Recent Reviews

September 2023

August 2023

July 2023

June 2023

[ More Music Reviews ]


Butcher: Welcome to the Night
Butcher Welcome to the Night album new music review

Butcher: Welcome to the Night

(Classic) Heavy Metal
3.0/5.0

Figuring out Butcher's Welcome to the Night, their first release in 14 years, is nearly an exercise in futility. Practicing classic Americanized NWOBHM, Butcher shoots themselves in the foot with a menagerie of nonsense infecting an otherwise good classic heavy metal outing.

There's 26 tracks on this album, but finding the metal is a challenge. Hint: it's mostly at the end. Thirteen segments on Welcome to the Night consist of strange, and unnecessarily superfluous, parodies of radio promos, commercials and Emergency Broadcast System warnings. What the hell? It's an amazing waste of time. Additionally the album cover art is ridiculous. Words fail me here: gross, stupid, preposterous, ugly, or contrived. I guess they were thinking, 'We need a 'metal' album cover,' and this was their first best attempt. It's crap.

Fortunately, when you do get to the metal, you discover that Butcher knows their craft. Battleaxe, Wreck N Ball, and Halloween are excellent examples of primal and fundamental metal, the metal upon which all current metal is built. Vocals are shared between the female vocals of Lil Tang and founder Stone Age, and both are pure metal strong. The production is vibrant and clear often showcasing the individual contributions like the bass line on Gates of Hell.

Bottom line: listen to Butcher's Welcome to the Night for the traditional heavy metal and forget all the other worthless bullshit within. You might be impressed. Butcher would have had a better chance if they would have published the songs on a single album and not all the other crap.




CraigHartranft.net - New fiction, crime fiction by Craig Hartranft

In Short

Bottom line: listen to Butcher's Welcome to the Night for the traditional heavy metal and forget all the other worthless bullshit within. You might be impressed.

Find A Review

Alphabetical Index

a b c d e f g h i j
k l m n o p q r s t
u v w x y z #
Album of the Week
Read the Eclipse: Megalomanium Album Review

Formed in 1999 by singer, songwriter, producer, and multi-instrumentalist Erik Martensson, Sweden's Eclipse is well into their third decade of making music. In the recent past, their recordings and reputation have ... [ Read More ]