Review by Booklist Review
The Shivers were one of the biggest pop-punk bands of the early 2000s, but their origin story holds a dark, apocalyptic secret, one with which front woman Lily Lawless can no longer bear to live. So begins DiLouie's latest (after How to Make a Horror Movie and Survive, 2024), which unfolds on the page as an oral history of the band as told by Lily and others, as Lily sits in prison for murder. Readers follow The Shivers, led by Lily and her boyfriend Drake Morgan, as they quickly garner attention for their unique sound and the violence that follows in the wake of their performances. Cheekily playing off of the age-old accusation that harder-edged music is satanic, DiLouie spins a story that is fresh, entertaining, and intensely unsettling. Is Drake Morgan actually the Antichrist? The answer may leave readers existentially unmoored. An easy hand sell for fans of Grady Hendrix's We Sold Our Souls (2018) or Silvia Moreno-Garcia's Silver Nitrate (2023), but don't forget those who loved the discomforting verisimilitude of The Ghost That Ate Us (2022), by Daniel Kraus.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Outré even by the standards of supernatural horror fiction, DiLouie's ostentatious, 1990s-set latest (after How to Make a Horror Movie and Survive) proposes that the Antichrist is the front man for a Pennsylvania art band and that the apocalypse he threatens can only be averted through the intervention of a punk pop group headed by his ex-girlfriend. Presented as an oral history, the tale unfolds through interviews mostly with members of the Shivers, a small-town ensemble whose seductive live shows, led by guitarists Lily Lawless and her charismatic partner, Drake Morgan, compel attendees to riot and kill. After Lily comes to suspect that Drake and his music are unholy and splits from him, Drake--who eventually admits to being less than human--goes on to found the infernal band Universal Priest, setting the stage for a showdown with the Shivers at the Armageddon Battle of the Bands, with the fate of the world on the line. DiLouie seeds the narrative with enough pop theology to undergird its tongue-in-cheek excesses, which include a cabal of rogue clergy wielding rocket launchers and a Universal Priest stage performance that unfolds like a mash-up of The Omen and This Is Spinal Tap. It's a wild ride. (May)
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
