There is sometimes a load of old shite talked about “guilty pleasures”, with dyed in the wool serious musos talking about the “guilty pleasure” of liking music that is anything less than underground and as kvlt as fuck. Well firstly, I don’t feel guilty about the fact that I think the guitar solo from The Commodores’ ‘Easy’ is one of my all-time favourites, fitting the song perfectly; secondly, I don’t feel in the slightest guilty about the fact I bloody well enjoy Evil Scarecrow live. Dig in my wardrobe and you’ll find a well-worn Evil Scarecrow shirt bought at a London pub gig, and look in the online footage from their 2014 Bloodstock set, and amongst the ten thousand plus smiling crowd you may just, if you’re unlucky, catch a glimpse of this forty four year old traditional and doom fan and baiter of the badger faced metal brigade gleefully scuttling like a crab or doing a shitty robot dance. As such, I didn’t hesitate when offered the new album to download and review. Hmm.
Like many albums of the extreme, or maybe in this case pseudo extreme genre, ‘Galactic Hunt’ (try saying that five times whilst drunk and you’ll work out the pun), opens with a touch of the classical and orchestral in the form of ‘Excelsior Mali Formidi’, complete with diabolical monastic chants before ‘Rise’ fires in with a would be fist pumping anthem of pretty much straight metal. Following this is ‘Space Dementia’ and the band start cranking up the comedy factor, Dr Rabid Hell keeping the lyrics understandable by having his vocal snarl restrained to just this side of decipherable whilst telling a tale of cheesy fifties space opera. This same sci-fi theme runs through ‘Galactus’, and is subsequently cranked up to 11 out of 10 in ‘Crabulon’, the verses practically being a script that the late Ed Wood could have written and directed. It’s in this track that I can arguably encapsulate the problem I have with Evil Scarecrow on album. Silly as the song is, it’s not as silly as some of the accidently ridiculous and overly serious songs of some bands who aren’t self-aware enough to realise how laughable they are. For me, it is in the comedy Lovecraftian gloom of ‘Book of Doom’ that the band come closest to capturing their over the top live presence, a silliness reinforced with the accordion driven dystopian fairground reel of ‘Dance of the Cyclops.’ Sadly, despite repeated listens, the tracks as recorded on album don’t come close to the live sound of the band; maybe that’s my problem, maybe not, but that’s what I kept on thinking. Evil Scarecrow are just such a great stage presence, I guess I cannot divorce their music from their whole performance.
That Evil Scarecrow have put together yet another album without industry support is a credit to the band, their tenacity, and the loyalty they imbue in fans. The fact that live they can bring spontaneous joy to a field full of soggy and hung-over festival goers is to be applauded, and I know I’ll happily go to see them on stage again, and gladly buy and wear their merch. What I am, however, unlikely to do, is put this album on a regular play rotation; without the stage antics, live interaction, and the atmosphere the band create, it just doesn’t do that much for me, and for that I apologise to the band.
(6/10 Spenny)
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