SKULL284

Posted on October 11, 2013 by Friar Wagner

CALVARIUM, The Skull of Golgotha (2003, Dynamic Arts)

The skull:
So, if you know or care about the skull of Golgotha, the place of the cross, and all that bullshit, you’re gonna love today’s Big Dumb Skull installment. In Calvarium’s depiction of that fable, the skull seems to emit a kind of glow, with a kind of spray rising from the top of the skull to dark storm clouds above. It was a dark day indeed, although it’s always a pretty crummy day when any human nails another human to a cross of wooden planks and leaves him to die there. The skull’s left-facing position is generally frowned upon by the Council, but we really do need to have some representation of the Golgotha skull in the Skullection, don’t we? And Trouble failed us with that when they released The Skull in 1985 (however, that cover totally rules, so we’re glad they left it to Calvarium to take on that awesome responsibility). Technically this is not a great piece of art — when the scale is considered this skull appears to be about 200 feet high and wide — but it’s not bad enough to take jabs at, so I won’t.

The music:
Like Valoton (SKULL274), here’s another Finnish band rising above the dull norm and at least trying to do something with a little substance and originality. “Originality” is probably a strong word, but Calvarium’s tunes are well-structured, well-executed, multi-tempo chunks of black metal that feel legitimately spooky without any cheesy contrivinces dumbing things down. The vocals are a few notches less screamy/screechy than the norm, having a kind of throaty, spittle-gurgling, depraved effect, while the guitars swim in a cacophonous wash that blankets everything in their wall of sound. When they speed it up, things lose a little identity and skirt towards the norm (“Horns of Hate,” “Siunatun Surma”), but something like “Jumalviha” has a theatrical vibe that reminds of early Samael and lots of the early ’90s Greek bands. Closer “Suicide Manifesto” creeps along in a sick lurch, bringing doom to the table, making it clear this band is more engaging when cruising on the slower side of the speedometer. While some moments throughout The Skull of Golgotha fall into a bland Marduk-esque malaise, there’s enough textural and tempo variety to keep the interest. And it’s played with the kind of authority you’d except from vets of the Finnish black metal movement; members of this band have also played in of Baptism, Behexen, Alghazanth, Funeris Nocturnum, Drowning the Light and Musta Kappeli, so there you go.
— Friar Wagner

SKULL283

Posted on October 10, 2013 by Friar Johnsen

BOMBS OF HADES, Chambers of Abominations (2010, Blood Harvest)

The skull:
It almost appears that at one point this was a much more detailed image, but it had to be repeatedly downgraded because with more detail and sharpness it just looked stupid. As it is, it still looks pretty stupid. I guess maybe you could read it as a big skull graffiti in a cathedral or something, but really it just looks like something thrown together on the library Xerox machine.

The music:
Bombs of Hades are basically working the classic Swedish death metal beat, sounding an awful lot like Nihilist or one of their demo-level peers. They’re not as sophisticated as Entombed, or as fun as Repugnant (to compare them to another clone), but they’re alright. They’ve more or less got the Sunlight sound down, and if you’ve got a hankering for yet another Stockholm style album, then this is as good as any, I suppose. After this, Bombs of Hades started to develop their own sound, mainly by stirring in some black metal and some Motorhead and dialing up the rawness in the production. I have to say, though, that I prefer their original, less original sound. Sometimes it’s best to leave the creative work to the people who are good at it.
— Friar Johnsen

SKULL282

Posted on October 9, 2013 by Friar Wagner

PRO-PAIN, Prophets of Doom (2005, Continental)

The skull:
We here at Big Dumb Skulls forbid adding animal skulls to the Skullection. We’re looking for the human artifact only, although some skulls blur the line: human skulls with ram horns are a popular skull subset, as are human skulls that look more like primate skulls. But then, that’s to be expected, considering the close link between human and primate. So we let this one slide, partly because it’s so silly. This monkey-boy skull thing — with one very comical left ear hole — grins uncomfortably, like he’s being threatened into smiling for the portrait…as he rides a unicycle, of course. The dress hanging to his right and the assemblage of whatever-the-hell-that-is hanging to his left balance the frame, but otherwise seem to have no purpose. The mosaic tile treatment and the style of artwork itself lends a Victorian Gothic meets Vaudeville sort of aesthetic. I don’t have all the Pro-Pain album covers memorized, but I’ll bet a zillion dollars this is by far the most unlikely cover they’ve ever had, even considering the skull.

The music:
I love the Crumbsuckers’ Beast on My Back album. Surpassing their pretty decent crossover debut, B.O.M.B. is a masterpiece of complex thrash and it has aged very well (despite a cover concept that took all of 2 and a half seconds to conceive). When they folded, I had high hopes that the Crumbsuckers rhythm section, Gary Meskil and Dan Richardson, would move in a similar direction with their new band Pro-Pain. But no, they went all toughguy. Their debut, Foul Taste of Freedom, is an album of dull hardcore aggro and muscle metal rage. And they’ve been taking the low road ever since. Prophets of Doom is the ninth in a seemingly never-ending campaign to be as boring and utterly useless as possible. I even saw this band live twice, somewhere around the time of their third album, and they had zero appeal. There’s not much to say about Prophets of Doom, other than it’s aggressive and loud and shouty and all those things your parents would say about it. People who like heavy music but haven’t been exposed to more than a handful of bands might enjoy it. For anyone deeper into the metal genre, there’s literally nothing here for you. Unless unflavored knucklehead jump-metal appeals to you. I respect their longevity, and Gary’s role in the Crumbsuckers (Dan’s long been gone), but that’s about it.
— Friar Wagner

SKULL281

Posted on October 8, 2013 by Friar Johnsen

THE MASS, Towards Darkness (2004, Great White North)

The skull:
Now what do you think that snake is doing up there? Skulls, as we know, are often found levitating above cemetaries and whatnot, and of course it’s not uncommon for swords to arrange themselves behind such floating skulls. Walk through any graveyard and you’re likely to see such a scene. But then there’s this snake all wrapped around that shit, and barely holding on, to boot. What’s his game? Is he lying in wait for his prey, the unsuspecting mourners he expects to file past these crooked and ancient headstones? Or is he maybe playing a trick on some of his snake buddies? Did he call them up and say, “Yeah, dudes, meet me under the floating skull. I got something awesome to show you!” knowing full well that his serpentine pals would just slither there on their bellies, like they always do, never thinking to look up? And then when they’ve all been waiting for like 10 minutes, wondering when the fuck he’s doing to show up, BAM! He drops on them yelling “Booga booga!” and scaring the shit out them. That’d be a real fucking gas, right?

The music:
Doomy death metal or deathy doom metal, take your pick, The Mass trade in more sophisticated riffs than the fuzzed-out Sabbath-worshipping stoner doom crowd, but can’t at all compete with the paralyzing dirge of true doom death masters like Morgion. Nor do they capture the gothic solemnity inherent to the best albums from, say, My Dying Bride. No, The Mass just plays really slow. And they sometimes play with a real lack of weight, as when the single guitar switches to clean melodic lines or a lead, and all that’s left to hold down the fort is a fizzy bass and the incredibly dry drums. I suppose it’s to their credit that they don’t attempt to fill that empty space in the studio when they know they can’t bring it live (having only a single guitarist), but still, when the rhythm guitars go away, it feels like some of the band just left the room. The Mass aren’t terrible, but they are pretty dull, and while I’d take them over pretty much any band to whom the descriptor “sludgy” could be fairly applied, I’d probably just as soon listen to nothing.
— Friar Johnsen

SKULL280

Posted on October 7, 2013 by Friar Wagner

U.D.O., Timebomb (1991, BMG Ariola)

The skull:
“Hey guys, check it out! I can balance this warhead on my forehead!” All lit up, as in
drunk, and literally lit up (eye sockets aglow with radiation), the pale orange skull that
all the other skulls try their best to avoid is at it again. Fuckin’ Rodney. Such
a jerk. Always hamming it up at the Big Dumb Skulls Christmas party, and here he goes
again. I mean, god, the nerve, especially with that arsenal of missiles behind him…one
false move and this is the last BDS Christmas party, ever. We were never really sure what
the tubing was all about, or whatever’s hanging from his left eye, but we’ll never find out either. BLAM-O! went the place, with a number of casualties, even more injured, and a hell of a mess to clean up. The sad post-script to all this is that U.D.O.’s record label wouldn’t allow his concept album about the event be titled Warhead On My Forehead. They used the skull’s posthumous nickname instead. R.I.P. Rodney “Timebomb” Schmidt.

The music:
When Udo Dirkscheider left Accept and formed U.D.O., he started out strong: debut Animal House was basically an Accept album in all but name. It slowly devolved in a dire direction thereafter. Eventually all the nuance, class and intelligence of prime Accept was gone. But it’s not all bad — if you are a fan of the first Accept run (1979-1986) you’ll find a few songs on each of U.D.O.’s first handful of albums that do his legacy and former band proud. As full albums, though, most don’t hold up to repeated listens. The lyrics started getting stupider with each new release, and by the late ’90s U.D.O. became a dumbed-down Accept and a redundant bore. What about Timebomb? It’s considered one of the best in U.D.O.’s long and ongoing slog, and while I appreciate its intensity and the fire that went into its making (much more inspired than dull trudges like Mean Machine) some of this makes any IQ I have tumble into the single digits. There really is a fine line between stupid and clever, and a lot of this is the stupid to Accept’s clever. Like “Kick in the Face.” And check out the song titles: “Metal Maniac Master Mind,” “Powersquad,” and “Thunderforce,” with lines like “Thunderforce, thunderforce, striking the universe / thunderforce, thunderforce, getting attacked, I’m fighting back.” What is this, a Power Rangers soundtrack? “Powersquad” sounds like a damn Jackyl b-side. Then there are the high points, noteworthy moments like the solo sections of “Back in Pain” and the title track, which are certifiably awesome; not just the solos, but the majestic passages underneath. Still, even if Timebomb is near the top of the pile by the stunted measuring stick we measure U.D.O. albums by, it still has that assembly-line vibe which permeates all U.D.O. albums. Set ’em up, knock ’em down, next…set ’em up, knock ’em down, next…set ’em up, knock ’em down, next…and so on.
— Friar Wagner

SKULL279

Posted on October 6, 2013 by Friar Johnsen

SIGNS OF DARKNESS, The Fall of Amen (2008, Shiver)

The skull:
It’s, like, a metaphor. The mind IS a maze, a labyrinth of thought! Except it’s, um, a really simple maze, like the kind on the back of the kids’ menu at a shitty restaurant. “Here ya go, Jimmy. Why don’t you plumb the depths of human psychology while we wait for your chicken fingers to come out. We’ll ask the server to bring you some crayons. While you’re at it, why not take a crack at the Puzzler: ‘What does a mazy skull have to do with the fall of amen?’ Huh. That’s a little weird. Well, whatever. Here are the crayons. Maybe draw a mustache on him.”

The music:
Pitched somewhere between black metal and melodic death metal (though leaning toward the former), Signs of Darkness occupy a weird grey zone. There’s no mystery to their music, nor any menace, which renders their black metal a little toothless, and they’re not quite catchy enough to be much fun as an MDM band. They don’t do anything badly, though, it’s just that tonally it’s a little hard to say what they’re shooting for. As a kind of easy-listening black metal experience they’re fine, a way to ease into the genre if you like the more abrasive elements of, say, early Dark Tranquillity, but haven’t quite come around on black metal. But then, who in that situation is going to seek out an obscure Belgian band? Why not start with Sacramentum or something like that? I feel a little bad busting on Signs of Darkness, because they’re eminently listenable and totally pro, and will appeal to people who already own a lot of music like this and enjoy the novelty of new bands, people who don’t always demand originality but require competence. I certainly own a lot of music in that vein, but not in this style, because what I have is enough. For you, maybe that’s not the case.
— Friar Johnsen

SKULL278

Posted on October 5, 2013 by Friar Wagner

SUPREME LORD / CHTON – Two Tales of Terror split (2003, Time Before Time)

The skull:
Stark and bleak, this skull seems to be deteriorating into the black…it won’t be long before he’s dust. He looks forlorn, as if knowing his fate, made that much sadder because, although at one time he was a robust, strong specimen of a skull with great vigor and ambition, all he got was this gig on a split cassette pressed in a mere 333 copies. “I guess we can’t all be that Krokus skull,” he wearily laments.

The music:
We’ve already covered the music of Norwegian band Chton with Skull186, and their music remains pretty much the same on this cassette: both “Book of Black Earth” and “Crawling Chaos” were on that album, so there’s no need to go into it here, although I will say I enjoy their ultra-ugly old-school death metal sound, which works in an area of corrupted, unhealthy noise a la Rottrevore and some of the early Finnish death metal bands… but I’m not fully committed to them either. A passing listen is fine enough. Poland’s Supreme Lord are of the typically high musical standard as many other of their countrymen, but you’ll probably only get into them if you’re needing more Deicide-meets-Immolation-meets-Morbid Angel worship. Yep, Supreme Lord are patterned after early ’90s US death metal, although they’re just a couple levels rawer and noisier than the aforementioned. Something like “Dark Heresies” even blasts monomaniacally enough that it flirts with that whole slam-death bullshit, but never entirely sinks to that level. They almost gain back those lost points with the short but super-crazy noise-solo section of “Isolated.” Even if this was a somewhat enjoyable, interesting listen while it lasted, ultimately this is a totally non-mandatory, dispensable death metal split tape.
— Friar Wagner

SKULL277

Posted on October 4, 2013 by Friar Johnsen

VADER, Future of the Past (1996, Koch)

The skull:
Now THAT is an evil, scary fucking skull. It looks to be maybe a long dead bride, her veil decayed to tatters. Vader’s art is usually terrible, which makes this one all the more extraordinary. It’s a beautiful, sinister painting that’s pretty much snark-proof, and I really can’t think of anything bad to say about it. There’s a first time for everything, I guess!

The music:
I bought the first Vader album when it came out, but that was getting to the end of my “everything on Earache is awesome” phase, and the album didn’t do much for me. I would hear more Vader from time to time, particularly when I was writing the zine, but it still never grabbed me, and honestly I didn’t even know this album existed. Why they felt the need to release a full-length covers album with only two original albums under their belt is a bit of a mystery, but there you go. It’s kind of quaint how on-the-nose the list of songs is, with Sodom, Kreator, Possessed, Celtic Frost, and Terrorizer, Slayer, Dark Angel and Black Sabbath, and then a few obligatory oddities, namely tunes by Anti-Nowhere League (whom Sodom themselves also covered) and every death metal band’s favorite synthpop band, Depeche Mode. It was them or Ultravox, I guess. Today, any band making an album like this would be falling over themselves trying to out-underground everyone else, and the tracklist would be demo and single tracks from bands you never heard of. And that would be okay, because at least the covers, when they’re played this plainly and without much interpretation, might open a window to new avenues of musical exploration. But, everyone’s already heard “Outbreak of Evil” and “Silent Scream” and no one’s discovering anything new from this album. Vader’s versions of these songs are as you’d expect: more or less straight renditions, played with Vader’s usual precision, and in general a little faster. There’s something lost, though, when you play early Sodom and Kreator with too much competence, so those tracks suffer accordingly from Vader’s skill. The Depeche Mode tune (“I Feel You”) has a moany industrial vibe and is fairly bad. It was wise of the band to not follow this path any further. There’s a version of the disc with KAT cover, and it would have been cool to hear Vader paying tribute to their countrymen, but I couldn’t find that track, sadly. Anyway, for a death metal covers album, Future of the Past is pretty good. Better than a lot of Vader albums, at least, but really no more essential.
— Friar Johnsen

SKULL276

Posted on October 3, 2013 by Friar Wagner

WARCALL, Demonarchy (2009, Panoptic)

The skull:
Swamped in a surfeit of yellow/brown, we’re already off to a bad start. Why are dirty yellows and browns such a popular choice amongst amateur metal album cover artists everywhere? A lotta people looking for jobs at Nuclear Blast, apparently. So, what’s going on here? Apparently this is Warcall’s vision of a “demonarchy,” but with all due respect to the power of the skull, you really gotta do something more than plop a skull down into the scene to spark a “demonarchy.” I think so anyway…I’ll know for sure once I nail down exactly what a demonarchy is. A planet ruled by one omnipotent demon, or a demon that endorses anarchy? We see United Nations-like symbology being taken over by this skull, who is apparently the demon, and he sits atop what look like unwieldy and incredibly thick-handled knives, or shovels. I’m gonna call them garden shovels. Goddamn it, I’m confused. I give up. Warcall & Skulldemon, 1, Friar Wagner, 0

The music:
Great. More melodic death metal that digs back about as far as In Flames’ Whoracle for inspiration. At least, it seems this is as deep as the well of inspiration runs for this Canadian band, judging by the 10 songs (and one intro) here. Warcall are Canadians who really really want to sound Swedish. They do a pretty good job of achieving their aim too, as it’s well-played and well-recorded, every ingredient in its right place and exemplifying the style perfectly. But (and holy shit, stop me yet again if I sound like a broken record) it’s absolutely derivative and generic beyond imagining. Nothing sticks, nothing interesting, nothing memorable. Remember the “About” section of this blog, how I note that Big Dumb Skulls’ mission is, in part, to investigate the correlation between the totally unoriginal idea of having a skull on your album cover and the music inside? Here you have it. Investigation complete. Warcall have made any additional investigations pointless. We now know for sure. Thanks guys.
— Friar Wagner

SKULL275

Posted on October 2, 2013 by Friar Johnsen

RANGER, Combat Metal (2012, demo)

The skull:
Stippling is an underused technique for sure on heavy metal demos, but Ranger found some dude willing to dot the shit out of a skull for them. He’s a big-headed sort of guy, kind of a cross between that Destruction skull and Kreator’s Violent Mind (well, his skull at least). His enormous dome almost makes him look like a hydrocephalic baby vampire skull. Maybe that’s why he only has teeth on the top – he’s just teething. Too young to menace, not too old to be cute. Aw, wookit the widdle skull, with the evil wed eyes…. Goochie goochie goo!

The music:
This cassette-only demo came out late last year, and you know that any band stupid enough to release anything on cassette is also not going to be forging new ground with their music. I guess the NWOBHM and Bay Area Thrash have both been adequately rehashed, and now it’s time to redo speed metal. Whoopee. Living Death, Exciter, Razor, early Deathrow and Angel Dust, you know the drill. Ranger’s singer is of the screamy, not barky variety, and armed with that information, assuming you’ve ever heard a speed metal band before, you can pretty much imagine what you’re going to get here. I have a sort of nostalgic fondness for this sort of thing (I own both Mandator albums, for fuck’s sake) but I don’t exactly love the stuff, and I’m not especially interested in hearing more of it, but honestly, Ranger do as fine a job of recycling speed metal as, say, Havok does recycling Bay Area thrash. If you don’t know your metal history, you love rethrash, and you wish the vocalist kinda-sorta sang, then Ranger are a perfectly fine band. Break out your walkman and your denim vest, hit play and tell your parents they can shove it.
— Friar Johnsen