Time Signature Run to the night...

Genre: beer metal

First off, I have to say that I love the coverart-and-title combination of this album. "Holy Shit" is in itself a brilliant album title due to the humor of it all, but when combined with an image of religious stained glass, the funny factor is multiplied by a million.

I definitely do not mind humor in metal, but it tends to fall a bit flat if the music is not good. Fortunately, the songs on this album are definitely good. Superchrist draw on old school metal and hard rock akin to Accept, Judas Priest and Motörhead - and there also seems to be some references to Running Wild's less speed metal-oriented material. 'Don't Wanna Know' is even more of a hard rock track. Some of the tracks on "Holy Shit" are a bit more on the punky side, as is the case of 'Hot Tonight' and 'PAMF'. Moreover, the drummer Ian Viper seems to have embraced the d-beat which gives the already energetic metal music of Superchrist a further injection of energy (his drumming is way more varied than that of your average crust drummer though).

The production is raw and slightly lo-fi without being underproduced. The guitars have a big fat bottom-rich fuzz to them, with the bass at time just providing the bass frequencies and at other times engaging in the performance of leads and harmonies (as heard in the bridge of 'Run to the Night'). The drums sound as if they have not been processed at all, which gives them a 70s hard rock type of quality. Chris Black's vocals are husky and his voice sounds like he has smoked more cigarettes and guzzled more whiskey than Lemmy himself. I must admit that Black's vocals do not sit well with me, but I do appreciate what he is doing and his voice definitely suits the raw quality of Superchrist's music.

I am sure that "Holy Shit" is primarily intended to be good fun, but the dirty rock 'n' rolling heavy metal style that Superchrist have adopted is actually pretty good, and that is what makes this album a quite good one actually: it is humorous, but the music is actually good. Fans of Motörhead and dirty hard rock 'n' roll should definitely check this one out... it might even make them go "Holy Shit".