Murderdolls - Women And Children Last review

"Women and Children Last" is the follow up to 2002's "Beyond The Valley Of The Murderdolls" from Slipknot drummer Joey Jordison's side project The Murderdolls.

The main protagonists in this venture have not been idle in the intervening years. Jordison has been hanging up his Murderdolls Guitar and touring the world in his day job as Slipknot drummer, while singer Wednesday 13 has kept busy touring and recording with a variety of his own projects.

"Beyond The Valley Of The Murderdolls" was something of a cult classic when it first came out, and when Jordison announced in March 2010 that he was reuniting with Wednesday 13 there was quite a buzz of excitement. 8 years is a long time to wait for a new release, so was it worthwhile ?

Well the first thing that you notice is that there is a very different feel to the band's latest outing. Whereas many of the tracks on the debut were originally tracks which Wednesday 13 had recorded with his previous band, this is the first 'built from scratch' Murderdolls album and it certainly has a darker feel than the more comic book experience of their debut.

It has to be said that I didn't find this album as immediately catchy as it's predecessor, although this is certainly a 'grower' that gets better with repeated listens. That is probably because there is a lot more going on here that many of us expected, and certainly more than you first appreciate...

Alongside fairly typical bouncy shock rock tracks such as Drug Me To Hell and Summertime Suicide there are much darker moments. This is perhaps best typified by the frankly brilliant "My Dark Place Alone". At first listen it sounds like another typical Murderdolls effort, catchy as hell but basically shallow, until you see the video, listen to the lyrics and realise the protagonist is very ill and being kept alive against his will. Bit of a change from the Necrophillia and shock horror of the first album.

Give me hand grenades, give me razor blades,
Give me anything to make the pain go away
Cause these pills don't work, Sometimes they make it worse.
And now I'm slowly going down the fucking drain.

This album struck me as a much more polished effort. The band's debut sounded much more, for want of a better word, punk than this, it's also a more commercial offering with much less swearing :)). Here the Murderdolls are exhibiting a new found maturity and the songwriting, performance and production are all a step up from their previous release.

For me this is an album that's difficult to fault. The band have moved away from the Wednesday 13 word play and sci-fi horror themes and instead come up with a mix of light bouncy catchy tracks and much darker moments that perhaps shouldn't really work together but somehow do.

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