Butcher
Welcome to the Night

March 2011
Released: 2010, Infernö Records
Rating: 2.5/5
Reviewer: Luxi Lahtinen

Classic American heavy metal and NWOBHM… that´s what this American act Butcher represents on their badly yet sadly delayed 2nd studio album, titled WELCOME TO THE NIGHT.



Having been around since 1982 under three different versions of a band named Coven, they dropped the name in 1991, and changed it to Butcher. Butcher started recording their follow-up album to IRON TIGER (the band´s debut album, self-released in 1996 by the band members themselves) many frustrating years ago. There were many unfortunate setbacks for Butcher - this including the death of vocalist and guitarist Chris C. Jackson in a motorcycle accident. The recordings of W.T.T.N. came finally to the end in May 2010.



Of the 26 tracks that are hammered down for this release, 12 out of them can only be considered as songs; the rest are like parodies of promos, commercials and Emergency Broadcast System warnings that are supposed to make this album somehow more ´special´ or ´unique.´ Well, unfortunately they don´t, but mostly seem unnecessary attempts to add some sort of ´tongue-in-cheek´ aspect into the content of this record. They fail miserably.



The music herein on the other hand, is raw, straight and mostly mid-tempo heavy metal that at least should appeal to the fans of both old-school American and NWOBHM fans worldwide – from NYC to London to Bogota to Moscow to Hà Nội. It´s also a good idea to share the vocal duties between female vocalist Lil Tang and male vocalist Stone Age that together create a nice contrast within the band´s uncompromising, back-to-the-roots type of heavy metal. Both vocalists do their share pretty well without highlighting any of the songs by their vocal performances. When the rest of the group manage to squeeze their own collective metallic juices into the actual songs on the album, it luckily makes it somehow possible to enjoy the album quite a bit. You can rest assured a modern studio technology is completely missing from this album, which serves the songs´ purpose to have that nice old-school vibe shining through the content of W.T.T.N. Some might even harshly say the production values on this record are just awful, but for the material of this release, the not-so-modern production truly supports the songs perfectly.



By no means is this an impressive release nor the kind of release that even might get some serious and continuous rotation in your CD-player. However it still manages occasionally to lift up the corners of the mount from time to time by pure nostalgia.