like gothic-80's music from The Cult or Sisters Of Mercy like in 'This Is Not An Exit' but I guess for this they can be forgiven.
We have the sing-a-long anthem of 'We Are the Other Ones', and the grave-robbing shenanigans of 'Monster Bride'. Suddenly a saxophone appears for last song 'Horror Night' which is a real encore of a song packed with 'Whoa's' in a ghoulish way as opposed to a punk rock way. It's good but it's not great.
Horror-Punk is a strange genre as for all intense and purposes it is more often or not a tail of rock'n'roll, with an eye of Rockabilly, a pinch of metal, and a smidgen of goth all mixed up with lashings of horror and bulked up with attitude. The music should probably be more offensive than it is, but I guess that is the charm of it, right?
Currently touring Germany it's a gamble whether they will be successful outside of their homeland, and whether the music buying public of Britain or America will truly get it. For now we'll slap on some fake blood and turn up our favourite 138% Horrorpunk band!