If we’re talking Nekromantix, why look back at ‘Curse Of The Coffin’? The Danes’ second album didn’t spawn a run of hit singles like ‘Return Of The Loving Dead’, and it wasn’t the debut that grabbed them their first record deal. ‘Curse Of The Coffin’ is, however, the album which cemented their sound into the Nekromantix we know and love, with a rough and ready charm that still grabs you by the collar thirty five years down the line.

Lead single and opening track ‘Devil Smile’ is pure pit fuel with just a hint of Lemmy’s drawl on Nekroman’s vocals and a sense of pure urgency running through every second. You can’t let this one drift into the background noise: it demands your attention. We could say the absolute same thing about the title track too. It’s the distilled sound of a band ready to make their mark on the scene.

As well as ‘Devil Smile’, the only other song from ‘Curse Of The Coffin’ to hold its place in Nekromantix setlists today is ‘Alice In Psycholand’. It’s not just because of the twitchy, claustrophobic quality, of course. Peter Sandorff’s guitar work on this track is second to none for intricacy and drama.This is the era before the Nekromantix acquired their polish, and the raw edges of ‘Curse Of The Coffin’ leave the musicianship with nowhere to hide. We have to appreciate just how amazing the lineup on this record was, both technically and together.

It’s always a bit of a detective game re-listening to older albums when you know what comes next, and picking out the clues to what each band decided to pursue and which to drop is half the fun. Re-listening to ‘Howling At The Moon’ reveals the roots of ‘Haunted Cathouse’ with its slinky darkness. If you’re into the horror-tropes side of Nekromantix on later songs like ‘Who Killed The Cheerleader?’, we’ve got that in spades on ‘New Born Son Of Satan’ or ‘Save My Grave’. But the most unusual track, the one that gives away the Nekromantix’ fun side as well as the rockabilly that they adapted for their own uses, has to be ‘Mama Don’t Allow’. It’s a country parody of a 1920s song that reveals a love of Rock n Roll behind their cheeky grins and a minor debt to Mad Sin, and we can only imagine how much fun they had putting this one together.

Thirty five years on, ‘Curse Of The Coffin’ deserves an unearthing, not only for diehard Nekromantix fans, but for anyone who wants an album bursting with all the things we love about this era of Psychobilly.

Kate Allvey

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