Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
It feels so rare these days to come across a great American metal/Punk Horror band that when you do, the only option you feel you have is to fly to Philadelphia and with great acclaim and ceremony, run the risk of imprisonment, and ring the Liberty Bell for all its worth. Sound the bells the Americans are hitting back with vengeance.
Wednesday 13 takes listeners down the punk horror route once more in their latest creation Monsters of the Universe: Come Out and Plague and it has be noted straight from the off that the Liberty Bell would have to withstand the type of pounding normally associated with a Heavy weight boxer going up against a priceless porcelain plate being carried by armed guards into the nearest museum. Such is the interesting intensity, the showmanship and allure on this album, it’s almost possible to believe that Alice Cooper has somehow had a hand in it somewhere.
However, and no matter how good Alice Copper is, Monsters of the Universe: Come Out and Plague is just pure Wednesday 13 brilliance, a three ringed circus of a terrific theme running throughout and at the speed that would make disgraced Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson ask whether banned substances were involved, all tied together by the musicianship of Wednesday 13, Roman Surman, Jack Tankersley, Troy Doebbler and Jason West in such a way that the enjoyment of the album becomes its own infection, it quickly spreads like a epidemic and that chiming of the Liberty Bell gets that little louder each time the music strikes home in another willing captive.
In many ways the album harks back to the glory days that surrounded Alice Cooper during the Billion Dollar Babies album, or even one of the Teutonic Four, Tankard, in the Chemical Invasion or Zombie Attack era but with a guile that is both pleasing and enough to have the hairs on the back of the hand stir and budge in the disease filled air.
Keep Watching The Skies, Come Out and Plague, Serpent Society, Planet Eater: Interstellar 187 and I Love Watching You Die really drive home the album’s sincerity and unexpected abundant pleasure and it gives hope that somewhere, away from the true established names that have kept the American side of the genre afloat for years, that Monsters of the Universe: Come Out and Plague influence a new generation to make music that is not bound by a corporation, or at least true to an ethos of creating a shock or two. Monsters of the Universe?, not quite but they are so close with this album that it actually makes the heart pump faster at the prospect.
Ian D. Hall