Evil Scarecrow – Galactic Hunt

If you’ve attended Bloodstock at all in the last few years, the chances are that you’ve seen and enjoyed Evil Scarecrow – they’ve packed out the Sophie Lancaster stage in previous years, and this year opened the main stage on the Saturday drawing a record crowd of around 11,000 – a unbelieveable crowd for anyone other than a headliner, and unheard of for an opening band playing at 11am when most people are hungover from the night before.
If you have never seen them before then you’ve missed out – their live performances are seriously entertaining, and while they are a parody metal band, they aren’t relying purely on humour or gimmicks – the music is bloody good too.  They’ve released 2 albums and an EP, and now their long-awaited third album is ready for release. The album was funded via a Pledgemusic campaign that saw them smash their funding target within a day or so of their Bloodstock performance..

Brief comments on a few of the songs…

The album opens with “Excelsior Mali Formidi” which roughly translates to “Rise of the Scarecrow” apparently.  A menacing drum beat and rich choral vocals mean you can picture it being sung in a church by a group of monks looking like Brother Dimitri Pain.  It’s a nice short introduction to the album, but the first real song is “Rise”.

“Rise” is a song that will be familiar to fans who have seen Evil Scarecrow on tour recently as it’s one of several songs from the album that has been part of their live set.  Nice heavy guitars and some powerful drumming combine with the simple but powerful chorus to create a great song.

“Crabulon” – what can I say other than it’s either insanity or genius (or a bit of both) – a song about a robotic crab.  It’s been a staple part of their live shows for quite a while now and always goes down a storm.  The band have just released a video for the song, so if you haven’t seen it yet, I suggest you watch it now (and if you have seen it then watch it again).  The video features footage from the band’s appearance at this year’s Bloodstock festival where they performed in front of 11,000 fans.  Seeing that many people scuttling left and right and making crab claws with their hands was an amazing sight.

“Dance of the Cyclops” is a great song – and that’s probably the first and only time you’ll hear me say that about a song that features an accordion prominently. It’s another song that has been going down well live, and really does sound great here.  You know it has to be good if the band manage to get a load of metal fans waltzing to it at their live shows.

The final track on the album, “Enter the Knightmare” features an introduction from Hugo Myatt – aka Treguard of Dunshelm, the host of the TV show Knightmare. In fact he also appears at a couple of points in the song and has the final word.It’s not the first TV Kids show to inspire Evil Scarecrow – they’ve played “Thundercats” live for a few years, but I think this is the first time they’ve recorded a song inspired by Kids TV.

I’d have to pick “Crabulon” and “Dance of the cyclops” as my favourites at the moment, but the rest of the album is great – “Book of doom”, “Enter the Knightmare” and “Space dementia” in particular being very strong.  It’s a really strong album all round.

Evil Scarecrow have long been one of the most entertaining live bands around, and with “Galactic Hunt” they have an album that lives up to their live performances.  This is their best album yet – great production, great songs and played to perfection.  The music is of a very high standard but for maximum enjoyment you need to listen to the lyrics.  OK you might get the impression that the band are certifiable lunatics once you listen to the lyrics (and you’d be right), but they’ve created songs with plenty of humour mixed in with great music.  After listening to this album on repeat for most of the last day or so, I’m still loving every minute of it – I’m very glad I’ve already ordered my copy.

“Galactic Hunt” will be released on 13th October 2014

Track listing:

1. Excelsior Mali Formidi
2. Rise
3. Space dementia
4. Galacticus
5. Crabulon
6. Frankingstein’s mirror
7. Book of doom
8. Dance of the cyclops
9. End level boss
10. Flight of the dragons
11. When Moses goes wrong
12. Enter the Knightmare

You can order the album via Pledgemusic along with a range of special incentives – http://www.pledgemusic.com/projects/evilscarecrowgalactichunt
or from Amazon etc.