THE OTHER

Right or wrong, we all know there are degrees of acceptability among fans and, especially, critics concerning a band's stylistic choice of music, particularly when it concerns a style created and/or perfected by a legendary band. For example, it's OK to mimic AT THE GATES if your group plays melodic death metal or EXODUS if the approach taken is old-school thrash. But by god, you better not take prime influence from the MISFITS' school of horror punk lest you lose all credibility as a musical entity. Give me a break. What rock 'n roll overlord has set such standards and put in place such limitations? So all of sudden, the rules must be followed, eh? Get over it, loosen up, and have a little fun. It'll make "New Blood", the fourth album from German horror rockers and gothic punks THE OTHER, a lot more enjoyable.

Take a more melodic and less overtly aggressive approach to the MISFTS (Glenn Danzig era, of course),inject a little more rock and Goth flavor and for the most part you've got "New Blood". It's all wrapped in a slicked back and punched Waldemar Sorychta (ENEMY OF THE SUN, GRIP INC.) production that maximizes the ghoul groove. THE OTHER was once a MISFITS cover band, so you know they've got the formula down pat, even honing in on those distinctive vocal inflections and points of song emphasis (lead and harmony) that made the New Jersey fiends so endearing in the first place. "New Blood" is full of this stuff and THE OTHER pulls it off with fun loving and creep crawling aplomb.

The songs themselves constitute the proof in the corpse paint pudding and no matter how hard you stubborn Fiend Clubbers try to deny it, most of these cuts are damn catchy and vocalist Rod Usher's smoother version of Danzig's legendary howl ensures that you're sucked in even deeper. THE OTHER sticks to the simple, yet effective punky 'n hooky blueprint on most of these tracks — "Back to the Cemetery", "Castle Rock", and "Transylvania" three definitive examples — and when they depart for the keyboard-soaked, more traditionally gothic "The Lovesick Mind" or a mid-tempo rock/metal approach on "In League with the Devil" the results aren't too shabby either. The songs that fall short of nailing it (e.g. the German-sung "Hier Kommt Die Dunkelheit") are still decent.

In the end, this isn't about praise for new levels of transcendent artistry, much less originality, by any stretch of the imagination; it's about recognizing the musical equivalent of a damn good time. It's nothing more complicated than that.