At the end of the summer of ’08 I first heard about Grave Robber. I received their debut full-length Be Afraid, but although they played some catchy horror punk, I wasn’t too fond of it. I described their music as a combination between Volbeat and Wednesday 13, while they were wearing the outfits of GWAR. They didn’t bring anything new to the table and therefore it was fun for the Halloween-period, but nothing more. Recently the people of Retroactive Records were kind enough to provide me with the second album of these horror punkers, called Inner Sanctum.

 

The first real song on Inner Sanctum, ‘Detonation A.D.’, starts of really energetic and is a catchy up-tempo song with nice vocal harmonies. ‘Shadows’ continues on the same path and the “whoah-oh”-parts in this song will probably do great live. When ‘Altered States’ however starts with “whoah-oh” and ‘Fear No Evil’ contains a lot of “Whoah-oh’s” and ‘I’m Possessed’ also starts with a couple of “whoah-oh’s” I’m pretty much done with this whole record already. I’m happy for them they found joy in their believe and found joy in music to speak about their believe, but this is just annoying as fuck and doesn’t stimulate very much to listen to more songs than the first five (intro excluded).

 

With ‘Tell Tale Heart’ the music fortunately changes a lot. Where the other tracks were more catchy, ‘Tell Tale Heart’ is a more “Praise The Lord” kind of song. Think Woopy Goldberg’s Sister Act, but then with Volbeat’s Michael Poulsen singing. Not very horror or punk or metal, but just in time to recover from the many “whoah-oh’s”. After this one they unfortunately just continue were they left before it. Woohoo! More “whoah-fucking-whoah-ho-oh’s”!.

 

On multiple Christian “white metal” websites this release is very well received, but I honestly can’t understand why people would give this album a positive rating. I did my best to give Grave Robber a second chance, but they blew it. Their first record had a lack of originality. But after the whole band was replaced, except for vocalist Wretched, they’ve become even more pathetic. The info-sheet that was delivered with this album states: “Horror punk metal got its start with the Misfits, but with Inner Sanctum, Grave Robber offers much, much more!” In that case I’m the fucking pope, president of the U.S.A. and a famous basketball player all at once. I don’t know if I should be laughing or crying right now…