Monthly Archives: June 2014

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ZERO DEGREE, The Storm and the Silence  (2007, demo)

The skull:
Lo, did the Viking explorers set out for new lands, prepared to pillage and rape wherever the skull beacon would steer them. Through storm and silence they did sail, through hurricane they did struggle and lose several good men, through calmness did they lick their wounds and carry on. But the trip ended suddenly in the dark of night when each of the longships crashed into a glacier the size of Odin’s big toe. Wood was rent asunder; provisions were pitched into icy waters; most men drowned. The trip to Newfoundland, or the Carribean, or India, or wherever the fuck they thought  the skull was taking them, ended in total disaster, because the skull beacon was using a compass and didn’t
know how to read it for shit.

The music:
Here we were all strapped in and ready for some raw Viking-obsessed black metal, but no, these Germans play metal that sounds like modern-era Arch Enemy mixed with early In Flames. Given that, you can easily imagine what this is like without even hearing it. You get steady and technically good drumming that is also completely soulless; mostly mid-tempo bastardized Iron Maiden riffs, and moments of Helloweeny fun that are more than mid-tempo but not exactly laden with speed; and vocals that are interchangeable with any other modern band of this type. The bass guitar is subliminal, at best. So, as modern melodic death metal goes its neither the worst nor the best of the lot. Being that it’s modern melo-death, there’s very little it can do to match the atmosphere, energy, invention and wildness of the sub-genre’s good old days. It’s formulaic and safe. I’m not big on reunions, but it’s time for Eucharist to return and show bands like this how it’s done.
— Friar Wagner

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PRIMEVAL REALM, Primordial Light (2014, Pure Steel)

The skull:
Although the ultimate example of a skull-hill has been deemed insufficiently stupid to qualify for admission to the Skullection, this new work from Pennsylvania’s Primeval Realm more than bridges the gap. Golgatha, the hill on which Jesus was supposedly crucified, was translated to mean “place of the skull,” and here we have the most literal possible interpretation of that translation, even if it seems weird to pair such obvious Christian imagery with language (Primeval, Primordial) that is clearly meant to suggest a far earlier time than a mere 2000 years ago. But, whatever! Who are we to poo-poo so fine a skull hill as this? The poor skull looks like those crosses are giving him the damndest headache, and I especially appreciate that even as a metaphor made real, this skull looks beat-up and toothless. I guess it’s tough work propping up the Calvariæ Locus.

The music:
Obsessed-style doom is for sure not a favorite of mine, but Primordial Realm unquestionably do this style absolutely as well as it could possibly be done. The songwriting is top notch, with plenty of trad-metal hooks to temper the obligatory (if leaden) Sabbath nods, and a totally crushing production. I can’t say I’m entitely sold on guitarist/mastermind Joe Potash’s vocals, which have a kind of baritone, everyman temper to them, but his melodies are good enough to make up for his lackluster tone. Brian Leahy’s thick, humming Hammond lines easily fill the space sometimes too keenly-felt in single guitar bands, though he rarely steps out front. At their best, Primeval Realm channel early 90s Trouble, minus Eric Wagner (of course) and the signature twin-axe stylings of Chicago’s finest, and even a pale imitation (which Primeval Realm are not) of that band’s finest era can yield some impressive tunes. Of course, this is still doom metal, so by the end of the album, if you’re at all like me, you’ll be ready for it to stop, but believe me, as someone who is compelled to listen to a lot of mediocre doom metal, when you’re not scrambling to hit “stop” midway through the first tune, you’re doing great.
— Friar Johnsen

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PSYCROPTIC, Initiation  (2010, Stomp)

The skull:
At first glance I was struck with a thought that I don’t believe has ever coursed through my gray matter before: “This snake is wearing cockrings!” But no, a closer look reveals that what I saw was simply a ringed door-knocker. Darn. The rest of the image is something we see often around here: a snake encircling a skull. This snake — unlike many other snake-centric entries in the Skullection — is not penetrating the eye and/or nose sockets of the bony noggin, but I’ll bet anything we’re just a few slithers away from a serious reptilian skull-fucking.

The music:
This was released as a CD/DVD, but the BDS bylaws drawn up by the Council in 1874 (or 2009, or something) state that a Friar need not review the DVD portion of a CD/DVD release. So, we have here a live album by Psycroptic, and not being one to get excited about live albums, this holds little appeal. I suppose most will feel the same, unless they are, of course, massive fans of Psycroptic. And those fans are out there, because these Aussies have been plying their brand of technical death metal since the early 2000s and have found a large following. This puts them not only well ahead of the current pack, but proves them to be spearheads in a death metal sub-genre that has become quite the unstoppable phenomena this last decade and a half. So, how is this live Psycroptic album? It’s a live Psycroptic album. The tunes vary not at all from their studio counterparts, save for a few subtle nuances. The performances are, of course, completely tight and ultra-finessed. But it feels redundant, and you wouldn’t be missing anything the studio albums don’t deliver, unless you love Jason Peppiatt’s stage banter. And why would you? It’s kinda funny when he asks the crowd, “Are you having fun out there?” While there is a degree of entertainment or fun with all of this, I’m not sure that’s ever what a death metal bands hopes to communicate. Fun? Really? I don’t know about you, but I want death metal to be thrilling, and dark, and otherworldly, and escapist, and heavy as fuck, but fun? Speaking of the vocalist, his delivery is generic, but that goes for so many bands of this type. You just have to accept that the John Tardys, David Vincents and LG Petrovs — ie. death metal vocalists with their own recognizable personalities — are a dying breed these days. So, hey, go for it if you’re a Psycroptic completist. Good luck to the band too, they’re quite excellent at what they do, but they don’t have that weirdness factor I want to hear in my tech-death. I’ll stick with Gigan…or early Atrocity.
— Friar Wagner

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SECRETS OF THE MOON, Warhead (2011, Lupus Lounge)

The skull:
“Psst. Up here. It’s me, The Moon. I’ve got a secret for you. If you look hard enough, like if you really get close and look around, every skull has a baby head on it somewhere. It’s true! I know it sounds crazy, but I’m not shitting with you. Seriously. And man, once you get over that mind-blowing, let me tell you, I’ve got tons more secrets like that one, and I’d be totally glad to let you in on them. You just gotta do me one favor. Destroy the earth. Yeah, like blow up the whole planet. How’re you gonna do it? You’ve gotta figure that our yourself. I mean, yeah, I know how to do it, but I kinda can’t say. It’s complicated. Yeah, it’s one of those secrets I was telling you about. So anyway, think about it, and get back to me, but don’t take too long. Time’s a wastin’, if you know what I’m saying!”

The music:
Secrets of the Moon have been around in one form or another for a close to twenty years, and their brand of black metal is fairly well polished and sophisticated, even if it still lacks a fundamental originality. Immortal and Satyricon are meaningful comparisons, although Secrets of the Moon, at least on the one original included on this single, rarely take the tempo above “mid,” and I have no problem with that. Said original, “Seven Bells,” ably captures some of the vibe of the classic (first wave) antecedents to black metal as we know it now, touching on Sodom and Mercyful Fate in equal measure. The a-side of the single is a cover of Venom’s “Warhead,” so the band is clearly intentionally signalling their interest in pre-Darkthrone black metal, although I’m not sure it ever makes much aesthetic sense to cover Venom. Still, they do a perfectly fine job of it, even if their over-effected vocals make one long for the dulcet tones of Cronos.
— Friar Johnsen

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BLACK RAINBOWS, Holy Moon  (2013, Heavy Psych Sounds)

The skull:
Could this be the skull world’s equivalent of “mooning”? I mean, they don’t have an ass to work with, so maybe a quick upthrust of the jaw is the way a skull would gesture his mischevious indolence? Perhaps this is what’s being depicted on the cover of the appropriately-titled Holy Moon. Skull-mooning cheered on by occult symbols that give him strength to be such a crazy man as this. It’s hardly as surprising and crass as a full-buttocks mooning, and a skull obviously also lacks a hand with which to do the old Italian chin flick, so just cut him some slack and pretend you’re shocked, okay?

The music:
We’ve had a lot of EPs come through the Skullection recently, and I guess it’s a fair indication that many bands don’t regard EPs with as much importance as their full-lengths. “Oh, that thing with two crappy new songs we left off the album and three shitty-sounding live tracks? I dunno…a skull is fine, I guess.” So, this Italian band play stoner rock/metal, and it’s telling that so many stoner bands choose a big dumb skull to represent their music. There isn’t much thought put into stoner music so why should they exhaust an ounce of precious ambition for the artwork? Black Rainbows have this sound down pat, that’s for sure, and that means it sounds a ton like Kyuss meets Sleep meets Clutch meets Fu Manchu. Good for them, and good for the fans who demand things that fit comfortably into the stoner template the way this does. But since there are a zillion other desert/psych/stoner bands that sound just like this, you’re not missing out on much if you miss out on Black Rainbows. You already know exactly what this EP sounds like without having heard a note. Trust us. Two bonus points for the cover of MC5’s “Black to Comm” — not because it’s an ass-jackingly amazing version, but because at least they didn’t bring yet another version of “Kick Out the Jams” into the world.
— Friar Wagner

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WILD ZOMBIE BLAST GUIDE, Wild Zombie Blast Guide (2012, self-released)

The skull:
This is some serious Rob Zombie meets HP Lovecraft shit right here. We’ve seen a lot of skulls wrapped up in the coils of snakes, but I’m not sure if we’ve seen any tentacled skulls before, and this quality of this illustration is quite high to boot. Of course, on a self-titled album by a band called Wild Zombie Blast Guide (which is a band full of dudes actually made up to look like zombies) you’d expect a cover that was at least vaguely zombie-like, and at the very least you’d expect to see a shotgun blast hole in the forehead, but if this is how the zombie band sells out its core principle, with a gloriously goofy big dumb skull, then who am I to complain?

The music:
Wild Zombie Blast Guide don’t appear in Metal Archives, which is usually a sign of a crappy metalcore band, but there’s really very little to distinguish this band from Soilwork, and I’m not even talking about late-period Soilwork, but their more vibrant early work. Certainly, this album isn’t on par with The Chainheart Machine or even Steelbath Suicide, but it’s of a piece with the better clones that arrived in the wake of those first two or three awesome albums by Helsinborg’s second-finest (Darkane still rules the roost!) It’s true, Wild Zombie Blast Guide suffers from generic vocals and lacks a distinct identity, but they do this sort of upbeat melodic death metal quite well, and while their lyrics are surely stupid, they’re not unavoidably intelligible, so it’s all good on that front. I really expected nothing but misery from this release but I’ll be damned if this ridiculous joke band isn’t secretly alright.
— Friar Johnsen

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ORTHON, Transmigrate  (2011, self-released)

The skull:
This cover is chintzy enough, and then they voluntarily add the Parental Advisory banner to uglify things even further. The Chinese are fairly new to this whole underground extreme metal thing, so we can give Orthon some slack, and it’s not the junkiest Photoshop job we’ve seen here at Big Dumb Skulls. It’s in the Top 20 though. I suppose the flared redness behind the skull makes him look ghostly, like he just teleported here, or is teleporting outta Dodge — “transmigrating,” basically. Brilliant. Sort of. Not really.

The music:
Literally decades of listening to metal, like, the vast majority of my life, and this is the first day I’ve ever laid ears on a band from China. To my knowledge, anyway. I would expect it to sound derivative, and it does:  it’s somewhere between Cradle of Filth and Dimmu Borgir with some regrettably shitty female vocals. It’s got the sweeping, theatrical drama of those bands, including the horribly triggered bass drums, and in its best moments recalls late-period Emperor, and sometimes you get a whiff of Arcturus. Some of the harsh vocals actually sound like the dude from Between the Buried and Me. Technically they’re all very good players, so credit where it’s due and for what it’s worth, but it’s still very clone-y, and those female vocals tear down music that is already iffy. Orthon is as appealing to this Friar as something like Old Man’s Child, which is to say it’s not appealing at all. But nice try.
— Friar Wagner

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EXCITER, The Dark Command (1997, Osmose)

The skull:
A barely-there skull floating translucently over what appears to be a volcano and some lightning (for some reason), this cover practically screams “Shitty Greek black metal,” but of course this is Exciter, one of the great grand-daddies of speed metal. I guess when they signed to Osmose, they looked at their labelmates’s covers and said, “Very well. If that is the way the winds are blowing, let it not be said we don’t also blow!” And they said it without even knowing that Simpsons reference.

The music:
This was Exciter’s “comeback” album, although looking back, they were not really gone for very long, only five years. Exciter is one of those bands I feel like I should enjoy, because I’m a good student of heavy metal history and I generally appreciate these elder statesmen-type bands, and because I’m generally inclined towards thrash and speed metal. But, Exciter has never much cranked my motor. I’ve got the first couple albums, and that always seemed like enough. I do actually own this album as well, because I found it used and cheap not long after it came out, and honestly, it’s not a bad album at all, even if it’s a little generic. When guitarist John Ricci reformed the band in the mid-90s, he did it without either of his classic-trio companions, and the result is an album that’s pretty good thrashy power metal, but which somehow doesn’t much satisfy as an Exciter album. And yes, I think I can say that without having ever been particularly satisfied by an Exciter album. New singer Jacques Belanger is like a bargain-basement Canadian Eric Adams, and while his voice is perfectly acceptable, he fails to bring the manic intensity that original (not-very-good) singer Dan Beehler had in spades. Plus, Beehler did it while playing drums (poorly) and that counts for a lot in my book. There are far worse comebacks, and something like this version of Exciter managed to keep the flame burning for another four albums, so I’m ready to give them a little credit, but not too much. Anyway, the original trio is back together, so I suppose it’s time for Exciter fans to start forgetting that the last 15 years ever happened.
— Friar Johnsen

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CORROSION OF CONFORMITY, Corrosion of Conformity  (2012, Candlelight)

The skull:
You know a band is scrambling when they bring back a logo or mascot previously left behind in the name of forward evolution. So many bands eventually wander roads less traveled, dropping iconic imagery and the familiar musical style that gained them legendary status, only to return at some future points with more recognizable sounds and symbols. The return to safer environs rarely results in music that measures up to the good old days — it’s usually a case of too little, too late. The return of the classic Megadeth logo and mascot; the return of the classic My Dying Bride logo; the return of the classic Slayer logo; the return of the Destruction logo and skull; the return of the classic Anthrax logo; the return of the classic Celtic Frost logo (I’m not amongst the majority who think Monotheist is good); on and on. So often it just feels like a seductive sham, a pandering to gullible fans after some hurt feelings. What are we to think when Corrosion of Conformity bring back their horned skull? After many dormant years, this highly recognizable bad boy returns, but this time they have added more spikes, tentacle-ish things, an eye of Horus, a sword-like thing under the chin, and a curious and adorable chinchilla-looking creature for its forehead. It’s a great design, except for the chinchilla, and a reasonably acceptable update of the classic skull made famous by zillions of t-shirt wearing fans, bands and quite a few people who don’t even know what COC is but thought the shirt looked totally bad-ass.

The music:
According to this Friar, COC’s Blind is one of the best metal albums released in the ’90s. They were just getting good at a time when most of their older fan base were demanding a name change. And Blind is way better than good. While Animosity and Deliverance have their moments, nothing the band has released before or since has been worthy of Blind‘s majesty. Part of the the problem is this issue of perpetual stylistic crisis. COC never stay in one musical place for very long, yet they continue to try and zero in on what it is that they do exactly. It’s been an interesting run, even if they seem wayward most the time. If the return of the spiky skull symbol wasn’t enough, the band decided to self-title this one, so apparently it’s gonna be the defining COC album. Finally! But with so many stylistic shifts, what should definitive COC sound like? Apparently it sounds like this — an often uncomfortably ambling and sometimes impressively focused mesh of hardcore, Southern rock, sludge, doom, punk, stoner rock, noise rock and thrash. Where “Psychic Vampire” is wholly unappealing in its muddied, muddled thrash-meets-sludge slop, something like “Your Tomorrow” is appealing because it hones in on one direction — that being a Trouble/Black Sabbath-esque slab of smart, emotive doom. Many of the songs here feature impressive riffs or inventive vocal melodies, but also a few too many dead-end riffs and sequences. Reed Mullin is excellent throughout. He remains one of the most underrated and tastiest drummer in the genre(s) — one listen to “The Doom” confirms this. So, Corrosion of Conformity is a likable but hardly lovable hodgepodge, and probably the first one since Deliverance that’s worth more than a cursory glance.
— Friar Wagner

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CULTES DES GHOULES, Häxan (2011, Hell’s Headbangers)

The skull:
There are at least four covers for this album (originally released on cassette, naturally, in 2008), and while one of them has two big dumb skulls, this lone entry with but one big dumb skull is, I believe, the Hell’s Headbanger issue. I’m also pretty sure this image is a screen cap of a cellphone pic of a CRT television paused on a VHS copy of some 8mm student horror film called Skull Communion or Chalice of the Skull or whatever, because what else would it be?

The music:
Primitive black metal, reminding me more of Bathory than Darkthrone. The sound is cruddy in the way that makes you think they asked the recording engineer to make it sound worse than it had to, just because that’s the sort of thing these kinds of bands like. Which is to say, this entire affair is one giant pose. But, whatever. Every scene has its own esoteric signifiers of authenticity. I expected this to be a completely amateur one-man-band situation, but it appears there is a four-man ensemble at work here, and truthfully, they’re not terrible players, but this music is so far from interesting to me that I’m struggling to not insult it reflexively, if only because I’m running really short on black metal insults after a year and a half of this blog. Basically, if you can imagine yourself liking a Polish black metal band with a French name and a Swedish album title, then you’ll almost certainly love this shit for reals.
— Friar Johnsen