The Batlord

House of Krazees: Season of the Pumpkin

Well, since I loved Twiztid's first album, but got more and more bored with their later albums I figured I'd check out their earlier stuff. Technically this isn't Twiztid, but the two members of Twiztid were in this group until they disbanded while on tour with ICP, losing third man, ROC, after which they immediately formed Twiztid and got signed to Psychopathic. So I'm assuming that House of Krazees were basically just the prologue to Twiztid and will have the best parts of early Twiztid but without the juggalo crap since they weren't even on Psychopathic at the time.




First thing that's obvious is that these people had about ten bucks to make this album. This sounds like it was recorded in a garage. For many this would be a bad thing, but the lo-fi reverb on this is perfect for creating a creepy atmosphere. And as the album title suggests this has a very Halloween vibe, so the production sounds totally appropriate.

On the other hand the primitive nature of the recording really exposes the amateurishness of the songwriting. Whatever you want to say about Twiztid they were in control of their craft, but these guys, while they can lay down some surprisingly entertaining verses, don't yet have the same polish and give the impression of three semi-talented kids from the block who somehow managed to record an album. Which isn't necessarily the worst thing in the world, since The Green Book was all polish without any soul. And this is slowly growing on me, so time will tell whether or not I'll be telling all the Twiztid fans that they should quit being such vaginas and listen to HOK instead. At the very least it's definitely an album to bump on Halloween.

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