Birmingham metal trio Margarita Witch Cult have never been coy about the debt they owe Black Sabbath but, while tempting, I feel it would be unhelpful to spend a review of their second album working through my mixed emotions about Sabbath’s recent Villa Park curtain call. Conflicting times for music fans in the city shall we say. Instead lets also point up their endorsement by Monster Magnet as a further signpost for their approach. With not a hint of second album jitters Strung Out In Hell picks up where the debut left off cranking out another bunch of riff driven, horror themed, chunks of heavy metal good times.
‘Crawl Home To Your Coffin’ sets the mood with a warm, distorted, tone and Hammer horror lyrics. ‘Scream Bloody Murder’ sticks with the unashamed title-is-the-chorus and chunky chuggin’ riffs, throwing in a key change at the end for the hell of it. Ominous descending riffs and the lines “smell of rotting flesh is getting stronger, stench of doom is rising every day…” lead us to ‘Conqueror Worm’. This time they drop the guitar solo for some nice wobbly B-movie organ. Pushing on with the NWOBHM cheap thrills ‘Witches Candle’ ramps up the pace, burning itself out in two and a half minutes.
As no less a rock god than David St. Hubbins noted, it’s a fine line between stupid and clever. Margarita Witch Cult walk that line. Their tunes are uncomplicated, or classic, in style. There are no grand concepts and the last forty years of metal micro-genres and experiments have little bearing on what they do. Despite this it doesn’t feel like a hollow retro exercise and while it’s clear they appreciate how silly some of it is, they’re aren’t taking the piss either. This is the fine line they walk. St. Hubbins was talking about the album’s artwork of course and the bizarre illustration on the front of Strung Out In Hell slowly reveals itself as a puzzle with an image for each tune. I’ll leave you to decide which side of the line that falls.
Speaking of puzzles, at the album’s midpoint ‘White Wedding’ has such a stomping intro that it’s not until the vocal comes in it becomes clear that, yes, this is indeed a doom version of Billy Idol’s 80s smash. You might think this a pointless nonsense, but if you were looking for an example of how a record can be both completely ridiculous and undeniably brilliant at the same time then ‘White Wedding’ is pretty much perfect. You know it is, don’t lie to yourself now.
On the album’s second side they stretch out the template a bit. Taking a long intro march before the galloping bass starts up, the sci-fi ‘Mars Rover’ comes from the point of view of the tragic mars rover lost in a dust storm, “it’s getting real dark and my battery’s low”. ‘Dig Your Way Out’ is a little more noise rock and ‘The Fool’ makes really great use of brass in a way that makes you wish they did more of it (while accepting that if they did, it’d probably just become their gimmick).
Finally ‘Who Put Bella In The Wych Elm’ brings back the creeping dread and horror vibes. Drawing on a local unsolved mystery, no one really knows how poor ‘Bella’s remains came to be stuffed in a tree but, this being heavy metal, the Witch Cult lean into speculations about sinister occult doings without particularly embellishing it. All in all, it’s good, clean, dumb, fun.
