Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

Indisputable, incontrovertible, and as much as an extravaganza as the band insist that it be seen as, for as the all-encompassing box set Lordiversity continues to be released in digital format over separate weeks, an extravaganza is exactly what it is, and as the Spooky Sextravaganza Spectacular takes its rightful place in the pantheon of Lordi’s catalogue, and by doing so continues the surprising, but unquestionable truth, that the former Eurovision Song Contest winners are the arena filling band we all crave to see, because what happens in the studio is only a precursor to what will materialise on stage.

With the box-set of Lordiversity coming at a time when the arena and venues have been denied the group’s unique form of expression, there has perhaps never been a finer time to really get to grips with what makes the five piece so larger than life, so in tune with the excess that makes rock so appealing, but refusing to lose their heads in the fan glory, and Spooky Sextravaganza Spectacular is perhaps the album that sums up the joy and the theatre to be found in the overall experience.

Across tracks and weaved spoken dialogue that pays homage to the B movie fandom, and arguably the way that Orson Wells beautifully played the card of manipulation during a cast recording of his adaption of H G Wells’ War Of The Worlds, Lordi play into the instincts and wonder of the theatrical marvel, and in tracks such as Demon Supreme, the excellent Re-Animate, Skull And Bones, Terror Extra Terrestical, and If Ain’t Broken (Must Break It), this latest digital release from the box-set is a clear and concise performance, one that contains fun, devastatingly cool riffs, and a stage for the continued phenomenon to expand, to be more than a presence, but a possession of unarguable brilliance.

Spooky Sextravaganza Spectacular is an album you cannot but help turn the volume up to its fullest and inform the neighbours of your desire to give them a show, an aural screening of the definition of the cinematic; spooky, sexy, and absolutely spectacular.

Ian D. Hall