Band Review: Snow White's Poison Bite

As I indicated yesterday, I did not get to see Snow White's Poison Bite, and I feel bad about that. On the plus side, covering them last, and with them have a larger discography than the other bands, I have spent more time listening to them than any of the others, so I hope that helps. They are permanently a part of me now.

Snow White's Poison Bite is a 4 person horror rock band from Joensuu, Finland. In this case I think horror rock refers more to the song content than the song styles. Their 2010 album, The Story of Kristy Killings, I thought sounded like pretty straightforward rock, musically. This year's release, Featuring: Dr. Gruesome and the Gruesome Gory Horror Show stretched a bit further. It incorporated more doo-wop elements, and was a bit more theatrical in terms of the first and ending tracks providing some narration and mood music.

Compared to the other bands from that night, I would say their sound is more similar to Farewell, My Love than any of the others, with a tendency towards the more melodic.

I don't feel like I quite have a handle on them, and I feel like seeing them perform would have helped with that, but we do have some transition going on. Even though the band has been around in some form since 2006, it was reformed almost completely in 2011, with only the vocalist, Allan Cotterill remaining. That's a fairly significant shakeup.

Also, there is some jumping around. That night, from seeing them earlier, they were in full skull face makeup. In the music videos they go back and forth between that, and their regular faces. The one video shows performing, acting, and miniature animation. There are just a lot of elements being thrown out there, which I think makes it harder for any of them to stick, though there are moments that really work.

Of course, my favorite videos tend to be comedic, with no fatalities, so I'm not the key demographic. Here there is a tendency towards a lot of death and a lot of blood, though it is pretty cheerfully fake. There is not a real sense of menace with any of it, and they are having fun with it.

While there is definitely the horror element, I would not say either album is a concept album. There is a "Kristy Killings" track on The Story of Kristy Killings, but the other songs do not seem to be related. They just all tell their own stories on the common themes of death and dismemberment.

Gruesome Gory Horror Show comes a little closer, telling you this is a horror show, and letting you know when it is over, with it's separate stories in between. In this way it reminds me of one of those old horror anthology films, like Dr. Terror's House of Horrors.

There is a kind of fun element to that, and a lot of the songs are really fun in their mayhem. "Halloween Means Death" gives this feeling of being pursued through a scary setting, but not too tense to not be enjoyable. Perhaps it is the equivalent of the chase through the haunted house in an episode of Scooby Doo. "Zombie Romance" (featuring Michale Graves, which is totally a big deal), sounds beautiful and heartfelt, but also, there is a certain amount of implied humor in the title, because there are many things that are completely impractical about zombies in love.

Again, back to that straightforward rock thing, "Will You Meet Me in the Graveyard" and "The End of Prom Night" both do rock, and both of those songs have videos (both with lots of fake blood). "SplatterSplatterBloodSplatter" is interesting, and kind of experimental, and then I just have a soft spot for "The Dreadful Lullaby" - I don't find it dreadful at all.

I could not find them on iTunes, but both albums are on Amazon.

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http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=ntt_srch_drd_B001S1QMES?ie=UTF8&field-keywords=Snow%20White%27s%20Poison%20Bite