Monthly Archives: May 2013

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MÄAX, Six Pack Witchcraft (2010, Abyss)

The skull:
A skull, an ace, a pair of wings, two knives, and an umlaut: it sure looks like Mäax is trying to muscle in on Motörhead’s territory. Substitute Snaggletooth for Mäax’s more generic skull and you’d have a perfect cover for a mid 90s Motörhead album. The other two Mäax discs have entirely different covers that also incorporate 100% of these design elements, so I guess they’re part of this band’s “thing.”

The music:
Mäax are a bunch of thick guys in leather vests making extra-filthy, Venomized, Motörhead-style “rock and roll”. It’s shitty metal to anyone with ears, but bands like this always fetishize the inspiration they draw from Elvis or Buddy Holly or Little Richard or whomever. The vocals are so bad that even the grunting has to be run through effects to give them any character, and the playing is far too loose for its own good. But, the main offense of music like this is its blandness. It styles itself as hard and rebellious, but it comes off as just another bunch of too-old barroom braggarts trying to pass as 70s tough. Nein!
— Friar Johnsen

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DEFYANCE, Voices Within (1992, demo)

The skull:
I’m not sure what all that curvy business is; is is part of the logo? Some kind of ornate Poe-style bladed pendulum? Demonic headgear for skully orthodontia? Whatever it is, the skull looks a little surprised. “Oh hey! What are you doing? I didn’t see you there…” He’s probably embarrassed to be caught posing for this low-rent demo. “It’s just a quick pencil sketch for some metal band, nothing serious,” he says, and you nod in understanding, but he knows you’re giggling on the inside.

The music:
I don’t think I personally own this demo, but I’m fairly certain I own the band’s first self-released disc, which came out in the mid 90s. Melodic metal was thin on the ground in the States back then, and we who loved that shit were reduced to buying some truly rotten crap in the hopes of finding some lone holdout for power metal in the aggro decade. Defyance were certainly not the worst of the bands working that circuit back then, but they also didn’t stand out as particularly great. These four songs have a commercial slant not unlike, say, Fifth Angel, but not as good. That this demo is form 1992 is a sign that probably these guys also listened to their share of hair metal, but preferred to make their metal a little heavier, even if they couldn’t get away from the corny lyrical cliches. Probably the singer was more into Cinderella than Iron Maiden, but the other guys in the band had to put up with his corny lyrics because it’s so hard to find a guy who can hit the high notes. You can easily imagine Defyance as the second local opener for a Savatage club show circa Streets. Good enough that you’d tap your foot while you were at the bar talking to your buddy, but not so great that you’d consider moving closer to the stage. Just good enough, in other words, and no better.
— Friar Johnsen

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SUIDAKRA, Command to Charge (2005, Locomotive)

The skull:
I suppose we’re expected to understand the background to be a splashing pool of liquid metal or something, but to me it looks more like fancy satin sheets, and because that interpretation especially confounds any possible meaning in this cover, I’m going to go with it. The skull is undeniably metal, maybe chromed steel, with some celtic designs printed thereon, because this German band is really into Ireland and Scotland, for some reason. Most puzzling is the bullet casing in the skull’s teeth. At first I thought this was another case of an artist not knowing how bullets work, expecting us to think the skull caught a fired bullet in his teeth. But then I noticed the smoke and have to conclude that the skull, for some reason, was holding a cartridge in his teeth when someone else struck the primer, expelling the lead backward. Or something. Sure, the smoke should be coming from the other end of the cartridge, but whatever. Artistic license. From the way the skull is positioned, I guess the bullet would probably clear the base of the skull in the back, and maybe that’s why the skull looks so smugly pleased with himself and his badass trick.

The music:
When I first heard Suidakra in the late 90s, they were an also-ran melodic death metal band of the sort you couldn’t get away from back then. Think early In Flames mixed with a little Dissection, even, but not as good as that sounds. They were fine, but undistinguished. Then some time in the early 00s, they hitched their wagons to bagpipes and jigs, and were all set for the coming popularity of “pagan metal,” which is a label that makes less and less sense every year. By the time of Command to Charge, all of the genuine heaviness had been purged from the band’s sound, turning them into, in effect, a low-tuned power metal band with some death vocals. The clean vocals are rather bad, too. The whole affair, while not exactly unpleasant, is almost offensively bland: death metal for kilt enthusiasts. Where’s that bullet to the brain when you need it?
— Friar Johnsen

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DESTRUCTION, Metal Discharge (2003, Nuclear Blast)

The skull:
A metal skull, cracking apart. About as literal as it could be, for an album called Metal Discharge. But, this isn’t the first time the band has used this exact skull: he appeared on the previous studio album, The Antichrist and on the intervening live album, Alive Devastation. The artistic laziness displayed here is almost staggering. I’m sure the artist worked up the illustration in Adobe Illustrator or something and just applied different textures for each album. I can’t even begin to imagine why Destruction, a popular and well capitalized band, would approach their album covers with such lackadaisical disregard for ingenuity, but here we are. We at Skull HQ have chosen this particular cover because it so singularly emphasizes the skull, without even bothering to cram some stupid crap in the background. Bonus points are awarded for the tacky, graffiti-style addition of the word “Discharge,” a hacky design gimmick wrenched through time from the distant year of 1991.

The music:
It would be a stretch to call any of the post-reunion Destruction albums essential, but they also haven’t released any real stinkers or embarrassed themselves, which, in light of other reunions, should be considered a rousing success. Personally, I think the band peaked with the weird techthrash of Release from Agony, and even the Schmier-less Cracked Brain is more creatively satisfying than the reunion stuff, but the first few of the new albums, especially, are good fun. Schmier actually sounds better now than he did back in the 80s, and what their recent songs lack in ambition, they make up for in enthusiasm and brisk timekeeping. Guitarist Mike Sifringer is an underrated riffmeister, and every song is jam packed with excellent rhythm work. Obviously, not every riff is a homerun, but sometimes quantity is its own quality. I think if you mixed up songs from this album, and the ones before and after it, I’d be really hard pressed to tell you which came from what album, but some might find that consistency admirable.
— Friar Johnsen

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UNHOLY GRAVE, Revoltage (2007, Agromosh)

The skull:
A skull with a neckbeard. What will they think of next? The horns feel a bit like lily-gilding, but I guess the artist just got on a roll that study hall, or maybe the parole hearing went on a lot longer than expected, and the horns just happened. And all that other bony crap littering up the cover. I’m sure this will look really nice on someone’s shoulder, next to a Crass logo or something.

The music:
Unlistenably noisy crust grind. It sounds like it was mastered boombox-to-boombox. EVERYTHING is distorted, all the time. The only thing I own that I can even remotely compare to this garbage is an old Hellbastard demo, and while I don’t take any special enjoyment from that, it’s a classic for the ages by comparison to Unholy Grave. Perhaps not surprisingly, Unholy Grave put the absolute minimum amount of care and effort into their recordings, having produced one hundred and forty demos, singles, splits, EPs and LPs in the last 20 years. Only the good die young.
— Friar Johnsen

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MINDS EYE, Minds Eye (1992, self-released)

The skull:
Gnarly logo (with embedded eyeball!) splits skull. The concept couldn’t be simpler, and yet pretty much everything about this painting is wrong. For starters, the way the skull is opening up suggests it’s malleable and not, in fact, brittle bone. Then, if you imagine the two halves coming together, the left half would be like two inches taller than the right half. And while the idea was obviously to cleave the skull neatly down the middle, a perspective error has it looking like the split is slanted. But despite all that, I still love this cover. It’s adorably ridiculous in the way only an amateur painting could possibly be. The fuzzy reproduction of the already hazy art makes it feel like soft-focus skull porn from the 70s. Brilliant!

The music:
Minds Eye played a distinctly early-90s hodgepodge of styles: some thrash, some traditional metal, some groovy blues, all thrown together in a weird creative bid to move metal away from the hairsprayed excesses of the 80s without altogether eschewing the possibility of commercial appeal. Some of the best music of the time was like this. But, this is not some of the best music of the time. The songs are run-of-the-mill, guitar tone is thin and bad, and the vocals are weak, although I’ve certainly endured much worse without complaining. All that said, I do have a soft spot for this sort of thing, especially for bands with enough vision to self-release a CD in 1992, and you can be sure if I ever ran across a physical copy of this, I’d pick it up in a heartbeat. It’s probably worth a fortune, too. But, if I really wanted to hear this kind of metal I’d make a beeline for my Wrathchild America discs (and since Minds Eye were also from Maryland, it’s impossible to imagine Wrathchild weren’t an influence). Hell, even Mindfunk were probably a little better at this game, and if that’s not a damning comparison, I don’t know what is (and I say this as someone who inexplicably owns all three Mindfunk albums.)
— Friar Johnsen

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1349, Demonoir (2010, Indie Recordings)

The skull:
Credit where credit is due: this is a pretty badass skull. Deep watercolors and dark shadows evoke a genuinely hellish vision, here. The jagged teeth of the gaping, inarticulate maw are especially disturbing: not screaming or grimacing this skull, but thoughtless, agape and hungry. The brilliant but limited palette perfectly captures the monochromatic starkness that is the ideal in black metal, but to greater effect than all but the best of the black and white pretenders. This is some seriously evil shit.

The music:
I’ve always enjoyed 1349’s semi-sophisticated take on black metal. Of course, Frost is one of, if not the best drummer in black metal, but unlike the recent stripped-down stupidity of his main band, 1349 brings the speed and angular weirdness that Satyricon so artfully deployed on their classic mid 90s releases, the godlike Nemesis Divina in particular. 1349 are still too blazingly fast, all the time, for my tastes, but there’s no other band working at these tempos that can even begin to hold my interest. The slower sections work best for me, and songs like “Pandemonium War Bells” that really mix up the speeds are the highlights of the album. The clean production goes a long way toward keeping 1349 listenable: even through the blasting, the riffing is articulate and audible. The vocals are pretty standard issue, but if you’re listening to black metal for the vocals, well, you have some weird priorities.
— Friar Johnsen

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RETRO GRAVE Again (2008, Upland)

The skull:
A quickie still life, probably done digitally but at least pretending to be an oil sketch or something, this is actually pretty classy as big dumb skulls go, but every bit as unambitious as the rest. Considering how badly this band wants to be 40 years older than they are, it’s kind of funny how little effort they put into the typography and design of this cover. The illustration might have passed retro muster, but nothing else does.

The music:
Psychedelic stoner metal, as you could probably have guessed. Total 70s style throwback music. Like Witchcraft or more recent acts like Blood Ceremony and Kadaver, Retro Grave don’t make even the slightest effort at originality, content to emulate their inspirations in every way: musically, sonically, aesthetically. Retro Grave is the work of one Jeff Olson, whose greatest claim to fame is as a footnote in Trouble’s history. Weirdly, this album was actually recorded and released twice, which makes the title sadly literal. Poor Friar Wagner also had to listen to this crap, but his review was swallowed by the cruel gods of the database, and I didn’t have the heart to make him review this stinker a second time.
— Friar Johnsen

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THE AWAKENING, Countdown to Misanthropy (2005, Twilight Vertrieb)

The skull:
A cartoony skull (making no allowances for dentition) in a busted-up cog, floating over a… puzzle of the badlands? In a loading zone? Who can say what’s supposed to be going on here, or how this cover could possible relate to the poorly conceived title. Are we to imagine the skull thinking, “All you humans out there? You’d better hold on to your asses because I’m gonna start hatin’ the shit out of ’em in a few minutes…” Adding to the confusion is the weirdly double-set title, no doubt the result of the band being unable to choose between the gritty modern font and the evil olde-tyme font. See also the logo and that symbol hiding behind the nondescript lettering: that’s a leftover of the A and G from their old logo, when The Awakening played pagan metal. These guys really just can’t make up their minds.

The music:
I was certain, looking at this cover, that the music it adorned would be Pantera/Machine Head style groove metal, but surprisingly, that’s not at all what The Awakening are about (now, at least. Maybe one of their other albums, though!) This is modern death metal, mid paced to quick, but rarely blasty. Sure, there are some thrash influences, but only as ornamentation. What you mostly get is Malevolent Creation / Monstrosity style DM, with a touch of the weirdness that informs a lot of German death metal, even the rotten stuff. This is not my preferred form of death metal, but some of this album really isn’t bad. I know I shouldn’t be saying nice things about a song called “Payment in Skin,” but it’s slithering riffs and barely-in-control drumming more or less work. Sure, the vocals are generic and the lyrics are dumb, but this can be said about even a lot of good death metal. That said, it appears that The Awakening broke up half a decade ago. Countdown averted, misanthropy delayed.
— Friar Johnsen

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MAGOR, Túl Mindenen  (2008, demo)

The skull:
This poor skull! All manner of junk is going into his boney being, for a reason we will likely never know. Túl Mindenen means “beyond all” in Hungarian, and the torture this skull is enduring here is truly beyond all reasonability. Some big ol’ stubby cylindrical thing has been jammed into the top of his head while various tubes run in and out of both sides of the skull. He’s chained in four spots, like he’s gonna get drawn and quartered, and to add insult to injury his forehead’s been stamped with a barcode. Wisps of smoke or some gaseous stuff trails from the tubes on the right. He silently screams “I’m not an animal, I’m a…skull!!!” There’s just no dignity in what’s happening here.

The music:
Lately I’ve been real hard on newer bands here at BDS, but admit something: if you’re a modern band putting a skull on your cover and playing fifth-generation tough-guy metal, you have no reason to exist. Hungary’s Magor are another band that toss together one-dimensional riffs and terrible yelled vocals and call it metal. But they do have some distinctive elements that make them a bit more enjoyable than the bland norm. One thing Magor does is throw in sublime lead guitar lines and thematic passages, as heard near the end of this demo’s third and final song, “Rejts el Magadban.” More of that and less of almost everything else would be cool. I appreciate the tightness displayed in “Arccal a Feny Fele,” so credit drummer Zoltan Csatai on that, and the doom-ish element within “Túlélő Vagyok, Nem Aldozat” keeps things interesting, so that’s appreciated. Still, Magor will likely sound pointless to any seasoned metalhead. But if you just got turned onto Sepultura, Metallica and Pantera yesterday, and you live in Hungary, you’re gonna love this.
— Friar Wagner