Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
The class just keeps flowing and surging through the releases under the extensive and noble effort that surrounds Finnish rockers Lordi and their seven series boxset Lordiversity; and three albums in the outstanding Humanimals takes its bow at the front of the pack and blows any thought of stagnation in the new year completely and utterly away.
Such is the strength of the songs that have burst forth that it can be seen as prophetic, almost visionary that it has taken such a band to do what others have failed to do in the past, continually deliver high drama, interest, and persuasion where others have faltered in their hunt for consistency over several albums in a short space of time.
There are bands who have produced two within a year and they have been enormously and satisfyingly welcome, a testament to the sheer upbeat nature of the group, and the intoxicating spirit within the individual but more than two within a twelve-month time frame and you are looking at musical burnout, the consistency and adrenaline cannot hope to be replicated, until now.
The sense of industry, of refusing to be the barer of indecision and laying back on laurels is enough to praise Lordi, and that some just don’t get the style, the theatre of the music, and the brass guts to be as outrageous and in tune with the horror genre, is worthy of devotion to the cause, of sensualising the glory that is exemplified by the shock one-time winners of The Eurovision Song Contest.
If you can rock the so-called establishment to its foundations, then three, let alone seven albums, in a matter of months causes a seismic shift on what is achievable from the soul of any person alive today; and Humanimals is seismic, it is pounding, a celebration of what Rock is deep down at its core, theatre and excess, a production extoling life, of high drama and a dollop of slapstick, and Lordi have got it down to a tee.
Across tracks such as Victims Of The Romance, Heart Of A Lion, Be My Maniac, Girl In A Suitcase, Like A Bee to the Honey, and the album’s title track Humanimals, the occasion and celebration are not just planned and met with valour, they are obliterated, decimated, taken prisoner and paraded in front of their captors and the listener with daggers drawn and a smile of impish glee on their faces.
Three albums into the bands gargantuan box set and there is no sign of diminishing return, all the effort, all the joy, the responsibility and the sincerity to the listener remains, and in Humanimals what is set in stone is the weight of satisfaction felt by those willing to be uplifted.
Lordi release Humanimals digitally on January 7th.
Ian D. Hall