Author Archives: Friar Johnsen

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SALACIOUS GODS, Piene (2005, Folter)

The skull:
Though this is obviously a piece of bargain basement Photoshoppery, I prefer to imagine that the plastic flatness of this cover was achieved by different, analog means. I’m speaking, of course, of Colorforms®. Imagine the possibilities! A few pieces from the “Skulls, Teeth, and Bones” starter kit, then a few maces from the “Medieval Weaponry” set, a pair of horns from “Goats, Sheep, and Cows,” and finally, something from a pack of “Spiky Crowns and Pointy Accoutrements”. Obviously the people who make albums like this have the minds of children, so it would make sense to cater to their edutainment needs. Frankly, I can’t imagine why the University Games Corporation hasn’t yet come out with an entire line of Big Dumb Skull® Colorforms®. I’m sure The Council would consider a license for so esteemed a property.

The music:
Speedy mid-fi black metal, reminding me of early Immortal, or Gorgoroth minus the madness. Competent, but so utterly derivative that I can’t be bothered to even try to enjoy it. I don’t as a rule seek out black metal, and yet I’ve heard dozens, maybe a hundred bands exactly like this. Salacious Gods even wear corpse paint. Well, at least they wore it in 2005 when Piene (which means “full” in Italian) came out, but way back then, corpse paint was only 75% as gauche as it is today, and I if it frightened their mothers and their old school teachers and the other straights, well, I guess it was worth it.
— Friar Johnsen

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ONSLAUGHT, What Lies Ahead (1983, demo)

The skull:
Yet another cracked up skull on a demo. Yawn. There’s a certain desperate look to this guy, though, that I like. A sadness, even. He knows he’s in a bad way, but he lost the ability to reason when his brain leaked out. Wracked with confusion, he’s only just realizing he can’t even scream “FUCK!” without lips. If he knew that what lies ahead is like four more demos of this shit, well, I think he’d completely wig out.

The music:
I’ll admit that I’m not a great fan of the first two Onslaught albums, which are held to be classics by many people. I vastly prefer their third album, the shamelessly Metallica-inspired In Search of Sanity, which also features one of my favorite British metal singers, Steve Grimmett, formerly of Grim Reaper. But, even were I fond of Power from Hell and The Force, I don’t think I’d particularly love this demo. It’s as much punk as it is metal, sounding like a Discharge cover band that also loved Venom. That’s not entirely a bad thing, and I can at least appreciate the energy on display, but the execution is just too raw for my tastes. A lot of the songs on this demo made it to the band’s proper debut, and while they don’t change much, the shift from hardcore to thrash is striking. Going from the demo to the album, the vocals changes from barking to snarling, and the guitarists learned how to properly speed pick for their LP while on the demo they’re just strumming their simple chord progressions. But if you like crusty pseudo-thrash along the lines of Hellbastard, or if you like Power from Hell but not as much as you love Hear Nothing See Nothing Say Nothing then maybe What Lies Ahead is worth a listen.
— Friar Johnsen

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DAMNED PLAN, Beyond Strength (2010, self released)

The skull:
“What have we got here, detective?” “Well, it would appear the victim, a renowned brain surgeon, was examining an x-ray and trying out his new fog machine when the assailant…” “Hold on, detective. Fog machine?” “Yes, sir. The doctor was evidently also a real Halloween enthusiast. Puts up a big display at his house every year. The kids loved it.” “Gotcha. So, he’s looking at the skull in the fog and then what? “Well, sir, we believe the killer was able to enter the room without the doctor noticing because of the fog. Ironic, really. Anyway, the assailant then hit the doctor in the head with a hammer, killing him instantly. The blood splatter on the x-ray supports this theory.” “Hmm. Good work, detective. Any suspects?” “Not yet, sir, but we’ve pulled some prints from the hammer, and we’ll run them through the system.” “Okay, keep me informed, and detective? Turn off the god damned fog machine.” “Yes, sir. Sorry about that, sir, but I have to admit it created a spooky vibe. The doctor knew what he was doing.”

The music:
You think these guys liked Dimebag Darrell? Jeez. Put some effort into your band name and album title, guys. They don’t sound any more like Pantera (or Damageplan, I guess) than any other groove metal band, but they’re close enough. It’s funny how some of these tribute genres work. You get 1000 bands that all kinda sorta sound like the inspiration, but all sound almost identical to one another. Every now and then with Damned Plan, you get a flash of some other influence, like maybe modern In Flames, and occasionally singer Doyo busts out a high scream that (unfortunately) reminds me of Ripper Owens more than anyone else, but these extra-Abbottian additions to the Damned Plan sound don’t do much to pull the album out of the muck. It’s just another boring aggro slugfest that tries to groove without soul.
— Friar Johnsen

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RAVENS OVER GOMORRAH, Darkly Melisma (1999, demo)

The skull:
Another purloined still life, although I’m unable this time to cite its provenance. You’d be surprised, though, by what you’ll get out of a Google search for “skull still life with flute.” Evidently back in the Renaissance, skulls and flutes went together like rats and plague. Pretty much every skull came with a flute, some sheet music, and possibly a compass and the carcass of a pheasant. Probably for a time no drawing room was complete without such a scene hanging in an ornately gilded frame. Maybe they were intended as object lessons (in the form of allegory, as were all communications back then) to the spoiled children of the day, who were as little inclined to practice their recorders as today’s wayward youth are to knuckle down and spin the turntables they begged their parents for, before they learned that DJs pretty much just use Macs now. Some stern governess would point at the skull and grimly intone, “So too shall ye all perish and be forgotten if ye attendeth not to thine fipple flowtes”. Piteous half-holing ensued.

The music:
Ravens of Gomorrah are so fucking kvlt that no one dares upload their demo to YouTube. In fact I could only find a single song by the band anywhere online, and it was from the demo before Darkly Melisma so we’ll have to assume all their shit is basically the same, which is to say basically like early Emperor, but lacking the Norse grandeur. Bad keys and falling-down-the-stairs drumming figure prominently, along with a croaking growl that never quite reaches the raspy timbre you expect from this sort of thing. The guitars are badly played, of course, but they do sound marginally better than your average Grieghallen special. I’ve heard worse, but pretty much only on assignment.
— Friar Johnsen

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DEVILDRIVER, Winter Kills (2013, Napalm)

The skull:
By the sacred waters of Lake Cachuma, at the darkest hour of the desolate California winter, the jerkalope goes to die. Felled, like all the warriors of his kind, by ink poisoning, the jerkalope in his throes sloughs off his overtinctured skin to reveal at last the one true soul tattoo emblazoned on his unburdened brow, the mystical mark of all which is aggro and pure. And though the crows may feast on his rotted flesh and carry away his lesser osseous leavings, they dare not disturb the jerkalope’s inviolable headbone, so that pilgrims to the mystic shores of Lake Cachuma may gaze on the gnarly remains of the brutal and pray to the souls of them who have voyaged to the great circle pit beyond.

The music:
This fucking band. God damned DevilDriver. It’s not that they’re offensively bad, it’s that they’re offensively bland, gratingly mediocre. Fake tough-guy bullshit groove death metal. DevilDriver wants so desperately to be “hard”, but there’s no musical conviction there, only sanitized double bass and just enough melody to go down easy: death metal for video games and minivan dvd players. This band is the walking embodiment of corporate metal, the tools dishing out exactly the pseudo-rebellious pap that angry teenagers with a little disposable income crave. It’s astounding and depressing that Dez Fafara has been able to successfully pull this prank twice, once with the bottom-scraping nu-metal troglodytes Coal Chamber and again with DevilDriver. He’s a talentless weight around the neck of Heavy Metal, a visionless shit merchant trying to pass tattoos and tour buy-ons for talent. I’d say that DevilDriver can’t go away too soon, except that the minute they’re no longer profitable, Fafara will rise again to play dub slam or whatever it is low-achieving mouthbreathers are listening to in 2020.
— Friar Johnsen

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MASTIC SCUM, Dust (2009, Twilight Vertrieb)

The skull:
Wheels within wheels, man. Or gears within skulls, whatever. This is a sharp looking biomech who succeeds on the details. Note the plate in his forehead and the exhaust vents astern, and of course the obligatory barcode (here emblazoned on his jaw). Lots of skulls go for this grimy industrial look, but most of them come off looking like rejected drafts for a Photoshop class. This guy nails it, and though he is to be docked points for presenting his skullacity in profile, and perhaps for a cliched surfeit of brown, he compensates with tasteful highlighting and some truly spectacular teeth.

The music:
Mastic Scum grind after the fashion of Napalm Death, with the death metal quotient turned up a bit. Though not as endearingly jarring as the godfathers of grind, Mastic Scum apply the formula well. The buzzy, super-high-gain guitars and the precise drum work summon a recollection of Fear Factory in better days, but really, most of the “industrial” in Mastic Scum is delegated to the artwork. I won’t say that this sort of music thrills me especially, but I can appreciate craft when I hear it, and Mastic Scum do this style about as well as anyone.
— Friar Johnsen

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DEUTERONOMIUM, To Die and Gain (1999, self-released)

The skull:
“Check me out! I just won the olde-tyme Olympics!” “Awesome! What’s your event?” “Triple jump.” “Huh. Well, good for you.” “Thanks. I couldn’t have done it without the Lord, my savior, Jesus Christ. Also, the Father and the Holy Spirit. One for each jump.” “Uh, great, but I gotta be going.” “But wait! Have you heard the Good News?” “….”

The music:
It goes to show that you should never judge a book by its cover; I assumed from this hokey skull that I was in for some kind of crappy punk crossover shit, but instead I got… Christian deathrock! Not all surprises are pleasant, I’m afraid. Deuteronomium sound a bit like Dismember trying to sound like Wolverine Blues, except with on-the-nose lyrics about Jesus. Seriously, the lyrics are only one step beyond “Jesus loves me, this I know, because the bible told me so.” Really dreadful stuff. Thankfully, this is only a two song single (three if you could the epically unnecessary demo version of the title track) so my suffering came quickly to an end. I mean, not counting the suffering I’ll endure in the fires of hell for thinking Deuteronomium sucks.
— Friar Johnsen

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NECROPSY, Another World (1991, demo)

The skull:
By now, you’d think we’d have encountered pretty much every situation a skull can get himself into, more or less, but this is definitely the first time we’ve seen a skull splashing out of a lake. He’s like some grim aquatic jack-in-the-box, and he looks every-so-pleased with himself. Of course, after he’s popped out of the water and scared the shit out of you, he doesn’t have a lot left to offer. He bobs there, grinning and dripping, and you admit, “Ha ha, you got me dude!” and then there’s an awkward silence, neither of you really knowing what to say, before he slowly sinks back into the water to wait for the next hiking sucker to stroll by his pristine Finnish lake, and you continue on your walk, thinking, “What a dick.”

The music:
Necropsy were one of those bands that released a ton of demos, but never managed a proper album. Usually these bands are terrible, so I didn’t approach Necropsy with much excitement, but now I realize they must just have been unlucky, because they were rather good. The band that immediately came to mind when I started listening to Another World was Demigod, and in fact the two issued a split EP together. Another World offers measured, precise, mid-to-fast paced death metal that isn’t tripping over its own feet trying to out-brutal every other death metal band out there. I’d also say that the basic template for Necropsy came from Florida, not Scandinavia, although the occasional keyboards and snippets of weird melody will quickly dispel any confusion between Necropsy and, say, Malevolent Creation. Another World also bears more than a passing trace of the thrash that spawned all death metal in the early days, although subsequent demos by the band evidenced fewer and fewer of these tendencies. All in all, this is a fine demo, and not even too bad sounding for the times, but the advent of Entombed and the explosion of creativity in the death metal scene at the dawn of the 90s probably made it very difficult for even solid bands like Necropsy to find a deal when they lacked any obvious hook or novelty. In retrospect, a lot of the junk that was signed and released in that period was a lot worse than Necropsy, but that’s just how it goes. Century Media just released a sprawling collection of every Necropsy demo, though, which I’d highly recommend to enthusiasts of this critical period in the evolution of death metal.
— Friar Johnsen

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ASPID, Manqueta (1991, demo)

The skull:
“What? Yeah, I’m a little cracked up in the back, but I think that looks kind of cool anyway, and hey, check out these pearly whites! You don’t see a lot of skulls with a full set of gleaming choppers like these, do you, baby? Hey, where are you going? Why you gotta be leaving? That’s okay, though, cause I like the view. Oh yeah, you know I got eyes, or something. And they like what they see baby, so why don’t you back that thing up? Come on, baby, bring it on back to Skully!”

The music:
There have been a lot of Aspids, but this isn’t the best one. The best Aspid were a Russian tech thrash band who released the excellent Extravasation album in 1993. But this Aspid, the Spanish one, at least started out okay. (For the record, “aspid” is another name for the European viper.) Manqueta is reasonably good speed metal, something of a cross between Agent Steel and early Arakain. Good riffing and solid, high pitched vocals (with lyrics in Spanish.) The sound and the style scream 1986, but as this demo came out in 1991, Aspid were clearly a little behind the times. Sadly, they would later get with the times by dumbing down and moving in a groove metal direction. But for a little while in the early 90s, Aspid were a pretty cool band, and speed metal afficianados would do well to track this one down for their collections.
— Friar Johnsen

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UNDERLORD, Rise of the Ancient Kings (2003, Rage of Achilles)

The skull:
I do love these covers that feature literally every evil metal signifier possible, crammed into one disjointed composition. A pentagram, upside down crosses (on fire, naturally), crazy swords, occult symbols, and of course a seriously regal skull in the midst of it all. As with the nouveau riche, this nouveau mal skull is just a bit too ostentatious in his displays of malevolence. You just know he drives some fancy luxury hearse with the vanity plate, “EVLSKLL”, and he just never takes that fucking crown off. How else would you know how royally sinister he is?

The music:
An even mix of first and second wave black metal, Underlord offer no surprises and nothing new. The playing is remarkably crisp, considering how shitty the recording is, but the riffs are dime-a-dozen Venom, Bathory and Mayhem knockoffs, with the obligatory croaking vocals and lyrics about war, Satan, and ancient wisdom and what have you. If you think of Hellhammer as more than just the shitty band that eventually became Celtic Frost, or you think Sodom peaked with In the Sign of Evil, then maybe Underlord will tweak your nipples just right.
— Friar Johnsen