Babylon Whores
Errata Stigmata
Necropolis
A nifty lil’ four-tracker here, Babylon Whores’ Errata Stigmata reprises its title track from last year’s excellent King Fear album, adds a remix of it, showcases a previously unreleased track, and, the icing on the already delicious cake, tacks on the video for “Sol Niger,” from the aforementioned album. To put things bluntly, Babylon Whores approximate what would happen if Glenn Danzig and John Christ unwittingly met up with the Sisters of Mercy, circa ‘85, and the latter got the former functionally drunk; seriously, none more accurate than the band’s “Death Rock Hellsinki” slogan. “Errata Stigmata” encapsulates all the Whores’ best features – major fist-pumpage, woofer-warping dynamics, anthemic overdrive, a cloak of cinder black that’s subtly wry and supremely narcotic, frontman Ike Vil’s demonic-crooner presence always threatening to leap out of the speakers and ensnare the soul in delicious, delicious sin – while its remix merely smothers the shit in white-to-black noise, grindstone bass, and the occasional dance-floor thump. “Fey (Version),” the previously unreleased track (actually, a reworking of one of King Fear’s tracks), strolls along rather atmospherically, almost to a fault, but with Ike at the mic, the song’s in good, grimy hands, subverting the goth overtones into dirge undertones, and vice versa, and then back again (say what?). And the video of “Sol Niger”? Lots of snow, skeletal trees, and underwater fluidity, the whole of the video steeped in a dark-blue hue that’s the perfect stomping ground for Vil’s staggering swagger; after seeing the man in action here, trust me – this guy is every bit as menacingly cool as all his press photos portray.
Necropolis, P.O. Box 14815, Fremont, CA 94539-4815; http://www.necropolisrec.com
