HELL MUÑECO, Doom Core (2009, demo)

The skull:
This guy reminds me of a Japanese Oni, what with his curved horns and fangs, not to mention the salacious look in his hideous peepers. With dentition like that, closing his mouth is probably next to impossible, but I imagine he gets by, mainly by screaming at all times and avoiding labial consonants. Then again, even if he could get his mouth shut, I guess the absence of lips would still make that sort of sound challenging, but other skulls manage to make them somehow. How, I don’t know! It’s times like this that make me wish we had a skull linguist on retainer to answer these burning questions.

The music:
Droopy doom metal with a cheap drum machine. Hell Muñeco are at least doom of the Solstice sort, and not a straight Sabbath knockoff, so you can expect riffing that’s a little more creative, and a little less reliant on the fuzz pedal for impact, than you get with your average weed-obsessed sludge merchant, but at the same time, the terrible vocals and Casio-grade drum samples really make this an unenjoyable listen, which is a pity because the writing and guitarwork are generally pretty solid, and certainly better than most of the doom bands we encounter around these parts. If the band found a stronger singer and a real drummer, they could probably grow into something interesting, but that could be said of an awful lot of bands, so I’m not holding out for a masterpiece from Hell Muñeco.
— Friar Johnsen