Author Archives: Friar Johnsen

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STONED JESUS, First Communion (2010, Solitude Productions)

The skull:
Can I get an “Amen”? There’s nothing about this cover that makes sense in the contexts of “Stoned Jesus,” or “First Communion,” unless the communion in question is one between skull and snake, with tongue. Back in my day, we’d have just called that first base. But, there’s no denying the general awesomeness of this cover, from the blissed-out noggin on a plasmatic sun, to the brilliantly ugly purple background, to the best use of a snake yet on a Big Dumb Skull. The skull could be bigger, sure, but this is a great example nevertheless of a cover that manages to cram together a bunch of elements in a way that accentuates the skull, that doesn’t distract from what is rightfully the central element of the composition. Would it have been better if the skull was wearing a crown of thorns? Yes. If the snake held a eucharistic wafer on his forked tongue? Of course. If the skull were smoking a massive doob? Absolutely. But, as they say, the perfect is the enemy of the good, and he who is without sin should be the first stoned, or something. It’s a great cover, is my point.

The music:
Although it’s always to be hoped that a band won’t sound exactly as you imagine they’ll sound, generally, it’s best to not get your hopes up. Stoned Jesus are just another boring Sabbath knockoff, one of millions, offering nothing that hasn’t been heard a billion times already. It’s tempting to ascribe this almost uniform worthlessness in stoner rock bands to the stoning, but I suppose you get this pretty much everywhere. No one automatically assumes that the latest metalcore band is so unambitious because of pot, no one points their finger at the reefer to explain the latest power metal abortion. But still. At least those bands sometimes play fast. That makes them seem less lazy, somewhow. Anyway, Stoned Jesus. I guess it’s mildly intriguing that a band from Ukraine would take up this style, but that interest is not enough to make it through even a single song without a plenitude of sighs and eye-rolls. This release is actually only four long songs, but it might as well be eight, or twelve, because none of them seem to really have a through-line that justifies the ten-plus minute lengths, and every single riff and song sounds exactly the same anyway. Why not release a 7″ with your best 5 riffs on one side, and a cover of “Sweet Leaf” on the other? Save everyone a lot of time.
— Friar Johnsen

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PROPELLER, Always Say Die (1992, demo)

The skull:
Another skull on a pentagram. I’d yawn, but I am amused by this one. It looks like the skull of a marionette, Howdy Doody defleshed, with it’s squashed jaw and tiny teeth. Also, I like how the eyes are actually too big for the sockets, which is not how eyes work. Yes, when you look at a (living) person, you can’t see the entire sphere, because of the eyelids. Take away the lids, though, and the eyeball fits nicely into the socket, with no overhanging bone to obscure the top or the bottom. Consider this a humble anatomy lesson directed at all future Big Dumb Skull artists, because this eye thing is a very common mistake.

The music:
In 1992 would almost certainly have been called death metal, but in retrospect it sounds more like thrash than anything. A transitional form, basically. Think Beneath the Remains or Swallowed in Black. It’s a little more legitimately deathy than some stuff of this era, perhaps because Propeller lifts sometimes very literally from contemporary death metal bands (the bridge in “Brainsucker Spiders,” for instance, is stolen from “Immortal Rites” by Morbid Angel). Despite the drum machine, and despite coming out of Russian in 1992, this sounds fairly good, and for die-hard thrash fans, it wouldn’t be a bad thing to own, although I’m sure at this point, a download is your only option. The vocals are weak, but the riffing is good and they’ve managed to cobble together some reasonable compelling songs, if only with the help of their inspirations. After releasing this demo, the band changed names to Phantasm and released a single album, but that album also features a Big Dumb Skull, so look for it here in the (distant) future. This demo seems to be the better-sounding effort, though, and most of the songs on the LP are also here, so I guess this is the place to start.
— Friar Johnsen

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CEREKLOTH, Halo of Syringes (2011, Hells Headbangers)

The skull:
SCENE III. A room of rehearsal.
Guy from Cerekloth at his post. Enter an artist.

Guy from Cerekloth: Thou art the master artist of our time.
What hast thee in thy mind for our EP?

Artist: A skull, perforce. What other thing could do?

GfC: I knoweth not, and yet my mind is ill
at ease. How doth the skull, in shape or sense
upon our music most unclean comment?

A: The gravity of death thy tunes proclaim, or so
I do detect.

GfC: You are correct, and yet
the title of this grim, unholy slab
is “Halo of Syringes.”

A: Then perhaps
around the figure’s bony brow should I
in ink that selfsame halo circumscribe.

GfC: Indeed! Thy genius is unmatched in all
these dark and Danish lands. So, hie thee now
unto thy scrivener’s desk to craft in black
and white that face unmasked, itself a mask
for all the seven inches of our songs!

Exeunt

The music:
Slow to crawling black metal, mainly reminding me of Blood Ritual-era Samael, down to the croaky Vorphalackian vocals and the distant, hollow guitar tone. The riffing is a little more advanced than Samael, and certainly owes something to late 90s black metal (particularly the groups not so interested in remaining tr00) and more modern stuff, particularly the angular oddness coming out of France. For some reason, Cerekloth bills themselves as death metal, and I guess it’s an open question if a band can actually be called “black metal” without blast beats, but to me, this doesn’t sound much like death metal at all. It’s perfectly serviceable stuff, but there are only two songs and a filler instrumental on this EP, so you’d probably be better off starting with the band’s full length debut, which came out a couple years after this.
Friar Johnsen

— Friar Johnsen

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MORDANT, Momento Mori (2004, Agonia)

The skull:
This art has the cute handmade look of someone who just learned to silkscreen last semester. It’s a striking design that would work well on a shirt, aside from the ugly logo that was clearly pasted in after the fact. It’s a nice touch that the pool of blood appears to be skulltears. I guess when you don’t have eyelids or any other soft tissue on your face, the tears just pour out in a single stream. This is just one of the many day-to-day things a skull has to deal with that have literally never occurred to me before. My long tenure in the service of The Council has certainly made me more empathetic to such skullish concerns.

The music:
Ever wonder what it would sound like to cross Motley Crue and Bathory? How you answer that question will more or less predict how much you like Mordant, who trade in a nearly even mix of early black metal and L.A. proto-hair metal. The mix works pretty well, all things considered. You get a kind of raspy growl, not entirely unlike early David Vincent, on top of riffs that Mick Mars could easily play, and which pedal on the A string instead of the E (or whatever the hell they’re tuned to. I don’t have perfect pitch and I’m not going to bother to figure this out right now.) The production is super boxy and bass-heavy but it sounds cheap in more or less the ways people like, when they listen to goofy retro shit like this. My research indicates that Mordant are frequently compared to Nifelheim, but that’s a band I never cared for, so I can’t say one way or the other, but I guess if this is what Nifelheim sounds like, well, maybe I’d like them if I tried again. Who knows. It’s not that Mordant is my new favorite thing ever, and I probably won’t even buy it, but listening to Memento Mori for this review wasn’t at all unpleasant. It’s hard to ask for more in this line of work!
— Friar Johnsen

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SINISTER REALM, The Crystal Eye (2011, Shadow Kingdom)

The skull:
This is the best kind of bad Photoshoppery, the kind that makes a cheap photo look even cheaper in the service of adding a sword and a glowing gem (I guess that’s the crystal eye?) It would have been easy for the artist to toss in some swirling brown background, or some lightning bolts or fire or something, but no, he kept it simple, kept it true. Black background, slightly out-of-focus skull, big sword that appears to mysterious emanate from the side of said skull, and some highly lame typography. While it would of course have been preferable to actually assemble all these pieces and shoot them in situ, even The Council realizes that modern metal bands are highly budget-constrained and are therefore willing to overlook any shortcut that nevertheless yields such a ridiculous Big Dumb Skull. The Crystal Eye: it’s gonna getcha!

The music:
Sinister Realm, previously featured all they way back at SKULL35, work in the medium of mid-paced true metal, a la latter day Dio (with some nods to early Jag Panzer as well). And like Dio’s last however many albums, Sinister Realm suffers for lack of variation in tempo (especially for lack of any real upbeat numbers) but they more or less make it work on the strength of the songs and singing. Vocalist Alex Kristoff has a powerful, meaty voice that commands respect and brings focus to the songs even when a few more ass-kicking riffs wouldn’t have hurt. Of the three Sinister Realm full-length albums, I’d say The Crystal Eye is the best by a nose, thanks largely to the harmonic depth of songs like “The Tower is Burning,” and if you like similar American bands like Argus or Jag Panzer (at their slowest), then Sinister Realm are likely to twist your nipples as well.
— Friar Johnsen

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LAST ETERNAL BREATH, From a Tormented Soul (2011, demo)

The skull:
This one is a textbook example of a skull photo scanned from a textbook. It’s a photo taken without even the slightest artistry, but the skull is quite large, and if nothing else the 3/4-from-the-top profile is something we don’t see too often in the BDS compound. The chunks of what looks like concrete are the only fun detail here. I imagine that the former owner of this skull tried eating them, maybe while high on PCP, and puked them up in his last eternal barf. His final thought was, “Fuck. They’re totally going to figure out that I was eating cement. I’m gonna look so stupid.”

The music:
Busy, technical death metal not unlike Decrepit Birth or Obscura, although not as brutal as the former nor as exploratory as the latter, Last Eternal Breath are nevertheless a fairly good example of the form. This demo is not especially well-recorded, but it’s not horrible sounding either, and it’s a pleasant change of pace to hear music like this that hasn’t been sampled and quantized to death. This is very much the sound of a band who could only afford four days to record and mix, and rehearsed the shit out of their material in advance of their studio session. These days, “technical death metal” can mean a lot of things, and in most cases, it means I’m not gonna like it, but these guys fall in that narrow range that appeals to me, even if I can’t wholeheartedly endorse them. A little more time spent on songwriting and developing at least one original hook would help, but even if they just polish what they’ve got to a high sheen, they’ll be good enough to compete with all but the very best bands working this style in no time. And even at that, they’re already much better than most of the bands on Unique Leader.
— Friar Johnsen

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GRAVEWORM, Collateral Defect (2007, Massacre)

The skull:
This would have been a lot more successful if they’d actually painted a crouching naked person to look like a skull, instead of just photoshopping a couple arms onto a skull. What was supposed (I assume) to be some kind of trompe l’oeil ends up looking like a skull sprouting limbs because he can’t think of a better way to get off this cover. You can imagine him grunting as with epic constipation, trying to squeeze out a couple legs so he can beat feet. “Man, I have GOT to get the hell off this Graveworm album. Shit, am I supposed to be in the sky or on the ground? Who can fucking tell? Feets, don’t fail me now!” But the feets, alas, have failed him indeed.

The music:
It seems like Italy’s Graveworm has always been around, always been mediocre. They hearken back to the first wave of shoddy melodic death metal knockoffs from outside of Scandinavia. Back in the early aughts, I heard Graveworm and thought, “This is okay, but there are really much better bands doing this.” Now, I listen Graveworm and think, “This is okay, but do we really still need any bands doing this?” At their worst, they sound like a cheap version of Children of Bodom, dressing up shitty power metal as teen-tough death metal. Fortunately, this is not their primary operating mode. Unfortunately, their primary mode entails highly generic, low-riff-density modern thrash mixed with gothic metal. Remember that shit? At least they don’t resort to contracting half the singing out to some “siren” putting her high school voice lessons to use, but it probably wouldn’t hurt if there were someone else working the mic besides Stefano Fiori, who fails to convince with growls, rasps, and every other technique he employs. I will say that I sort of enjoy the keyboards, though, and that in itself is somewhat remarkable. It’s not that Sabine Mair possesses any unique technical skill, and her keys are almost entirely atmospheric, but they frequently are the only interesting element in this otherwise drab music. Yes, she overuses her “strings” and “organ” patches for padding chords, but from time to time she busts out some neat little effect that really enlivens the tune, as with the spacey synth blooping that successfully distracts from the garden variety, power-ballad acoustic guitars in “Memories.” The keys are not enough to make Graveworm good, or at least not great, because really they’re not bad at all. It’s just that you’d probably have to be a very boring person to get excited by music that’s this middle-of-the-road.
— Friar Johnsen

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ANATOMY, For Those Whose Eyes Are Black (1992, demo)

The skull:
Staring at the MRI cross section on the screen, the doctor asks is residents, “Can anyone tell me what we’re looking at here.” “It’s big, sir.” “Yes, of course it’s big. What else?” “It appears to be dumb, as well.” “Yes, yes, we all know it’s dumb. Big and dumb: that’s obvious. What else?” The residents shift nervously, all of them withering under the doctor’s steely gaze. “Jesus, don’t they teach you kids anything anymore? This big dumb skull is also a cranky motherfucker with small teeth. Write this down, because I’m sure you’re going to see it again.”

The music:
Rough and tumble death metal that only aspires to the technical proficiency of Hellhammer. Sloppy, sludgy, cavernously reverberated, and thoroughly unimpressive, I would guess this stuff was nominally inspired by early Death and maybe some Scandinavian stuff, but at least in 1992, Anatomy were not up to the challenge. They continued to exist for at least another 10 years, and who knows if they got any better, but their early demos pretty squarely suck. But, just as I’ll buy pretty much any crappy thrash reissue, I’m sure there’s someone who just can’t get enough of this demo death junk, and maybe they should start scavenging the lowliest of Melbourne thrift stores looking for a copy of this.
— Friar Johnsen

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WIECZNOŚĆ, The Insight Kingdom (2010, self-released)

The skull:
Sometimes the best skulls are the worst, you know? This is a tastefully rendered watercolor skull that doesn’t immediately remind me of another cover, but it’s also so fucking boring that my fingers are falling asleep as I type this. What joke is to be made here? My kingdom for an insight! That’s about all I’ve got, and that was pretty lame. I can imagine a million small changes that would immediately elevate this skull to true ridiculousness. He could be smoking a pipe, for instance. Or wearing a propeller beanie. Or one of his teeth could have an emerald embedded in it. The options are limitless. I’m going to have to assume that the artist just ran out of time. He was totally ready to turn this into a real work of art when the band came bursting into his studio to demand the final art, because they needed to print up a dozen CDRs for their show that night, and also they really wanted to get the pic up on Myspace. If only they had been more patient!

The music:
I was expecting some very harsh black metal, but this is… not that. I guess you could call it progressive death metal, maybe? It does have some black metal influences, but they’re more like someone’s imagined ideas of what a Chuck Schuldiner-led black metal band sound like. In their slower moments (which are never really slow, but at least they’re not blasting fast), Wieczność come up with some very cool melodic riffs in the vein of early Dark Suns or something like that. Even when they speed up, the guitar work remains fairly clever, although it often gets lost in the programmed blasting. The drum machine can be very distracting, in fact. The samples are good sounding, for the most part, so it’s not that they sound overly fake. It’s just that sometimes the drum parts don’t seem to go with the guitar parts at all. They feel like mistakes. Maybe this is just the result of two guitarists programming the drums, although for the most part, the beats makes sense. I don’t know. It’s a weird thing. Anyway, Wieczność, when they’re good, are very good, but they often lose control of themselves, and in the end I’m not even entirely sure what they were trying to accomplish. This is the band’s sole release, but they’re allegedly still around, so maybe they’re just taking their time to really get their ducks in a row. If they do release something else, I’d expect it to be fairly good, so here’s hoping.
— Friar Johnsen

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INFINITUM OBSCURE, Ipsus Universum (2009, Blood Harvest)

The skull:
Originally released as half of a split with Ancient Gods on Utterly Somber Creations in 2003, these Infinitum Obscure tracks were later reissued as a standalone 10″, and that’s when they were graced with this excellent skull cover. That swirly shit in the background is maybe a callback to the original art, which was just a lame purple vortex, but obviously, the real attraction here is the skull egg issuing a bat-winged demon baby made of fire. I can’t even believe how awesome that description sounds, and I’m sure I can’t add to the greatness of this image. Let’s just bask for a moment in its magnificence. You know, before that demon baby grows up and eats us alive or impregnates our skulls or whatever. It’s best not to think where this is all headed, really.

The music:
Ipsus Universum is a pretty even mix of death and black metal, reminding me of mid-period Old Man’s Child (In Defiance of Existence and Vermin), when they mostly dropped the keyboards and got back to their death metal roots. This is riffy and dense music, with a lot of musical twists and some fairly impressive playing. Infinitum Obscure are definitely fans of Morbid Angel, too, but that sound unsurprisingly meshes well with 6/8 black metal. All in all, this is an intense listen, and a very well-crafted release. I’m not often in the mood for this sort of thing, but I might have to track this down for those times when I am. The production is a little murkier than I like, and the vocals are hit or miss, but the music is great and the vibe is pretty seriously evil. Usually the abuse of Latin is a clear-cut signal of awfulness in metal, but somehow Infinitum Obscure have bucked the trend.
— Friar Johnsen