Review Summary: Bereft of life, 'e rests in peace. Slant 6 fail to live up to the premise of a horror-flick-themed surf-influenced punk rock record
I'm glad a thing like Inzombia exists. A trio of women playing straight surf-influenced punk rock in the tradition of
The Wipers deciding to make a B-horror movie of a concept album is a great idea. Naming it something that sounds like italian horror masters Dario Argento and Lucio Fulci teamed up to come up with only improves it. But while the idea is great, I really wish it were better executed.
Slant 6 doesn't change the bulk of their sound. The main influences are still present, and if someone is skeptical about the idea of a rockabilly and surf influenced punk to work as a soundtrack to a horror flick, well, you may want to have a word with
The Cramps.
But why doesn't
Inzombia work¿ First, because they don't dive deep enough into the subject. Second, because of a meager general sound that kills any menace the tracks had in them. Third, because of point number two, the slower songs are mostly dull. "Ladybug Superfly" for instance has a nice idea of dropping the guitars entirely and focusing on melodies over bass and drums, but its lifeless vocals aren't able to get it off the ground. Fourth, "Retro Duck".
Also, the title track would've worked much better if it were cut down into sections, like intros or outros spread throughout the record, thus helping create a sense of cohesiveness to
Inzombia. A single track consisting of 7 minutes of diverse little experiments in eerie background music is a little too much to handle for a record that delivered so little before it.
As it is, the record is not completely disposable, though. "Insider Spider" is a cool instrumental that is exactly what I was expecting from the album, "G.F.S." opens everything up quite well with something better than any of
Soda Pop*Rip Off first three tracks, "Partner In Crime" is a much-needed injection of adrenaline when the audience were about to be turned into zombies and "Click-Click" is the equivalent of an eerie midnight walk through a graveyard guided by a tumbling spider, thanks to its lonely and harrowing guitar verses. I just wish the subject of it wasn't so bland. Others like "Babydoll" and "Mascaria" are not bad per se but would've benefited a lot from a better production and mastering or just more development. The later also contains the line "
disguise your eyes, they can't tell lies" that is probably the best one found here given the overall theme they worked on.
I can't help but think they could've easily put "What Kind Of Monster Are You¿" in here. It actually fits the theme much better than most of the tracks. But... again¿ Well,
Bikini Kill have three different versions of "Rebel Girl" in their albums, right¿ Pumping up the track with each version. The problem with Slant 6 doing it is that it would be hard to overcome the concise perfection that is their most well-known song recorded version. And considering the frail sound presented in Inzombia it's hard to really wish a version sounding like this. It would probably be like a cold corpse bereft of life and all of its blood with vampire bitten marks still freshly showing on its neck. I'll pass.
