01. Traipsing Through The Blood
02. At The Gates
03. Terrortory
04. Images Quite Horrible
05. Her Ghost Comes Out To Play
06. Caught In The Webs
07. Scare You
08. Not One
09. Darkside, Inside
10. Re-Inventing Fear
11. I Lie Awake
12. Hands Around My Throat
13. Say Your Prayers
14. Where Is Michael?
15. Dead On…
16. Into The Afterlife (Instrumental)

Halloween — and no kids, not the once Kiske-led Helloween — have just released their fifth studio album in their 27 years of existence. Titled Terrortory, the album somehow picks up where they left off with classics like Victims of the Night and Don’t Metal With Evil. Hailing from Detroit and obviously topically influenced by the likes of Alice Cooper, Halloween plays a unique amalgam of NWOBHM intertwined with good ol’ fashioned American Classic Metal. There’s also Doom elements inside the interwoven tapestries of the sonic nightmares they lure you into, making Terrortory one of those albums impossible to say “they sound just like (some freakin’ other band).”
How else would you want this album to begin with besides “Traipsing Through the Blood?” Before you get off track and think it’s a murderous winter serial killer song, it’s actually … an uplifting call to arms, a Marine-like “seize the day” anthem that belies the visceral title. “Why do we never care, until it’s way too late? Why do we waste our time; we play with fate.” The lyrical content is a query into cowardice, the sin of hesitation, of self-apathy. With the serrated riffing from guitarist Don Gurrier, the machine-gun like unforgiving rhythm section, and vocalist Brian Thomas’ foreboding and damning delivery … the guys set the bar unbelievably high with this opener.
The title track “Terrortory” nearly holds up against “Traipsing Through the Blood.” The galloping guitar riffs are the most mesmerizing ingredient in this concoction. Although simple, like an AC/DC riff, it’s implants itself into your brain tissue and becomes impossible to remove even as you move on to the rest of the story.