Product Description

"It's a Halloween party in a jewel-box" Voltaire comments about OOKY SPOOKY, his most hilariously irreverent CD to date. Years in the making, Voltaire's 5th album contains a duet with the Dresden Dolls' Amanda Palmer, a track from a Cartoon Network movie plus his crowd-pleasing songs about zombies, devils, and dancing skeletons. In fact necrophilia, cannibalism, prostitution, buggery, blasphemy, sacrilege, going to hell, and bombing New Jersey are just a few of the charming topics covered on OOKY SPOOKY.

Review

Having experimented very successfully with a straightforwardly serious album in Then and Again, Voltaire followed up his hilarious limited-edition live disc with a full new winner in the realm of truly black humor in Ooky Spooky. With Voltaire happily embracing mariachi horns as a new element to his music not perhaps as sudden a shift as Johnny Cash adding them to Ring of Fire, but with a similarly enjoyable effect, matched with the great cover art the result is probably one of the best musical fusions all around, not to mention a perfect Tejano album under another name (not too strange when you realize the Eastern European origins of both that and Voltaires previous efforts as a whole). The kick-up-your-heels, if your feet havent rotted away, kick of lead single Zombie Prostitute was already familiar I had a stiffy/For the stiff in front of me is just one perfect line of snark among many and unsurprisingly benefits from both the swirling strings and the brass interjections in equal measure. Meanwhile, seemingly the-joke-is-all-in-the-title efforts like Bomb New Jersey and Reggae Mortis prove to be thorough gutbusters, while Amanda Palmer from the often similarly minded Dresden Dolls takes a great guest turn on Stuck with You, a duet between obsessively dueling lovers who take it all the way to the grave and beyond. Throughout, Voltaire's excellent singing remains his not-so-secret weapon, jauntily vocalizing about white boy bullfighters and cannibal banquets with total élan. If there's a jaw-dropping moment, though, Cantina, returning from its appearance on the Zombie Prostitute EP, might just be it a classic high-and-lonesome country & western song about the legendary bar scene in Star Wars. Except said scene didn't feature the song's narrator being repeatedly had by all the denizens of the bar in a mass interspecies omnisexual orgy, an omission in the original movie now utterly, perfectly corrected. Do not play at insecure fanboys, however. Ned Raggett --Allmusic.com

When asked to describe his music, Voltaire once said its Music for a parallel universe where electricity was never invented and Morrissey is the Queen of England. In the instance of his fifth full length release, Ooky Spooky (out on Projekt Records) that description is as apt as any for classifying his work. Try as I might, I could not find a label for what he does! In the course of his recording career, beginning in 1998 and running to the present, Voltaire has made music that takes Goth culture, dresses it in its geeky best, and makes it art that defies genre every time. Ooky Spooky is merriment made music from the first song, The Land Of the Dead, and the party lasts until the closing notes of the album. Featured as the introduction to Cartoon Network movie, Billy and Mandy's Big Boogie Adventure, this song is an oddly melodic account of the life of character Grim, short for Grim Reaper. It offers some very bizarre lyrical images that are based on the cartoon, and music that sounds like it would be more at home in a cantina somewhere south the border of sanity. Land of the Dead sets the tone for the entire album with its flippant lyrics about all things dead. The second episode in this macabre missive is Zombie Prostitute, which was one of the first songs I heard from this new album via MySpace. What can one say about songs that make necrophilia funny? In the case of this reviewer the only thing that can be said is Voltaire is the master of the genre! This song takes tongue in cheek to a whole new level, in that the tongue and cheek are those of his undead love. Definitely one song to cheek out(drum roll please!). Of the eleven songs on the aptly named Ooky Spooky, my favorite is without a doubt the Star Wars (gone perversely awry) themed Cantina. A country ballad (of all the Godforsaken things to hear while reviewing!) based in the planet Tatooine, this song is so odd, so dirty, so ridden with raunchy ridicule that I can't write a great deal about it for fear of a lawsuit! Yes, it's that bad, but in a great way. I have been a fan of the series since I was a child, and as a result of this song, I'll never be able to look at it the same way again. Nor will you. Ooky Spooky is a great album, so great you may need a support group after you listen to it.
The bottom line: This album is eleven tracks of gruesome, gorey giddiness guaranteed to get you giggling, no matter how tragically Goth you think you are. Benny Hell --VF Magazine