Right here's one for you to mull over.  'I Declare: Treason' is the debut album from a band with an uber cool B Movie moniker, a gothic mystique about their image, and ex members of Turbonegro, Marilyn Manson and Satyricon within their ranks, so said album is gonna be a belter of a debut ...right?  Wrong, in fact it's the complete opposite of what you might expect, as to these ears at least it is dull, unimaginative and quite frankly....  bloody boring.

Things so start well enough though, as the spoken word intro of 'You Are God' has me thinking that Hank Von Helvete (for it is he who is the ex member of Turbonegro) paying tribute to 'God Bless The Children Of The Beast' is maybe not such a bad thing after all. Then with a sneer that is pure Johnny Rotten and a huge riff courtesy of Tim Skold (yup he of Marilyn Manson and Kingpin fame) we herald the arrival of album opener 'Sign My Name' and pretty damn sharpish we are soon off into a toxic futuristic musical landscape that is actually initially quite alluring.  Sort of less Death Punk and more Cyber Punk if you get my drift.

It's with the album's title track 'I Declare: Treason' which is up next that I start to get cold feet though, as suddenly we are off on a Slayer-esque riff that has Hank singing in a metallic voice that loses any chance of forming a melody because he ends up sounding like a native of the planet Skaro, and I find myself waiting for the lyrics to rhyme 'procreate', 'magistrate', 'generate' and 'illuminate' with "Exterminate!!!" Then and only then will the job be totally finished here.

Lead single from the album '(Don't) Waste It' does redeem matters slightly with an almost Alice Cooper-esque anthemic edge added to the again overtly heavy guitars, but that feeling of "up" doesn't last long as 'Blame is The Game' once again has Hank wasting his undoubted vocal talent behind a style that quite frankly does not suit his more usually more melodic vocal style.

Elsewhere tracks like 'Misconception' and 'Victorious' end up sounding like Fear Factory pastiches but sadly without any of the fire that Burton C Bell would have in their industrial metal hearts.  Don't get me wrong; the musicianship of Anders Odden, Audun Stengel and David Husvik is faultless, tight and claustrophobic, conjuring up a vision that is intense and relentless.  Its just that when your singer used to earn his living sticking fireworks up his arse whilst singing Punk Rock anthems that contained homoerotic lyrics bordering on pure fucking genius, its really hard to stomach the sound of said frontman paying tribute to Marilyn Manson in the dour 'OK (We're Just about To Die)' when in fact it should be the other way around.

It comes to something when you see a track called 'Fools Gold' and you actually want it to be a cover of The Stone Roses track by the same name just so you can marvel in what a band such as Doctor Midnight & The Mercy Cult would do with a baggy anthem, but sadly it is not....

'I Declare: Treason' crept out here in the UK back at the start of June, and I purchased my copy in the faint hope that Hank hadn't in fact cleaned up his act or found god, as one of his previous press releases would have us believe.  On the strength (or weakness. you decide) of the eleven tracks contained here though I'd pretty much say we can all kiss goodbye to the Hank Von Helvete of old, as Doctor Midnight & The Mercy Cult won't be rendezvousing with any anus anytime soon that's for sure.

Turbojugend beware!!!!

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