The route down to Deathtrip 69 has not been an easy one for Frank ‘Killjoy’ Pucci. The album was originally touted for a summer 2008 release, one to be followed by a major tour but it seemed that something, somewhere things were cursed. Whatever happened exactly is no doubt an interesting tale but things culminated with an entire new line-up being assembled around the vokillist in 2010 and the album now finally just seeing the dark of night. There had been a lot of press statements in the lead up to things and indeed we salivated on both track titles and the prospect of a ‘Gospel Of Gore’ DVD with possible contributions by everyone from Jim Van Bebber, HG Lewis, Tom Savini and Toetag Pictures. If this ever gets completed getting it past the censors is no doubt going to be a battle and a half as well.
Despite the album title this is not an all out homage to ole Charlie, although we do indeed meet him on the trip. Killjoy is probably more obsessed by horror movies than he is by the music itself and every song is like a tribute to a classic film. It is great fun as a splatter geek putting the pieces together and like a jigsaw puzzle of flesh and bones and surmising on which film each track is in particularly referencing.
As we start at ‘Naturan Demonto’ if you cannot guess the origins you probably don’t have any right to be listening to this. Thunder crashes and guitars set teeth on edge as we are thrust into the pages of ‘The Book Of The Dead.’ Kandarian demons are summoned and we get the results in the form of Killjoy’s wretched throat shredding gurgles. There is a chugging, chundering and grinding musical bombast with guitars hitting screeching cadences and with horrendous yells of ‘Join Us’ the dead are most definitely fucking evil! ‘Beast With The Feral Claws’ is an chugging lycanthropic mid-paced assault which gets claws in and has you howling. An ode to the hairy beast that is infected by full moon madness, this has a nice rabid and distempered guitar solo from Boris Randall flowing through it and a puked up, punked out edge. You have to Steel(e) yourself for ‘Tomb With A View’ and be prepared for the clang of a bell heralding pitchfork bearing citizens to purge the threat of witchcraft. Yep this is all about Bava’s excellent ‘Mask Of Satan’ / ‘Black Sunday’ and it’s one of my favourites of the album. Ghoulish gang shouts mould around the spewed out chorus and the epic monochrome atmosphere is given a new lease of life as metal as the spikes piercing gorgeous Barbara’s flesh. ‘Suffering Comes In Sixes’ goes more vile and violent, bordering on the older style death metal of earlier albums. Thematically, a more original treatment perhaps? I get the Toetag vibe from it as it offers up something really depraved and nasty.
We now enter a very strange segment with ‘A Funeral for Solange’ having a psychedelic tinge to it that at first had me thinking towards mysterious J-Horror and the work of the group on ‘Goblins Be Thine’. I guess however it is alluding to Dallamano’s excellent series of Gialli including ‘What Have You Done To Solange.’ I read that Killjoy likened it to Death In June and can only say nail hit on head. ‘Kyra’ is punk as! Fast and furious, it romps away on a mad dash and then slows with some eerie echoing samples which has the image of a girl with a trowel stabbing her mum, she is not alive but when she is her name is Kyra Schon! What image horror wise do you get of bleeding eyes and regurgitated flesh, well City Of The Living Dead of corpse! Its Fulci time and ‘Bleeding Eyes of the Eternally Damned’ goes as far as to rasp out Enoch on chorus and then romp into some highly effective Fabio Frizzi worship, killer! I admit to not having seen 2007 film Trick r’ Treat by Michael Dougherty, apparently it’s a segment movie and has Anna Paquin in so I am sold. The song from it sounds like a razor blade in candy and drags your childhood innocence through the front door and down to the basement where hell itself ends.
Onto Charlie time, we have ‘Deathtrip and Death Valley 69’ with some sounds of the Summer Of Love embedded into their psyche for good measure. It’s like overdosing on Van Bebber’s seminal ‘Charlie’s Family’ and ‘Helter Skelter’ in one segment. The fury of dealing with snitches is invoked in the first part and the second sees the family all peace love and acid, kicking back after slaughter time and is great fun actually sounding like an authentic recording rather than a re-imagining of the event.
This is a neat and very enjoyable album with many facets to it both in sound and narrative. It totally brought out the geek in me and follows on nicely from the last couple of albums ‘Harvest Ritual Volume I’ and ‘Divine Art Of Torture.’ Also, once undertaking (ahem) the review I found I could not overlook any particular song on it. I’m not going to cross fingers to hope some dates follow including the UK, in the spirit of things I’m going to chop em off Cropsy style; here’s hoping for blood on the road!
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