Author Archives: Friar Wagner

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NEAL SMITH, Killsmith Two (2011, Kachina)

The skull:
This looks like a circus tent design, more specifically something lugged around by a traveling county fair troupe. You know, the kind of thing worked exclusively by chain-smoking ex-con rednecks  You can see this fearsome image (cough cough) on the tent with a barker at the entrance: “Ladies and gentlemen and children of all ages, step right up! See the amazingriffic, terrifispendous Neal Smith, banging drums and singing songs of skulls and snakes to give you the shakes! The original rocker, straight from the pits of Hell, sent to thrill and chill, only one dollar bill! Oh, what a shriek! Step right this way folks, step right this way…”

The music:
Had Neal Smith not been part of the original Alice Cooper group, people would laugh this shit off as the lunk-headed cock-rock sleaze that it is. This is terrible. It’s easy to throw the “Spinal Tap” insult toward any bad band playing super-dumb heavy metal or hard rock, but in this case it’s a completely accurate comparison. “Strip Down,” “Legend of Viper Company,” “Evil Voodoo Moon”…every one of these songs is dreck. Check out the video for “Squeeze Like a Python.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nO22Ttr_adM
See? Maybe Killsmith One is the masterpiece, I dunno.
— Friar Wagner

SKULL506

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SQUEALER, End of the World  (2013, self-released)

The skull:
End of the World? More like End of Album Cover Ideas. I know, that’s not even funny, but if they’re not gonna try, why should I? This guy looks tired, or in some form of despair, and perhaps it’s because he’s just endured a trip to the optometrist, one that ended in pupil dilation, which explains the sunglasses. But then it’s all a fraud, because skulls don’t have eyeballs. Squealer just doesn’t get it, man.

The music:
Did you know there have been six metal bands to have recorded under the name Squealer? Three have been German, and the most successful of the lot is this one — and they’re still pretty weak. No doubt, they’re capable, maybe even decent at times, but they’re still no more than standard-issue German melodic speed/power metal, right off the factory assembly line. Or at least, that’s how they started out. No matter their direction, most of these tunes are about as faceless as it gets. When they’re in power metal mode, it’s somewhere between Not Fragile, Scanner and the weakest Iron Savior tunes — at the best of times. Squealer didn’t remain static in their evolution, which you have to give them credit for, but then their new frontiers weren’t all that impressive either. When they tried to change their sound, as heard on “Fade Away,” they’re a sorry excuse for modern gothic-tinged metal, like latter-day Sentenced covering Sisters of Mercy. Seems Squealer has flirted with a Moonspell-ish gothic direction more than once, too, as also heard in “To Die For (…Your Sins).” Boredom eternal. It’s difficult to determine why this self-released compilation exists, and why the Japanese wanted a piece of it. But here it is, in case you feel like you missed the train on the mighty Squealer or something. Might as well pre-order that 6xLP Chinchilla box set while you’re at it.
— Friar Wagner

SKULL505

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AMORAL, Show Your Colors  (2009, Spinefarm)

The skull:
A gang of young Finnish rapscallions went on a spraypainting spree throughout Helsinki in 2009, armed with black cans of paint and a stencil of a skull wearing a black headband. Each of the kids was successful in conveying whatever message they were trying to convey, except for young Tomi’s stencil, which was mangled on the bus ride across town. The bus was packed, and some huge 300 lb. Finnish creep sat on the stencil, which caused total headband failure once Tomi started his tagging. Tomi was, very sadly, killed crossing the street after spraying his very first mark. To honor his memory, the lads took his fucked-up stencil and tagged the city with the pattern thousands of times over before getting caught. But others followed their example, and now the image is as prevalent throughout the city as those “Obey” Andre the Giant stickers you used to see all over the States.

The music:
These Finns have been around since 2001 and have gone through a drastic musical evolution, starting as a technical death metal band, morphing into a more straightforward death/thrash sound, and currently playing classy melodic power metal. This album is their fourth, and from what I gather, the one that lost as many fans as it gained for the band. I’m glad I wasn’t biased going into this album — I hadn’t actually given much time to Amoral’s first few albums so had no expectation listening to Show Your Colors. I’m eager to check their earlier material out now, and the later ones, but taken for what it is, Show Your Colors is a well-written slab of buoyant, colorful, melodic metal. The choruses are huge, as in “Release,” which includes the line “nothing will remain as it was before,” an apparent mission statement and defiant message to disgruntled fans. The rest of the album shines brightly and soars proudly, touchstones being post-Criss Savatage, latter-day Nocturnal Rites, TNT, Dokken and the most AOR-leaning Helloween tunes (“I Can,” “If I Could Fly,” “First Time”). But Amoral plays it even cleaner and crisper than any of that. Yeah, they’re so streamlined that they edge toward feeling antiseptic. Yet the songwriting, playing and crystal clear tones of vocalist Ari Koivunen (who sounds a bit auto-tuned here, unfortunately) are impossible to not enjoy if you like any of the aforementioned. Apparently Amoral’s early work gained them a number of dedicated fans, fans that do not appreciate where they took their music with Show Your Colors. Check this out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uI0ZOtinDzA — Jesus Christ, people, let a band grow.
— Friar Wagner

SKULL504

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PENTAGRAM, Sub-Basement  (2012, Svart)

The skull:
We throw a lot of wisecracks around here at Big Dumb Skulls, but we’re writing a blog about skull album covers in metal — lots of these beauties deserve snarky, sarcastic commentary. It’s a lotta chuckles here a BDS HQ, but every now and then we unearth a cover that is legitimately great art. Sepultura’s Beneath the Remains comes to mind, as does Autopsy’s Macabre Eternal. This one, however, might be the finest of them all. What I would give for a chance to saunter through this surrealistic catacomb for just five minutes, marveling at its magnificence and wondering why more bands with an inkling to exalt the skull couldn’t aspire to this. But then I suppose we all would have missed seeing skulls balancing warheads on their heads or having skateboards broken over their noggins. There’s room for it all, but god, this amazing album cover puts to shame 99% of the Skullection.

The music:
Regrettably, this great cover was assigned to a limited vinyl-only reissue of a middling Pentagram album. And a picture disc, at that (not sure how the full cover works into the packaging, as I don’t own the actual article). At least it made it to vinyl-size. This is when Pentagram began its precipitous decline in quality. Sub-Basement, originally released in 2001, is a full step down from its predecessor, Review Your Choices, and finds Bobby Liebling scraping the bottom of his ’70s archive barrel. He was also starting to sound as awful as he looked, although his voice is still decent here, not the total wreck it was by the time the next album rolled around. I’ll always have massive respect for the man and I consider myself a Pentagram fan (albums one through three, and all that ’70s stuff, rank extremely high on my favorites list), but this one is where it all started to feel tired. Yes, the world has finally embraced Liebling’s mad genius, and for that I’m grateful, it’s just too bad their best albums are long in the past. But what about Sub-Basement? “Bloodlust,” the title track and its intro, and “Drive Me to the Grave” are decent, although much of the rest feels pedestrian, as if, for the first time, the guys in the band (Liebling and Joe Hasselvander) were clocking in at the shop rather than entering the studio with a real fire under their collective ass. Still, it has its moments, and Hasselvander handles all instruments with impressive panache. Nah, it’s not even close to a total disaster, it just sometimes feels half-baked, and that’s not acceptable, even in the world of doom metal.
— Friar Wagner

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DEATHEVOKER, Eternally Rot  (2012, demo)

The cover:
A stylish skull, this one, encircled to bring out the wrath this guy’s going through: drowned in slime, maggots, tendrils, offal and various other unpleasant junk. Par for the course for a death metal skull, basically. This is clearly inspired by Dan Seagrave and could have been a demo cover from the good ol’ days of Carnage or Dismember. It actually closely resembles the artwork on Dismember’s 1990 demo, Reborn in Blasphemy. With the logo looking 1001% Swedish and traditional gothic font used for the demo title, you don’t have to be a fancypants Nostradamus to figure out what kind of music Deathevoker plays. It’s a good little piece of art from this Malaysian band whose every release to date features a skull or skulls — we Friars and the ever-onlooking Council hail their good taste!

The music:
While I figured this demo would totally sound like demo-era Dismember, there’s a bit more going on here. Even if many riffs — monolithic, cruel and raw in the finest Swedish tradition — are deadringers for Dismember, the vocals are of a more scathing, unhinged sort, not as low as a Karki or Petrov, more like a synthesis of early King Fowley (Deceased) and early Pete Helmkamp (Order From Chaos) with a bit of a black metal snarl on the fringes. And they will, occasionally, add a melodic sequence that recalls a majestic Metallica or Megadeth passage, veering closer than you’d guess to balls-out power metal in these rare instances. It’s still death metal through and through, but Deathevoker are somewhat refreshing in that they use their considerable abilities to carve out something relatively unique rather than treading the same old boards most other retro-minded bands are content to.
— Friar Wagner

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CHEST, MMXI  (2011, self-released)

The skull:
And lo did Skull #500 find enlightenment at long last. Floating through the desert for nigh on 17 turns ’round the sun seeking purpose in his bodiless purgatory, and presently teetering on total astral burnout, skull 500 finally felt deep pangs of hunger. So did his search lead him, if only for a moment, toward something perhaps even more existential than the meaning of death, purgatory and the afterlife. With considerable surprise he did find the Lophophora williamsii cactus plant, or peyote, before him, dried in buttons and begging to be consumed. “It is kismet that I should stumble upon such heavenly bread!” said he as he ingested the buttons. In short time, he fell into a rapturous mescaline haze. Not only did it satisfy his pangs, but it achieved in him a vertigo hitherto unexperienced by man, beast or skull. He could not remember how or why he was crowned king those many years ago, or even what land he ruled, but screw it, he hadn’t a speck of care about any of that now. “How much of that shit did I eat???” he wondered. His name is Chester, King Chester, and he is absolutely wigging the fuck out.

The music:
There is precious little to report on here. Finland’s Chest play serviceable, standard-issue stoner rock/sludge, utterly adequate and likely reaching the low bar that freaks for this kind of stuff “demand” of their bonged-out leaders. But for anyone wanting a new, different, memorable, worthwhile or (gasp) adventurous musical experience, look elsewhere. Where Queens of the Stone Age are the Mensa wizards on high, come from a far distant planet to enslave us with their majesty, Chest are the couch potatoes scraping the bowl for remnants of smoke-able resin as they bicker about who has to venture into the outside world to secure the next batch of Cheetos and Mellow Yellow.
— Friar Wagner

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MORBID YELL, Death Desecration  (2004, demo)

The skull:
Hard to gather exactly what’s happening amidst all the black and white noise, but it looks to this friar like the skull of a man who got lost hiking in a jungle and became ensnared in all manner of flora. The harder he struggled, the tighter the vines, branches and stems pulled, eventually suffocating the guy, whose face was eaten off by a band of rabid wild boars. That’s great news for the boars and Big Dumb Skulls! Crappy for the guy who wandered too far out into the wilderness, but we have it on good faith he was a deadbeat dad that deserved it.

The music:
Word on the street is that in the Spanish city of A Coruna, there existed several morbid-sounding metal bands who took similar names at the very same time. Morbid Commotion and Morbid Conniption, both now long-defunct, left the dudes in this then-unnamed band seriously frustrated. What to call their own brand of morbid metal? “Commotion” and “conniption” were both taken, and Texas band Morbid Scream had long owned that name, so it was decided, rather reluctantly, to just call it Morbid Yell and get on with business. (The recent reactivation of Chile’s Death Yell offers exciting possibilities for a seriously yelly tour package.) This is Morbid Yell’s first demo. The recording gives the music a chilling, distant quality, like it’s being communicated from several feet underground, all of it drenched in reverb while cymbals clang mercilessly in their quest to give headaches to the lot of you. This is fairly standard black/death/thrash — primitive, anguished and ugly, played by two Spanish brutes who probably think Watain are the wimpiest band in existence and that Inquisition have sold out. It’s not great, but not entirely worthless either. One thing’s for sure: this tape would have definitely landed them a deal with Wild Rags if that label was still active.
— Friar Wagner

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GRANTIG, So Muss Es Sein  (2008, Drakkar Entertainment GMBH)

The skull:
We’ve seen quite a few iterations of the Human Skull + Ram Horns motif here at Big Dumb Skulls. As we near Skull #500 in the run up to 666, you can bet we’ve seen better ones than this, although this one deserves some attention thanks to its stylized take on the “concept.” I’m as tired of browns as any other metal fan long in the tooth, and this cover uses nearly every shade of it. That said, it’s a pretty okay piece of art, as these sorts of things go, but that’s a pretty low bar we’re setting. I’m sure some hanger-on Grantig fan somewhere in the depths of Bavaria has this skull tattooed on his arm, and probably carries the band’s gear into the van for them. Then they’re all like “Sorry, no room in the van, buddy, but we love your tattoo!” They speed off to a gig where three other Grantig diehards await their arrival. So it must be.

The music:
Modern metal from Germany, exactly like a synthesis of Pantera and Black Label Society but with lyrics in German. I will concede they’re no slouches at their chosen craft, even if the craft they’ve chosen (German Southern Groove Metal?) has absolutely no appeal to this friar. This is the kind of jockstrap thump-rock that impressionable under-age kids half listen to and half care about when they’re chugging ’em down at the back of the pub while the band rocks its balls off.
— Friar Wagner

SKULL494

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E-FORCE, The Curse…  (2014, Mausoleum)

The skull:
Hubba hubba! Here we have a scene depicting the goings on at some German strip club, around 5 AM, in which twins Grunhilde and Brunhilde get all kindsa cray-cray together after a long night of dancing. The wall of the club where the twins strut their hot stuff is painted to depict a skull upon a moon-like planetary surface. The skull looks on, impossibly frustrated with the scene before him. He looks on sternly, and jealously, thinking: “God damn it, I forgot to bring paper money. These girls aren’t gonna give me the time of day.” This is the curse of the skull.

The music:
It’s impossible to listen to E-Force without putting them in the context of the Voivod timeline. The band’s main selling point, of course, is that bassist/vocalist Eric Forrest filled some gigantic shoes when he joined Voivod in the mid ’90s, fulfilling both the vocal (Snake) and bass (Blacky) duties, replacing those who are impossible to replace. Negatron is a rare low ebb in the band’s discography (although it certainly has its moments), while Phobos found the reinvented Voivod finding their feet. Forrest sounded for-real on Phobos, not forced and out-of-place as he did on Negatron. And that was it for Forrest-era Voivod. While the guy never seemed entirely integrated as a Voivod member, he got close and performed well enough, especially in the live setting where the band remained at the top of their game. And let’s face it: the cards were stacked against him from the start. Voivod reunited with Snake, and eventually with Blacky too, and Forrest wasted no time forming this band. E-Force was first based in Quebec, but when Forrest moved to France, the membership changed accordingly. And here comes the sad truth: E-Force is not a great band and The Curse…, their third, is not a great album. Forrest’s vocals are raspy, aggressive modern thrash shouts, akin to a metalcore kid trying to sound like latter-day Darren Travis (Sadus), and the chunky riffs are the same faceless things we’ve heard played over and over again in countless other modern thrash bands, or by old-school bands who now sound thicker and chunkier and appeal to the young’uns who weren’t even born when Pleasure to Kill and Infernal Overkill were released. There’s energy in abundance here, and they’re all technically good players. Glen Drover even pops up as a guest soloist, but unless you worship the last few Destruction albums, post-Max Sepultura, and the last couple Kreator albums — and you surely could be into worse music than that, of course — then you probably don’t need to bother with this. Even a Voivod completist like myself draws the line at tangential branches of the family tree like this one. Union Made…Echobrain…E-Force…hardly mandatory stuff. [Apparently it’s not the curse of the skull we’re witnessing on the cover, but, according to the final song on the album, “The Curse of the Cunt.”]
— Friar Wagner

SKULL492

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CRUX, Terrific Warrior  (1992, demo)

The skull:
[The scene: post-battle, two military men wander a wasteland that has been hosting hundreds of rotting dead for weeks. They come upon a freshly defleshed skull.]

Commander: How well did that warrior fight, Lieutenant?
Lieutenant: He was terrific. Just terrific.
Commander: Does he deserve the Feather Commendation?
Lieutenant: He certainly does, Commander. He was a terrific warrior.
Commander: “Terrific warrior,” you say? I love that demo!

The music:
Unfortunately, I could not find a copy of the Terrific Warrior demo to review, but its songs, as well as some songs from the band’s first demo, 1991’s Rev Smrti, are not only the same, but also appeared on their one and only album, 1993’s Rev Smrti. Confused? It’s a weird little history, but one worth investigating if you dig early Root or black/thrash type stuff in the vein of Sodom, Bulldozer and later Norwegian band Aura Noir. Their music is crude but not exactly primitive, and generally recommendable. The fact that two of Crux’s members played on lots of the classics by Root should tell you there’s a fairly respectable performance level. Crux isn’t innovative in the least, but the spirit is there, and with a handful of beastly yet memorable riffs and some nutso gravel-laced vocals, they’re worth checking out.
— Friar Wagner