Review Summary: The sound of the Misfits and Alkaline Trio if they had a child that was named Lucifer.
Ah, Calabrese. As the apparent successor to the Misfits and self proclaimed greatest horror punk band, they would catch me by surprise in several ways. First off they really aren't that original in many ways. They takes the "whoa's" of the Misfits a little too far and add the powerchords and imagery of B-horror movies to all of their songs. So what makes them so good. The reason why I come back to this album over and over is that they are very good at what they excel at. Catchy melodies, palm muted chords, and the whoa's never get stagnant even though they are repeated throughout the entire album. Which leads me to Thirteen Halloween's, the debut album from this Arizona band.
The album starts off with Zombie I which was a good choice to start off the album for several reasons. A. It combines everything good about Calabrese, which is the infectious melodies coupled with the dark instrumentation albeit simple instrumentation. It also has good horror movie lyrics which would remind me of listening to Walk Among Us. Resurrection follows with an excellent spoken passage from a horror movie along with a excellent chorus. I won't explain it but another interesting aspect of the band is mixing in horror movie sound clips to add to the song's lyrics. The whole first half of the cd is superb, culminating in Midnight Spookshow which in my opinion would have been their first single if they were a bigger band.
The only thing that brings down the rest of the album is the songs at the end. Shrunken heads could have been a lot better and the beginning reminds me of Come Alive off their second album. The only problem for me is that Come Alive is a whole hell of a lot better, ironically, since Shrunken heads was created first. The only songs up to par from the first half in my opinion was Eyes Down with its great verse. Thats not to say the latter half of the album is bad but only inferior in quality.
So is this album as good as the Travelling Vampire Show, their second full length? No. Is it a worthy cd for people interested in horror punk or just punk in general? Yes. Calabrese and Blitzkid in my opinion are forging the next path of horror punk into the future. Yes, the Misfits would hopefully be proud after all.
