Monthly Archives: February 2014

SKULL424

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DEMONIC RAGE / EXCORIATE, Death Communion split  (2008, Rawblackult Productions)

The skull:
If skull 423 had Cletus-teeth, this guy is his brother Darryl. Had the “artist” of this masterpiece blacked out these two central incisors, it might have been a more morbid-looking image. But then the skull itself might have raised objections: “Them’s the only choppers I’s got!” What’s more, he already has enough crap to worry about, having gotten two death metal logos spraypainted on his head while he was passed out on the couch at the party.

The music:
Two Chilean death metal bands, one cassette tape, 11 songs, 333 copies, and a handful of Incantation-esque song titles (“Everlasting Plagues of Nauseous Wickedness,” “The Beginning of the Apocalyptic Enlightenment”). Excoriate have a relatively cleaner sound than their split-mates, theirs a choppy, speedy, no-frills death metal attack that veers into the most insane, violent realms of old-school thrash. They sound authentically 1990, and if they had actually been around back then I have no doubt their tapes would have carried the Wild Rags logo (what with the ping-ing snare and all). Demonic Rage are, technically, probably the better band. Their approach is a ridiculously heavy one, suffocatingly dense and much crueler than Excoriate. It’s no wonder they’ve managed a fairly prolific output while their split buddies have faded into the crowded realms of death metal’s also-rans. Too bad, because Excoriate appeal to me more with their out-of-time aura, but they’re not so good to waste any time in mourning.
— Friar Wagner

SKULL423

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NECROMANTIA, Vampiric Rituals  (1992, demo)

The skull:
Huge eye sockets, huge nasal cavity, big “Call me Cletus” teeth, and some of the most bad-ass looking fangs we’ve yet seen on a skull. Fangs-on-skull usually look goofy or lamely tacked on by an amateur computer “artist,” but these…yeah, I’d run the other way if I saw these white spikes of doom gnashing away, lusting for any part of my flesh. However, this is rendered less threatening by the symbol on the forehead. Designed properly, it may have added to all the evil intent, but really it just looks like a sticker from a Flash Gordon playset slapped onto his forehead. These album covers are great, the ones that take the album title and hope to reflect that title super-literally. Vampire fangs + Ritual-esque symbol on forehead = Vampiric Rituals!

The music:
The one and only “they have two bass players” black metal band from Greece. This is their second release (which actually combines two different recordings, from 1990 and 1991). Unsurprisingly it’s quite the raw ride. When they play fast, as in parts of “The Feast of Ghouls,” it’s absolutely feral despite its clumsiness. Paired with the diseased vocals it paints a bleak, creepy picture. The drumming is hilariously bad throughout, and even those bassists are a bit sketchy, but they certainly sounded more accomplished as quickly as the next year’s debut album. Too many “ooh, aren’t we a spooky lot?” keyboard parts throughout this 39-minute demo, but you have to give them credit for conjuring a vibe here, that vibe particular to the early ’90s Greek scene — strange, morbid, raw, earnest and with a certain charm. The final track, “La Mort,” is especially strange, sounding not unlike some basement recording of a dark Italian prog rock band with drunken Uncle Giorgio having taken over the mic to perform his best/worst Dracula impression. Unsettling and funny at the same time. Whether it’s Rotting Christ, Varathron or Necromantia, their ideas were more ambitious than their skills would allow in their early forms, but they did the best they could, and you have to give them each credit for their ability to craft otherworldly atmospheres. The material on this recording is a bit stiff, a bit cold, a bit low-rent, but that may be what Necromantia were going for, and it’s definitely what a ton of NWN!-worshipping kids in suburbs all over the globe will eat up these days, if packaged properly (ie. deluxe “blood pack” red vinyl with thick 54-page booklet, limited to 100 hand-numbered copies. Preferably.).
— Friar Wagner

SKULL422

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BUTTOCKS, …War Kills… (1990, demo)

The skull:
As a young friar, I spent most of my days in the priory studying the sacred texts of our order, contemplating the mysteries of the Skull, producing illuminated copies of Metal Forces back issues, and so forth. The usual duties of an ascetic. But on our day of rest (which is Wednesday according to the calendar most of you would be familiar with) we were encouraged to explore the surrounding forests and meadows and commune with our inner skull. One day, on a walk that took me many miles from the cloistered walls of my home, I encountered a stiff wind from the north, which soon brought a driving rain upon me. I sought refuge in a small copse of trees and huddled in my cowl beside a large rock, which afforded some cover from the elements. In the sheltered lee of this rock, I found the remains of a fire, and amid the ashes, soot, and charcoal, I saw a glimmer of white. I reached into the pile, and withdrew the white thing, which was the singed but mostly intact jacket of a cassette tape, the identity of which I assume now is obvious. As I waited for the storm to pass, I stared at this unlikely bit of detritus and pondered the significance of its title. I marveled at the chain of events that led me to this place and the discovery of a Big Dumb Skull heretofore unknown to my order. But above all, I giggled like a schoolboy because some band called themselves Buttocks and thought anyone would take their social commentary seriously.

The music:
Sadly, I was not able to find any songs from this demo, and had to content myself with a spin of their 1991 demo, Urcemurcel Turkus. It’s simple but slightly off-kilter Norwegian death metal, not dissimilar to the first Cadaver album, minus the tuba. Really, nothing special, which is sad, because I had such high hopes for Buttocks. There are a LOT of songs on this demo, though; far more than on their later recordings, and this makes me wonder if maybe they didn’t start as a Napalm Death style grind band. I may never know, but I take comfort in the fact that this ridiculous band existed at all.
— Friar Johnsen

SKULL421

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MORDAX, The Bitter End (1992, demo)

The skull:
Neverminding how ugly this cover is, think about how lazy it is. It’s one thing to cut a skull out of a book or an issue of National Geographic. It’s quite another to grab so uninteresting a skull from an anatomy textbook, with all the labeling numbers intact (and without the legend!) This is really the best skull they could steal? At least it’s huge – there’s barely any room for even the band’s shitty pixelated logo — and a huge bad skull is always preferred over a small badass skull. It says so right in the charter establishing The Council. Or at least, I think it does: my Latin is rusty.

The music:
Swedish death metal from 1992 that sounds like American death metal from 1990. Or something like that. The gurgly vocals are terrible, but there’s an undercurrent of weirdness here that I find strangely appealing. While the base influences are the likes of Death, Morbid Angel, and of course the bigger Swedish bands, the final product is odd in the way Demilich was odd, just not to the same extent. Unbelievably, this band and release are unknown to Metal Archives, although these is another Mordax (who ALSO have a BDS cover) listed. Quite a mystery! For all I know, this isn’t the cover the demo was released with originally, and really, this could just be some dumb-ass retro thing recorded in 2010 and doctored to look and sound old. Who knows, or cares? While this is not exactly my cup of tea, it is inexactly my cup of tea, and it’s fairly well done, especially for the time. Anyone with a serious love of early death metal should at least check this out. You’ll probably end up with the same warbly Nth generation dub that I found, but for something like this, that’s more than good enough.
— Friar Johnsen

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STONED JESUS, First Communion (2010, Solitude Productions)

The skull:
Can I get an “Amen”? There’s nothing about this cover that makes sense in the contexts of “Stoned Jesus,” or “First Communion,” unless the communion in question is one between skull and snake, with tongue. Back in my day, we’d have just called that first base. But, there’s no denying the general awesomeness of this cover, from the blissed-out noggin on a plasmatic sun, to the brilliantly ugly purple background, to the best use of a snake yet on a Big Dumb Skull. The skull could be bigger, sure, but this is a great example nevertheless of a cover that manages to cram together a bunch of elements in a way that accentuates the skull, that doesn’t distract from what is rightfully the central element of the composition. Would it have been better if the skull was wearing a crown of thorns? Yes. If the snake held a eucharistic wafer on his forked tongue? Of course. If the skull were smoking a massive doob? Absolutely. But, as they say, the perfect is the enemy of the good, and he who is without sin should be the first stoned, or something. It’s a great cover, is my point.

The music:
Although it’s always to be hoped that a band won’t sound exactly as you imagine they’ll sound, generally, it’s best to not get your hopes up. Stoned Jesus are just another boring Sabbath knockoff, one of millions, offering nothing that hasn’t been heard a billion times already. It’s tempting to ascribe this almost uniform worthlessness in stoner rock bands to the stoning, but I suppose you get this pretty much everywhere. No one automatically assumes that the latest metalcore band is so unambitious because of pot, no one points their finger at the reefer to explain the latest power metal abortion. But still. At least those bands sometimes play fast. That makes them seem less lazy, somewhow. Anyway, Stoned Jesus. I guess it’s mildly intriguing that a band from Ukraine would take up this style, but that interest is not enough to make it through even a single song without a plenitude of sighs and eye-rolls. This release is actually only four long songs, but it might as well be eight, or twelve, because none of them seem to really have a through-line that justifies the ten-plus minute lengths, and every single riff and song sounds exactly the same anyway. Why not release a 7″ with your best 5 riffs on one side, and a cover of “Sweet Leaf” on the other? Save everyone a lot of time.
— Friar Johnsen

SKULL419

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PROPELLER, Always Say Die (1992, demo)

The skull:
Another skull on a pentagram. I’d yawn, but I am amused by this one. It looks like the skull of a marionette, Howdy Doody defleshed, with it’s squashed jaw and tiny teeth. Also, I like how the eyes are actually too big for the sockets, which is not how eyes work. Yes, when you look at a (living) person, you can’t see the entire sphere, because of the eyelids. Take away the lids, though, and the eyeball fits nicely into the socket, with no overhanging bone to obscure the top or the bottom. Consider this a humble anatomy lesson directed at all future Big Dumb Skull artists, because this eye thing is a very common mistake.

The music:
In 1992 would almost certainly have been called death metal, but in retrospect it sounds more like thrash than anything. A transitional form, basically. Think Beneath the Remains or Swallowed in Black. It’s a little more legitimately deathy than some stuff of this era, perhaps because Propeller lifts sometimes very literally from contemporary death metal bands (the bridge in “Brainsucker Spiders,” for instance, is stolen from “Immortal Rites” by Morbid Angel). Despite the drum machine, and despite coming out of Russian in 1992, this sounds fairly good, and for die-hard thrash fans, it wouldn’t be a bad thing to own, although I’m sure at this point, a download is your only option. The vocals are weak, but the riffing is good and they’ve managed to cobble together some reasonable compelling songs, if only with the help of their inspirations. After releasing this demo, the band changed names to Phantasm and released a single album, but that album also features a Big Dumb Skull, so look for it here in the (distant) future. This demo seems to be the better-sounding effort, though, and most of the songs on the LP are also here, so I guess this is the place to start.
— Friar Johnsen

SKULL418

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RAHOWA, Cult of the Holy War  (1995, Resistance)

The skull:
I was sitting around on the 4th floor of the Big Dumb Skulls compound, chatting it up with a spokesperson for the Council, when we both realized it had been too long since we’d enjoyed a skull with a snake weaving in and out of it. Could it be that we last saw it with Skull149 (Kataklysm)? Then we started talking about the old days, all the way back to Skull4 (Sword). Then we opened our eleventh bottles of some strong Belgian ale and marveled at this cover, the mighty Skull418, which has that slightly pornographic motif we were looking for:  a skull penetrated in several holes at the same time by one mean looking serpent. Then the spokesperson started sobbing uncontrollably about how much he wishes the Council would come around on the S.O.D. Speak English or Die skull (currently in the rejected pile) and then I blacked out.

The music:
I remember all the controversy about this band (and label, and magazine) back in the mid ’90s, but avoided the music because there’s even less great white supremacist metal out there than great Christian metal. But I also remember hearing that this album was a “masterpiece,” something that even people outside the band’s political realm were claiming. I still didn’t check it out, but noted the reverence. Now that all’s said and done with Rahowa, I feel okay listening to this album via Youtube. The first thing that strikes me are the vocals. They vary from clean folk-ish choir vocals to gruff, semi-sung passages that recall the worst of Tim from Pyogenesis (a band I have much affection for, despite Tim’s occasional silliness). In fact, many moments in Cult of the Holy War remind of Sweet X-Rated Nothings, or maybe those Cemetary albums when the band was steering its death metal into more gothic areas. I even hear that orchestral/gothic post-metal feel of mid ’90s Tiamat and Paradise Lost in spots. Another way to frame what Rahowa’s doing is to call it “post-Bloody Kisses” (look no further than “Hall of the Heroes” and “The Last Battalion” for two particularly blatant Type O Negative ripoffs). There’s also a strong presence of gang chants and a decidedly folky flavor to the music, which probably provides a link to Rahowa’s Oi! roots and might appeal to people who like junk like Korpiklaani, but what the hell do I know about Oi! or Korpiklaani? Not much! Lyrically it’s obsessed with the idea of white power, making Cult of the Holy War the least-angry metal album of its type, at least that I’ve heard. Despite the fact that their philosophy is fucked, I appreciate the sensitivity they show on something like ballad “In the Fires of 1945.” Some of this is positively upbeat, and hey, I guess there’s something to be said for not giving a worse name to white power bands. Ultimately there’s a ton of variety here, and some of it is even truly good, although the bad stuff is hilariously bad (“Anvil of Crom” = Manowar circa Gods of War). For every good moment there’s a shoddy off-key vocal or some clunky rhythm that makes you wish they’d used a drum machine. And really, this is no masterpiece. It is, in fact, for all its ambition, quite a mess. Too many ideas, too many directions, too many cooks, really, without the ability to tie it all together cohesively. There’s a serious lack of self-editing skill here, too, as if every single idea they had for the album went onto the album. The white power thing is something band leader (and founder of the Resistance label and magazine) George Eric Hawthorne completely turned away from and now denounces. Apparently he’s now in a band with Jewish and black people called Novacosm, and good for him. Hopefully the music’s better than what’s on offer within Cult of the Holy War, but this at least has several interesting moments.
— Friar Wagner

SKULL417

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CEREKLOTH, Halo of Syringes (2011, Hells Headbangers)

The skull:
SCENE III. A room of rehearsal.
Guy from Cerekloth at his post. Enter an artist.

Guy from Cerekloth: Thou art the master artist of our time.
What hast thee in thy mind for our EP?

Artist: A skull, perforce. What other thing could do?

GfC: I knoweth not, and yet my mind is ill
at ease. How doth the skull, in shape or sense
upon our music most unclean comment?

A: The gravity of death thy tunes proclaim, or so
I do detect.

GfC: You are correct, and yet
the title of this grim, unholy slab
is “Halo of Syringes.”

A: Then perhaps
around the figure’s bony brow should I
in ink that selfsame halo circumscribe.

GfC: Indeed! Thy genius is unmatched in all
these dark and Danish lands. So, hie thee now
unto thy scrivener’s desk to craft in black
and white that face unmasked, itself a mask
for all the seven inches of our songs!

Exeunt

The music:
Slow to crawling black metal, mainly reminding me of Blood Ritual-era Samael, down to the croaky Vorphalackian vocals and the distant, hollow guitar tone. The riffing is a little more advanced than Samael, and certainly owes something to late 90s black metal (particularly the groups not so interested in remaining tr00) and more modern stuff, particularly the angular oddness coming out of France. For some reason, Cerekloth bills themselves as death metal, and I guess it’s an open question if a band can actually be called “black metal” without blast beats, but to me, this doesn’t sound much like death metal at all. It’s perfectly serviceable stuff, but there are only two songs and a filler instrumental on this EP, so you’d probably be better off starting with the band’s full length debut, which came out a couple years after this.
Friar Johnsen

— Friar Johnsen

SKULL416

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KRANK, Ugly Right to the Bone  (2010, Retrospective)

The skull:
I’d like to think that this skull is sporting a gold earring in its left, uh, “ear.” The bone of the skull may be deteriorating, and the cause of death is obvious (those look like bullet holes skidding along the top of his dome) but the earring remains to communicate to one and all: “Even in death I am a cheeseball.” Yes, I’d like to think it’s an earring and not some gold hole in the metal plate(s) behind him, so I’m gonna go with it.

The music:
Like so many other metal fans, I have a deep affinity for classic ’80s era Metal Blade. Not just the many great bands they signed, but the artwork (good and bad), the compilations, even the simple label design on the old vinyl records (first tan, then silver). Hugely nostalgic and still totally relevant. Krank’s Hideous is not one of Metal Blade’s finer moments. In fact, it’s one of its worst. (I know — I bought it in 1986, which was, perhaps not incidentally, the year I stopped buying absolutely everything Metal Blade released.) There isn’t a more aptly-titled album either. Fast forward nearly 25 years and we find Krank peddling that same clanky, go-nowhere metal that’s about as appealing as the idea of sucking a hermaphrodite’s cock in an alley behind L.A.’s Gazzari’s while a totally smashed-on-whisky Nitro plays inside. If there was ever a band that had no business attempting to regain its former non-glory, Krank is it. This album is nearly unlistenable. If you want to hear a vocalist that makes Vince Neil sound like Pavarotti and a band that write tunes so insipid it makes Girls Girls Girls sound like Dark Side of the Moon, you might want to check out Krank immediately! Finally, in my delving of metal’s grossest gutters, looking for a copy of Ugly Right to the Bone to listen to, someone on Youtube, apparently without any irony, says “Krank has always been one of my favorite metal bands.” Seriously, that’s what they said. You can’t make that shit up.
— Friar Wagner

SKULL415

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MORDANT, Momento Mori (2004, Agonia)

The skull:
This art has the cute handmade look of someone who just learned to silkscreen last semester. It’s a striking design that would work well on a shirt, aside from the ugly logo that was clearly pasted in after the fact. It’s a nice touch that the pool of blood appears to be skulltears. I guess when you don’t have eyelids or any other soft tissue on your face, the tears just pour out in a single stream. This is just one of the many day-to-day things a skull has to deal with that have literally never occurred to me before. My long tenure in the service of The Council has certainly made me more empathetic to such skullish concerns.

The music:
Ever wonder what it would sound like to cross Motley Crue and Bathory? How you answer that question will more or less predict how much you like Mordant, who trade in a nearly even mix of early black metal and L.A. proto-hair metal. The mix works pretty well, all things considered. You get a kind of raspy growl, not entirely unlike early David Vincent, on top of riffs that Mick Mars could easily play, and which pedal on the A string instead of the E (or whatever the hell they’re tuned to. I don’t have perfect pitch and I’m not going to bother to figure this out right now.) The production is super boxy and bass-heavy but it sounds cheap in more or less the ways people like, when they listen to goofy retro shit like this. My research indicates that Mordant are frequently compared to Nifelheim, but that’s a band I never cared for, so I can’t say one way or the other, but I guess if this is what Nifelheim sounds like, well, maybe I’d like them if I tried again. Who knows. It’s not that Mordant is my new favorite thing ever, and I probably won’t even buy it, but listening to Memento Mori for this review wasn’t at all unpleasant. It’s hard to ask for more in this line of work!
— Friar Johnsen