SKULL243

Posted on August 31, 2013 by Friar Johnsen

GRAVE, Screaming from the Grave / Dreamer (1983, self-released)

The skull:
We see a lot of badly drawn skulls here at Skull HQ, but this is not one one them. No, this is one of the most awesomely drawn skulls we’ve come across. He’s weirdly deformed, as if he’s frowning so hard his entire face has started to collapse into itself, and his teeth are carved into little skulls themselves! What a badass grill! This skull is a fairly perfect encapsulation of the competing draws of heavy metal: the danger and the fun. It’s a mean-looking, angry skull, but at the same time, no one would take this guy too seriously. He’s not scaring anyone, and we love him all the more for it. I also love the many elements of the logo: the scroll, the spider web, the dripping blood, and the letters that look like carven stones in a desert. It presages Death’s peerless logo for the number of gimmicks attempted at once. Total genius.

The music:
This is not the Grave you’re thinking of, but they are Swedish. This Grave played the NWOBHM-inspired metal that was quite common in Sweden back then (and which is sometimes called FWOSHM), and they did it quite well. This self-released single contains two high energy tunes with catchy vocal lines, pretty good singing (for an early Swedish band), and some nice keyboard work (Hammond and synth). This is hardly essential stuff (and the band broke up after one more demo, leaving precious little in the way of a legacy), but if you’re into this sort of thing, Grave are surely better than a lot of the other obscure crap you listen to.
— Friar Johnsen

SKULL242

Posted on August 30, 2013 by Friar Wagner

BLOOD THIRSTY DEMONS, In the Grave (2004, C.M.)

The skull:
Two of two in our look at Italian band Blood Thirsty Demons, who somehow made it into the Skullection with two skull album covers in a row. I have not yet conferred with the good friar Johnsen regarding his views on the band’s music, but I’m pretty sure I got the superior cover. It’s immediately apparent that this skull is not in the grave at all, so I’m assuming he’s a runaway, or perhaps taking some kind of furlough from his skull-in-the-grave duties to tra-la-la his way through the beautiful Italian countryside. I would not be surprised if the next panel in this skull’s adventures found Dorothy, Toto and the Scarecrow skipping down the road and coming upon the skull. They would quickly realize he is not the next one they’re looking for (the Tin Man), so the Scarecrow gives a swift kick to the skull and they carry merrily on. This leaves the skull deeply hurt, wishing he’d never left the grave in the first place. It ain’t yellow brick, this road, it’s a sloping, bumpy dirty path, but c’mon people, a friar’s gotta use his imagination this far into the Skullection.

The music:
Sanctis Ghoram of the Paul Chain band and that guy in Dark Quarterer are pretty terrible singers, but they have a kind of charm. The dude in Blood Thirsty Demons, however, is just a shitty vocalist; no charm, no character, nothing. And musically this album is a shambles, merging traditional metal, doom, a little thrash, even some punk. None of it is interesting or memorable. It’s not even played very well. And no, “C.M.” does not stand for Century Media. No respectable label in their right mind would sign these guys. (P.S. I have since read Friar Johnsen’s review of Blood Thirsty Demons’ other skull-laden album. He was much kinder to them, and that’s terrific. It might be a better album than this. It is five years on from this earlier one. But I am in one seriously shitty mood today, so sitting through 31 minutes of this guy’s yelping and his band’s hashed together metal junk is not helping lift my spirits.)
— Friar Wagner

SKULL241

Posted on August 29, 2013 by Friar Johnsen

BLOOD THIRSTY DEMONS, Occultum Lapidem (2009, Black Funeral Promotions)

The skull:
It’s sort of surprising that there aren’t more metal covers like this: old, morbid paintings by the masters. This work is from a series of still lifes with skulls by the Flemish Adriaen van Utrecht (died 1652), any one of which would have made a fine low-budget album cover. Set amid a key, a compass, a candlestick holder, and a book, this skull obviously seeks knowledge, and perhaps foreshadows the ultimate end of all search. Or something like that. I’m sure Blood Thirsty Demons just tore it out of a textbook, begrudgingly admitting that there’s some cool shit in this stupid art history book their stupid teacher is making them carry around all fucking day, as if they don’t have a math book and that big ass geography book to deal with, too. Anyway, despite the evident and time-tested coolness of the painting, it bears little obvious relation to the title, which means “Hidden Stone” (famously the ending of the alchemical anagram VITRIOL “Visita Interiora Terrae Rectificando Invenies Occultum Lapidem,” which I don’t know but assume is the referent of that Absu album title), unless we’re to assume the manuscript contains transmutational formulae. And frankly, I think I’m already giving Blood Thirsty Demons too much credit. I think someone in the band found a neat old skull painting, and a mysterious-sounding latin phrase, and just jammed them together.

The music:
I was absolutely positive I would be sitting through yet another shitty bedroom black metal project when I queued this one up, but, much to my surprise and delight, what I got instead was a kind of mediocre Megadeth knockoff with a dash of Venom, which is to say midpaced thrash played a little sloppily but with heart. Bloody Thirsty Demons are presumably grown men, but they make music like a high school band. Each song has maybe four or five riffs, repeated endlessly, seemingly because no one in the group knows better than to do that. It’s not that the riffs are bad, because some of them are actually kind of catchy and fun, but they’re hardly so good to deserve as much love as they get in these arrangements. The vocals are almost comically bad, and by that I mean they’re literally bad in a funny way, as if singer Cristian Mustaine (a name too good to be true) is trying to make us laugh. His voice is pitched somewhere between Paul Baloff and Udo, but goofier than either (which is saying something.) The production isn’t half-bad, and the playing is acceptably good, but the amateurishness of the songwriting is sufficient to put me off on Blood Thirsty Demons. At least they aren’t the atrocity I was expecting.
— Friar Johnsen

SKULL240

Posted on August 28, 2013 by Friar Wagner

FEAST FOR THE CROWS, When All Seems to Be Burned (2007, Bastardized Recordings)

The skull:
For once my attention is not on the skull itself, but on the nonsense idea/graphics happening below. These two guys (identical twins, apparently) are talking simultaneously, saying “when all seems to be burned.” Very pessimistic, boys. They look dopey with their heads maned with what looks like yellow fire or sunflower petals. I’ll go with sunflower petals, just for fun. The skull itself, well he’s just hanging out above these guys, his ear holes having sprouted dragons and sporting wings behind him. You know how it is. Happens all the time. These wings apparently have no practical purpose for either skull or dragon. An ugly mess of yellow, this cover, with a concept that’s pretty much random nonsense without any meaning whatsoever. And yes indeed, I am looking for PROFOUND meaning in these skull covers! Maybe that’s the problem.

The music:
For a band who I’ve seen labelled as both “melodic death metal” and “metalcore,” I will give Feast For The Crows props: they are certainly melodic and deathly enough to qualify as “melodic death metal,” and if they’re “metalcore,” they certainly have equal amounts of metal and, uh, “core” to skate by. It’s not really my sort of thing, especially when they get into the slower breakdowns (as within “Abandon”) but they’re quite good at what they’re trying to achieve. The performances are all strong, although the drums sound much too fake/plastic. Getting further into the guts of this album, this is almost the missing link between Odium and Feel Sorry For the Fanatic that Morgoth failed to deliver. You know, that kind of German metal that sits in a genre-less nether-region, borrowing bits of this and bits of that and ending up with precision attack cold metal. F.F.T.C. give it a more modern/generic twist, but that’s the general wheelhouse this thing sits in.
— Friar Wagner

SKULL239

Posted on August 27, 2013 by Friar Wagner

DYING FETUS, War of Attrition (2007, Relapse)

The skull:
Is this the first skull in the Big Dumb Skulls Skullection to wear a wig? We’ll have to
have our guys in the truck check the stats on that. The wig is not what the eye goes to
first, though: it’s the missles, the Statue of Liberty crown, and the American flags. You
wonder if this is some kind of anti-American statement or a hyper-patriotic one? Guessing
by the band name and the type of music they play, I’m assuming it’s neither…just a band
tired of parading out the guts ‘n’ entrails imagery looking for something more
intellectual to convey. Nice try.

The music:
It’s hard to take Dying Fetus to task for being so generic in style and delivery. They’re an interesting mixture on this album of tech-death, steamroller simplicity, super-low vocal delivery, and chunky post-death grooves. They’re still generic in style and delivery, but they’ve been doing it consistently since 1993, so I step back and offer respect for their longevity. As for their popularity, well, Miller Lite and Justin Bieber are extremely popular, so popularity is no indicator of quality. But that’s where the comparison stops: Dying Fetus have integrity, and I recognize that. Listening to War of Attrition, it’s hard not to be impressed with how tightly played it is, how technically dazzling some moments are (“Fate of the Condemned”) and how cleanly produced it is without lacking impact. I also wonder how anyone can make room for this in their life when so many other, more interesting death metal albums had already come before this album in 2007. I guess some people can eat McDonald’s every single day and never tire of it.
— Friar Wagner

SKULL238

Posted on August 26, 2013 by Friar Johnsen

DREAM EVIL, Gold Medal in Metal (2008, Century Media)

The skull:
Going entirely literal, Dream Evil decided to just show the god damned gold medal in metal already. Except that one can’t escape the feeling that the musical Olympics at which this particular honor was won are a decidedly low-rent affair. For starters, the medal itself isn’t even a medal, but more like a cheap brooch, or a ring they got out of some crappy kid’s toy machine at the grocery store. This “medal” is affixed not to some fancy ribbon, or even a jewelry-grade chain, but the sort of chain you’d use to padlock a gate shut. Only gold. Or photoshopped to look gold, at least. The links are nearly as large as the medal, and you can see the fucking welds! What kind of award is this? The skull itself is squished horizontally to fit inside the flowery border, his jaws agape as if screaming, “WHAT IS THIS BULLSHIT?”

The music:
Dream Evil are the cheesiest of cheese, or at least the cheesiest cheese that I enjoy. Their wink-wink posturing makes it a tiny bit easier to endure their not-good-enough-for-Judas-Priest lyrics, but only barely. Really, they only get a pass for their many sins against good taste because they write unaccountably catchy tunes, and their singer is really, really good. That said, the only truly great album is the debut Dragonslayer, and some five albums in, their schtick has worn quite thin, especially as each turns the “Heavy Metal Cliches” dial up at least a notch. Gold Medal in Metal is a double disc set (some versions also include a DVD, I believe) compiling a live show and a bunch of studio rarities. As with all the Dream Evil releases, the sound and performances are top notch, owing, one assumes, to the engineering/producing magic of guitarist Fredrick Nordstrom, but really, there isn’t a compelling reason to own a Dream Evil live album. The rarities disc is better value proposition, but it’s not like their catalog is so thick with genius that there were truly excellent songs left off the albums. If you own Dragonslayer, and you want more Dream Evil, then this studio disc is pretty much as good as any others, offering the same guilty pleasures as their proper albums. If you don’t own Dragonslayer yet, or you don’t think “HammerFall from Alternate Universe where HammerFall is good” is likely to do much for you, then you can safely leave this medal unclaimed.
— Friar Johnsen

SKULL237

Posted on August 25, 2013 by Friar Johnsen

CONFESSOR, Confessor (1992 Earache)

The skull:
Impeccably simple: a boxed-out side view of a skull, stippled white on black, topped with the band’s beautiful looping logo in a two tone fade. It’s nearly perfect, this cover, and while The Council always and forever prefers a face-forward rendering of a skull, the artistry of this Confessor EP is so great that even our hooded masters welcome it unreservedly into the Skullection, without the usual grudging complaints that a skull from the side is better than no skull at all (or, even worse, two skulls).

The music:
No other band ever sounded like Confessor, and their self-applied label of “technical doom metal” is perfectly apt. Spastic drumming over odd-time perversions of Sabbath riffs are the basis for the Confessor sound, added to which Scott Jeffries piercingly high vocals create a sound unlike any other. Confessor are the sort of band where if you like all their influences, there is still no guarantee you’ll appreciate the final product. Take Trouble, for instance, who were so influential on this North Carolingian band that this three song EP contains TWO Trouble covers. While the guitars are played fairly straight on both, Jeffries replaces Eric Wagner’s smoky rasp with his shrieking, warbling highs (on the non-instrumental “The Last Judgement”), while Steve Shelton adds a burbling undercurrent of off-kilter triplets to the drum beats. The results, while still fairly faithful to the originals, are still undeniably Confessor, such that if you ONLY knew that band, you’d probably never guess these were not original songs. The third track on the EP is the pinnacle achievement of the band’s full length debut, the brilliantly twisted “Condemned”. In their original formation, the band released that album and this EP and then broke up, making this an essential piece, but the band regrouped in the mid 00s and released another EP and album, although neither attain the same heights as their original 90s releases. They’re still kicking around as a live unit, and it’s hoped by many that they’ll make it back to the studio to keep their unique brand of doom alive.
— Friar Johnsen

SKULL236

Posted on August 24, 2013 by Friar Wagner

DISPATCHED, Terrorizer (2004, Khaosmaster)

The skull:
Stock skull (we’re sure we’ve seen this exact one at least 22 times in the last 236 skulls) with cyber-hair and weird twisty cyber-tentacles. Looks like it took about five minutes to create, with even less time and thought going into the band logo. I’m not even gonna get into how bad the music is. (Oh wait, the Council is telling me I have to, per the rules as a lowly Big Dumb Skulls friar. Okay then…)

The music:
Achieving a small degree of notice during their long 12-year slog, poor Dispatched would be occupying bargain bins everywhere if bargain bins still existed. Terrorizer is poorly
recorded, and remarkably so, which doesn’t help their cause. This production is thin, frail and brittle sounding, which might work if you’re a one-man bedroom black metal demo band, but they’re not. They are, however, bad metal, despite trying for something bigger and better. Dispatched attempts to achieve a melodic death metal sort of sound, one that doesn’t mind adding in a flute or lead keyboard role here and there. It’s maybe akin to In Flames right around the time In Flames started getting junky. But whether the songwriting is good or not (it’s not), you need a production with some degree of power to convince. Dispatched’s other problem is ambition, but not because they’re lacking it. In fact, they throw out a ton of ideas, sometimes within the same song, but most of them aren’t very interesting to begin with. If they are, they fly by too briefly before some dippy keyboard-driven gothic sort of melody line flies in. And then they’ll deliver another stock riff out of the Unused Dark Tranquillity Riffs box. I’ll usually give some credit to any band who tries to, you know, “mix it up” a little bit, but in Dispatched’s case it’s unlistenable and annoying. And I realize my criticism is very surface and probably unfair, but why try any harder if they themselves can’t be bothered to write better lyrics than this…from “I Am thy Lord”:

“The world is mine
I grab it with my soul
Identify
Me as your lord
The world is mine
I grab it with my soul
Realize
I am thy lord”

But hey, if faintly “cyber” melodic death metal with cheesy keyboard sounds and a terrible
production appeals to you, go for it. You might even enjoy living in hopes that some label
comes along and releases their numerous demos and EPs in a four-LP box. For me, I hope this band stays buried. Please do not exhume!
— Friar Wagner

SKULL235

Posted on August 23, 2013 by Friar Johnsen

VIOLENT HISTORY, Blackstone Valley Thrash (2010, Muerte)

The skull:
You could say that there’s an octopus sneaking up on this plain Jane skull, but I prefer to imagine that the tentacles are just a crazy Lovecraftian mullet, sprouting majestically from the skull’s backside. Blackstone Valley sounds like the kind of place where a skull might think a tentaskullet is cool. But then, it turns out Blackstone Valley is in Rhode Island, and suddenly the parental warning sticker makes sense. Oldschool northeastern maternalistic neoliberalism strikes again!

The music:
Sloppy thrash with some grind and black metal influences, Violent History are almost good, but really need to spend more time rehearsing. The drummer has some great beats, but he struggles to get them across. Some of the riffing is intricate and twisted, while too much of it sounds like any third tier speed metal band. And then the vocals are the kind of uninspired hardcore yell that make everything worse. While the band obviously labels their music thrash, it’s only thrash by derivation. They aren’t trying to recapture the 80s sound and as such don’t bear much resemblance to your typical new thrash band, and I certainly appreciate that. There are only two songs on this EP, and they both have their share of bright moments, but there’s also enough garbage in each to make the listen an unpleasant experience on balance. A little more time in the garage and they could go somewhere, for sure.
— Friar Johnsen

SKULL234

Posted on August 22, 2013 by Friar Wagner

SHAH, P.S.I.H.O. (1994, Moroz Records)

The skull:
Shah is one of the most celebrated Russian thrash bands ever (not that there are that many noteworthy ones to begin with), and they sure love heads and skulls. All four of their albums feature just that, and this, their fourth and final album, sports a cover we were more than happy to add to the Skullection. We look at skulls a lot here at BDS but never really wonder how the skull came to be. We’re always so in-the-moment. Shah’s skull shows the transition to skulliness in all its gory motion: the flesh, including a nose and an eyeball, are being blown clean off the bone by what we’ll assume is a very, very strong wind. But this reveals that all is not bone! The skull is apparently made of steel or some kind of other metallic material. And its left eyeball refuses to leave home. Glorious!

The music:
I have not had the pleasure of hearing Shah’s three albums prior to this one. But I’ve heard they’re a little more straight-forward and aggressive than P.S.I.H.O., which is like a poor man’s Countdown to Extinction; it has a similarly razor-sharp riffing approach, its smooth complexity resembles that album’s refined posture, and the vocalist emits Mustaine-esque whines ‘n’ snarls. It’s more ramshackle than Countdown…, however. P.S.I.H.O. has some genuinely great moments (the cool riffs and harmony vocals within “Turn of the Changes”; the hypnotic pace and acoustic guitar layered throughout “Open”), but just ask yourself: “Do I love early/mid ’90s Megadeth enough to seek out a Russian analog of the same?” Having been released in the waning years of thrash metal’s finest era, this could probably be called “semi-thrash” or “post-thrash” while escaping any alignment to the likes of Machine Head or Pantera. I’m also reminded of forgotten midwestern semi-thrashers Coup De Grace, Heathen’s most melodic moments, and shades of Metal Church.
— Friar Wagner