Wednesday 13

Wednesday 13 is the stage name of Joseph Poole, and the band that carries it plays horror punk with the volume and attack of heavy metal. The songs are built out of B-movie material — monsters, murder, the iconography of the drive-in — and delivered in a sneering, theatrical voice over fast, hook-driven guitar.

Musically it sits between two traditions: the speed and brevity of punk, and the weight and precision of metal, with choruses written to be shouted back rather than admired. The catalogue is deep and unusually consistent, album after album returning to horror cinema for its subject matter without the joke wearing thin, largely because the songs are constructed as songs first and jokes second. The instrumentation stays plain throughout: guitar, bass, drums, voice.

Poole came up through horror punk, fronting Frankenstein Drag Queens from Planet 13 before wider recognition arrived with Murderdolls, the project he formed with the Slipknot drummer Joey Jordison and whose 2002 album remains the record most listeners know him by. He launched the band under his own stage name afterwards and has sustained it across a substantial solo discography, Horrifier among it.

Live, the theatre is the point. Corpse makeup, horror costuming and staging borrowed from the films the songs come from frame a set played hard and fast, with little air between numbers. It is closer to a haunted attraction with a rhythm section than to a straight metal show, and the audience is expected to join in rather than watch.

It is for listeners who want their metal with a sense of humour and a body count, and for anyone who suspects a horror film and a rock show want much the same thing from a crowd.