Does anyone remember Driller Killer? Wömit Angel joins the tradition of metal bands making novelty releases on the society-hating side. Obviously inspired by Impaled Nazarene, Wömit Angel serves up fast hardcore riffs with a heavy dose of hard rock on the choruses.
And that is about all you must know.
This release makes for pleasant listening in that obviously these guys have been in metal bands for some time and know all the ways to give a song power. There are no random wanderings like one finds with inexperienced bands; everything fits together like a puzzle. The problem is that each puzzle is based around a melodic hook per song, with a corresponding rhythmic hook in vocals, and then nothing really interesting happens even when they inject a bit of riff salad. What fails to hold these songs together is internal, at a conceptual level lower than music. They are all variations of the same idea which is fun background music to hate society and self-destruct to.
Driller Killer was similar but of 1999 or so vintage. It was fast hardcore with melodic undertones but the heavier emphasis on chorus vocal rhythm common to German speed/death metal bands (we’re looking at you, Destruction). It was catchy. No part of it was incompetent. But like Holy Goatse, the Driller Killer album was temporary, transient and quickly forgotten. Music is best when it evokes a feel from life and observes something poetic about it. If that feeling is living on Euro-welfare, drinking $9 beers and hating society — with no motivation to find a reason why — the result will be a nostalgia-tinged journey through influences and convenient songwriting.
Thus rises the epitaph of Wömit Angel. If you found this at a yard sale, it would hold your attention for a couple weeks, but mostly for the novelty of the name and cover. Then you would put it in a box and ten years later drop it off somewhere where it would again end up as a yard sale item. Music must have meaning or it becomes universal pop which is like elevator music at this point: always there, always cheap, and rarely lasting more than an instant.
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