SCUM, Voyage into Depth of Insanity / Macabre Moors of Morgoth (1993, Sickness)

The skull:
Lit from above and deeply shadowed, this stark skull drawing is a nearly perfect example of black and white BDSery. No jaw, no logo, no title. The essence of Big Dumb Skull.

The music:
Original entry:
Friar Wagner collected this skull, but he failed to adequately record its provenance, so its identity remains unknown even to The Council. For close to two years, Friar Johnsen has labored to uncover the identity of the band, scouring the obscurest of mp3 blogs and frequently entreating Tineye.com for assistance, but he has so far failed in his epic quest. Friar Wagner has all along insisted that the band is a metal band, and supposing that’s true, the likelihood of it being a black metal band is close to 100%. The Council welcomes any and all information about SKULL157, the only mystery skull in the entire Skullection.

Update 2013-08-10:
It was only a matter of time, but finally the mystery skull has been identified! Thanks to Sami at Bestial Burst Records we now know that SKULL157 is actually a 7″ by the Finnish death metal band Scum. Like early Sentenced, Scum takes the Stockholm formula and adds a weird twist, producing something that’s mostly familiar without sounding entirely derivative. Both songs are excellent (and both appear on the band’s full-length debut, Mother Nature), particularly the slinky plodding bits of “Voyage”. Honestly, I wasn’t expecting much from the mystery skull when it was identified, but I’m pleasantly surprised by this discovery. Thanks again to Sami!
— Friar Johnsen