The Children's Crusade

At first blush a masturbatory exercise in retro-histrionics, consequent exposure to Bible Of The Devil’s The Diabolic Procession has led this medical professional to reclassify this hard rocking masterpiece as primo high-octane ear sludge.

Formed in the shadow days of the late-90s, Chicago’s Bible Of The Devil combine classic ‘70s hard-knock influences like Thin Lizzy and Black Sabbath with NWOBM guitar-goo, the band throwing in elements of the genus “Thrashicus Americanus” like Metallica and Megadeth alongside a little Cro-Mags or Gang Green-styled hardcore punktasia. In other words, Bible Of The Death is what Wolfmother would sound like if they’d listened to more Hanoi Rocks and less Ozzie Osbourne.

On its surface, The Diabolic Procession is a conceptual song-cycle, no different, really, than My Chemical Romance’s The Black Parade except that it doesn’t suck and Bible Of The Devil is a far more malevolent gang of peach-pickers. Really, you kind of have to admire any band lunkheaded enough to squeeze out a “concept album” in this day and age, some three decades from the beast’s commercial decline, and I betcha that the guys in Bible Of The Devil don’t paste their mugs with make-up on their way to the MTV studios. Nosirree, these cretin hoppers are more likely to play “grab-n-go” with grannies on the way to the bank with their social security checks instead of sitting on camera with whatever plastic facepaint passes for a “veejay” these days.

That is, The Diabolic Procession is ostensibly the band’s take on the Children’s Crusade, that allegedly apocryphal tale of youthful Christian missionaries making their way to the Holy Lands to convert the Muslim population, only to be sold into slavery or, worst yet, to Republican congressmen. It’s an imaginative fairytale, and an unlikely source of inspiration for as anti-intellectual a bunch of moonlighters as a rock & roll band. However, Mark Hoffman’s lyrics are lean-and-mean, like a shank to the heart; every verse sparkling with passing daylight and erudite imagery.

No sharpened toothbrush can take the spotlight away from Bible Of The Devil’s riff-happy sound tho’, with the twin guitar chemistry of Hoffman and Nate Perry driving every song, lemminglike, off the cliff and into the drink in a manic frenzy. Plumbing much the same bombastic musical killing floor as Phil Lynott’s late-lamented Thin Lizzy, these bruise brothers are joined at the hip with bassist Darren Amaya and drummer Greg Spalding, a one-two rhythmic uppercut that knock outs out a deafening melodic undercurrent while the six-string bashers bob-and-weave with Goth fatalism, metallic nihilism and sleazegrinder hedonism.

If I had my druthers, I’d druther a three-way with Cindy Crawford and Haile Berry in a vat of butterscotch pudding; and if I was master of the rock & roll kingdom, I’d line up the music-buying public, strap them with their own ignorance into uncomfortable metal folding chairs, prop open their ears with toothpicks old-school Clockwork Orange-style and make ‘em all listen to The Diabolic Procession until their ears bleed. Then, and only then, might they all stop buying those damned awful My Chemical Fallout Boy Romance records and bow before the infernal greatness of Bible Of The Devil. Can I get an “amen, brother”!!??? (Cruz Del Sur Music)