ZIMMERS HOLE — Legion Of Flames (review)

ZIMMERS HOLE — Legion Of Flames album cover

Album · 2001 · Thrash Metal

4/5 · 2015-12-19
Vim Fuego

Here’s a question: would you be embarrassed to have the line “a thousand miles of cock” repeating in your head over and over?

If the answer is yes, then you’d better avoid this album. Perhaps something more serious by Opeth or Sentenced or Dream Theater would be more to your liking.

If the answer is no, read on and listen up! “Legion Of Flames” by Zimmer’s Hole should be right up your back alley.

Zimmer’s Hole is what the three quarters of Strapping Young Lad/Devin Townsend’s band who aren’t Devin Townsend do while Townsend is off being a creative genius. The music is just as powerful and thrashy as Strapping Young Lad, except the humour is much more juvenile and scatological, and of course, The Heathen is quite a different vocalist to Hevy Devy. Basically, if you like SYL or any of Townsend’s other metal projects, you will know exactly where Zimmer’s Hole is coming from.

Some of the songs sound quite serious, like the title track, until you read the titles and lyrics. There are veins of double entendre, urine extraction, and more puns than you can shake a shtick at. Try these titles on for size: “The Hole Is The Law”, “Re-Anaconda”, “Gender Of The Beast”, “Aerometh”, and “Sodomanaz”. “The Death Of The Ressurection Of The Death Of Metal” includes the immortal lyrics “The hole is the law/Bow down to this law/And have some coleslaw”. “Satan Is A Gay Porn Star” may well be the funniest song here, but then again, it might be deadly serious. Fuck only knows what mishmash of languages it is sung in.

There are also musical jokes aplenty. “Evil Robots” is a piss take of Metallica’s “Master Of Puppets”, “Rock Move 47” has Donald Duck style black metal vocals. “Sodomanaz” starts as pure glam and ends up kicking out the jams, and finishes with the riff from “Back In Black”.

In amongst the mayhem, a cover of Joni Mitchell’s “This Flight Tonight” pops up, done quite respectfully, but also fully metal.

And so where does all the cock come into it? Surprisingly enough, it’s from the song “1000 Miles Of Cock”. It comes from one of the catchiest tunes here. Clocking in at just over the minute mark, the song is a psychobilly cowpunk freak out. The lyrics feature the lines “My baby left me for a thousand miles of cock/It wasn’t that way ‘til she started smokin’ rock/Well now she’s out there on the corner of the block/My baby left me for a thousand miles of cock”. The melody and gang vocals will have you singing it, regardless of gender, sexuality or moral standards, and then will keep popping back into your head days after. The lyrics could be a serious social comment on the nature of drug addiction. Most likely, the lyrics are just funny and happen to rhyme.

Pure and simple, if you like thrash and like a bit of a giggle, try this. Don’t be shy, there’s plenty of cock to go round.