Monthly Archives: March 2013

SKULL90

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NECROPSYA, Skullcrusher  (2006, self-released EP)

The skull: As with the good Friar Johnsen’s complaints regarding the lack of crushing going on with skull81 (a band named Skullcrusher), this cover also promises skull crushing without actually delivering it. As is, this cover is absolutely great. The skull looks quite happy for what is about to happen to him, which seems to be more of a drilling than a crushing. While it seems measures have been taken to either prevent a crushing, or repairs were made from a previous crushing attempt (the bolted-on metal plates), both are moot points: this skull’s about to get a lower parietal trepanation on the left and right side, and real quick, dawg. We’ll have to wait even longer to get a truly skullcrushed skull added to the Skullection. For now, this beauty will do just fine.

The music:
This is one Brazilian thrash/death type band that Nuclear War Now! will probably NOT be reissuing on vinyl anytime soon. It’s lame, pedestrian, boring, and without any reason to exist whatsoever. They’ve self-released two full-length albums since, and I hope there’s some measure of improvement on those. How to describe this level of lameness? Maybe the most generic of early ’90s British thrash,  with an attempt at death metal in the vocals, but these are un-threatening, non-guttural, and unconvincing in their delivery. Tame and utterly fourth rate. I guarantee that if Wild Rags Records was around in 2013, they’d be the only label to consider signing them (there were a handful of good albums that came out on W.R., but you know what I mean). I’ll bet the newly-revived Pavement label and its A&R genius is gonna be all over Brazil’s Necropsya any day now…
— Friar Wagner

 

 

SKULL89

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SACRIFICE, Crest of Black (1986, demo)

The skull:
Even by the standards of the hand-drawn demo cover, this skull is pretty lame. Why does a skull with no eyes need an eyepatch? Why not wear two, then? The pentagram is of course always a welcome addition, and it’s nice that instead of the cliched knife in the teeth, this pirate skull is biting down on a big axe, it’s notched blade glinting in the sun. How he’s going to wield it is another question for another time.

The music:
Early Japanese thrash that’s pretty much exactly as good as you’re imagining. It’s easy to forget when you hear something this murky and terrible that in 1986, thrash was actually pretty advanced. It’s the year of Reign in Blood, Peace Sells, and Master of Puppets, but you’d think from listening to Crest of Black that Hellhammer’s first demo had just been released, that Mantas was still in Venom, and that Quorthon was still squatting over pentagrams. This demo sounds terrible, the songs are awful, and the playing and singing are atrocious. I know there’s a whole scene of people for whom this kind of “authenticity” trumps all other concerns (and it is for exactly this undiscerning crowd that this barely-a-footnote demo was bootlegged on vinyl), but I for one demand a bit more than an unusual (for metal) provenance and a yellowing photocopied tape sleeve. Don’t hear small sound indeed!
— Friar Johnsen

SKULL88

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COME SLEEP, The Skull of Ahab  (2004, demo)

The skull:
Man, just when you think you’ve seen the simplest of simple skull album covers, here comes Come Sleep. I very much doubt this is the skull of Ahab, unless he was of the Homo Habilis species, and somehow I think the dude was younger than 1.4 million years old. But hey, Come Sleep have provided artwork that’s beautiful in its simplicity, with the understated band non-logo tattooed across the skull’s left eye. What a hipster.

The music:
This Swedish band rank at about a 5 on the Sludge Boredom Scale. It’s not the boring-est sludge ever, as it has various layers and textures that keep it just a little bit colorful, and some of the vocals are actually emotive in a way that ape-thug shouts can never be. You can tell they’ve studied the requisite Neurosis and Mastodon albums, but ultimately this five-songer does indeed beckon me to slumber. It’s just not my thing, but if you like sludge, there’s lots worse out there, and the band’s obscurity is not quite deserved.
— Friar Wagner

 

SKULL87

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BARE BONES, Refreshing Old Skull (2008, demo)

The skull:
Old, I’ll grant. A skull? Yes. Refreshing? I’m not sure about that. I suppose it’s refreshing for a band to just own up to the ridiculousness of their BDSery in this way. I mean, the band is Bare Bones. The demo is Refreshing Old Skull. Surely that’s a sign of some self-awareness, right? Right?

The music:
Although it’s rarely a genuine pleasure to suffer through these obscure releases for Big Dumb Skulls, there’s something satisfying about peering into an otherwise untouched and unloved pocket of the scene. This Polish band released two demos in the late 00s and then broke up. Came and went, with no one the wiser for it. Listening to Refreshing Old Skull, it’s pretty obvious why: Bare Bones were a boring midpaced thrash band with crappy death vocals and their demo sounds like the work of a couple weekends in the guitarist’s bedroom. Cheap sounds, bad programmed drums, and dull songs are the order of the day. But whatever – these guys were probably teenagers when they made this. Bare Bones are no worse than the metal bands I palled around with in middle school. Okay, maybe a little worse.
— Friar Johnsen

SKULL86

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EMPATHY, Skulls on Fire  (2007, demo)

The skull:
We love our skulls on fire here at Big Dumb Skulls. We’ll take ’em any way we can get ’em, but there’s just something about skulls on fire. It takes an extremely high temperature to burn bone, but these skulls? They’ll take whatever punishment you dish out. [See prior Skulls 68 and 55 for more examples of flaming skulls.] This one is rendered in a neon-like glow in matching neon color. It’s not exactly threatening looking, and would be a not-very-well-though-out tattoo choice. Apparently the lines in the corners are either lightning, or cracks. Your choice! I choose lightning cracks.

The music:
A lot more intense and threatening than the album cover suggests (I expected something like Saxon here). This obscure UK band have since changed their name to the not-exactly-unique Painkiller, but here we have the original 4-song demo/EP by Empathy. The only song I was able to track down is “Burial,” but I’m going to assume the other three songs are in a similar vein. That vein? Think of the lost Kreator album that might have existed between Pleasure to Kill and Terrible Certainty. The riffs bristle with crisp energy and the vocals are dead-on Mille Petrozza circa 1986. The drumming is probably technically better than Ventor, but I like Ventor. As 1986 is my favorite Kreator/Mille era, I cannot help but give this a thumbs up, even if it does cruise by in a blaze of redundancy. But hey, we’ve all got our soft spots, and one of mine is this era of Kreator, so I’ll listen to anything that sounds like it once.
— Friar Wagner

SKULL85

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SLAYER, South of Heaven (1988, Def Jam)

The skull:
This cover is so famous and so iconic that it’s easy to miss pretty much all the details. When was the last time you looked at this up close? The skull itself would have to be massive, a hundred feet tall or more, if the perspective is to be trusted and the scale of the gothic architecture in the background is commensurate with other structures in the style. The skull is impaled on an equally large crucifix, and the entire scene is awash in a literal sea of blood, with artist Larry Carroll’s Bruegelian beasties cavorting about the skull in a scene to make Bosch blanche, even if the guy in the skull’s right eyesocket looks a lot like those crazy-haired trolls that elementary school girls used to put on top of their pencils. The tininess of the (all-time great) logo accentuates the hugeness of the skull, and the weird artlessness of the title, set in a block of red that looks like it was literally cut and paste over the image, only serves to heighten the gravity and horror of the entire design. This is a near perfect cover, and an absolutely brilliant big dumb skull to boot.

The music:
While I can acknowledge that, objectively, this album is not quite on par with its predecessor, this was my first Slayer album, and probably forever my favorite. That said, while it is not as consistently awesome as Reign in Blood, there are elements to this album that honestly transcend the blitzkrieg of its precursor. Knowing they couldn’t out-pace the frantic Reign, the band wisely mixed up the tempos, with success at every speed, from the dirge-like slowness of the gutsy opening title track, to the almost oppressive monotony of “Mandatory Suicide,” to the moderated midpace of the underrated “Behind the Crooked Cross” to the all-out fury of “Silent Scream,” and that’s just side one! Sure, the Judas Priest cover feels like padding on an already short album, but they do a shockingly good job of making that song their own, and yeah, maybe Tom’s moaning on “Spill the Blood” isn’t quite as spooky as he intended, but even the lesser side two of this album is packed with brilliant riffs and killer songs. The absolutely parched production, almost impossible dry, accentuates the mastery of songcraft at which the band had arrived. It’s really no surprise that after Reign in Blood and South of Heaven, the band had nowhere to go but down. Seasons in the Abyss isn’t a terrible album, but it feels at all times like a pale imitation of this one. It’s an album that sounds like it was made by some hacky British knock-off, not the proper follow-up to the greatest one-two punch in the history of thrash. And of course, after that, the band only got worse and worse, to the point that Slayer these days is little more than a sad caricature of Slayer, even if they’re more popular than ever. But none of what has come since can diminish the monumental accomplishment of this album.
— Friar Johnsen

SKULL84

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SKULLVIEW, Skullview  (1997, demo)

The skull:
This image appeared on a demo cassette, which helps fill the frame with one humongous skull! The skull seems to be leering at what it views: endless humans, clones apparently, all with shaved heads, looking like victims in some hellish concentration camp (is there any other kind of concentration camp?). They are not at all happy, and in fact look quite desperate, while the skull grins as if to say “I diiiig what this skull is viewin’, baby.” One can imagine the wider picture, too, the skull perched on top of its skeletal frame, sitting on a chopper riding down a highway in the valley of the damned. Pure evil, or something. An interesting image, one of my personal favorites in the BDS Skullection.

The music:
I have a soft spot for this sort of stuff, and while bands like Omen, Heavy Load, Manilla Road and even early Nocturnal Rites epitomize the purest heavy metal, constant rehash by newer and younger bands almost dilutes the whole idea. There are few bands that have landed in the 2000s doing something extraordinary, although Lost Horizon and Pharaoh should be mentioned, yet even those bands have a more refined, modern feel. As for the likes of Enforcer, Portrait and In Solitude, I get it, but the older bands still wrote better and more lasting songs. All this to say that Skullview were right there in 1997, when this sort of thing was at its lowest ebb of popularity, at least until Hammerfall blew up later that year. This demo sounds like some Metal Blade band circa 1984, and it’s hard not to like, even in rough demo form. The three songs here made it onto the band’s first album, and they’ve been flying the traditional heavy metal flag ever since. Skullview has a dark gothic vibe before gothic meant “Nightwish” and that sort of junk, and while it’s nothing original, their hearts are clearly in it for life, and the relative complexity of the arrangements ensures multiple listens. There’s no mistaking it for any other band: Skullview manage a sound of their own despite originating from a place of total elder gods worship. I’m sure we’d all have a blast together cranking up some Medieval Steel and Gotham City records while slamming down some beers, so yeah, I’m on Skullview’s side for sure.
— Friar Wagner

SKULL83

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DUSK RITUAL, With Rum, Skull and Crossbones (2005, demo)

The skull:
A clipart skull and crossbones on a parchment-looking background, with a few spots of blood. Or, I guess, really oddly colored rum. No, that doesn’t make any sense, unless maybe it’s some kind of rum cocktail with grenadine. But then, the title would have to be, at a minimum, With Rum, Mixers, Skull and Crossbones. So yeah, it’s probably blood. For whatever stupid piratical reason. In any case, the only cover art I could find was incredibly small, so it looks extra bad blown up to the not-especially-large standard to which we hew at BDS headquarters.

The music:
There’s really only room in the world for two pirate metal bands, and Dusk Ritual is unfortunately neither Running Wild nor Swashbuckle. Although, I guess I can’t say for certain that Dusk Ritual are actually a pirate metal band, since I can’t understand the lyrics or find them on the internet. The cover art and title are damning, however, even if the German bio on the Austrian band’s still-extant Myspace page (this 2005 demo is their only release, so one assumes this is just an abandoned online outpost of a forgotten band) seems to refer to them as “party metal”. A grim party, that. Musically, this is just crappy thrash-flavored melodic death metal, so it’s no wonder Dusk Ritual failed to light the world on fire. But, they were ahead of the pirate metal boom by a few years, and it’s not like Alestorm is any good, so maybe theirs is simply a case of being too far ahead of their time.
— Friar Johnsen

SKULL82

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SKULLDEMON, Demons of the Black Abyss  (2005, demo)

The skull:
One of the most obscure pieces in the Skullection, this cover comes from a band buried way down deep in the underground of Finnish black metal. It’s simple as hell, assembled in junior high homeroom, perhaps. Kinda Olde English style font for band name and demo title, with a negative image of a skull slapped onto a particularly un-evil looking background (a pattern more appropriate for bathroom tile than unholy hymns to the dark one). The two tiny horns on top are apparently an attempt at evilness, but it’s all pretty Mickey Mouse level stuff in the end.

The music:
Total one-man band bedroom black metal right here, complete with programmed drums. Buzzing and raw, the songs operate at a variety of tempos (moderate medium tempo to repetitive blasting). The vocals offer slight diversity, the most interesting approach being a hilarious throaty bellow that sounds like a cross between Wizard of Oz’s Wicked Witch and Sam Kinison. Inspired by Burzum and Bathory, no doubt, but not at all inspiring. Pointless, but thanks for the skull, buddy!
— Friar Wagner

SKULL81

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SKULLCRUSH, Skullcrush (2009, self-released)

The skull:
Really, Skullcrush, would it have been so hard to crush the fucking skull? Like, you’re halfway there, guys! You’re not “Tallskull” or “Tophalfofskull,” you’re Skullcrush. Just crush it already! And don’t try to tell me that black area up top is a sign of crushing. That just looks like someone set off some firecrackers on the skull’s forehead. So, next time, keep it simple like this, but get the details right. A crushed skull on a black background, with your crappy typewriter logo on top, just like this one. That’d be perfect.

The music:
It’s not everyday you hear Macedonian metal, and while I was expecting the worst, really, this isn’t so bad. The base formula for Skullcrush is late 80s German thrash of the second-tier: Assassin, Protector, Living Death, that sort of thing. Fast picking, a few inspired riffs, and a lot of the basketball beat, with vocals that are almost hardcore shouting (and in… Macedonian? I guess?) The production isn’t the best, but I’ve made do with less, and the tunes are solid if you don’t care that you’ve heard a hundred others just like them. Hardcore thrashers looking for something new could do a lot worse than to pad out their collections with this sort of thing, and of course you can impress your friends by being able to name a Macedonian thrash band. In any case, this is better than all those lame American and British rethrash bands writing songs about moshing and beer.
— Friar Johnsen