ZIMMER'S HOLE: When You Were Shouting at the Devil... We Were in League With Satan

Produced by Devin Townsend

Released: March 17, 2008

With so many metal bands coming off as unintentional parodies of themselves or of the music, deliberately contriving to be a parody metal band is a tricky thing to attempt. Cremator was one of the first, and were so good at it that many people didn't even realise they were taking the piss. In recent years bands like Metal Skool and Absolute Steel have made some pretty funny albums (the latter while pretending not to be parodic, which is clever in itself) and Crotchduster's Big Fat Box of Shit (that took off both metal and concept albums) made me laugh so much I almost killed myself several times when I foolishly listened to it while driving. Zimmer's Hole has been at the parody game longer than most, but for some reason they still can't quite pull it off.

Zimmer's Hole was founded by Jed Simon and Byron Stroud in the mid-90s, and the first thing you notice about this new album is that it doesn't sound that different from the other band they've been so well known for over the last decade: Strapping Young Lad. It doesn't really help that Devin Townsend handles production duties, because as fine a producer as he is, just about everything he touches ends up sounding like one of his bands to some degree. The fact that all four of the guys who play on this (Stroud, Simon, drum god Gene Hoglan and vocalist Chris Valagao) have all worked extensively with him over the years seems to have allowed Townsend to make When You Were Shouting at the Devil... sound like the Strapping Young Lad album he never got around to making. That means that primarily each song is built around fast, repetitive thrash riffs with high-pitched, manic vocals and a rigourous and thundering double-kick undercurrent. There's nothing inherently wrong with this, except that it runs out of steam pretty quicly. And there is humour here, but just not enough of it.

The title track does what it sets out to do, and that's poke fun at the whole Satanic thing that's made metal a laughing stock for a long time, but the real fun comes in the shape of "We Rule the Fucking Land". Unashamedly ripping off Metallica's "The Four Horsemen" with the main riff, there's also a "Die by my hand" lyric and Valagao throws out a vague Bruce Dickinson imitation. But it isn't quite convincing enough. Like Anal Cunt, any real laughs come from the song titles and not really the songs themselves; unlike them, Zimmer's Hole profess to be a serious band that makes actual music. A song called "Hair Doesn't Grow on Steel" should be hilarious, but it just isn't. "Fista Corpse" is mindless repetition of a lyric that wasn't that funny in the first place and most of the rest of the tracks hardly hold up as being as humourous as they're made out to be. As songs they're not too bad without being spectacular, but nothing really stands out as a particular highlight. Zimmer's biggest hurdle however is that they just sound too much like Strapping Young Lad, except without the songs that made SYL so incredible.

1. When You Were Shouting at the Devil... We Were in League With Satan
2. We Rule the Fucking Land
3. Flight of the Knight Bat
4. 1312
5. Devil's Mouth
6. The Vowel Song
7. Fista Corpse
8. Anonymous Esophagus
9. Alright
10. Hair Doesn't Grow on Steel
11. What's My Name... Evil!

Rating: 45%