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“Hey baby, feeling low? Grab a shovel, c’mon let’s go…” – ‘Grave Digger’
Horror punk pop splicings can often fall so foul of even the most
fundamental rules of physics and phantasmagory, ending up like the failed
experiments of the first plastic surgeons that must’ve caused all sorts of
uneven lumps and exploding bruises. As false, feckless and fake as a
severed hand in ‘Evil Dead 3’ and sounding like they’re made of nuts and
bolts that wouldn’t even hold Frankenstein’s toes in let alone his neck or
an IKEA shelf many of this ilk fail even before the first fling past
witching hour. So bless these Finnish ghoul-popper gurls who arrive with
phasers, fingers and flickering tongues set to scalpel caress and a set of
sweet campily-crypt-alarious songs using all things dark as talismanic
fetishes, such as The Damned, god-damned and Go-Go’s gone and far out in
the belfry damned ‘Grave Digger’ and ‘Wolf Man’, all sang with a coy
cutesiness yet chest-pounding drama that makes even the most male amongst
us look down expecting to see Hammer Horror-style heaving cleavage.
Fatally well formed this set of Scandinavian sirens belie their aura of
all-knowing vamps with broken-hearts for centuries dead Counts, Kings and
distant species to entice songs from bacteria in underground bunkers to
likewise enchant a whole new generation of graveyard delinquency and
monstrous romance. As their heroes Radio Birdman did, they synthesise some
sort of songline from their homeland, smearing the songs with a space and
sensuality that others miss in the rush for the shock factor and an
eternal headlong rush into a purgatory for putrid face-paint pastiches.
They’re also possibly the first and only band to sing a salutary psalm to
William Shatner. However fear not as it would surely resurrect Stiv Bators
for a spot of crypt(ic) castigation. And so as the end credits roll on
this little treasure and you allow it to take root and cast its spells and
charms it seems that whatever our comely charioteer-esses of catcacomb
rock do we shall contribute corpuscles willingly. If you see them coming
towards you with fangs bared, then give thanks and yield.
“Come on come on come on let’s raise the dead,
Shake them bones – pass me the head…” __________________________________________________
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