By Martin Popoff
There's one thing that can be said for Blackie Lawless and his choking, oppressive smudge of a dark vehicle called W.A.S.P.: every album through the last decade has been wildly different from the last, Blackie quietly going about his business creating an unsettling catalogue that is as often brainy as it is debauched. Now back with Unholy Terror, the man digs into and under his strict religious upbringing and poses a few questions designed to put you on the same open-minded quest for knowledge Blackie has embraced. And for a musical soundtrack, you've got a thick mix of all of W.A.S.P.'s styles, which may sound like a dreary pronouncement but somehow it isn't.
Blackie puts Unholy Terror into perspective. "It's a record that takes a little while to get into because it's really diverse. In that sense it's like Headless or The Crimson Idol. It's not a first impression record. And it's quite lyrically diverse, certainly as much as Headless but more so, because I think there are more extremes on this one. My point of view starting the record is that I wanted to make a '70s record. That is really the direction I came from. And if you listen to it in that frame of mind it will probably make more sense to you. But we didn't start in the '70s, so attempting to make one that sounds like that is going to be our incarnation of what we think that was. So this is what you end up with."
Makes sense. I mean, there's always something scrappy and retro about a W.A.S.P. album. Blackie is old enough to remember the '70s well. In fact, he was almost (or briefly, depending on who you ask), a member of the New York Dolls at one time. Unholy Terror is not showy. In fact, it is a bit impermeable. There are guitar solos on here that utilize 21 tracks of howling axes. 'Let It Roar' (the W.A.S.P. credo if there ever was one) features over forty tracks of goo slathered on the last. The result is the classic, noisy, screechy W.A.S.P. sound meticulously assembled like a happy accident, chaos devilishly devised.
W.A.S.P. - Rewriting The Book Of Blackie Page 2