You pretty much know what's in store for you every time a new
Zodiac Mindwarp & the Love Reaction album drops: blaring three-chord rock, gloriously stupid lyrics, etc. So rather unsurprisingly, that's exactly what is featured throughout the group's 2010 offering,
We Are Volsung. Still at the helm of
the Love Reaction machine is Mark Manning (aka
Zodiac Mindwarp), who created a brand of metal that certainly stood out from the pack during the late '80s (and served as a blueprint for what
Rob Zombie would later perfect and ride to the top of the charts and arenas on). White trash metal, biker metal, it's all a fitting description of the tunes included on
We Are Volsung. Case in point, the one-two punch of the album-opening "Stark Van Oben" and the title track, or just take a gander at such song titles as "We Ride" and "White Trash." That said, lyrically
Zodiac Mindwarp comes up short here and there, as with the predictable sentiment conveyed throughout a song like "Don't Touch My Guitar." But as evidenced by tracks such as "Die Pretty," fans of
Motörhead and early
Guns N' Roses (the latter of whom
Zodiac Mindwarp toured with early in their career) will find plenty of unapologetic, cranked-to-ten metal to sink their teeth into throughout
We Are Volsung. ~ Greg Prato