ILLWILL: Evilution

Released: 1998

Illwill was a part-parody side-project for a bunch of King Diamond/Mercyful Fate alumni in the shapes of Sharlee D'Angelo, Andy LaRocque and skinsman Snowy Shaw. With hitherto unknown singer Yonas af Dahlstrom making up the numbers, Illwill was turned out to be a very strange entity indeed.

Evilution is a schizophrenic album which one moment draws from the crunching staccato riff factory of Meshuggah and the next sounds like something Devin Townsend would do! In fact there's no telling where this band is likely to go from one track to the other, with Dahlstrom sounding different on just about every second song, moving from a Halford-style soaring to a sandpaper growl that recalls no one more than Udo Dirkschneider. Some of it is quite obviously a jibe at the posturing of the modern metal bands of the time too, like some of the deliberately orchestrated parts and the occasional Goth-y bits. Plenty of people revile this because of these aspects without realising that Illwill was actually taking the piss.

This is, in fact, one very bizarre piece of work, with the occasional deliberately out-of-tune guitar tossed in and the concept of a time-signature often tossed out. Such avant-garde touches may well be too much for some to come to grips with, but Evilution is well worth the listen, although the seven-minute repetitive a'cappella chant tacked onto the end of the last track ("365 Reasons to Commit Suicide") did get a little tiresome after the first three minutes or so!

1. Singh Hai
2. V is for Vulgarians
3. Cult
4. Il Organizatione
5. Six Sec Sex
6. Whether With or Without
7. Eternal Sleep
8. K.A.O.S.
9. Bid Farewell to Welfare
10. Who to Trust?
11. This Barren Life
12. 365 Reasons to Commit Suicide
13. EWS

Rating: 85%

ABSOLUTE STEEL: Womanizer

Released: 2005

As soon as I saw this, I knew I had to listen to it. I thought I knew what I was going to be in for, but Absolute Steel exceeded my expectations with a level of cheese and hilarity that almost caused me to have several serious road accidents. Zimmer's Hole take note: this is how to make a parody album. Absolute Steel is a Norwegian five piece proudly living out an 80s Sunset Strip daydream of endless girls and partying. The end result of this fantasising is an album so ludicrous Steve Rachelle himself must be pulling his hair out that he didn't think of it first.

In a nutshell, Womanizer is a combination of the music of Turbo-era Judas Priest and the lyrics of a second-rate Poison clone. Considering how completely vacuous Poison could be a lot of the time, that's really saying something! Hilarious lyrics abound on this stunningly-contrived 80s metal pastiche, with "Deeper" perhaps taking the cake with this jaw-dropping couplet: "If you're looking for romance, I'm not your guy/Put down that joint girl, I'm a natural high!" And for sheer absurdity, nothing comes close to the acoustic ballad "Juicy Lucy", without doubt one of the most ridiculous songs of all time! "Beer Run" is the album's highlight, with its chorus of "We're out of beer (No!)/Let's do a beer run (Yeah!)/We've got to save the party". This track is so close to the heart of any real headbanger that none who hears it could possibly disagree. Absolute Steel really is playing it for laughs, and as mentioned there's plenty of them to be had. It works, because the music is great and the songs are so dumb you know they can't possibly be taking themselves seriously. Rounding off the album is a six-minute Steve Vai-style guitar shred instrumental that's so obviously over-indulgent you can almost see Yngwie cringing with embarrassment.

Womanizer is the ultimate party metal album. No piss-up should be without it.

1. High Heels and Fishnet Stockings


2. Beer Run


3. Kick


4. Rough Love (Tender Heart)


5. Deeper


6. Juicy Lucy


7. Too Slow Above


8. Deliverence


9. Opus Suite

Rating: 87%

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%