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By RYAN MAVITY
Talk about false advertising. I’d heard of Lizzy Borden before, but nothing prepared me for the CD booklet. Lizzy, the band, looks for all the world like Mayhem’s illegitimate cousins, decked out in corpse paint and skeleton costumes. They look like they may pull a Euronymous and make a necklace out of someone’s skull fragments.
So imagine the shock an untrained listener gets when they find out that Lizzy sounds like, well, a hair band from the ‘80s. Of course, Lizzy always has been a hair band that started in the ‘80s and has stuck around, but nonetheless, the imagery of the album leads you to believe otherwise. Thematically, Lizzy, the singer, has taken on the persona of Death and most of the songs are about, well, Death. Only it’s done in a sleaze metal rock style, think Faster Pussycat music and singing style meets Cannibal Corpse-lite lyrics. Lizzy certainly makes death sound like a hell of a party, like on “Something’s Crawling,” “Abnormal” and “The Death of Love.” And then there are the classic Halford-like screams on the ballad “The Darker Side.” We may have an appointment with death, but we’re going to party like its 1986 and we’re in the “Heavy Metal Parking Lot.”
I suppose an album like this is impenetrable to a sarcastic review. After all, Lizzy has carved out a long career for itself and has a loyal following, I think. No doubt, these guys are professionals, Lizzy is an accomplished frontman and the band behind him is tight the entire time. I guess the point of my review here is that when you have a photo shoot where you depict yourself as Death, are named after a notorious (alleged) murderess, have scantily clad girls and dress like the Cobra Kai on Halloween, maybe my expectations were impossible to fulfill.
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