Review Summary: You can only kill them with a stake to the heart.....
Horror movies have always been a personal favorite of mine. Serial killers such as Michael Myers, Jason Voorhees, Freddie Kruger and the like. Imagine those vicious savages joining a death metal band and you have Hooded Menace.
While being more rooted in death metal, these guys also can doom their asses off. The riffs are slow and crushing, but at the same time they're also very melodic. There's even a little bit of a progressive tone to the riffs as well. Almost as if they could be featured on an Autopsy album or a Katatonia album all at the same time, which is what makes these guys so special. The drumming never really stands out and to be honest, it really doesn't have to. This album owes its success to all those damn riffs and that's just a fact. Not as if that's ever a complaint on a death metal album though. The vocals are also extremely well done and add another dimension of awesomeness to
Effigies of Evil. While the vocalist really only uses one style, that's all he really needs. The throaty grunts spewing from his mouth fits the theme of the album perfectly.
As you can probably expect, if you're a death metal fan I highly recommend checking out this album and Hooded Menace in general as they are one of the finest death metal bands around these days. Also, fans of the classic horror movies, or horror movies in general, will find this extremely enjoyable as well. Samples from some of these horror movies are featured here and just bring the theme even more to the forefront. So basically if you like riffs and you like serial killers and vampires,
Effigies of Evil is an album you're going to want to hear sooner than later.
