I have been waiting for this new Ice Nine Kills album, The Silver Scream 2: Welcome to Horrorwood for what feels like forever. The band has been slowly releasing singles from their new collection as a part of their video series they have been producing as a parallel to the music. Needless to say, with the timing of their first release, I was getting pretty impatient with how long it was taking to get to the full album. Then, this morning, it finally drops.
I will say this for INK, when they set a release date they actually hold to it unlike some people (Cough Kanye Cough) the general public obsseses over.
So before I get to the album, I'll put my pre-release expectations out there first. I knew from news releases, as well as the first single drop, that Spencer Charnas and crew were going to continue their anthology series from their most recent album, The Silver Scream. The band would be making songs to honor/ imitate/emulate their favorite horror films, primarily the classics. I also knew from listening to The Silver Scream as well as the bands earlier work that I shouldn't expect many similarities between each song as they're meant to stand alone with their cinematic counterparts.
Alright, so I had a pretty good baseline of what I'd get going into today. Now for the actual music:
Overall Opinion: The sequel to The Silver Scream starts off with a huge bang in their opening song, progressing quickly to the songs they've release as singles as well as a couple others in the first half of the album. After the song Hip To Be Scared, the first single released off the album, something changes and the music kind of limps to the finish. Take Your Pick is easily my least favorite song on the album, and the next couple songs don't seem to hold the same kind of quality in production as the first batch of songs does. The album makes a strong recovery right before the end with Ex-Mortis and limps to the finish Farewell II Flesh at the end.
Ice Nine Kills as a group is at their absolute best when they're pushing a genre-bending type of style that doesn't come with a clean definition. Other bands try and do things similar to INK but much like Linkin Park was the first to really nail down a successful style of nu-metal, they seem to be the leaders in the clubhouse for success of a genre without designation. They'll bring in elements that can remind you of bands like My Chemical Romance, I Prevail and even Shakespear if the Bard had tattoos from head to toe and only wore black. I could easily see Tom Ellis sitting at a piano belting out The Shower Scene in an operatic manner as part of a Halloween special on Lucifer. If a metal song can make a change like that, it's a sign of a quality piece of work.
So is it worth a listen? Yes. You won't find yourself in love with every song from top to bottom, but it's almost as if INK is daring you to have a love/ hate relationship with them like the villain of a horror film struggling with their inner demons during their character development stage. You'll love them at their best, then tune them out at their worst.
Best song: this had to go to Welcome to Horrorwood. As a true stand alone (there's no movie tied to this song) the source material is simply the story being told within the album, making it truly unique to Ice Nine Kills. There isn't as much funky genre- bending as there are in other songs. No switches to the tune of Hip To Be Square, nothing that provides a video game like feel of Rainy Day or random half-beat hard stops of A Rash Decision, but this is easily the song you're most likely to face stuck in your head at the end of your listen. It's filled with metaphors and double-entendres utilizing both lyric and sound to make their point. The more you listen the more you pick up on which only grows your appreciation for the artistry of song.
Worst song: Take Your Pick (feat. Corpsegrinder). First, it's hard to follow up a song as dynamic in flow, pace and sound as Hip To Be Scared, but Take Your Pick really drops the ball. It's a one-note kind of song that puts INK in a corner they don't belong in. The growling and gravelly screams are an element of their music, but not what defines them. I don't think I could listen to them if it was. Even a song like Funeral Derangements, which is heavy on the sort of grit and grind sound, has a melodic chorus that'll stick in your brain like a drug. This song just sounds like someone's voice being put through a meat grinder for 3 minutes and I couldn't stand it. Sorry Corpsegrinder, go back to Cannibal Corpse, this isn't where you're supposed to be.
Final Rating: 7/10. I love the up and down and side-to-side nature of Ice Nine Kills. They're a band that pushes boundaries and finds a way to hit the mark more often than not. Unfortunately, they had a few clear misses on this album, knocking them down pretty hard. I still love the product as a whole, but there's several parts I could do without.
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