Here with their sophomore full length effort "Electric Exorcist", we have Chicago Metal veteran Tony Spillman's semi-eponymously titled band SPILLAGE. Sporting an enticingly gaudy album cover, one anticipates much of such an entertainingly titled LP. What we get is a reasonable attempt at a Doom-tinged traditional Metal album, but it falls somewhat short of the expectations conjured.

Out of the gate, first track is the titular "Electric Exorcist", it's not a bad start, it has a nice sludgy detuned riff, some frenzied entertainment in the shape of a twin guitar harmony attack. Elvin Rodriguez's vocals are throaty, but on key and he has no problem hitting the notes he wants to, but the song drags on long past its welcome at an unnecessary eight minutes. There's a slightly clumsy attempt at a galloping guitar riff breaking the track up, and some rather dramatic voice over work during a mid-song breakdown, which features some awkwardly incongruous organ work.

"Heaven on Earth" brings us quite a nice Groove riff, the rest of the track is your typical run-of-the-mill Blues based Hard Rocker with some good vocal work, but nothing particularly memorable in terms of lyrics or melody. The next track "Mirror Black" is much more interesting, with an extended instrumental intro which has some decent riffing and keyboard backing, which then leads us into a good Doom-ridden Metal song with a nice descending guitar riff and a more memorable vocal line. Once again though, it's very long without any real grounds to be so.

"Book of Secrets" is also a very long song at almost 8 minutes, this time it has just cause, as it is winding, epic piece with hard and heavy sections, a main MAIDEN-esque refrain that still tends to repeat itself a little too often, but some quite effective relaxed sections juxtaposed with thumping, fast double bass drum choruses combine to make an engaging piece. There's a decent acoustic driven semi-ballad in "Real" which has a slightly psychedelic feel, and the nicely recorded guitars and subtle effects help to bring a bit of a PINK FLOYD vibe.

The final proper song on the album barring an enthusiastic cover of "Look at Yourself" by URIAH HEEP, is "Pharoah's Revenge," which is a downbeat, atmospheric piece with the best vocal work to be found on the LP. It has several sharp shifts in tempo and feel, and the drums are particularly well devised on this song. A decent closer with one of the more impressive guitar solos, but nothing special.

As a rule of thumb, the songs on this album are just too long, they stretch ideas out too much to justify the six-to-eight-minute running times half of the album has, it could have benefitted from a shorter songs and a couple more of them. If you take away the URIAH HEEP cover, there's only seven of the band's own compositions here. The song writing is intelligent but derivative, there's nothing you haven't heard before here, and plenty that you have. The production is fair, the guitars have much of the mids scooped, leading to quite a deliberately tinny guitar sound that is very much of-the-genre, there is an unusual lack of showy guitar solos however and those that are present tend to be muted affairs. The vocals are well recorded and performed, and the drum sound is good, the LP is also quite well mixed although there is little in the way of experimentation, it is all quite predictable and uniform.