The Electric Hellfire Club

Witness the Millennium (Cleopatra)
by Scott Hefflon

Never had much use for The Electric Hellfire Club, but always kinda had a good chuckle with them before selling their CDs. Thorn quit My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult (another band that never really took it far enough) in ’93 and has since released four parody/schlock albums to varying degrees of success. If it’s a joke, it doesn’t stay funny for long, and if it’s serious, well, that’s pretty sad. But if you find grindcore funny, this electronic circus show might just catch yer fancy. Whether this band is supposed to parody industrial or bad metal, I’ve never been sure, but their exploitation of every metal cliché and their horrendous cover of Iron Maiden’s “Number of the Beast” points toward metal. And this record is produced by black metal pioneers, Venom (another band I like to think wasn’t serious), so it sounds authentically shitty.
(13428 Maxella Ave. #251 Marina Del Rey, CA 90292)