Wednesday 13 has been doing the good-time, horror-inspired punk we know and love for quite some time now, and his is a formula that has stayed strong. Even today many people talk fondly of Murderdolls and his subsequent . Not one to rest on his laurels, with this latest offering he has gone for something a little different by releasing an album of acoustic versions of some of his best known tracks called Undead Unplugged.
Well, different may be a tad ironic. It’s not the most original idea, but certainly anyone with knowledge of Wednesday 13’s work would perhaps be intrigued to know how he’s managed to make this work.
And quite honestly on first listen you’d be hard pressed not to chuckle at the inappropriateness of Undead and Welcome To The Strange in such a mellow setting. Not that their usual tongue-in-cheek style hasn’t had the intention of putting a smile your face – on this album you get the exceptionally bad but also great pun track-title ‘Morgue Than Words’ – but to the average listener these stripped-down versions do seem to scream gimmicky.
If you’re already a fan that will make no difference. It’s not particularly clever or musically interesting, but it’s still his own songs and it’s still him being his entertaining self. And a good portion of this is actually quite fun to listen to. The back-to-back duo of Scary Song and We All Die somehow retain their original upbeat and humorous nature.
But that’s where the whole concept of a Wednesday 13 acoustic album falls. Far be it from us to pigeon-hole a band or singer into one area but the original songs were energetic, cheeky and interesting. The way they’re presented here just don’t live up to that. If he was really serious about this idea he could have written something new and more fitting. Instead for the most part these re-workings are, to put it bluntly, quite boring.
If you’re a mega fan of his you might like this out of loyalty. But others should just listen back to the original versions because there’s little to keep you interested here.
