Album review : SICK’N'BEAUTIFUL – Horror Vacui

BLKIIBLK/Frontiers [Release date 18.04.25]

Sick’n’Beautiful’s fourth album and their first release on Frontiers’ debut “heavy music imprint”, BLKIIBLK.

Horror Vacui is an artistic concept, roughly translated from Latin as fear of empty spaces.

Fronted by the sexually alluring Herma Sick (Greta Di Lacovo), S’n’B present a visual image that’s one part Lordi, one part Rammstein, and one part Gal Gadot.

Funnily enough, opening track, ‘Human’, is one part Lordi, one part Rammstein, and… well, we don’t know what Gal Gadot sounds like (but Herma sounds great).

The album is filled to the brim with sawing riffs, bass bending notes and detonating drumbeats, all providing a solid foundation, underpinning Herma’s serrated vocals.

But it’s not all about the beat. These songs aren’t short on melody and hooks, and that opener is a genuine scene setter. An all of the above (plus a slice of Nine Inch Nails) sensory assault, squeezing out well crafted choruses that may not comply with the industry standard, but hit the spot just the same.

The Alice Cooper influenced ‘My Wounds’, ‘Hate Manifesto’ and ‘Raise The Dragon’ all crackle with kinetic energy, and are delivered in a swirl of pounding, combative heavy metal, but hold a tune nevertheless.

Elsewhere, the songs are smart, tightly woven, dynamic.

Like ‘Death Police’, which sounds like its title, where Herma swaps vocal lines with grimy, growling, transgressive “voices off”.

It’s one of several carefully choreographed heavy metal battles, flaring up like a torch on each line of Herma’s dialogue with the unseen. This is the album’s key track.

Her laminated vocals swell ‘Septem Malificas’ seemingly from the inside out. The song always seems on the point of igniting. It may be a reference to the movie short, ‘Septem’ which examines the Devil’s role in the start of every sin. Maybe not, but it would fit the overall musical theme of Horror Vacui.

Like a few others, the insidious ‘Haunted’ and ‘The Rat King’ slip way over the line into Symphonic Metal territory. An indication perhaps as to where the band’s journey began.
Long may that journey continue. ***1/2

Review by Brian McGowan

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