If The Lost Boys was set in Southend on Sea rather than fictional Santa Carla, local boys The Horrors could have written the soundtrack. STRANGE HOUSE their debut album is a mixture of gothic punk, garage rock, surf guitar and eerie fairground music. Like a good ghost train, it's scary and camp, fun and frightening.
The sound is heavily indebted to the likes of goth new wavers like Bauhaus, The Birthday Party and The Cramps but similarly there's an influences from the likes of 1960s british producer Joe Meek who had a love for strange disconcerting sounds within pop records. There's also a cartoonish goth creepiness you'd associate with a soundtrack composer and Tim Burton collaborator Danny Elfman.
The album starts with a caustic version of Screaming Lord Sutch's single 'Jack The Ripper' (originally produced by Joe Meek). When singer Faris Badewan sings about stalking the streets of London late at night you'll think he's an escaped lunatic from the Victorian Mental Asylum, Bedlam. He starts slowly with a deep menacing growl before descending into frenzied panic of screams and yowls which he sustains for much of the rest of the album.
We take in songs about childhood neuroses ('Count In Fives'), crazed obsessives ('Gloves'), serial killers ('Thunderclaps') and frankly lots of other scary stuff.
'Sheena is a Parasite' is perhaps the best known track. The title is a riff on The Ramones 'Sheena is a Punk Rocker' and The Cramps reply, 'Sheena's in a Goth Gang'. The video for this, the band's debut single, was banned by MTV but not because actress Samantha Morton pukes her intestines at the camera but because of strobing. Vomiting body parts is so passé these days.
STRANGE HOUSE is a disturbing, and sickenly twisted ride but its so over the top and silly that it's also lot of fun. Especially if you play it really, really loud.
'JACK THE RIPPER'
'SHEENA IS A PARASITE'
'THUNDERCLAPS'
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