Tweet
Panic Beats - A Date With Death
Released by: Midnight Jamboree Records
Released on: October 6th, 2014.
Purchase From Amazon or Bandcamp
Panic Beats, Dale VanThomme's one man horror punk band, have got a new album out - and hey, it's Halloween time, or at least it was when this arrived in my mailbox last week, so what better season could there be to dig in?
The complete track listing for A Date With Death is:
Time To Kill / Stalker / Love You To Death / Do What I Say / Half Way To Hell / Kill You Anyway / Call Me Death / Dig Your Own Grave / Bury Them Deep / Kill And Kill Again / Shot On Video / Killer On The Loose
The opening track kicks things off in grand Panic Beats fashion - rifftastic guitars way up front in the mix, simple but catchy versus and chorus and morbid, tongue-in-cheek lyrics. This time around, however - and this goes on throughout the album - the backup vocals (courtesy of Chad Roberts, who also contributes some guitar work here, and Vinny Hoffer) are more up front and more frequent. So that gives this opening song and everything else on the record a bit of a different tone. VanThomme still plays all the instruments and still does all the lead vocals, his voice is pretty recognizable and it still fits the music really well with this sort of slightly distant, slightly awkward vibe that is right in keeping with the whole 'killer's POV' that he tends to favor in his songwriting.
Stalker and Love You To Death keep the momentum going with their fast pop punk style three chord traditional styles but dig the soloing and some of those bridges… is there a little bit of Social Distortion creeping into the mix here and there? Sounds that way, and that's not a bad thing. It helps to make this album sound a little different than the last few did though it doesn't really approach the rockabilly conventions that inevitably find their way into Ness and company's music.
Moving right along, Do What I Say is a bit closer to mid-tempo than the first three tracks but it's hardly slow, no siree, not at all. Again, we're approaching things from the psychopath's point of view as he sings about taking a girl on a date with death (hey, that's where the album title came from!). It's a great song, easy to sing along to with some catchy harmonies creating an infectious sound in all the right ways. Half Way To Hell, Kill You Anyway and Call Me Death all find that right mix between weird Lillingtons inspired pop punk and Ramones style 1-2-3-4 straight ahead punk rock. VanThomme and friends wear their hearts on their collective sleeve as far as their influences go, they make it obvious what they listen to and what they like but it's presented through a unique filter.
Dig Your Own Grave starts off with a nice guitar solo that lasts 10 seconds or so, just long enough to set the mood. How a song about making someone you're going to kill dig their own grave could be so peppy and fun and put you in such a good mood is one for the armchair psychiatrists out there and my mom would probably find it unsettling but damn, you'll be singing along to this one in no time flat. Both Bury Them Deep and Kill And Kill Again keep the pace fast and the lyrics darkly simple. The backing vocals keep at it, complimenting VanThomme's leads with that aforementioned awkwardness that sounds… off but at the same time fits things really well.
As the album draws to a close, things do break from the tried and true formula a little bit. Shot On Video features some female vocals in the background (courtesy of Dale's wife Amanda) alongside the male backing vocals. It gives the song a bit more character in that way and that's a good thing. Then there's the final track, Killer On The Loose, which pushes close to four minutes, a fair bit longer than anything else on the album. It doesn't deviate from the pop-punk/horror-punk thing that has become the Panic Beats' trademark sound nor does it deviate into guitar noodling or instrumental wankery but it is a longer song by the band's standards. It finishes off the album quite well though, as it stays in keeping, both lyrically and musically, with the eleven tracks that have come before it.
The production values are good here (the album was mixed by Joel Grind of Toxic Holoxcaust), slick enough that the album sounds good but not so overdone as to make it sound like more than what it is, if that makes sense. It's very much rooted in punk tradition, so it shouldn't sound too glossy, and it doesn't. Wrap it all up in a nifty, gory comic book style cover by Bill Hauser and it's a great package overall. It's available via CD or digital only at this point, no vinyl option yet, but don't let that dissuade you vinyl snobs! This is a really fun, catchy record.
Check out the video for Stalker!
