Satan's Satyrs
Die Screaming
Something sinister is looming in the mist - a ghastly three-headed apparition, equal parts riffage and rancour and fuelled by a steady diet of garage rock 7-inches played at 33RPM and horror movies watched at 5AM, the primeval force of Satans Satyrs is returned to the earth to lay waste to everything in its path. Rising from the primordial ooze of Herndon, Virginia Satan's Satyrs hit the metal underground like a tidal wave of sulphur with their debut proper, 2012's 'Wild Beyond Belief'. This almighty assault, almost entirely the work of chief Satyr Clayton Burgess, was a harrowing blast of fuzz-drenched aggro - a clash of Venom-esque metalpunk squalor and in-the-red garage-rock dementia. This time around, the band set about expanding their sound, maintaining their trash-obsessed aesthetic whilst sharpening their songcraft to produce an album possessed of both mighty heaviosity and incisive hooks. Bolstered by roaring Hammond and percussive ornamentation that bring still more Hammer Horror atmosphere to the fray, Die Screaming transcends the band's Black Sabbath, Stooges and Black Flag influences to arrive at a relentlessly gory and gung-ho assault on the senses. One minute, this terror-troupe are dishing out the rotten rock n'roll of 'One By One (They Die)' and 'Curse Of The Corpse', which stalk the Earth like the reanimated corpses of Budgie and Blue Oyster Cult records past. The next, on the jaw-dropping title-track, they're throwing Death SS, the Alice Cooper of 'Sick Things' and Scott Reagers-era Saint Vitus into a bubbling cauldron and standing well back. Yet at all times Satan's Satyrs gonzo attack is authentically red in both tooth and claw.