Notre Dame

Demi Monde Bizarros (Osmose)
by Martin Popoff

Ex-Mercyful Fate/King Diamond (and more) drummer Snowy Shaw has re-engineered himself as one of metal’s more wonderful eccentrics. This album, subtitled “songs about sex, satan and sado-masochism” is the band’s second, after an exquisitely groovy debut called Vol 1: Le Theatre Du Vampire, which happened to have contained the greatest song of all 2000, called “Vlad The Impaler.” Riff and rhythm were fused so hard, you gotta hear it to believe it.

Back with album two, “Snowy and the Three Stooges” whip up yet another headbanging pastiche of elements, never buddy-systemed outside of their unique franchise. A combination of Motörhead, Entombed, and soundtrack music would be the best way to describe this, smacked upside the head with doses of progressive thrash and Italian doom. Yet indeed, the album is a collection of songs, topped mostly with Vampiric male vocals, occasional female vocals, and long stretches with no vocals, all housed within a maelstrom of hypnotic, percussive song states, enveloped in production values which are as uniquely calibrated as the band’s weirdo credo. Magnificent, cleverly ironic, and full of surprises.
(www.osmoseproductions.com)