Thirteen shots are a horrorbilly 4-piece band from Birmingham, England. They offer everything from high-paced, surf-rock riffs to slower, eerie, more jazzy kind of segments, with plenty of garage sprinkled in. One can definitely hear that these ghoulish rockers take influence from such horror greats like Nekromantix, Calabrese, and The Meteors so if you find yourself gravitating towards such music, “Tales that Start With a Whisper” is an album worth checking out.
As Thirteen Shots are a new band for me its hard to say how they’ve evolved, but from listening to prior material (as well as they entirety of “Vaudeville” as included in the European tour edition of the album) I get the feeling the sound isn’t changing a ton, but rather getting more clean, crisp and tighter as a group altogether. They bring a high energy, party rocking from the grave feel to the forefront of their music, which is particularly apparent in the tracks “Death Jam 2000”, “Nekrosexual”, and the title track “Tales that start with a Whisper”. As well for the more rock/punk oriented boils and ghouls out there, they’ve got the spooky intro and crushing, catchy chorus of “Bewitched”, and for the more jazz/blues inclined, “Psycho Jukebox” brings a rockabilly and spooky underground jazz club vibe to the rest of the album.
All in all, Thirteen Shots did a great job putting together a collection of catchy, rocking, horrorbilly tunes and on top of that some really simple, yet effective artwork to tie everything all up. If you have any interest at all in classic psychobilly and punk, rockabilly, horror punk or anything of the like, “Tales that start with a Whisper” is a must listen!
7.5/10 Skulls (8.0 for the European Tour Edition)
http://thirteenshots.bandcamp.com
Reviewed by Ghoulshow