Monthly Archives: April 2013

SKULL100

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PAGANOS, Infierno Real  (2007, Pacheco Records)

The skull:
This cover might have never been added to the Skullection due to the “No Skulls” rule had the Council of the Elders of the Skull not determined that the skull image to the left of the main skull was a mere reflection of the front and center skull. A reflection in a watery sort of mist or fog, perhaps, but it’s not totally clear. The owner of the skull appears to have suffered a dire fate, drilled straight through the noggin by a thick drill bit or whittled tree limb, branded on the forehead like any old cow’s rump and left to drift in a smoky psychedelic yellow purgatory. Man, what these skulls have to go through sometimes.

The music:
This is Argentinian metal that uses Bay Area style thrash as its base, some Sepultura references, a tiny dash of German thrash, and also gets into a kind of American ’90s power metal pocket. The latter is heard in a few passages of melodic vocal, which seem to worship James Rivera and Bobby Lucas on a song like “La Unica Razon” but don’t have the control or power of those dudes. It also recalls early Blind Guardian in its mixture of thrash intensity and traditional heavy metal tropes. There are two guys doing vocals, apparently, one more frantic and less melodic than the other…sometimes the “heavier” vocal recalls Mille Petrozza in the Renewal era, which is weird, but that’s what I’m hearing. Although Infierno Real has its moments, it’s frustratingly inconsistent and entirely scattered as to the direction it aims for. Sometimes Paganos shows a proper amount of dexterity to pull off semi-technical riffs, yet other times they stumble over themselves in an embarrassing show of clumsiness (“Quemando el Tiempo” features sloppy guitar playing and drumming…and super-shitty vocals too). I love how the guitar intro to “La Unica Razon” brings to mind one of Joey DeMaio’s ridiculously frenzied piccolo bass compositions. I guess when things start feeling dull, the mind wanders and looks for any old reference to stay alert. The music on this 12-song, entirely-too-long 55-minute album tries hard to achieve something impressive (the eight-minute “Muerte Justa” even roundly qualifies as “progressive”), but too often pulls itself down in blaze after blaze of unoriginality, or incompetence, or both. So why bother? Because there’s a good degree of potential in spots. They put another album out in 2010, one I’m almost tempted to check out.

When we opened up this site, one of our main questions was and remains whether skull album cover artwork revealed “laziness in both musical and artistic execution?” A waltz through the first 100 album covers shows that the answer is “Yes” about 75% of the time. And onward we go…so many amazing covers yet to be revealed.  As for musical quality, we make no promises…
— Friar Wagner

SKULL99

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ANCIENT NECROPSY, Ancient Necropsy (2003, Nice to Eat You)

The skull:
Looking like a three-for-a-dollar rubber skull set out in a basket as an impulse buy at the Halloween Adventure store, this skull was clearly not menacing enough on his own, so the cover artist helpfully added some slanty “angry” eyebrows, straight out of an Archie comic. And then, you know, some fire and lightning and shit. What’s even going on here? Is this necropsy so ancient that it predates the earth taking form, happening amidst the fiery tumult of planetary creation? Or is this skull merely out grillin’ in a lightning storm, having used too much lighter fluid again?

The music:
Question: what do you get when you cross Pyaemia with Brodequin, in a Colombian bedroom? Answer: Sweet hell, don’t even make me think about it!
— Friar Johnsen

SKULL98

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EXIT WOUNDS, Exit Wounds  (2008, No Escape)

The skull:
Stark and bleak, this morbid looking photograph of a skull, brought into greater focus by the circle around it and without the distraction of words. Only the number 30 looms in the lower right quadrant, and this is, probably not coincidentally, the number of songs on this album. (Yes, they’re a grindcore band.) The skull’s left eye is so hollow, it’s black as the abyss and ends up looking like an eyepatch…and we dig eyepatched skulls here at Big Dumb Skulls HQ. And, unless it’s just a shadow, the upper right part of the cranium appears to be missing. This would probably be the “exit wound.” Clever.

The music:
There’s nothing interesting about this music whatsoever. It’s well-played, certainly, and I don’t doubt each member of this Polish band knows every Napalm Death, Nasum and Disrupt song title there is. I love ’80s and ’90s-era Napalm Death, and of course Terrorizer and other super-crazy death metal that intersects with grind, mostly from the older days, and I have been exposed to tons of grind over the decades (hey, I used to work at Relapse) but enough already! Give me something I can use. At least this album blazes by in a short 23 minutes…admittedly 23 very punishing, pummeling, violent minutes. I wonder what Friar Johnsen is listening to right now…
— Friar Wagner

SKULL97

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OVERKILL L.A., Triumph of the Will (1985, SST)

The skull:
Another totenkopf, but look at the size of it! If you’re gonna appropriate Nazi iconography for your album cover, this the way to do it: big and dumb. The copper coloring is a nice touch, too: it tones down the monochromatic harshness that plagues so many totenkopf album covers, although to be fair, this is the earliest example of the form in the skullection. Every cliche was a good idea at one time.

The music:
It really does send some confusing signals to decorate your cover with the insignia of the SS, while also titling it after the infamous Leni Riefenstahl propaganda film glorifying Hitler and his government. Well, no: it sends the rather clear signal that your band are Nazi sympathizers. In this case, the confusion comes later, when you realize that Overkill L.A. (naturally, the geographical suffix was added only after a conflict with Overkill N.Y.) are not a Nazi, national socialist, or in any way racist band. In truth, they’re only barely metal, too, although there’s enough Motorhead in this degenerate west coast punk amalgam to pass muster with the Council. I guess the cover and title are just part and parcel of a punk predilection for provocation, because the lyrics don’t even seem to make much of a special anti-racist statement, either. Just your typical me-against-the-world snottiness typical of mid 80s west coast punk, with a touch of the toughness that would shortly come to define (sometimes parodically) American hardcore. Personally, I’ve known about this album forever, as it used to show up all the time in the record shop section otherwise reserved for the one true Overkill (another skull-loving group), and I’m sure I listened to at least a song of this at some point, but I never listened to the whole thing until now. It’s… not bad! I wouldn’t have liked it at all in the 80s, but as an older, wiser man, I can appreciate its grit and working class moxie. It’s not a great album, and seemingly every song is played at the same middle tempo, but if you like early Motorhead and can also get behind Black Flag and Social Distortion, you might love this.
— Friar Johnsen

SKULL95

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BLITZSPEER, Live (1990, Epic)

The skull:
Finally! Some actual Pushead, to go along with all the pushead knockoffs littering the skullection. This is hardly Mr. Head’s finest work, but it’s still pretty excellent in its simplicity. Skull, eyepatch, crossbones, checkered flags. Looks like the painting was then slapped unceremoniously over a photo of some asphalt, but half-assedness was the order of the day, as we shall see.

The music:
In the late 80s, there was a halo effect around hair metal, the aquanet tide lifting all ships in the metal fleet. Thrash, in particular, seemed like it might be the next big thing, and every major label scrambled to sign any band that might possibly become the next Metallica, or, failing that, the next Testament. A lot of bands without so much as a demo got snapped up and rushed to market well before their due, and as a result you’d see things like Meliah Rage’s Live Kill Blitzspeer’s Live taking up space and creating “buzz” while the bands got their shit together for a full length. As it happened, by the time those LPs were finally shit out, so too had Nevermind been shat, and the thrash Titanic made a beeline for the ocean floor. A lot of great bands undeservedly took it on the chin in those dark times (see: Wrathchild America), but it can’t be said that Blitzspeer didn’t deserve their almost immediate obscurity. A tepid mix of thrash and biker rock, delivered with a well-rehearsed NYC punk sneer, Blitzspeer weren’t bad so much as totally, completely forgettable. Live is actually a really nicely recorded document, and while at least half of these songs appeared on the band’s studio debut (and swansong) Saves, these live versions are clearly more energetic than their properly tracked counterparts. That’s not enough to really make it worth your time to track this stuff down, but I guess if you’re dead set on owning some Blitzspeer, this is the one you want.
— Friar Johnsen

SKULL94

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ZARACH BAAL THARAGH, Skull Face Exhumations  (demo, 2006)

The skull:
This French freakazoid has shown lots of love for big dumb skulls throughout his illustrious, infamous career, between this “band” and other projects like White Bastard and Skull Face. We spun the wheel and chose this one. It’s as good as any. This one boasts some real black metal chutzpah: pentagram, crazy logo, lots of dripping stuff, what appears to be a forest, and a very worried looking skull. Party! This skull is likely overwhelmed with the grief of appearing on one of this guy’s 100+ demos. It’s embarrassing stuff for any skull. No kidding, this guy has over 100 demos to his credit. What’s weird is he’s not produced any yet for 2013, as of this writing in late March. Is he still alive?

The music:
Typical one-man-band/bedroom-studio sort of stuff. That doesn’t always mean garbage, but it does here. There’s a fine line between something like this and Xasthur. This particular demo (ZBT’s 49th, apparently) features 22 different tracks all named “Exhumation.” Surely some folks have tried to convince themselves that this exists on some high-art level, but I know pointless black metal junk when I hear it, and this is the epitome of pointless black metal junk. Moving right along…
— Friar Wagner

 

SKULL93

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TASTE OF BLOOD, Skull of Vaccuum / Survive the Rain (2006, self-released)

The skull:
He’s comin’ atcha, this skull, so fast that he’s starting to blur. So fast that you couldn’t snap off a pic before he’d pretty much filled the entire frame. You’re gonna taste the blood, all right, when this guy headbutts you. I guess you might taste some logo, too. Chew that gingerly – it looks sharp.

The music:
In ’99 or so, you couldn’t spit at a label roster without hitting a band like this, just a straight-up In Flames / Dark Tranquillity knockoff (for another German example, see: Night In Gales). They were everywhere, these bands, and because they were playing an inherently inoffensive and palatable style (sugary melodic death metal), none of them were really bad, but you could count on these acts going in one ear and out the other. By 2006, when this single (!) came out, pretty much all the melodic death metal bands in the traditional Gothenburg mold had vanished, supplanted by their sadder, degenerate ancestors, the Killswitch Engage clones and their mopey ‘core brethren. I’ll admit, I’d take Taste of Blood any day over that shit, but that’s really putting the “lesser” in “lesser of two evils.”
— Friar Johnsen

SKULL92

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PENDULUM, Skull Fuck  (1989, Euthanasia)

The skull:
Oh my. This is one of the greatest skulls we have ever curated in the Big Dumb Skullection. While we disqualify any cover featuring multiple skulls, this one skirts around that rule by featuring a skull that is simply made of smaller skulls…it’s just part of its genetic makeup, it can’t help it. And it’s in grave danger of losing all those little skulls, with that half-moon blade swinging pendulum-style right into the skull’s forehead, spraying blood and tiny skulls everywhere. And the skull looks immensely happy about this! Perhaps the blade is firing neurons in the skull-brain that produce a feeling of total elation or something. Two hooded figures flank the scene, looking on as if this was some sort of medieval sporting event. We believe these two are ancestors of a couple members of the Council of the Skull. This cover is almost too good to be believed.

The music:
This long-dead Texas band are aiming for a kind of wiry, buzzing technical speed metal sort of thing, probably influenced in part by fellow Texans Watchtower, who were in their prime the year Pendulum released this 4-song EP. It’s interesting music, possibly fusion-influenced, but the vocals are horrible. The vocalist is what your mom means when she says “How can you listen to all that yelling?” And this guy isn’t even doing a threatening sort of yell; he sounds like a petulant child who just discovered D.R.I. and is trying his best to whine like Kurt Brecht but ends up sounding like an entirely powerless and way less squeaky Jason McMaster (ex-Watchtower).  You have to admire Pendulum’s forward-thinking approach, but the vocals kill it, and the arrangements are a total mess too, so unless later demos are better, it would seem their finest contribution to metal is that amazing cover artwork.
— Friar Wagner

 

SKULL91

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Enemy of the Sun, Caedium (2010, Massacre)

The skull:
This overly smooth skull (grimy textures notwithstanding) was obviously produced with some kind of 3D modelling software, but probably not by the guy who designed the cover, because the sun-insignia set into the skull’s dome is clearly just a slapped-on photoshop addition and not a part of the wireframe model. You can see that it doesn’t follow the contour of the pate at all. Lazy! Same goes for the very cheap-looking effect of the bullet exploding out of the right temple. It seems like this was added rather haphazardly after someone in the band asked, “Yeah, but what does this have to do with caedium?” at which point the artist looked it up and found it meant, more or less, “murder” in Latin. “How’s about, like, I add a bullet coming out of his brain?” Sold!

The music:
Enemy of the Sun is the latest project from guitarist and producer par excellence Waldemar Sorychta, following Grip, Inc. and Despair (among other lesser acts). Sorychta’s guitar style is as distinctive as his production, which makes it very hard to compare him to anyone else. No one else really makes music in the style he does, either, which is thrashy, but not thrash, and decidedly not death metal. He offers a speculative take on what thrash might have become had it evolved consistently in the decades after it’s early 90s commercial and creative death. That said, there’s a blanket of sameness draped over most of what the man has done since Despair that makes it hard to form a strong connection with it. In Grip, there were Lombardo’s drumming and Gus Chamber’s furious yelling to compensate, but none of the other players in Enemy of the Sun rise above the baseline set by the leader (although I do appreciate the diversity of tones employed by frontman Jules Näveri). On Caedium, you get solid, competent, reliable, and ultimately kind of samey songs that work well enough on their own but fail to meaningfully cohere into an album. There’s nothing at all that’s bad about this album or the band, and I’ll definitely check out anything new they produce, but I can’t say I’m exactly looking forward to it.
— Friar Johnsen