Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

The music never wants to stop, and as part of the Lordiversity box set, why anyone would want the ideas to stem and falter, the feeling of theatre and back door music hall thespianism to halt at the point where the audience is now chomping at the bit in anticipation, and where the lady has not even arrived in a pre-booked horse and carriage at the stage door, let alone applied her make up and cleared her throat for the final curtain.

Lordi have set a large and intimidating bench mark in the last couple of months, a physical release to which in terms of scale is the boxset equivalent of finding Mount Rushmore has been transplanted to the end of your road and the faces have been altered to reflect the Native Indian tribes rather than the false interlopers of presidents and European ideals, and in which its continuous release as separate downloads has kept the band firmly in the mind of the music lover and fan. It is this continued pressure, this reveal of the curtain from week to week that Abusement Park take the lead as the next and colourful character to be presented to the stalls and the jewellery wearing and jangling boxes, a presentation which thrills once again and keeps the lady stuck in traffic lights and away from the theatre of Lordi.

It is to theatre that the band have plainly involved the separate albums within, and as a boxset it is that rare appearance of overall brilliance without lowering the tone at all. It is in that belief of the whole that makes each album their own distinctive ingredient in the theatre’s playbill, and Abusement Park is no different.

Across tracks such as Ghost Train, Carousel, Pinball Machine, Rollercoaster, Up To No Good, and the album’s blistering title track, Abusement Park, the scene is set as one of an event, soaking up the pulse of the band, of the audience, and merging them in such a way that the amusement is part of the act and that is in itself the point, for in the theatre all is not what it seems, it is the allusion and the illusion which leaves the crowd gasping for more, intent on delving into the psyche of the performer, and finding layer upon layer of insight within the body, under the skin.

Abusement Park is the latest streamed release from Lordi, and as with all the others it is pure and passionate realm in which the set changes have been seamless, and the rollercoaster of performance has been dynamic and focused.

Ian D. Hall