Snow White’s Poison Bite: Featuring: Dr. Gruesome

A new take on horror punk from the graveyards of Finland

By Natasha Scharf
( Metal Hammer )
published

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When The Misfits formed in 1977, they couldn’t have imagined they would still be inspiring new bands more than 30 years later. SWPB are a face-painted horror-punk outfit from Finland whose Victory debut even features guest vocals from former Misfits frontman Michale Graves.

There’s a lot of competition when it comes to bands replicating that zombie-infested metal punk formula but SWPB do things differently. Although there’s an abundance of theremins, their vocals are more Mindless Self Indulgence than Danzig and there’s also a touch of early AFI with some Beyond The Valley-era Murderdolls.

In fact, aside from Graves’ involvement and the facepaint, The Misfits influence has been assimilated into their cauldron of post-hardcore and modern metal and the result is that SWPB’s album brings fresh blood to an often imitated style. Spooky, with puns aplenty, it wouldn’t be a big surprise if this lot ended up on tour with Wednesday 13.

Natasha Scharf
Natasha Scharf
Deputy Editor, Prog

Contributing to Prog since the very first issue, writer and broadcaster Natasha Scharf was the magazine’s News Editor before she took up her current role of Deputy Editor, and has interviewed some of the best-known acts in the progressive music world from ELP, Yes and Marillion to Nightwish, Dream Theater and TesseracT. Starting young, she set up her first music fanzine in the late 80s and became a regular contributor to local newspapers and magazines over the next decade. The 00s would see her running the dark music magazine, Meltdown, as well as contributing to Metal Hammer, Classic Rock, Terrorizer and Artrocker. Author of music subculture books The Art Of Gothic and Worldwide Gothic, she’s since written album sleeve notes for Cherry Red, and also co-wrote Tarja Turunen’s memoirs, Singing In My Blood. Beyond the written word, Natasha has spent several decades as a club DJ, spinning tunes at aftershow parties for Metallica, Motörhead and Nine Inch Nails. She’s currently the only member of the Prog team to have appeared on the magazine’s cover.