Wednesday 13 - Horrifier
The idea of “shock-rock” is nothing new, especially when it’s been a thing since the early 1960s, but popularized by Alice Cooper in the mid-70s, namely 1975′s masterpiece Welcome To My Nightmare. Certain bands and artists incorporate elements of shock-rock from all walks of rock and metal, including Rob Zombie, Korn, Slipknot, Cannibal Corpse, and a lot more, but a band like Wednesday 13 takes on good old-fashioned 70s shock-rock. I’ve heard of Wednesday 13, who is also the name of the band’s frontman and main member, but I never listened to them before. I just knew they were a shock-rock band, and their sound was really spooky and Halloween-inspired, so hearing a new album from them in the beginning of October should be a great idea, right?
Well, yes and no, but first and foremost, their new album, Horrifier, is a pretty good album. I enjoy it quite a bit, but it’s got some issues, namely that it’s just super generic. If you like Alice Cooper and/or Rob Zombie, you’ll like this album, but that’s all I can tell you. There are some nice moments, a song about the late Joey Jordison and his late mother, as well as songs about the Halloween franchise and the movie Christine, but the generic songs about Halloween itself, or spooky things, don’t do anything for me, especially a song like “You’re So Hideous,” which has some weirdly misogynistic lyrics, but the instrumentation is at least good.
That’s how I’d describe most of this album, too; the instrumentation is good, albeit generic, but the lyrics range from pretty decent to being outright awful. I just don’t have much of a desire to return to the album because of that. At leats the album is really short, only 39 minutes, so it’s not a long record, but if you’re willing to sit through a lot of generic tropes within shock-rock, you’ll be okay with this album. On the surface, the album isn’t half bad, and even when you dig into it, it’s still not bad, and it’s even kind of catchy here and there, but it’s just really bland. It’s like, why listen to this album you can just listen to Rob Zombie or Alice Cooper? I’d rather just listen to Cooper’s Welcome To My Nightmare or Rob Zombie’s Hellbilly Deluxe, because those will give me a better reaction. This isn’t horrible, but it’s also nothing noteworthy, either.
