SKULL455

Posted on March 31, 2014 by Friar Johnsen

SÓLSTAFIR, Black Death (2002, Ketzer)

The skull:
Designing an album cover to look like a liquor label is only clever to the likes of Zakk Wylde, which is to say it’s about as far from actually clever as can be imagined. The only redeeming quality of this jokey design is the downright prehistoric skull on display. With a lower jaw that could impress Nutcracker Man or Jay Leno, this guy looks ready to do some serious chompin’, not to mention some serious partyin’. He’s the sort of lovable oaf you can’t say no to, even if he shows up with a bunch of Icelandic dudes who habitually overstay their welcome.

The music:
Previously, I had only heard more recent Sólstafir records, where the band coast on one or two riffs for interminable lengths, “crafting” 13 minute songs out of raw materials suited for maybe a short intro, at best. I can appreciate, at least on paper, the vibe they try to summon (especially when Rhodes piano is involved), but in practice, those epic endurance tests masquerading as songs reek of hubris and laziness, not to mention a too-evident love of The Church. Fortunately, this early entry to the Sólstafir canon is a peppier, and more succinct, affair. Originally released as a demo but pared down by a couple songs for an EP release, Black Death is a slightly “folky” mix of black, death, and doom metal, played with energy and passion. I’m reminded in places, weirdly, of Hexx’s much-disparaged death metal period, in particular the excellent Morbid Reality. The post-whatever influences (-rock, -punk, so on) that dominate the band’s later albums are present here, but only as seasonings in a mostly metal stew. There’s definitely a spark here that, had I heard this 10 years ago, I would have taken as a sign of a band with big things to come, and I would have been right, I suppose, but the bigness, as it turned out, was not so much in the realm of great ideas, but in that of hype.
— Friar Johnsen

SKULL454

Posted on March 30, 2014 by Friar Wagner

SA Sanctuary, Abandon in Place (2011, Butchered)

The skull:
An under-achieving piece of cover “art” on every single level: the skull image is not only dull, but has been used before (skull366); the band’s name is one of those clunky territory-staking ones (is Sanctuary such an amazing name that you have to hold onto it at all costs?); and the album title makes absolutely no sense. Regarding the latter, I amuse myself by imaging this as a square dance call in some highly surrealistic alternate universe: “Swing your partner round and round / heads promenade around the town / gentlemen, abandon in place!” as the gentlemen perform difficult contortions that look like something from a dada dance troupe. The original cover did not feature a skull, but for god-knows-what reason it was reissued 10 years later with this masterpiece of artwork announcing to the world that SA Sanctuary are not to be forgotten!!!

The music:
SA Sanctuary play forgettable thrash. But first, the name: what is it with San Antonio bands and their unflagging loyalty to their name? First it was Slayer, who changed their name to SA Slayer, then it was Sanctuary, who changed it to SA Sanctuary when the Seattle Sanctuary got signed to a major. Is it worth all the fuss? No, it is not. SA Sanctuary sound like Acrophet. Or a Bizarro World version of Forbidden, where great bands in the real world are mirrored by lesser, failed facsimiles of themselves. Lots of gang vocals too. Typical of many Texas metal bands on the thrashier end of the spectrum, they have a fair amount of traditional metal melody creeping in. Seattle’s Sanctuary are way better. I hear SA Chozzen Phate have a new reissue set coming out, although no one is even sure if there’s actually another Chozzen Phate that forced this addendum to their name. We suspect they did it because it’s just what San Antonio metal bands do.
— Friar Wagner

SKULL453

Posted on March 29, 2014 by Friar Johnsen

PHANTASM, Keeper of Death (1993, Russian Disc)

The skull:
As promised with SKULL419, here is the successor to Russia’s Propeller. These guys really upgraded their aesthetics here. Of course, Phantasm is a much more awesome (if unoriginal) name than Propeller, and this skull is also mas macho. Whereas the Propeller pentagram was a kind of bladey thing, here we have barbed wire which is actually threaded through fissures in the skull (a nice touch!) Propeller featured what looked like a marionette skull, but Phantasm’s skull is clearly a badass dude. And while there’s still the issue of the too-big eyes, this guy makes up for it by dripping blood from his nose and mouth. Everything about this guy screams, “You motherfuckers thought you knew about death and pain? Well, you don’t know SHIT.”

The music:
Unfortunately, while Propeller got their look together when they changed to Phantasm, they sure as hell didn’t get their act in the studio together. This is the same kind of deathy thrash, but the sound is atrocious and the playing mysteriously sloppier. This was only recorded a year or so after that Propeller demo, but it sounds like it might have been made 5 years before. It’s a very strange regression for a band who, as of their demo, sounded like they knew what they were doing. That said, this being a proper LP and not a demo, it’s acquired a reputation as an underground classic in some circles, and if you like caveman death metal a la Master, then you might really go in for this, shitty production and all. Granted, you won’t find it for less than a small fortune, but spending hundred of bucks on a totally inessntial LP from Russia will make it sounds way more awesome, at least in your mind.
— Friar Johnsen

SKULL452

Posted on March 28, 2014 by Friar Wagner

PLAGUE WARHEAD, Whores of Lucifer (2011, Godeater)

The skull:
If I’m reading into the deeply embedded subtext correctly, the upside crosses represent Lucifer and the skull is the whore. The skull’s eye holes are being penetrated by nine lascivious crosses — and a huge dagger cleaving through the skull’s head for good measure. This is perhaps the grossest violation of a skull’s orifices we have ever seen here at Big Dumb Skulls, although one wonders: why not some hot and nasty penetration of the nasal cavity? It’s a gaping hole just waiting to be sullied. Or maybe it’s just a skull with a bunch of crosses stuffed into its eyes — no pornographic overtones whatsoever. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, right? But that’s no fun…and that’s how hardened we’ve become here at BDS. Now anything less than nine crosses fucking dry eyeless sockets is going to seem pedestrian.

The music:
While they can confidently be called “death metal,” Plague Warhead’s riffing and drumming are far more thrash metal than the norm, so it is that the band are often dubbed “death/thrash.” And while calling Plague Warhead death/thrash automatically makes them seem unappealing (because of the zillions of death/thrash bands that suck), these guys are quite good at their chosen craft. It’s so 2002 up in this joint! There’s some particularly good bass playing and a few hair-raising moments of Slayer-esque dissonance in “Forces of Evil” (bet you’ve never seen a song title like that before), and again, they’re going to satisfy metal fans that want this exact sort of thing — they’re certainly better than 90% of other bands in this vein. That said, Plague Warhead delivers not a damn bit of individual personality to their music, so one listen and I’m done. Benny Larsson (Edge of Sanity, Pan-Thy-Monium) is the drummer here, and while I wouldn’t say he’s totally slumming, I’d say he’s mostly slumming. But when you’ve been in two bands that godly, where do you go from there? Plague Warhead, I guess. I’ll be waiting for them to write a song called “The Skull is the Whore,” and then — and only then — will I listen again.
— Friar Wagner

SKULL451

Posted on March 27, 2014 by Friar Johnsen

OMINOS, Ominos (2011, demo)

The skull:
I could be wrong, but I believe this is the first moonskull in the Skullection. At least, I think they’re going for some kind of moon thing here, because if not that, what? Sometimes a skull is just a skull, but those white crescents have to be something, right? Is this just the reflected image of a skull gazing forlornly into a birdbath he installed in his backyard? He was so looking forward to watching black phoebes and western scrubjays frolic in the basin, but he hasn’t spotted a single bird out there yet. And his hummingbird feeder isn’t seeing any action either. He says to himself, “I thought birding would make me happy, for once…” before his thoughts dissolve to nothingness.

The music:
For some reason, I was expecting Greek style black metal, but instead this is garage-quality shithead thrash. It’s not really retro, but it’s hardly forward-looking, either. This is metal made by people with tiny music collections. Like, if the band members pooled their discs, they’d probably have most of the Metallica albums, two or three from Pantera, Burn My Eyes, Divine Intervention, and maybe something by Lamb of God. The playing is loose and messy, and the vocals are atrocious, but the main strike against Ominos is their plain inability to write songs or even single riffs worth hearing. I bet they could totally talk 20 of their friends into buying a ticket to the Devildriver show they’re playing, though. Ominos go on at 5:30pm.
— Friar Johnsen

SKULL450

Posted on March 26, 2014 by Friar Wagner

BLACKLIST, The Sign of 4 (1984, self-released)

The skull:
This is one of the earliest examples of the “worried skull,” a curious motif we see occasionally here at Big Dumb Skulls HQ. Why he worry? Perhaps because the band put four iron crosses on the cover, and the skull didn’t realize until too late that this might draw accusations of Nazism toward the band. And that casts a bad light on the skull by proxy. A skull’s got a reputation to uphold, right? And how was he ever going to land that big deal with Krokus that was all the gossip in skull circles that year? Ultimately, he didn’t get the gig — Krokus wanted an eyeless skull, and this guy wasn’t willing to have them gouged out. And his crossbones were deemed too dinky for Marc Storace and company. Or maybe the skull’s worried look (and that particularly sunken right eye) is due to the zap of highly charged static electricty we see hovering around him. Either way, none of this worry and mild shock were worth this bullshit minimum wage gig.

The music:
Yet another of those independently-released US metal records from the ’80s that goes for hundreds of dollars on eBay, mostly to Greek kids. And, as with so much of this era’s bands, it could have easily wound up on one of the early Metal Massacre compilations. They wouldn’t have been a highlight of the comp, but they wouldn’t have been the worst. The riffs here are uniformly average, the choruses typical, and the overall vibe “ho-hum.” On the plus side, there are some good guitar leads from Jon Rogue, and occasionally, as in “Steady on the Steel,” he reels off a glory-crammed thematic melody line. All of his work on “Revenge” is excellent. Vocalist Mark Holz is interesting, too. He sounds like a throatier, huskier Vince Neil on “Confrontation,” although not tone deaf and flat-out shitty (Vince Neil is the worst), while his raspy delivery on “Steady on the Steel” finds him mashing up Mark Shelton and Mark Tornillo, thought it’s not quite as weird or ridiculous as that combo seems on paper. This also gets a few extra points for the recording job, which is cleaner, brighter, heavier and much less scrappy than the typical release of this kind. So, Blacklist has a few noteworthy and even impressive elements, but it’s pointless to spread delicious icing on stale cake. This EP is worth a listen, but probably not worth $300, which I’ll bet you $300 it has sold for to some fanatic in Greece.
— Friar Wagner

SKULL449

Posted on March 25, 2014 by Friar Johnsen

MARK LOWREY, Rusty Mark in the Metal Palace (1985, self-released)

The skull:
When you think of Jack and the Beanstalk, you think about the giant up top, but did you ever stop to consider how fucking big those beans must have been? And if the race of giants cultivated giant legumes, they might well have also grown giant corn, and would probably have invented two prong cob holders so their giant children wouldn’t burn their fingers. To a terrestrial human, these might have looked like swords. Pictured on this album cover is one of the sad predecessors to Jack, who stumbled into the giant’s home sometime in late June, early July and was rather quickly impaled on a corn holder by some impetuous giant toddler. It’s a shitty way to go, no doubt.

The music:
Workmanlike U.S. metal of the sort that padded the space between the great tracks on the early Metal Massacre albums. Think Tyrant, Pandemonium, Thrust, that sort of thing. Totally boring, but accomplished enough that surely someone thinks this is a lost classic. Someone from Austria, probably. Someone with a lot of money, at least, because this album, when it shows up, sells for at least a couple hundred bucks. Go figure. The cover art and impossibly bad title made me suspect that this was some kind of Metal Enterprises quickie release, but no, it appears that Mark Lowrey, a vocalist of no special skill, just really felt his work needed to be heard, so he pressed these up himself. No one from the backing band ever did anything else, but considering there are not one but two guys named “Rusty” in the lineup, I suspect that maybe some pseudonyms were used. If I were an L.A. session dude, I certainly wouldn’t want to be associated with Mark Lowrey. I have a certain fondness for plodding early metal like this (I own 3rd Stage Alert on CD, for fuck’s sake), but even by my relaxed standards this is dull stuff, like Twisted Sister without a sense of humor (and Dee Snider). That most of these songs are about or even include “metal” in the title is just an additional kick in the balls. Lowrey deserves some special award for his lack of irony, though: “Unsung Song” is not an instrumental, and the album’s instrumental is titled “Purple Pyramid.” That’s the kind of brilliant nonsense that no snarky reviewer could make up on his own.
— Friar Johnsen

SKULL448

Posted on March 24, 2014 by Friar Wagner

HAMMER HEAD, Rock Forever (1987, Power Outage)

The skull:
The dudes in Tacoma’s Hammer Head were sitting around one rainy day in 1987 chugging cans of Olympia beer and listening to Thor when they came up with the metalhead’s alternative to the Rock, Paper, Scissors game. They called it Rock, Hammer, Skull, and while the specifics of the rules are still being hammered out (no pun intended) decades later, they do know that the outcome of the game is always the same: rock wins, because rock is forever. As seen from the panel of the game instructions the band used for their album cover, it has been determined that hammer smashes skull. We’re not sure what the official game rules state regarding the specific powers and weaknesses of the skull, but we’re pretty sure they’ll be releasing the final rules booklet for Rock, Hammer, Skull any year now. And please note the innovative use of pink…probably an attempt to attract the women-folk.

The music:
In a nutshell, Hammer Head sounds a lot like Anvil in the Metal Blade years (Strength of Steel, Pound for Pound) without the ability to craft memorable songs. Even the vocals are Lips-esque, here draped in a chilly fog of reverb, just enough to keep it from sounding dry. The drums have a similarly processed/effected sound, while the guitars crank out in standard-issue ’80s heavy metal style without much in the way of unique personality. While Hammer Head’s songs are dull in their composition, the execution gets plus points thanks to the tasty guitar work of Greg Martin. I’ll bet if Mike Shrapnel had heard this guy back in the day, he would have signed Hammer Head based on Martin’s work alone. Certainly not for the songs, but Shrapnel were not always concerned about songs as much as having another kickass guitarist was in the house. A song like “Point Nine” has absolutely nothing going for it other than the lead work, while the title track is a plodder in the vein of Anvil’s “Strength of Steel.” “Stone Cold Crazy” is not the Queen song of the same name; it sounds like Ultimate Sin-era Ozzy in the verses, and, again, Anvil in the chorus. “Angel” is a worthless ballad, not because ballads are automatically worthless (they’re not), but because it’s a worthless ballad. “Holocaust” is an acoustic guitar-led semi-epic, but its cock-rock delivery and cheeseball sound effects are not very holocausty. Ultimately Hammer Head should be given credit for attempting to craft a fairly diverse album, but lacking any discernible vision and without much songwriting acumen, they’re doomed to be remembered by the small handful of metal fans who will eat up any US metal band that released an album on a tiny label in the 1980s. Probably goes for $300 on eBay.
— Friar Wagner

SKULL447

Posted on March 23, 2014 by Friar Johnsen

SARCOFAGUS, Live in Studio 1979 (2010, Svart)

The skull:
This most excellent BDS can only be found on the vinyl reissue of this collection, which was released on CD a few years earlier with a really, truly unremarkable cover. It was wise of Svart to doll it up thusly, because who can resist the majesty of this crazy guy? Inside every metal lover is a death’s head, I guess is the message, and inside every death’s head are a couple of pinballs. I especially love that the skull photo is terribly out of focus, which only makes the inept Photoshop paste job that much more charming. The whole thing in a way evokes the look of an old fashioned in-camera effect, almost as if to pretend that this image is contemporary with the music it’s fronting. If that was intentional, then I say, “Huzzah!” to the fine artist who assembled this piece, but in the far more likely case that it’s just a happy accident, I must still commend him on his exceptional luck.

The music:
Sarcofagus stake their claim on being the first significant heavy metal band from Finland, and that may well be true. Who am I to say? But, I can say that they’re only metal in the way the first couple Rush albums were metal. Probably now this sort of thing would just be called “hard rock” but if they identified as heavy metal in the late 70s, then I guess that’s good enough. Certainly I’ve heard a lot of NWOBHM that’s less heavy than this, and Sarcofagus aren’t bad, even if I’m never entirely sold on the everyman vocals. They have some good riffs, and the keyboards leaven the procedings in all the right ways. If you enjoy keyboard-heavy NWOBHM like Shiva, then you’d probably dig Sarcofagus, and for that matter, they might even appeal to retrometal hipsters into bands like Witchcraft or Orchid. This particularly collection is probably not the ideal starting place, although it’s certainly not bad. It’s just that you’d probably be better off with their early singles and studio albums, which were anthologized just a couple years ago.
— Friar Johnsen

SKULL446

Posted on March 22, 2014 by Friar Wagner

THE INNER ABYSS, The Inner Abyss (2011, Sex, Drinks and Metal Records)

The skull:
Years ago, and consistently each Christmas, my crafty mother would create a decoration that was usually placed on an end table. It was a crocheted 3D Santa Claus head, and its enormous beard covered the entire table top. The beard was made of cotton, and if it weren’t so voluminous in its cloudy whiteness, the sight of a beheaded Santa would have been kind of creepy. I cannot help but think of that innocent Christmas decoration when I look at the cover of this debut album from The Inner Abyss. Between the puffy beard of cotton and the “I have a great idea!” light bulb above its head, this skull can’t possibly come off as anything but cute and dorky. Even with all that occult-ish nonsense stamped into its forehead.

The music:
Epic, yes; foreboding, even. And hella fast. These are mostly elongated black metal compositions that blaze forth with remarkable power and precision. The band seems to enjoy repetition as a way to drill their musical mission into your head — not totally in a Krallice-like way, but it’s in a similar wheelhouse — although you get the sense they’re just chasing their tail most the time. The songs, while worthy enough on the surface, fail to develop into anything of interest, and with song lengths averaging around eight-and-a-half minutes, it’s a tiring exercise to absorb. Also, you know a band’s in trouble when the cover song is the best one on the album, and that occurs here (their take on Inquisition’s “Crush the Jewish Prophet” is possibly better than the original — they nail the vocal croaks too). I wish the label had misprinted the title to read “Crush the Jewish Profit.” And speaking of the label, I perhaps got off on the wrong foot here, expecting this German band to sound all fucked up, untight and Brazilian. What they are is a fairly good band, neither scraping the bottom of the black metal barrel nor rising to the heights of the hallowed elite. While I don’t like this album much, I admit to being hugely curious about the three-song follow-up EP they released a week ago, Outer Space. I have a weakness for anything to do with cosmic imagery, and am hoping they sound like Deathspell Omega meets Oxiplegatz these days.
— Friar Wagner