STORY OF JADE: "The Damned Next Door" (Know Your Neighbors)

Rating: 6/10

Label: WormHoleDeath 2012

Review by: Urban "Wally" Wallstrom

Horror metal is a huge? part of the Italian scene as it's buried deep into their roots just as pizza and pasta. Yeah, well, they have several of those mad producers of (slightly) disturbing splatter/horror movies... and there seems to be new followers of the genre each and every year since the days of Death SS really. Probably even further back, but I'm no expert on pre-eighties rock out of Italy or anything else for that matter.

Story Of Jade are desperate to let you know about, "The Damned Next Door", as it's appearantly important to know your neighbors? It's their debut release at WormHoleDeath Records and the image goes hand in hand with the music concept. It's the usual corpse painting, zombies, dead bodies, and various other strange objects and items of horror and terror (Gremlins?).

What else to expect than morbid ideas from songtitles such as "Confessions of a Headless Man" and "Bloodsuckers Motherf**kers". The latter featuring lyric that goes and I quote, "Crawlin' through your veins, they bite when you fall asleep. Breakin' your filthy dreams, lickin' your sweaty flesh, creepin' under your clothes. You are their juicy prey, you're gonna die tonight", end quote. Indeed, they are the juvenile bloodsuckers and I'm not quite sure what to say really?

Okay, lyrics, perhaps not their strongest point. The music however mixes influences such as Exodus, Slayer, Megadeth, WASP, with the more modern core of The Black Dahlia Murder. Baphomatt (their lead vocalist) sings/growls like any twisted person of the genre. The clean vocals are quite similar to the ones by Mustaine (only worse?) and it's not a poor record. It's just that words such as neat, pleasant, decent, just doesn't ring true when it comes to horror metal.

www.storyofjade.net