MITRA, Mitra (2005, demo)

The skull:
As you can see, this skull was originally very small, as it was drawn in a 5×5 block of squares on a piece of graph paper. This took the guitarist pretty much all of fifth period, and he still has no idea how to factor a polynomial, but it was totally worth it.

The music:
Actually, no, this demo isn’t the work of high school kids, but Texas metal veterans including members of Rigor Mortis and REO Speedealer (one of the greatest joke band names ever.) I couldn’t find this demo, but I did find a live recording of the lead track, which I guess you could call Southern groove thrash or something? I guess it’s supposed to be at least a little silly, which makes sense considering the pedigree of Mitra’s members. They seem pretty tight, but this is not especially interesting much, and if they’re actually meant to be a comedy band, then they’re not nearly obviously funny enough. And anyway, there’s really only one legit player in Southern groove thrash (Texas region, special comedy division), and that’s Agony Column, whose big dumb skulls are unfortunately all steers.
— Friar Johnsen