Band:	W.A.S.P.
Album:	Dying For The World
Style:	Heavy metal
Release date:	2002
Guest review by:	DayFly

01. Shadow Man
02. My Wicked Heart
03. Black Bone Torso
04. Hell For Eternity
05. Hallowed Ground
06. Revengeance
07. Trail Of Tears
08. Stone Cold Killers
09. Rubber Man
10. Hallowed Ground [acoustic version]

Immediately after 9/11 Blackie Lawless was riding the crest of the war-on-terror-wave as much as any American (and more than enough Europeans, too). With plenty of anger stacked up he went into the studio, releasing the resulting Dying For The World little more than a year after Unholy Terror. And boy, this album is dripping with venom and rage. Half of the album consists of frenzied rockers written to "go kill people with". Thankfully, the lyrics are not as crude and embarrassing as many album responses to 9/11 tend to be as Lawless was careful not to target anyone specifically (he does get very explicit in interviews and liner notes however). In fact, had this album not been released as a response to 9/11 one might mistake it as another attack on organized religion in the same manner as the Neon God duology and the aforementioned Unholy Terror. The lyrics may not be as disturbed sounding as those on Kill.Fuck.Die but one really does notice a satisfying, evil glee behind "Shadow Man" and "Stone Cold Killers" as Lawless proclaims upcoming doom to people who committed atrocities in the name of religion.

Musically, the mid-paced and menacing "Shadow Man", which would not sound out of place on K.F.D, is this album's "Charisma" and easily one of the band's strongest tunes. The faster, simple rockers the band is generally thought to excel at (not that I personally share that sentiment in the least) all suffer from a bad mixing (especially the vocals could be a bit more prominent) and production (the guitar tone is a bit too bright and "happy" to work in the album's context) to a certain degree. The aforementioned "Stone Cold Killers" is probably the best of the lot, as it has the strongest chorus and the subtle keyboards add more depth to it. On the remaining tracks the band drops their hostile stance, even if the chilling "Black Bone Torso" that deals with the child abuse by Catholic priests is arguably the most disturbing song on the album. Lastly, both the atmospheric "Tail Of Tears" and the more conventional and heavier "Hallowed Ground" are haunting ballads one has come to count on the band to come up with.

With a bit more studio processing and time one truly has to wonder what a killer this could have been. As things stand however, it is "only" another quality album by W.A.S.P.'s most underrated era.