WEDNESDAY 13 are back with their ninth album. The continued release of albums at a 2 yearly basis, sometime per year, shows that Joseph Pool aka Wednesday 13 and his right hand man, Roman Surman are truly dedicated to this project, despite the live show from BOURBON CROW in 2018 sparking rumors about a new album. Will this new album be a continued solid effort of sound from the master of Shock Punk? Or will this be another album that is to disappoint? Let's enter, the Necrophaze

"Necrophaze" has a nice intro with Shock Rock icon, Alice Cooper, which is a good way to start as an intro. The buildup is progressively getting heavier, before introducing the clean cut, WEDNESDAY 13 style guitars that have become accustom to all the band's songs. They are not holding back on this one. The song also ends with Alice Cooper spoken word. The song is very catchy and seems to end very quickly, but it is a 4 -minute song, which when it feels quick, shows that it is a decent song, with us wanting more of it. So far, so good. "Zodiac" starts off with a spoken word build up from reports of the Zodiac killer. In live shows, Wednesday comes out in a Zodiac style head piece. The instrumental build up has a decent pace. They do have a good idea when they make the lyrics rhythm with the spoken word. It's got a decent pace from the band, there is a decent instrumental section mid-way into the song. When you pay attention to the song, the vocals are short and simple, but this works very well in context.

"Monster" may have Cristina Scabia in, but she's more a backing vocalist in this, which adds a good new depth to the sound, but I think she could have done more of a duet and it would have been more effective. The song itself, once more has a good beat to it, it picks up pace from the off. It has a few more backing growls added also, which is a decent thing to add in now and again from Roman Surman, it is a band effort this song. The added vocals make this song stand out more, which is a good play by the band to add something different and make the album not feel repetitive.

"Decompose" starts in a very dark, drone way almost like a funereal doom song, but breaks into the guitar intro, it works well. It's a song with a little less pace than others so far, which is a band trait to slow things down, but it works, like their slower songs usually do. The band really knows how to change things up. It is very well controlled throughout. It doesn't go into pace that would change the overall feel song, but this is a darker, gloomier song than others, and it's clear, that is the goal. "Animal" is back to the heavier sounding songs after a gap of the slower ones. This does contain one of the best Melodic-Death Metal musicians in the form of the Wildchild: Alexi Laiho. The song is more of an aggressive approach to the band with the drums hitting harder and guitar is deeper, darker, thicker than others on this album with a bit cleaner cut guitar added into it. This rounds off the album well. Only issue I have is, I can't hear what difference Alexi makes, he doesn't get any vocals and solo's, or if he does, they are in no way able to be told apart from other band's. Bit of a wasted appearance

One of the things that made it so much easier for me to get into this album was the fact I saw them twice in 2 days whilst on tour with DOPE, SOiL and a Wayne-less STATIC-X as part of the 20^th anniversary of a truly amazing album, "Wisconsin Death Trip". WEDNESDAY 13 played "Necrophaze", "Zodiac" and "Decompose" and the way they performed these, you'd have thought they'd been doing it years. The album is very much like most of their previously released, this is good. It works to the band's sounds and strengths well. It is exactly what you want to hear when you want to listen to WEDNESDAY 13, so why change a good sound? The album does lose its overall pace midway into the album, which is the kind of cheesier shock punk sound, but I know it's not for everyone.