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Once you've seen Zimmer's Hole live, you know their live-show out-does, out-metals, out-over-the-tops every live-act there has ever been. After being duly impressed on Dynamo Open Air 2002, I was curious to their album efforts. So I downloaded one.

Well, obviously I should have expected this not to be as good as seeing them live, but this was a bit less interesting than I could have anticipated. What this album basically is, is an attempt to be metal and funny at the same time, yet failing, mostly in the humor department. On repeated listens it becomes slightly more palpable, but not much.

The sound can best be described as a mix between speedmetal and thrashmetal, with obvious Devin Townsend influences (no wonder of course). Overall, it's a very inconsistent album however, with most songs around 1 minute 30, going from style to style without it working out well. And they try to cover every possible style in metal apparently, from heavy to gothic to death, all in a semi-thrashy way.

This album reminds me of Anal Cunt. The songtitles are better than the songs themselves, and usually look better on paper than in practice. For example the 'This Is Metal' song; an obvious parody on heavy/power metal, with exageratedly high vocals, is funny when it first hits you, but afterwards loses it's charm pretty quickly. I'd rather have some real Manowar/Hammerheart, even though I'm not exactly a fan. 'Gospel Sodomy Boy On Blow' starts out like an overly symphonic gothic/black song that actually sounds rather good, even if it is a parody. But after the initial laughing subsides, the track jumps from style to style a bit in a non-enjoyable way, in an attempt to make the idea funnier.

Ever had someone tell you he was going to make you laugh, and then failed, partly because he said just that? This album is just like that. It tries to be funny, but throwing in a Simpsons quote, or putting on a play with talk about sex in a rednecky manner does not equate to funnyness automatically.
Where Piledriver lyrics can seem unfunny if you just read them, but are definitely funny (or at least memorable) when you hear them in the context of the songs, Zimmer's Hole lyrics can only seem funny in the context of 'Hey we're going to do a metalsong, and it's about so-and-so'. Haha! Not.

There are some positive things to be said about this album of course. It can be a feast of recognition to hear all the bands/genres they parody. They even actually have pretty good riffs all the time, but the problem is they do nothing with them. If they have a riff that might make you headbang, it soon gets replaced by another riff, all in their attempt to parody a genre or make a funny song. And as they keep jumping styles and direction in every song, it's extremely hard to get into the music, they're just too damn inconsistent. I wish they'd use their talents to make actual music, as it's obvious they know how to play. They just can't write decent a song.

48/100

Review by: Egregius

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