Druid Lord- Hymns for the Wicked Review by Graveyard Gregor

Druid Lord – Hymns for the Wicked

Okay, if Druid Lord doesn't have a lair, I'm going to be very disappointed.

Ideally it should be in a partially ruined castle on a hilltop crowded with dead trees and surrounded by a spiked rusty iron fence. There will need to be a decrepit graveyard nearby. The only access will be a stretch of
lonely road with lots of potholes and trees ready to fall in the way of oncoming vehicles. Being on the way to a
favourite coed party spot would be a bonus.

If you're not getting an idea of what to expect from Druid Lord yet, either I'm not as good a writer as I thought or you're a post-operative lobotomy patient... Hymns for the Wicked should have been the soundtrack to every horror movie Dario Argento ever made instead of the weird crappy synthesizer Italian directors seem to like so much (I'm looking at YOU, Suspiria).

I'm not making these comparisons lightly. Scan through the Hymns track list... “Chamber of Ghastly
Horror”, “Castle of Count Sadist”, “Baron Blood”.... listening to this album gave me flashbacks to movies like
Blood Feast, Demons, and those old Hammer Horror flicks with Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing in them.
Something about the slow crushing grind of these songs (not to mention the lyrics) put me in mind of the
creeping suspense these kinds of movies evoke...blood running down the walls...horrific shadow silhouettes...
knives in the dark...something ghastly under the floorboards...you get the picture.

Hymns is... man, I don't want to say “old school” because that's sort of the equivalent of saying someone
is “nice” or “has a good sense of humor”. But getting away from the old school label here is like trying to escape the guy in the human-skin mask when your leg is broken and you've already taken a good solid couple of hits to the head with a hammer. This is old school death in a casket with the lid nailed on by doom. Familiar ground in both cases (death/doom), but if it's anything, it's an old Indian burial ground, and we all know what happens when you build on that kind of foundation. Druid Lord has released the angry spirits, and they are coming to live inside your body and make you do awful, awful things. And you're going to enjoy it.