Album Review: Blitzkid – “Apparitional”

Anyone who listens to horror punk (or possibly even psycho-billy) should have heard of Blitzkid. The band has been releasing their music, which shows influence from The Misfits and The Damned with a touch The Cramps throw in for good measure, since 1998.

I first discovered this band six or seven years ago when a friend gave me the “Let Flowers Die” album. I enjoyed some of the songs, especially the “Pumpkin Patch Murders” but I wasn’t thrilled with the record as a whole, so several years passed before I bothered to listen to another Blitzkid release. Fast forward a few years to sometime in ’08. I was bored and searching iTunes for some new music when I found Blitzkid’s “Five Cellars Below” release. I checked out the samples and decided to go ahead and buy it. After listening to it in its entirety I found that there were some very good songs on that album and a few pretty bad ones as well. About a year later I found and bought their “Trace Of A Stranger” album from a used CD store. Unfortunately on that release, the bad outweighed the good. So… I guess what I’ve been trying to get across in that rambling history of my time with Blitzkid is that they have the ability to write some awesome songs but are not so good at creating awesome albums.

“Apparitional” is no exception to that rule. Actually, this may be the their worst album yet. The whole thing feels like a disjointed mess. To me it sounds more like a poorly put together B-sides compilation than it does a proper album. It’s also a very, very boring record, which is odd because there really isn’t a horrible song on the disc. Most of these songs are good on their own, some are great, but each time I put this album on, I soon wanted to turn it off and listen to something else.

There are a couple of highlights and one missed opportunity on “Apparitional” that I want to described to you in a bit more detail.

The first one is “Casque of Amontillado”. This is the one that they just missed the bulls-eye with. Musically it’s a cool rock-n-roll track with saxophone throughout the song. But lyrically (it’s a retelling of an Edgar Allan Poe short story) it seemed too forced and kinda lame. With better lyrics this track could have been great but as it is, I don’t really care for it.

“Cedar Bluff” is one that I enjoyed quite a bit. It’s a short song, under two minutes, and has a 1950’s sock hop sound to it. “Mr. Gore” is another of my favorites on this album. It’s one of the more punk songs on the disc and actually sounds a bit like Alkaline Trio, especially in the chorus.

The best song on “Apparitional” is “Head Over Hills”. It starts out as a fast paced punk track but slows down for the verses, similar to “Mary And The Storm” from their “Five Cellars Below” album. Lyrically this song seems to be about a love story set in Sleepy Hollow. There is also an alternate, slower version of this song tacked on to the end of the album. It starts about three and a half minutes into the song “She Won’t Stop Bleeding”.

Other good songs are the previously mentioned “She Won’t Stop Bleeding”, a Misfits like punk track. “The Iscariot”, a slower song and “Mr. Sardonicus”, a punker with an obvious ’50’s influence.

It was difficult for me to figure out what rating to give this release. Like I said earlier, “Apparitional” is in essence a boring album that feels very disorganized but it does have a few borderline amazing songs on it so… I’m going to give it a 3 stars but the actual rating should be a 2.5.