Lordi are still going? Really? Many would have thought their fifteen minutes came and went with their Eurovision win for Finland in 2006, and while they’ve undoubtedly faded into obscurity since, they’ve still been awarded a career longer than their generic heavy metal from schlocky monster costumes should rightfully allow. Granted, most of that is from the attention offered to them on the continent where this sort of thing flies much more readily (they did win Eurovision after all), but that doesn’t make it any more acceptable, or Lordi any better of a band.
So with that in mind, here’s Sexorcism, an album that achieves so little in its hour runtime that it’s a wonder it was even slated for release in the first place. If what passes for good music for you is basic, vanilla Euro-metal replete with horrendous, cringeworthy puns, then you may need to rethink your entire music taste, but Lordi have at least got you covered. Of course, that’s far from a good thing, but what’s even worse is just how boring it all is. This isn’t like a Nekrogoblikon or an Escape The Fate where it’s worth getting righteously furious about how bad it is; instead with Lordi, it’s more a feeling of disappointed resignation and confusion as to why this exists in the first place.
That alone greatly diminishes anything worthwhile saying about this album, particularly instrumentally. As a best case scenario, Ms. Hella’s keyboard lines can offer some nice swell to a track like The Beast Is Yet To Cum, but that title alone should be enough evidence in itself for everything else being as lowest common denominator as possible. And it’s really everything you’d expect – stomping Scandi-metal with so little to it that it might as well be an unaltered template for the entire genre (and no, stretching it from five to seven minutes for almost every song doesn’t constitute something being there), while Mr. Lordi bellows his way through with the diction and coherency of a tortured deer.
It’s not as if he’s saying much worth paying attention to, mind, and the vast majority of titles being clumsy mashups pulling from the semantic fields of sex and monsters really say it all. And Lordi clearly want to be edgy and controversial with this – just look at the title track or Naked In My Cellar for the most obvious examples – and it’s at the very least different from other bands’ approaches. That may also be because other bands know better though, and that sticking dodgy Halloween masks over graverobbed classic rock iconography is just as cheesy and plastic as it seems. It’s enough to make you wonder how they’ve managed nine albums of this, but when what’s here so emphatically feels like the very bottom of the barrel, the pieces start clicking together in earnest.
Though that’s probably more thought and effort than this album really deserves, and doubly so for how much went into it. Lordi at best deserve credit for hanging on to their shtick for as long as they have, but when it’s as tired and flabby as it is here, it’s probably time to call it a day. There’s still residual attention from the Eurovision win, and there can’t be that many who’ll be bothered if we never get another Lordi album, surely. Given what Sexorcism is, that might be the best way forward.
3/10
For fans of: Turisas, Sabaton, DragonForce
Words by Luke Nuttall
‘Sexorcism’ by Lordi is released on 25th May on AFM Records.
