Wednesday 13 – Monsters of the Universe: Come out & Plague

Wednesday 13 is back with a new album – “Monsters of the Universe: Come out & Plague”.  As always you’ve got their distinctive punk infused hard rock sound and themes of Horror, sci-fi and a bit of humour.  It’s a great sound – the closest comparison would be Alice Cooper’s “Brutal planet” album – so it’s heavier than Alice Cooper is normally but not so much heavier that the music wouldnt appeal to Alice Cooper fans.  The biggest difference between Wednesday 13 and Alice Cooper is in the live shows – unlike Alice Cooper, Wednesday 13 doesnt go in for a full-blown horror pantomime stage show and so the focus is more on the music.  Vocally I do find there is a lot in common between Alice Cooper and Wednesday 13, but that’s certainly no bad thing.

Brief comments on a few tracks…

The album kicks off with “The fall of all”, an instrumental.  It’s nice and heavy and has a suitably dark feel to it.

“Keep watching the skies” is up next and is the first track to feature vocals.  A good start to the album

“Bloodline 666” is a short instrumental piece that features a more electronic sound and serves to add a change of pace into the album.  I think that serves a very useful purpose as it reinforces the power of the next song, whereas if you have all the songs at full power then the later ones tend to lose some of the impact whereas a quieter slower track like this means the next track has more impact.

Generally the album is one great track after another, all packed with chunky guitar riffs, great vocals and horror themed lyrics.  The production is excellent – with so much going on musically it would be easy for bits to get drowned out but here you can clearly hear everything thats being played nice and clearly.

Given how successful Alice Cooper is, I’m constantly amazed that Wednesday 13 isnt playing much bigger venues.  A great album.

“Monsters of the Universe: Come out & Plague” is out now

Track listing:

1. The fall of all
2. Keep watching the skies
3. Come out and plague
4. I ain’t got time to bleed
5. Bloodline 666
6. Serpent society
7. Bombs, guns & gods – this is a war
8. Planet eater interstellar 187
9. I love watching you die
10. Into the crop circle
11. Over your dead body
12. The arrival
13. Monsters of the universe