Electric Hellfire Club

Oh the power chord mayhem of head banger goth-metal. EHC are at it again with their fifth studio album. They spent some time in Sweden during the making of this record and that is frighteningly apparent. Wailing guitar solos scream over rolling metal drum fills. Dense, minor-key power chords drive out a chugging rhythm in each of their 13 tunes. What starts off as sounding like they may have taken the black metal thing a bit too far turns into a decent electro-metal album. "Whores of Babylon” and "Hypochristian” have all the electronic fixings such as samples and vocal effects to pigeonhole this somewhere near Ministry’s "Psalm 69.” They don’t completely leave behind their electronic/industrial past — thank Bejesus — as the keyboards are consistently right up there with the guitars in the mix. They certainly haven’t lost their sense of humour, what with all the devil-talk in songs like "Goat Mass” ("We are gathered here tonight to pay homage...to the Black Goat of the Northern Woods”) and if nothing else, they can always be relied upon for just that.