Murder City Devils
In Name and Blood
Subpop

CD Review by David Mills

Warning! In Name and Blood, the third CD from Seattle's Murder City Devils, is not for the squeamish or faint of heart. Do you remember the AC/DC album "If you want blood, you got it"? Well, the Murder City Devils have definitely outdone AC/DC in the gory album cover department. Nobody is being impaled on their instrument here…it’s much worse. The CD sleeve is covered with crime scene photos of each and every band member (plus one roadie) murdered. The modus operandi include: hanging, stabbing, beating, gunshot wound, blunt trauma and abdominal goring with a broken bottle. Cute. So what does this have to do with the music? Let’s find out…

Right out of the jewel case, these tunes will hit you like a sledgehammer; they’re gonna "kill" you. The opening track "Press Gang" begins with a creepy organ part that makes you feel as if you’re in a mortuary; either that or in "The Munsters" living room. Leslie Hardy keeps this cool creepy organ thing going through most of the album. It sounds like an old Vox or Farfisa ala "Paul Revere and the Raiders." Nate Manny and Dann Gallucci hold you hostage with a full-on dual guitar assault. It sounds like a wall of Marshalls turned on "11" with the desired end result being the perforation of your eardrums. To keep this musical murder spree moving along at a nice clip, Coady Willis subjects his drums to a merciless beating. He accomplishes this by delivering quick, brutal blunt trauma to the heads. Derek Fudesco manages to disembowel you with the penetrating thump of his bass lines.

Putting the murderous message into words, lead-singer Spencer Moody howls like a werewolf and doesn’t so much sing as he spits his gut-wrenching lyrics at a helpless audience. However, Spencer does show us his sensitive side on "I’ll Come Running." You can’t help but get all weepy while listening to this heart-felt appeal to patch things up in a "relationship lost." Overall the album has a very dark and tragic nature: "Somebody Else’s Baby" (read lost love); and "No Grave But The Sea" (Hopelessness).

On "Lemuria Rising" Spencer whines, "You should have seen me crying on my homework when I was 12 years old. I would have slit my wrists, if it hadn’t been for rock n roll." I think he means it.

The Murder City Devils are from Seattle and the band members have a long history in the NW Punk Scene. Spencer Moody and Dan Gallucci were in hardcore band, Area 51, before MCD was formed. Gallucci played guitar on some early Modest Mouse singles. MCD keyboardist, Leslie Hardy, played bass in Hole and Juned before joining the Devils.

MCD live shows-- expansive bacchanalian events which amalgamate an Iggy Pop-like appetite for destruction with an Alice Cooper-esque sense of showmanship-- have for years electrified Seattle audiences. In addition, the band has toured hard and toured frequently, in the process growing a loyal fan base which stretches from New York City to L.A. They are all about "The Rock," they live it, they play it, and they’re for real.

All post-mortems aside, this CD isn’t so much punk as it is a very raw and powerful rock and roll album. What The Murder City Devils have managed to do with "In Name and Blood" is take the energy of their live shows and capture it on CD for your listening pleasure. If you enjoy old Alice Cooper (Welcome to my Nightmare era), Offspring, or Moby, then "this murder’s for you."

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