ALBUM REVIEW: Call The Devil – Mushroomhead
On the cover of Call The Devil, the ninth record from MUSHROOMHEAD, the big man downstairs has his eyes locked on the screen of a mobile phone. It’s one of the less confrontational depictions of Satan, whose figure typically looms over ceremonial offerings and those doomed to serve him, since here his attention is focused instead on the digital world we have in our pockets. The masked troupe based out of Ohio have a prescient record on their hands, dropping at the end of a week in which riots spurred on by social media extremists caused fear and destruction across the United Kingdom. Call The Devil, then, is a soundtrack to our troubled times.
Although more adventurous than perhaps they are given credit for, MUSHROOMHEAD are considered nu-metal stalwarts, and the genre’s knuckle-headed riffs that hit like an Olympic boxer’s blows are the ideal accompaniment to lyrics dealing with societal division caused by the internet.
They deftly avoid boomer accusations by playing with the nastiness beamed into our feeds, sometimes taking on the role of the seductive influencers who whip up hate, while other times capturing the sensory overload brought on by the daily deluge of aggressive attitudes. If recently it has all started to feel like a bit much, Call The Devil saw it coming, and many of the songs here are powder kegs of pent up frustration at the state of the world.
Songs like Hideous, appropriately titled with its subtle synths that buzz like flies, which deals with “machines of hate” and how “xenophobic masochists split hairs among the waste”. Or Emptiness, on which lines like “desperate to disconnect, overjoyed to escape, pacified by its caress, but sickened by the taste” sum up the addictive and damaging qualities of living life through a screen.
When nu-metal burst on to the scene, it expressed the rage and anxieties of disconnected youth, desperate to be heard over the din of the mainstream. MUSHROOMHEAD have done the unthinkable and found its purpose in 2024, using tropes from a couple of decades ago to communicate a similar feeling of disaffection that permeates our lives today. Prepackaged has that classic sound from the turn of the millennium and could feature on any Spotify list with Fred Durst on its cover. Listeners who grew up on the scene will be overjoyed at how instantly transportive it is. But it is no nostalgic victory lap, instead fearful that everything is a nail while we carry hammers around. Call The Devil exists in a world where ‘break stuff’ doesn’t actually sound like a good thing.
No two MUSHROOMHEAD records contain the same line-up, and only Steve ‘Skinny’ Felton remains from the band’s inception. As its leader, he has managed to piece together a record that keeps the band relevant and feel part of the world around them, instead of a legacy act whose most ambitious days are behind them. There are alternative metal hooks, ferocious groove metal licks, twisted carnivalesque motifs, and soulful American choruses thanks to the rock ’n’ roll grit of Jackie LaPonza’s pipes.
Put simply, it sounds like they still care. Call The Devil reflects the tense times we live in, made by people who were there when this kind of music was popular the first time round. Sometimes there really is no replacement for the OGs.
Rating: 8/10
Call The Devil is out now via Napalm Records.
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