Recording History and Overview
At this point of Deuteronomium's career, Johnny Pesonen and Jari Mantour were replaced by Kalle Paju (guitar) and Janne-Jussi Kontoniemi (drums). The songs on Street Corner Queen were written between many years before the band entered the Studio Watercastle in Jyväskylä, 1998. According to the band members, on Street Corner Queen they couldn't decide what style they wanted to focus on yet wanted to be pioneering and write lyrics that kept balance between artistic output and intelligible meaning. Their guitarist-vocalist Miika Partala was the main songwriter at this point and he experimented with more and more bizarre musical styles after another, combining these elements with extreme metal. Street Corner Queen eventually ended up being a mixture of a broad spectrum of different styles, the main focus being on melodic output of Scandinavian death metal in vein of old In Flames or Dark Tranquillity and groovy rock oriented aggression similar to later Entombed and 1990s Napalm Death material. Many of the songs incorporate death metal, black metal, punk rock, classic rock, jazz, rap, reggae and funk metal elements – a style they were known to call 'death and roll'. The vocalization of Miika Partala shifts between aggressive Killing Joke type punk shouting and high pitched black metal style shrieking.
One of the more peculiar tracks on the album include "Bonsai People", which is a Red Hot Chili Peppers type funk metal song. The lyrics compare childlike people to bonsai trees in a way that they are tiny (humble, God-fearing) but as a strong breed they can endure the rending of wind (temptation) since their roots are deeply entrenched into soil (word of God). "Spell of Hell" on the other hand is a dark, melodic black metal type song which begins with oppressive clean guitaring. With a haunting voice a person whispers the words "Hell is a totally cool site, so let's get there, all right?". This sentence is probably an attempt to describe the attitude of some of the black metal fans; the lyrics tell that those who say things like that are under the 'spell of hell' which the devil uses to mislead people. Consecutively, it can be said that "Spell of Hell" was Deuteronomium's way of expressing their stance on the black metal movement which had at that time become very popular, with Emperor and likes being played on the Finnish metal radio program 'Metalliliitto', as the band members recall in an interview. "Spell of Hell" became Deuteronomium's best known song. The songs "III" and "Northern Praise" are also black metal influenced and present more worshipful lyrics, the forementioned is vocalized in Finnish and refers to the trinity of God. The latter is also a somewhat popular song as it is noted for being one of their best known songs. The self-titled song "Street Corner Queen" is a punk rock influenced death metal song about a prostitute, the lyrics tell that she sells love though deep inside she knows that it's not love at all, and that she seeks comfort from wrong ways. "Druglord" is another punk rock influenced death metal track. The lyrics are written from the perspective of a young person who suffers from drug addiction.
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