Headkase – The Worm County Circus (2009)

For a band that’s been around for 8 years, “The Worm Country Circus” is a very solid and well prepared debut album. These crazy Australians label themselves as ‘Circus Metal” and after listening to the CD plenty of times, I have to agree 100% with this description.

The 13 tracks on this album sound like a deranged composition straight out of a horror movie; House of 1000 corpses comes into mind. The whole circus theme of the band plays perfectly on the bizarreness of the bands sound and persona.

Headkase’s combination of jazz, swing and metal with circus music makes this band’s sound very bizarre but very original, something that is hard to do these days. I can only think of Mr. Bungle when I’m trying to compare them to some other band out there.

The elements that makes “The Worm Country Circus” be one of the most interesting albums of this year, besides the unique genre mixture, is the eerie keyboards that are placed in the songs, driving them over the edge of normalcy into the unknown realms of insanity. But this is not the only good element in the music, as you listen to the full album several times, you will be discovering sounds and little things here and there that you did not noticed the first time.

Another element that is worth highlighting is the drumming, provided by Todd Hansen, it’s relentless throughout the whole album and provides nice changes of pace when needed. The guitar work can be considered standard, but gets the job done and provided the aggressiveness that the music requires. The vocals, while not my favorite thing of the band, are versatile enough to not get tiresome over the duration of the album.

I’m very impressed with the band’s fresh sound and if their live performances are as crazy as the music, then I’ll be getting on a plane to Australia to check them out. Overall a very impressive first album and the rawness of the production makes it sound even more aggressive. I sure hope this band gets more popular and we can see them perform in the US some day.

Release: 2009

Country: Australia