Monthly Archives: November 2013

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OF THE GODS, And So It Begins (2010, self-released)

The skull:
I can pretty much guarantee that whatever detail we’re not seeing in this Mesoamerican carving is more evil and more metal than the dimestore skull that’s been plopped on top. Even if it’s just a portrait of some ancient king, there’s a 90% chance he’s depicted wearing a mask of human skin, or at least a jaguar pelt. The Aztecs were incredible, unbelievable badasses, and when they wanted a decorative skull, they fucking murdered somebody and drank his blood first. Of the Gods found some royalty-free photos on the internet, made only the barest attempts at color-matching in Photoshop, and called it a day. The titular “It” is clearly a short and undistinguished career. And as always (though it usually falls on Friar Wagner to mention it), the self-applied Parental Advisory warning is a baffling addition. Were Of the Gods so sure of their success that they imagined their DIY disc would end up on the shelves at Best Buy? They are from Las Vegas, a city of big dreamers, so maybe they were.

The music:
This is like a cross between barroom groove metal and the sad stale thrash of early aughts Overkill. It’s fairly riffy and played reasonably well, and there are some good ideas, but rotten vocals and a pervasive shit-kicking stupidity easily crush whatever good things the band otherwise brings to the table. I think the vocals (and lyrics) are really the worst part, for me. I’ve heard vocals like this a hundred times before, the singing of a man who has absolutely no business singing, but maybe had enough money for a PA. They’re semi-melodic (in the sense that they strain for melody) but also totally invested in sounding tough, and the result is less Phil Anselmo than, well, terrible. There’s no one to compare this kind of singing to, because although it is incredibly common in the underground, no metal band has achieved even a tiny modicum of success with singing like this. Really, the only performance that I think I can recall that compares is Kelly Shaefer’s work in Neurotica, and on the off chance you’ve heard that, I can say safely that Of the Gods’ Landon is even worse, as hard as that is to imagine. It’s a shame, too, because with a good frontman, maybe Of the Gods could muster the enthusiasm and energy to push themselves beyond this half-assed powergroove into something at least sort of interesting. And so it ends.
— Friar Johnsen

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KILLING CHAPEL, High on Homicide (2007, self-released)

The skull:
It’s hard to see in this small image, but this skull is ornately labelled for the benefit of 19th century anatomy students, which suggests that some knife wielding maniac was so high on homicide that he didn’t realize he was stabbing a long dead teaching skull and wasn’t adding to his bodycount. He must have murdered a whole lot of people before he got to this skull, though, to be that wasted. Also, homicide must make you freakishly strong (like pcp!), because imagine how hard it is to drive a knife straight through a skull like that!

The music:
This is blue collar death/thrash made by guys who probably don’t realize those are two different things. They’re from Mifflinville, PA, though, so I gotta shout out to my bruthas from anotha county. Anyway, Killing Chapel are garden variety angry music played with a ton of energy and almost no precision. The drumming is spectacularly sloppy in that push-em-down-the-stairs kind of way, which is always at least a little amusing. The four originals fail to impress, and then they wheel out a couple of not-so-awesome covers (“Dead Skin Mask” by Slayer and “Shredded Humans” by Cannibal Corpse), and a re-recording of the Killing Chapel classic “Lord of the New Faith,” from the band’s 2005 demo. Some songs are just too good to stay buried on an obscure demo, but not so good as to find any wider release than an obscure self-released EP (aka: a demo.) Put that in your murderpipe and smoke it!
— Friar Johnsen

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HELSTAR, Rising From the Grave  (2010, Metal Blade)

The skull:
This bad boy is pretty stock: a horned skull apparently taken from a 9th grader’s notebook cover, its horns wrapped around a five-pointed star. There isn’t much to say about it. Best thing about the cover is it invokes a bit of Texas metal history (“Texas Metal, Est. 1982”) and exalts the fact that Helstar have been at this forever. Which is why they deserve a better album cover than this. It’s not even a real Helstar album, it’s a boxed set, but considering it holds two of their all-time classics…can we get a better cover design for this one please? Dang it. Even as a patch or tshirt or tattoo, I wouldn’t stich it, wear it or have its ink shot into my flesh with a needle. I’m glad I own the two studio albums in question, that way I don’t have to have this low-rent box set artwork littering my racks. Enough of that already.

The music:
This is a box set collecting two Helstar studio albums and a live one: 1988’s A Distant Thunder, 1989’s Nosferatu, and later live album, the clumsily-titled ‘Twas the Night of a Helish X-mas, originally released in 2000 but recorded in the earlier Nosferatu era. Let’s work backwards. With ‘Twas the Night blah blah blah, you can clearly hear that Helstar was an amazing live band back then (as they are now), but you wouldn’t believe it if this was your only evidence. Great performance but a shitty recording and equally disadvantageous mix. It’s far less worthy of being in this box set than Multiples of Black would have been (talk about “rising from the grave”) or of being released as a stand-alone album, as it was in 2000. Ahh, wait…I think I just discovered how Metal Blade solved the problem of getting rid of the last couple thousand they had in their warehouse…clever, guys, very clever.

Nosferatu is an album people have mistaken as a speed/thrash album, and even as a tech/prog album. It doesn’t exactly sit perfectly in those classifications, but they did ramp up the intensity and technicality for Nosferatu, so it certainly touches on those areas. It’s really just a more hi-octane Helstar than what came before, but so fussily questing for perfection that it feels a bit stiff ‘n’ cold in certain moments. That said, some of the band’s most engaging material is here (“Baptized in Blood,” “Harker’s Tale”), and any fan of, you know, metal, should really check it out.

Finally, if you purchase this box set because you love that cover art so much, you better be prepared to spin A Distant Thunder at least 100 times. The first 10 will help you acclimate to it. And least, that’s what I needed, as I found it to have much less instant appeal than their easy-to-get-into first couple albums. It’s not overly complex, certainly not on the Nosferatu level, it’s just not overly direct. It might grab you right away, but it took me years to realize its greatness. Once it took hold, though, it had to share space with Burning Star when considering which Helstar album is best. Stuff like “The King is Dead,” “Abandon Ship” and “Winds of War” are stellar examples of primo Texas epic/power/heavy metal, with the distinctive James Rivera ripping it up on vocals. Unfortunately they chose the wrong song to cover from Scorpions’ Taken By Force. “He’s a Woman (She’s a Man)” is totally out of place on A Distant Thunder; the clear winner would have been “The Sails of Charon,” but they did ask me, did they?
— Friar Wagner

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SICKBAG, Shades Among Shades (2010, Destructure)

The skull:
Although there are too many textures going on here, this is a pretty nice cover. Classy, even. Which seems inappropriate for a band called Sickbag. The skull is artfully rendered, looking a little like an engraving at first glance, but made up of much curvier lines on close inspection. The third eye is a nice touch, too. And while it’s a little hard to say for sure, I guess that fluff near the bottom could be skullvomit. There’s no sickbag to be seen, but I guess you gotta start with the puke, right?

The music:
Sickbag sound like maybe they started out playing modern Napalm Death style grind before calming down a little and settling into abrasive midpaced death metal. Dissonant chording and some angular plodding also call to mind Gojira at their least accessible (so, around From Mars to Sirius). There’s a thick grime of fuzz over everything here, from the guitars to the vocals, that I find very unpleasant, and even minus this effect the vocals would be generic and offputting, but the songwriting, for this style, is reasonably solid. The occasional ambitious reach (for instance, the increasingly messy drum intro to “…for the weak”) generally falls flat, but I do like the creativity at least hinted by those attempts. Sickbag need to tighten everything up a bit, and change their name, but they at least have some potential.
— Friar Johnsen

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HELLEMENTS, Time Machine  (2010, demo)

The skull:
Two dudes walk into a Spencer’s in some Italian mall. They see a wall clock with a skull and crossbones on the clock face. One guy says “Rad! Maybe I’ll buy that.” The other guy responds: [and, get ready, this is the punchline] “Yeah…we can use it for our album cover.”

The music:
Clearly it’s a dodgy album cover. And the album title is a lame pun on the lame album cover. And if “Hellements” is some sort of play on the word “elements,” its cleverness is lost on us. And geezus, did they really have to give the capital “H” a devil tail and Cheshire Cat smile? Doesn’t exactly get you all psyched to hear what this band has to offer. Luckily it’s a mercilessly short three song demo and not a double concept album manifesto. What we have here is traditional heavy metal crossing over to German-sounding power metal, with some Metallica-circa-1986 riffing minus the innovation and a heavily-accented vocalist who possesses an unlistenable warble. This warble ranges from completely unremarkable talk-singing (because he has trouble reaching most notes) and cringeworthy attempts to occasionallly introduce a Michael Kiske squeakiness on top of all this. There are some ham-fisted attempts at Iron Maiden-esque dual leads, and yet some solo leads fly out with laudable precision, but this is nothing you need, even for those of you with a taste for the most execrable of power metal bands. This is metal for little kids…and even some of those would find this intolerable.
— Friar Wagner

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DYNABYTE, 2KX (2010, self-released)

The skull:
This might have been a cool cover if someone had actually set out a skull and then projected their stupid blue gears-and-pipes collage onto it. Instead, probably a skull photo was poached from the internet and the industrial cliches were just Photoshopped in. I do like the attention paid to the teeth, though. They look nice.

The music:
Obviously, Dynabyte are industrial metal. The cover gives that away immediately. They’re like a slightly heavier KMFDM, with a little Pslam 69-era Ministry thrown in. Nothing too special, I’d say, although at their best (“Normal”, for instance) they almost approach early Pitch Shifter in quality. The female vocals, courtesy of Cadaveria, remind me a bit of early Genitorturers, although the cleaner singing is more nasal and less appealing. The growling is okay, though. Industrial metal, overall, should be a lot better than it is, but the truth is, for as simple as the ingredients are, almost no one does it properly, or at least to my tastes. It’s a genre of near-misses, of bands that never quite put the pieces together. For every Pitch Shifter, a dozen Drowns. For every Swamp Terrorists, a hundred Dynabytes. And that’s before you even start looking for the bands that out-and-out suck. But if that sort of thing appeals to you, like if you think Circle of Dust are awesome, and you own an Ugly Mustard album, then probably you’ll think Dynabyte are okay.
— Friar Johnsen

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WARPATH, Malevolent Reprisal  (2010, Underground Movement)

The skull:
A scowling skull decked out for war, backed up by quite the arsenal: all manner of gun, knife, blade and, uh, bear trap. It looks incredibly imposing, but maybe what we’re really dealing with is comparable to those guys that drive huge monster trucks because they have a small penis. That’s the psychological theory, anyway, and I’ll bet something like that is going on with this guy.

The music:
Here’s another metal moratorium worth proposing: no more using the Gladiator sample “at my signal, unleash hell.” It’s been done probably a hundred times. I know it must have seemed like a great a idea the first time (it was), but by now, using this sample is totally beat. Now, to the music: Warpath play Brutal Blasting Irish Death Metal exclusively! It’s like Dying Fetus meets Malevolent Creation meets Bolt Thrower stripped of any distinguishing personality. Technically they’re proficient, and they’re extremely heavy, but as well-performed as it is, Warpath cannot save themselves from slotting in shoulder-to-shoulder with the many vanilla-flavored brutal death hordes out there. You have to admire the conviction and ability, but that’s about all you have to do before forgetting this ever happened and moving onto something actually worth spending time with. Definitely gonna dock a point or two for their decision to cover Hatebreed. Ugh.
— Friar Wagner

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PISTÖNS/BESTHÖVEN, Pistöns/Besthöven (2010, Suffering Jesus Productions)

The skull:
Just your basic skull-in-deep-shadows here. We’ve seen better, and we’ve seen worse, but really, if you’re gonna go with a Big Dumb Skull, it’s best to avoid that middle ground. You want to totally rule, or completely suck. The top of the BDS bell curve is a sad place to be.

The music:
Pistöns are basically 70% Motörhead and 30% Venom, which I guess really means they’re 90% Motörhead and 10% Cronos’s barfy voice. They’re pretty good for the style, with solid riffs and convincing delivery, but they would really benefit from better vocals. Even Lemmy’s barely melodic delivery goes a long way toward differentiating what are, in the end, pretty similar songs, and Pistöns don’t even have that much going on. Still, if you like those bands, Pistöns are as good as any other knockoff I’ve heard, and they don’t come off as jokey, which is a nice change of pace. Besthöven, as you can tell by the logo, are a Discharge clone, and while those are typically useless and bad, Besthöven are awful even by comparison to their barrel bottom peers. Really sloppy low-fi shit. They only waste about 7 minutes of this split’s 22 minute running time, which I guess is the brightside, but it really makes me wonder why Pistöns would agree to share the space with them? Maybe a bet was involved. Or blackmail.
— Friar Johnsen

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UNDERGANG, Indhentet Af Doden (2011, Xtreem Music)

The skull:
He so horny! Of all the horned skulls in the Skullection — perhaps our largest subset — Mr. Undergang here is the horniest of them all. I count 12 horns protruding from this guy’s noggin. There’s nearly one horn for every spear plunging into the guy’s head space, 11 spears in fact, and while balance would have been nice at an even 12, they’re doing the job and keeping this gnarly bastard from getting into any more trouble. All manner of wraith-like visages look on, either in amusement or mocking grins, as if to say “not so fast, Horndog!” You get the feeling this guy’s seen better days, falling from grace as a Prince of Hell or a Lord of the Underworld or some such distinction. Here, he’s met his match. Still, one sharp snap of the head to the left or right, you’d think maybe those toothpick-thin spears would be rendered useless. I’d like to imagine Undergang’s next album shows us the next panel in this saga, with Horny breaking free of his bonds and kicking unholy ass on all those wise-ass specters. (It doesn’t, but it does feature about 30 non-horned skulls impaled on spears, so there’s at least some kind of thematic continuity.)

The music:
This album kinda caught fire. It was originally released in 2010 as a promo cassette in a mere 100 copies, but in short order got scooped up by two different labels and, by the next year, was pressed onto vinyl and CD. It seems to have been deserving of all that attention. Undergang have quietly been banging away with some of the most distinctive old-school-esque death metal while everyone else rips off Entombed/Dismember ad nauseam. They take the heavier road, always, mixing the aesthetics of early Napalm Death with the ridiculously bloated churning of bands like Rottrevore and Mortician, all played with the skill of any halfway decent Swedeath practitioner you care to name. Everything is lllooowww as fuck: gruff vocals from way deep down in a pit and an incredibly fat guitar sound like the roar of 15 tractor engines. If you ever wondered what it would sound like if Incantation recorded Bolt Thrower songs in Sunlight Studio with the guy from Pan-Thy-Monium on vocals, here you go.
— Friar Wagner

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TRANSMETAL, Indestructible (2012, La Mazakuata)

The skull:
Crowned in lightning and wreathed in black clouds, this massive sky-skull is not fucking around. And while the figure at the center of the Aztec calendar stone adorning the skull’s forehead is widely believed by scholars to depict the sun god, this interpretation is not universal, and clearly Transmetal are throwing their hat behind an unorthodox theory that it’s none other than Mictlantecuhtli: god of death, and, by extension, death metal. He’s out for blood and will be taking no shit. And don’t even think you can destroy him. Have you not noticed the title?

The music:
Looking at that name, and that logo, you’d surely assume that this was some super-corny true metal band, but you’d be wrong, because Transmetal are basically the wise old men of the Mexican death metal scene. Since forming in the mid 80s, they’ve released over 20 full length studio albums, and their meat-and-potatoes DM sound hasn’t changed much in all that time. There really isn’t a comparable band in the States, although Cannibal Corpse or Immolation might fit the bill. And while most DM bands who have held on that long are down to a couple original members, at least, three of the four original Transmetal dudes are still in the band. So, color me impressed by the dedication and longevity. If only their music was better! Their early stuff sounds like pretty much any other class of 87 death metal band, and over they years they’ve only modernized in the sense that they’ve incorporated some European influences (especially Scandinavian), and they’ve resisted the temptations to go melodic or technical. They’re a perfectly fine act, and if Indestructible isn’t one of their best albums (and it isn’t, especially considering the terrible, tinny production), it’s hardly a bad disc. It’s just maddeninly generic, and samey from song-to-song as well. But if mid-tempo death metal a la Asphyx is your thing, if what you want is tank-like consistency, then Transmetal might just do it for you.
— Friar Johnsen