Echoes Across The Hellscape | Polkadot Cadaver (bandcamp.com)
Echoes Across the Hellscape is the 5th album from Maryland’s Polkadot Cadaver.
It’s echoes reverberate dystopia like a deranged clown at the world’s Industrial Metal Circus playing a synthesizer possessed by the Ghost of early Mr Bungle albums. The circus performs it’s first everyday autopsy with Emotional Creatures which dissects the human experience like only Todd Smith can. Todd is also the lead singer for the band Dog Fashion Disco a band that’s been my personal escape from the troubles of this world for the last 2 decades.
An escape that is Wonderfully presented in question and answer by the song Where Do I Belong? The answer being “Lost in a song”. Followed by the jarring sound of a thrash metal band and a piano falling down a flight of stairs together.
The kind of Godless Noise that gets your heart ready for a thousand deaths brought by love for awesome riffs.
If the last track leaves you feeling like a dog without water locked in a hot car the next track quenches your thirst for a genuinely catchy hook that’ll worm its way into your brain and never lets go. With the swan song of the previous track still ringing in your ears Eat My Tongue gives you all the love candy and body horror a twisted heart could desire.
With your desires sated the album moves into the space between a Nightmare and a dream as the band plays a chunky riff while Todd croons about teaching your children history with a game of Catch Me If You Can.
As the album draws towards it end the ripest of fruit is presented in Ripe Fruit For The Wicked which cherry picks all of Todd’s signature vocal skills into a metal salad fit for the devil himself as he screams , growls and croons his Wicked heart out.
Or at least the wicked heart he writes about because much like Corpsegrinder’s (Cannibal Corpse) love for claw machines Todd Smith is a big softy wrapped in “The Devil’s Music”. As the author of the children’s book Poof & Snoofin
You won’t find any child friendly lyrics in the next track Shape shifting Reptilian Overlord’s a song that forced me to Google the word Halcyon after convincing myself I was wrong about it’s definition.
I was wrong.
Which brings me to the album closer Mrs. Gore which isn’t a song about Al Gore’s wife.
It’s the epic metal closer Razor To Wrist band’s are known for.
Razor To Wrist being the record label run by Jasan Stepp and Todd Smith (probably some other folks too)
That’s it that’s the review I hope it sparks your interest in a truly underrated group of musicians.
https://polkadotcadaver.bandcamp.com/album/echoes-across-the-hellscape
https://razortowrist.bandcamp.com