Horrorscope

Welcome to my second 'Horrorscope' review!! Just had to point that out, were they not aware of the Overkill album before giving this one a title??

Well, this isn't that bad of an EP... what we have here is a pretty decent Jaws of Death semi-ballad, a Japanese bonus track (the title track) and three covers ("Out in the Fields", "Breaker" and "Kill the King", curse you if you don't know the bands!). All of these songs are available elsewhere; "Under Your Spell" on 'Jaws', "Out in the Fields" on some Gary Moore/Phil Lynnot tribute that I can't remember the title of right now, "Horrorscope" on the Jap version of 'Jaws', "Breaker" on 'A Tribute to Accept Volume I', and "Kill the King" on the digibook version of 'Jaws' and also "Tribute to Ronnie James Dio".

I'm not 100% of the line-ups for the respective songs, but I think OitF and Breaker feature the Nuclear Fire line up, which is a definite bonus as it is the best one they ever had. Sure, it's not the line-up that released the s/t, but I still consider Nuclear Fire to be the album where the band seemed to really gel and is instrumentally their best release. "Out in the Fields" is a pretty decent take on the classic original, the parts where the excellent lead guitar replace the keyboard parts on the original (second verse) are worth hearing, but unfortunately, Ralf's screechy vocals that I am usually quite fond of sound kinda out of place and unfortunately take away a lot of quality.
Breaker is a more standard cover and once again the original song is classic, but this cover just isn't quite as beautifully raw and intense as the original. If you've heard the original song, you're well off not having heard this one, and of course, if you haven't heard the original song you're best off hearing that one first.

The three other songs are all played with the Jaws of Death line-up. Actually, Henny Wolter instead of Tom Naumann is actually the only difference between the two line-ups, but as 'Nuclear Fire' would prove, that makes all the difference! "Under Your Spell", read my JoD review and you'll see... it's a decent mid-paced semi-ballad with some keyboards thrown in (several of the band members seem to think of this song as their best song ever, not sure why, really). It's similar to "Tears of Rage", "Now or Never", "Silence" and "Wings of Desire", so it's one song of this caliber per album, as you can see (if you know all songs on all PF albums off hand, that is).

The song "Horrorscope" is pretty much the song "Dollars" off the s/t, but with more technical drumming. This is mostly because the main riff is really similar, otherwise it's a decent enough song on it's own. Not quite up to the norm of their three first albums, though. It's also found on the Japanese version of JoD, but get the digibook version instead, as you get the far superior "Kill the King" on that one.

Which, by the way, is the last song on this EP. What is it with all these bands covering this song, anyway?? Stratovarius, Grave Digger, Heathen... Well, I shortly went through this one in the other review too... A speedy and energetic cover, pretty good and fairly headbangable; probably the best song on here. But again, this song is found on the digibook 'Jaws of Death' so it can hardly be seen as a reason to get this EP.

As you've probably figured out by now, I got this EP mostly for completist values and also because it was cheap (I actually bought it along with Maiden's Eddie's Archive - another completist purchase, but less cheap of course;)).

I'm just gonna end this review with: MWOAHAHA I HAVE WRITTEN MORE PF REVIEWS THAN ANYONE ELSE!! EAT MY SHIT, NIGHTCRAWLER!!!!