PopHorror Let's Get Scared
The band S.H.O.U.T. sound akin to a bunch of goblins that got together in their basement one night, perhaps after a long evening of drinking and screaming at other fantasy creatures, found some instruments, and recorded the whole thing in one debaucherous take. Indeed, their most recent release, The Rock’n’Roll Monsters, is not a polished album, but really, that doesn’t seem to be the intent here. As a self-described horror-glam metal band, S.H.O.U.T. aims to spin tales of blood and horror, no matter what means it takes to do so. In this endeavor, they succeed.
In doing some research* on S.H.O.U.T., it seems that there are four total members: GLAMSTER (vocals), TerrRor (drums), Ghost #1 (guitar), and Ghost #2 (Bbass). The first thing to note is that, listed next to each band member’s name, there are what appear to be statuses for each member:
GLAMSTER (Undead)
TerrRor (Undead)
Ghost #1 (Dead)
Ghost #2 (Dead)
This listing is certainly mysterious enough, and in my research* on the band, I couldn’t find anything clarifying these statuses. Even checking out their music videos, all of which are glorious in their own right, doesn’t seem to give any answers or shed any light on what it means to be “undead” vs “dead” in this band. Some things must remain a mystery, I suppose.
The second thing to note is that S.H.O.U.T. is shockingly, wildly prolific. The Rock’n’Roll Monsters is their SIXTH album, the others being Monsterious (2013), Dead Of Night (2014), Shock The World (2015), Satan’s Hellraisers Of Underground Terror (2016), and The Curse (2017). Holy shit, that’s an album a year! Rihanna was only that prolific for about three years of her career before she had to take a break, but she’s got nothing on S.H.O.U.T.!
So, enough messing around here – how’s the music? Well… it’s sort of what you’d think, but also, strangely, not at all what you’d think.
One major thing that caught my ear was the seemingly intentional, ballsy decision to not have any bass in the mix for almost every song on the album. In fact, reaching back into S.H.O.U.T.’s previous albums, it seems that Ghost #2 is essentially dead at the wheel – its bass either exactly mimicking its fellow Ghost to the point of perfect audio unity – or the band pulling a Metallica circa 1988 and essentially muting the bass from the mix entirely. The result, interestingly enough, is a pretty in-your-face, no-holds-barred-all, about-that-treble-no-bass sort of sound that slaps the eardrums with no respite from the concept of bottom end. <100Hz? Screw that, S.H.O.U.T. is going all high-end on your ass!
The song topics on the album range from being a kickass monster band (“The Rock’n’Roll Monsters”), to being kickass monsters in general (“Heavy Metal Monster”), to not really knowing what’s going on at the party (“What The Hell”), to being a kickass monster band at a party and probably knowing what’s going on (“MonsterParty Rock’n’Roll Hell”). Overall, GLAMSTER delivers his brand of growled singing with a fairly even consistency, and definitely seems excited about being a monster, being a monster in a band, and being at parties as a monster in a band. And he should be! Out of the band’s six albums, the production on this one sounds the best that they’ve ever had. The snare tone is nice and bright, the kick drum’s solid thwacks come through clear as day, and the vocals are fuzzed to a nice, monster mash-y degree.
But we need to talk about one thing here, the elephant-goblin in the room, as it were: the drumming. In pretty much on every song on the album, TerrRor’s timing ranges from pretty-much-on-beat to wildly and dramatically off-beat. Almost every transition in every song from verse to chorus – or to any section, for that matter – just don’t seem to line up. This could be intentional, of course (cause hey, goblins gotta goblin), but it makes it fairly difficult, nay impossible, to have an actual sense of groove or timing on almost any of the album’s 9 tracks.
There’s two ways to go about fixing this issue: either get that drummer a metronome (you can make ‘em out of bones from a freshly slain corpse, I hear!), or fully embrace the organic-ness of the songs and have the rest of the gang join where TerrRor’s drumming is taking them. It’s actually not as tough of a fix as one might think. All it takes is a little practice, elbow grease, and some monster-ful intuition.
At the end of the day, the horror glam scene is in need of some representation, and S.H.O.U.T. has what it takes to join the ranks of the best in the genre. The Rock’n’Roll Monsters is a step further in the right direction, and hopefully with the band’s next release, they’ll find the groove they need to take them to the top of the heap. Until then, chewing on the bones is fine, too.
