Labels: Spinefarm
Review by: Nick Sharp
Taking a glance at the band-member profiles on RB’s website will do a sound job of preparing the uninitiated for the contents of this [at seventy-three minutes, really very] long-player, a re-issue of album #2 from defunct Finnish pruners of the most withered limb on the classic doom-metal tree: vocalist/guitarist Albert Witchfinder heartily endorses Conan the Barbarian, Lovecraft, Crowley and Dennis Wheatley. On a personal-tastes-dovetailing-with-genre-expectations basis, this is comparable to stating that Jerry Garcia was probably familiar with both patchouli and cannabis.
Opening track, ‘Doom Over The World’ gallops purposefully before dropping a truly remarkable chorus that features the title repeatedly gang-hollered, shot through with Witchfinder’s unbridled falsetto in a manner that evokes a curious vision of Scott Reagers indulging his pub-rock tendencies. A kind of Vitus Quo, if you will.
This track, as with the subsequent two “” the charmingly derivative ‘The Devil Rides Out’ and the gallop-centric ‘Cromwell’ “” represents a distinct change of pace from that showcased on ‘In The Rectory Of The Bizarre Reverend’. The rigorous drums/bass/guitar/nowt else arrangements endure (one suspects that these gents would always skip ‘Fluff’ during their bonged, witching-hour Sabbath-fests), but the low-end churn is given legs and something of a cute pop sensibility.
From here to close, the pace slows and the demons, virgins, altars and invokations fly liberally: stand-outs being the fantastically odd ‘Slave Of Satan’ which marries a slow, dynamic crawl with a lyric (including the fantastic line “lie there at the altar/waiting for an ugly jerk to rape you”) that suggests Michael Gira taking the lead in a Hammer flick, and the patently absurd ‘Fucking Wizard’, which is every inch as emphatic as the title would suggest.
Those who appreciate the self-aware traditional angle of a band like Warning could do worse than to sully their “art’-inflected doom palms with ‘Crush The Insects’, as long as they are comfortable with exchanging that band’s canny emotional wranglings for something a touch more playful. After an initial “ugh’ response, which can be attributed to my being a po-faced chump, I now spin this record frequently, and muse goodnaturedly over the disappointing lack of bands that rhyme “demon” with “semen”.