The New Jacobin Club – Soldiers Of The Mark

I can’t say that the great white north is the venue most typically associated with quality horror punk, but the occasional exemplar still comes to mind.  Nim Vind being one responsible for much personal satisfaction, it would still seem more the exception rather than the rule.  That being said, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan sextet The New Jacobin Club has been making its mark in the Canadian prairie horror scene for over a decade.  Their latest full length, Soldiers Of The Mark, offers up ten forceful tracks of atmospheric, horror infused punk-rock sure to satisfy their audience’s ghoulish desire for hard hitting gothic tunage.

Opening with vocalist The Horde’s sinister baritone bellowe, The New Jacobin Club wastes no time setting the tone for the barrage of rock ready riffs thereafter.  “The Mark” should instantly hook fans of Danzig and Doyle with it’s steady guitar-heavy, gang-vocal bolstered chorus.  “Rise up, from the foaming sea, we’ve come to know the enemy… we wear the mark, and we are saved,” chimes a chorus of bandmates as they lead the charge into a late-song bridge built upon Poison Candi’s over the top (but not out of place) theramine and Mistress Nagini’s bopping keyboard.  Unlike some horror acts out there, the band avoids coming across hokey or cheesey, instead taking their devotion to the dark subject matter seriously without coming across overly cultish.  The band knows their horror-rock, and fans of the classics will easily embrace tracks like “Champagne Ivy,” “Angel MMXIV” and “A Grey Day To Die” without hesitation.

But with such a diverse instrumental roster, The New Jacobin Club presents a dynamic performance with notable track-by-track variance.  Take the acoustic lead in of “Parade Of Innocents” and run it up against the ominous cello strokes and odd chord pairings leading into Poison Candi’s elegant vocal performance.  Such targeted contrast becomes the norm with songs like “Into The Fire,” which reduces itself to an earthy cello tone reminiscent of a spooky Murder By Death experiment, or the frighteningly distorted, foreign tongue spoken word nightmare that transforms into “Garthim.”  It’s the effortless blending and blurring of styles that makes Soldiers Of The Mark such a gripping grind.  One moment The Horde and Poison Candi are sparring for the mic for what could pass as a duet at a satanist’s funeral (“My Smile”), and the next they’re rocking out about the mark of Kane and a deadly plague in a fleeting chorus vaguely channeling The Ramones (“Return To Eden”).  Horror purists will swoon at just how masterfully coherent every note compliments the next.

The New Jacobin Club has crafted an purposeful and highly varied adventure sure to make it’s mark in the horror community.  As such, Soldiers Of The Mark manages to skirt the redundancy that often results from playing to such a particular and narrow niche.  Thanks to a rotating cast of vocalists and a host of sparingly interspersed instruments, the album can be enjoyed from start to finish, and during every eerie moment in between.