Monthly Archives: December 2013

SKULL355

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KORZUS, Korzus Ao Vivo (1985, Devil Discos)

The skull:
While the reissue of this album recolors it to make the background black (and obviously 50% more evil), I prefer this original from a time when metal aesthetics were not quite as hidebound as they are now. Granted, it’s a little harder to make out the skull here (and the logo is also less conveniently placed on this version) but it’s not like you won’t notice this giant yellow skull sitting on some rocks. For those not fluent in Portugese, “ao vivo” means “live” (this is a live album), lending the skull a pleasing bit of irony, but there’s not otherwise a whole lot going on conceptually here: just a skull, some stone, and a Warholian palette.

The music:
I don’t know what the Council is trying to say to us lowly Friars, who have lately been absolutely inundated in Brazilian thrash. Are we being punished or rewarded? Only the Council, the ultimate arbiters of the Skullection, can say for sure, and we who serve are not about to ask. Not directly, at least. We’re pretty sure the Council doesn’t even read these posts. They have bigger fish to fry, after all. Anyway, Korzus are one of the original Brazilian thrash bands, and Korzus Ao Vivo is their first vinyl release. You can imagine exactly how awesome a Brazilian live thrash album from 1985 sounds, I’m sure. Korzus at this point were not too dissimilar from Show No Mercy-era Slayer, which is to say, they’re just fast and raw enough to be a thrash band and not NWOBHM disciples. And I’d make this comparison even if they didn’t include a cover of “Evil Has No Boundaries” on this platter. Exciter probably also figured prominently in Korzus’s list of influences back then, but for a South American band, Korzus show surprisingly little interest in German thrash. That’s fine by me. These are actually pretty decent tunes, all things considered, and I might actually enjoy this album, if not for the shitty sound. The crowd sounds intimate and into it, which is cool, but audience enthusiasm can only go so far to redeem what basically amounts to a low-grade bootleg. Also, I’m not a huge fan of Portugese as a lingua metalli. But, crusty oldschool thrashers should probably at least check these guys out, if only to name-drop them on their buddies who think they’re underground because they have Sarcofago patches on their denim vests.
— Friar Johnsen

SKULL354

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VIOLATOR, Annihilation Process  (2010, Kill Again)

The skull:
We see a lot of skulls here at Big Dumb Skulls. Many are big, most are dumb, and too many of them are boring pieces of non-art. Not this one. This cover art is all kinds of interesting, throwing out a nightmare scenario that happened one day to the citizens of some unknown metropolis. The skies turned pink and purple that morning. The dude doing the crazy backflip in the foreground was just minding his own business, walking to the bus stop, when outta nowhere comes this humongous skull whipping up all kinds of frenzy. His jaw dislocates itself to reveal a reptilian tongue of tremendous length while he belches missiles. (And he’s got a flat pig nose, too.) The missles haven’t even fired yet and we’ve already got a tremendous explosion to deal with. Bodies fly, cars slip over, buildings cave in…just all kinds of trauma. Where the huge mechanical pinchers in the bottom right and the mechanical tentacles in the background come from is a whole other story, and a whole other level of hell that these citizens are dealing with.

The music:
Third Brazilian band in a row for this Friar, and one that I name-checked in the Farscape review (skull 350). I’ll throw Violator a bone and call them “actually good.” I don’t care much for these third rate re-thrash bands, but a couple of them do it so well that you have to give them a pass, and I’ll do that for Violator. Their sound is exclusively fast and frenzied, reminding of single-minded US bands of the past such as Vio-lence and Gammacide, with vocals similar to Germany’s Assassin (Violator’s background vocals sound like “Baka!!!” and “Chocomel!!!” to me…fans of Interstellar Experience will understand). Every song on this EP sounds exactly the same, but you might expect that. They seem to know their thrash history, at least their own country’s thrash history, because they cover the obscure “You’ll Come Back Before Dying” from the obscure Executer, off their obscure third demo, circa 1989. It sounds just like a Violator original.
— Friar Wagner

SKULL353

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HDK, System Overload (2009, Season of Mist)

The skull:
Does the HDK graphic arts team not know how x-rays work? The whole point is to look through the soft tissue (like brains) to see the hard (like skulls). Perhaps we’re seeing a new, experimental kind of imaging technology at work here. Y-rays, or something like that. Or, maybe these are just really dense brains. Like, maybe the system that’s overloaded is the Moh’s Hardness Scale. These brains rate an 11. Also, the soft palate, I guess. Shit. Now my BDS Justification System is starting to smoke. Red alert!

The music:
HDK play modern melodic death metal (think: Soilwork, Scar Symmetry, etc) with a kind of Fear Factory-like precision. They’re not especially original, but I’ll be damned if they aren’t pretty good at what they do. The band is a studio project led by After Forever’s Sander Gomens, and he ropes in a bunch of buddies to help out, particularly in the vocal department. There are at least seven credited vocalists (including: rap vocalis, harsh vocals, clean vocals, and female vocals) and one of the bigger names to turn up is Andre Matos, most famously of Angra. The female singer is Amanda Somerville, who also fronts Trillium and who sounds a lot like all those other Dutch female metal singers. But for the most part, the vocals are a kind of semi-melodic yarl. Not quite thrashy, but definitely not clean either. These alternate with standard issue deep and raspy growls. The glossy, triggered, high-gain production renders the affair a bit more generic sounding than it was already scheduled to be, but if you’re into the bands that HDK wants to sound like, the homogeneity of the sounds will probably comfort. Most of the songs are uptempo and catchy enough, with only a few out-and-out clunkers (notably the lame groove cut “Terrorist”) even if nothing really stands out as especially well-crafted. For modern middle-of-the-road extreme metal, HDK are solid, and if that sounds like a weak endorsement, I should say I’m not too into the bands whose shoulders they’re standing on, but I can certainly appreciate the workmanlike craft they put into their music.
— Friar Johnsen

SKULL352

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VIOLENT HATE, Rising From the Past  (2009, Mutilation)

The skull:
This guy is all decked out in blades. Look at ’em all! So many sharp edges here, amidst an unholy red mess of creepy writhing tendrils. It’s almost enough to take attention away from the skull, who looks mighty evil with that upside-down star on his forehead. Unfortunately, all that evil is rendered inert due to the missing front tooth that makes him look like a redneck skull, a skull that took a wrong turn on his hike…and ended up playing with the powers of Hell. “I didn’t know, man, I was just waltzing along minding my own business when all these blades showed up and this pentagram came flyin’ in and stuck onto my head.” Sure, buddy. Sure.

The music:
Violent Hate’s biggest claim to fame is sharing space with Krisiun on a 1993 split. Their music recalls elements of Deicide, Vital Remains, and Vader, although it lacks a firm identity of its own (which is funny, because even Vader lacks a firm identity of their own, but that’s another story). You’re getting faceless garden variety death metal of a super-heavy inclination here. It’s been done better, it’s been done worse. If you’re actually interested, though, this collection would set you up nicely, as it gives you most of their recorded material. All except their very first demo from 1992, which means you will not get the stone cold death metal classic, “Like a Bitch in Heat.” Oh, and one of their members gives us the finger from under a brim-flipped S.T.-like ballcap. Badass, dude.
— Friar Wagner

SKULL351

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MONSTER MASH, He Gambled with Satan and Lost (2009, demo)

The skull:
It feels like it’s been a long time since we had a nice, simple, skull-on-a-table type cover, so today’s BDS is a comforting one indeed. I guess this guy wagered his teeth when he placed his bets with the devil. Or maybe it was, “If I win, you fix the teeth my ex knocked out with a hammer, and if I lose, then you can condemn my skull to an eternity on the cover of a South American thrash demo.” Either way, the title gives away the ending.

The music:
This is odd thrashy power metal with melodic high vocals that sound like a spit-take on James Rivera’s warble (although he sounds more like Kai Hansen when he does his weak falsetto scream). There’s actually another singer who is a dead ringer for this guy (or vice versa, I guess), but he’s so generic and without defining character that I can’t actually summon the name to memory. It’ll come to me one of these days. Maybe. Musically, I’m reminded in places of pre-Dark Saga Iced Earth, but of course Monster Mash are not as together as Shaffer’s troupe. The drumming is a mess, and a lot of times, it feels like the band is only barely on the same page. That said, for a band called Monster Mash, they’re not entirely bad, and with some practice they could possibly shape up into something rather decent. There’s certainly a shortage of bands like this, walking the fine line between speed and melody, and it’s always nice to hear a thrash band with a proper singer. That’s something that used to happen all the time, and now it’s exceedingly rare.
—Friar Johnsen

SKULL350

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FARSCAPE, Doctrine Sickness (2001, demo)

The skull:
Are we really on skull #350 already? What a crazy world. But before we get to the skull itself, I’m a little confused about the demo title. Is it sickness from having read or followed too much doctrine to the point you’ve been made physically ill? Or is it, like, bad-ass doctrine, as in “Dude, that doctrine you’re spewing is SICK!” We may never know, and this skull doesn’t offer any helpful hints. All this skull does is look completely batshit crazy. Not sure what’s in his eyes, but it appears to be cosmic and glowing. He’s got some liquid junk coming out of his mouth, too. Since this is black and white, it’s probably supposed to be blood, but looks more like spittle. Either fluid would be appropriate. Then there’s that ridiculous-looking wisp of hair, which looks like a guy going bald desperately trying to hang onto his last several strands. Or maybe he’s a metal dude adopting a faux-Hare Krishna style, you know, the metalhead that’s always left of left-of-center, just to be all idiosyncratic and random and shit. And what the hell are those wing-like things? They’re full of goo and wrapped in what looks like barbed-wire. Like I said: batshit muhfuggin’ kuh-RAY-ZAY.

The music:
These Brazilians play vicious, biting, ultra-intense thrash that brings to mind early Sadus, early Kreator, Darkness Descends-era Dark Angel, and off-the-chain Brazilian brethren like Vulcano and Violator. There’s not much more to say, as what you read is exactly what you get. They’re very good at it, and if I’d never been exposed to the aforementioned, I’d be going apeshit over this. The riffs are good, the intensity is high, the delivery is spot-on, and the conviction is true. How much you need Farscape in your life will depend on how many layers you like to peel off the thrash-generations onion. It makes me cry after about two layers, usually.
— Friar Wagner

SKULL349

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MASSAKER, First Attack (2009, demo)

The skull:
It’s hard to tell if the drawing is just terrible, or if this weirdly squished skull is supposed to be a “gray,” those bug-eyed aliens always probing someone’s rectum. We’ll assume it’s just an ugly human, because how would a supersciency spaceman find himself in such dire, and utterly human, straits? Impaled on a cross and decorated with a bandolier, this guy has clearly run afoul of the same liturgical vigilantes that have stuck countless other skulls on crosses in the past. It’s a rotten way to go, I imagine.

The music:
Sloppy thrash from Brazilian youngsters, First Attack is not so much raw in the Dorsal Atlantica, “Thrash was just invented and we’re still trying to figure out how to do it” way but in the, “I’m at least as good on guitar as the guy on the first Dorsal Atlantic album, so how hard can making a thrash demo be?” way. Bad songs, bad playing (especially from the drummer), and infuriatingly shitty production are the three calling cards of Massaker, as this demo is their only release to date. This band is never going to get better, and on the off chance they do, they’ll want to distance themselves as much as they can from this stinker.
— Friar Johnsen

SKULL348

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AUTOPSY, Macabre Eternal  (2011, Peaceville)

The skull:
We appreciate that this is a truly BIG skull; you don’t need an expert on scale to see that this is a weighty proposition for these zombie creatures to move across their landscape of horror. There’s nothing very dumb about it, though: Wes Benscoter has done some great work, and this is up there with his absolute best. Not until gazing at the cover for this BDS spiel did I imagine it as a morbid alternate take on Gulliver’s Travels, the Lilliputians being tiny emaciated zombies. The nasty little critters have just fed on Gulliver’s flesh and are seen here dragging his defleshed skull to some unknown destination, probably to be set up as a lawn ornament at the home of the Lilliputian Zombie King. (Please ignore the beheaded guy standing in the background…that’s some other dude they beheaded before Gulliver came along.) Even though these Lilliputian zombies should be hardened to the depravity of their day-to-day existence, some of them, if you look closely, look appalled at the scene, with looks on their faces that seem to say “How did it come to all this???” Be sure to buy my forthcoming book, Re-imagining Gulliver’s Travels, sure to set fire to the literary world a la Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. The zombie thing isn’t overdone yet, right?

The music:
Up there with Surgical Steel when it comes to better-than-average comeback albums, Macabre Eternal is one of the greatest Autopsy albums, old or new. More memorable than this year’s The Headless Ritual, and more cohesive than older albums Shitfun and Acts of the Unspeakable, it found Autopsy returning to what they do best, yet songs like “Bridge of Bones” and “Sadistic Gratification” find the band expanding their range too. These two tracks bring some new ideas to the table, and in the case of the latter, finds Autopsy working with extended length and relatively complex arrangement ideas that they’d never before attempted. And there’s plenty of doom-laden horror and ridiculous depravity throughout the other, more traditional Autopsy songs. The guitar tones and soloing of the Corrales/Cutler team are here in all their gory glory, while Chris Reifert not only rocks the drumkit unlike most other death metal drummers, he expands his vocal range to include a kind of perverted talk-singing that’s sometimes hard to swallow, but if you’re in the mood, it takes you to a putrid, crazy place. A completely enjoyable slab of fucked-up ugliness from an incomparable death metal legend.
— Friar Wagner

SKULL347

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TABES, Cadavera Tabes Absumebat (1999, self-released)

The skull:
The title translates to “The corpses were consumed by decay,” which seems somewhat redundant over a picture of a skull, but there you have it. Also, there’s the obvious disagreement in number, but that’s okay. We’d rather see one skull than many corpses, and this is a fine photo featuring some of the shoddiest Photoshop masking I’ve ever seen. Although, this being from 1999, it was probably from PaintShop Pro or one of the other free/shareware graphics editing packages of the day. Can you even imagine how long it would have taken to download a warez version of Photoshop on dial-up? Then again, maybe these young Frenchmen had an isdn connection at their school.

The music:
Amateur-hour death metal with a corny horrorshow vibe, Tabes was almost certainly these musicians’ first band. The playing is hilariously messy, and you can picture with total clarity the look of brow-furrowed concentration on the the faces of the guitarists as they struggle to (not exactly) nail their (not at all) challenging parts, and you can practically hear the drummer counting to himself as he gamely attempts to keep the train on the rails. Tabes are actually kind of charming in their high-school ineptitude, but god damn, this is some terrible shit. Makes me really glad my high school band left no recorded output!
— Friar Johnsen

SKULL346

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DIABOLIKAL, Devastacion, Aniquilacion, Destruccion  (2008, demo)

The skull:
This guy looks like he was caught with his pants down in the tiny entryway of a mineshaft. Now how the hell did this happen? I can offer no explanation, but the grainy treatment gives it a bleak and spooky feel, helping divert attention from that fact that the skull was caught with his pants down — that is, if he had hips and legs, which there seem to be no evidence for. Still, he looks a bit like the proverbial deer in the headlights, doesn’t he?

The music:
Shitloads of spikes, 25 pounds of leather, loads of chains, crazy-ass corpsepaint and all the right patches on your denim do not automatically guarantee entry into the hall of nekro death/thrash/black infamy. This Chilean band are offering nothing new, interesting, dangerous or diabolical on this five-song, 13-minute demo. Lame music is lame music, no matter how much cool shit you dress it up in. Yet another mediocre metal band not worth remembering.
— Friar Wagner