ALBUM REVIEW: Horrifier – Wednesday 13

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, right? Unless you’re WEDNESDAY 13, who by now, should really consider retirement. With MURDERDOLLS members muddying their legacy in the wake of Joey Jordison’s passing and upcoming album anniversaries, you’d think Horrifier would be Joseph Michael Poole’s statement of intent. Instead, his ninth album is the ALICE COOPER and ROB ZOMBIE split B-sides and rarities compilation you never asked for. 

Sure, shock rock had its golden age of grotesque. But with bands like ICE NINE KILLS chopping and changing the limbs of horror punk in recent years, jump scare riffs and cliché one-liners don’t cut the mustard. And Horrifier is full of them. Exhume And Devour’s industrial stomp that shackles everything that isn’t Poole’s vocals underneath an overproduced pile of undertuned instruments is B-movie ROB ZOMBIE; meanwhile, Good Day To Be A Bad Guy is vintage ALICE COOPER, crossing harmonic hooks that hit so hard they could bludgeon a brain with BEACH BOYS-esque rock and roll. Horrifier sounds swell on paper, yet the sum of its parts is swollen, so much so that it’s horrifyingly average. 

Whilst the Halloween-inspired Return To Haddonfield and heartwarming tribute to both former bandmate Joey Jordison and Poole’s mother The Other Side break Horrifier’s formulaic shock-rock that’s two decades too late, the majority of the album’s 11 tracks tread water rather than swim with the sharks. It’s not that they’re bad songs, it’s just that every chorus, every riff, and every pulsing synth has been heard six-hundred and sixty-six times before. Insides Out could easily have been heard on ROB ZOMBIE’s Hellbilly Deluxe, and You’re So Hideous is hopelessly devoted to Poison-era ALICE COOPER.

But the real stinker in this pile of dung isn’t a single song, but the overripe lyrics that linger in your memory longer than they should. Sure, shock rock should be tongue-in-cheek, taken with a pinch of salt, but when you’ve got odes to lost loved ones and cool retellings of classic horror films, why soil them with predictability (Insides Out) and misogyny (You’re So Hideous). Whilst the former delivers cliché clangers from decades ago like “bow down to me, my sweet amputee,” the latter crosses the blurred line unnecessarily, hyper-focusing on the hideousness of womanhood in the modern world. To all who might say this writer’s a snowflake, there are ways to sing this song without slinging out over-simplified slammers such as “She’s the worst thing that I’ve seen / And I’ve seen a lot of hideous things.”

If you’re searching for shock rock from a time long gone, WEDNESDAY 13 more than delivers on Horrifier. However, if you’re hoping for something that updates his sound, you’ll be left covering your ears and cowering behind the couch for all the wrong reasons. Sorry folks, but it’s time the director cuts the scene. 

Rating: 5/10

Horrifier is set for release on October 7th via Napalm Records.

Like WEDNESDAY 13 on Facebook.