This review originally appeared in Issue 04 of Lamplighter Magazine in Fall 2014 and subsequently on LamplighterNJ.com in May 2016
With a name like Voodoo Terror Tribe, there are only a few sounds you should expect from this Rockaway four-piece. And if their name didn’t clue you in, an album title like A Walk In Hell certainly would.
Their latest release is five tracks of pure, unadulterated metal. So pure that you probably shouldn’t even bother listening if you’re not the sort of person deeply excited by those first few chorus-soaked notes of “Enter Sandman.” Though the opening track “Screaming Dreams” does bend towards nü-metal inclinations, and “Deviancy Amplification Spiral(D.a.S)” may meander a bit more on the lyrically manic side than their heavy metal forebears ever dared to, the rest of the record remains true to its roots. Voodoo Terror Tribe are at their best when vocalist Gil Pan Zastor channels his inner Hetfield, singing with a clear but powerful voice.
Perhaps the best example is the album’s slow-moving title track, caught somewhere between a ballad and a blistering shredfest, decorated by Zastor’s diaphragmatic crooning. The album’s lyrics are full of dark, angst-ridden imagery and hyperbole, quintessentially metal, but this typicality is symbolic of the record as a whole. Save for a fitting cover of Billy Idol’s “Rebel Yell” (so fitting, both to the original and to the standards of traditional heavy metal, that most won’t even bat an eye), this album does not pander.
This is not the flashy metal of Avenged Sevenfold and this is not post-hardcore with a metal tag slapped on because iTunes asked for two genres. This is metal for those who use devil horns as a salute, not as an ironic hand gesture. No, Voodoo Terror Tribe are not evangelists for the heavy metal subset. If anything, they are crusaders, and A Walk In Hell is their violent, one-way march to reclaim the holy land.
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