REVIEW: GHOUL 'TRANSMISSION ZERO' (TANKCRIMES)

If you ever needed one glorious reason why Ghoul are a notch higher than the vast majority of bands dully lacing their sub-par Jungle Rot stodge metal with horror samples, you get it seconds into 'Transmission Zero' - a static burst of horror movie synth, instantly bringing to mind Goblin's work on the 'Dawn Of The Dead' soundtrack or Dennis Michael Tenney's 'Night Of The Demons' intro, and some stark blood red titles in your mind's eye. That it's followed up by some lacklustre DVD menu screen riffing saps some of the momentum from its shambling zombie movie lurch, but it's an effective statement nonetheless. It says, 'Hey dickhead, we're the real thing'.

Well, about as 'real' as you can be when you wear sacks on your head, in that they're committed to their theme, which elevates it above a mere gimmick and into foam-phallus territory, where looking stupid is a full-blown lifestyle choice and you feel shitty for making fun of it.

Their fourth album, and their first since 2006's ambitiously daft 'Splatterthrash' made them a definite cult band, a sort of Misfits-like awesome party squad for death metal fans unafraid to express an enthusiasm for more than one type of music (so roughly five of them), 'Transmission Zero' doesn't really drive their music off road and into any terrifying new directions. 'Splatterthrash' did the hard work of parking them thoroughly in thrash territory following their more conventional death metal origins, but if you were expecting progression, maybe thrash metal isn't really for you because this is superbly anachronistic stuff - all fist-pumpingly punkish, up-tempo grinding crossover thrash, with Carcass-bothering high vocals and Massacre-like slab-battering lows, as befitting a line-up culled from lead-Carcass botherers Impaled. Possibly their entrenched status in the extreme metal ghetto, as well as sporadic levels of activity thanks to having other bands and (un)lives are what has denied them the sort of crossover appeal-slash-hype-laden oversaturation that bands of a similar sound and vintage have experienced.

Maybe this'll change with Tankcrimes being an obvious boutique brand of quality for fans of luminous shorts, because frankly, and thankfully, it's the only thing that will, and they deserve a change to upgrade their circlepit of grinning loons to a bigger circlepit of grinning loons.