SKULL607

Posted on August 30, 2014 by Friar Johnsen

SOCIAL DESPAIR, Social Despair (2007, demo)

The skull:
I don’t recall seeing another skull with only half a jaw. For all the violence we’ve seen visited on skulls here at Skull HQ, this seems the most brutal. What holds the thing on, I can’t say, but I bet it hurts like all hell. Fortunately, this guy looks to be riding out his Hellraiser-esque eternity in style, what with that kickin’ mullet and badass fangs. He’s probably like, “Yeah, I’m all chained up through a hole in my top, and my bottom jaw is fucking busted in half, but they didn’t even ding the fangs! Suckers!” That’s some Myth of Sisyphus-level existentialism right there, folks.

The music:
Obviously, this is a thrash band. Obviously. The name, the logo, and of course the cover all give it away. But, they don’t have the sound of a trendhopping rethrash act. Instead, they sound like a bunch of meatheads who wanted to play death metal but found it was just too hard, so they dumbed it down and arrived at some kind of remedial thrash, the sort played by high school bands in 1991 who mostly decorated their denim vests with Metallica patches but who just discovered Deicide. The sound is awful, the playing sloppy, the riffs dull, and the vocals unlistenable. At least the songs are short. Interestingly, Social Despair appear to have released an album only last year — there’s proof of it on their Facebook page — but despite an even more awesome BDS cover, the album doesn’t appear on Metal Archives and I can’t find sound samples for it. So, maybe Social Despair got their act together and turned into a good band, although I can’t say I have particularly high hopes for a record called Refusal for Abreaction.
— Friar Johnsen

SKULL605

Posted on August 28, 2014 by Friar Johnsen

AGGRESSIVE MUTILATOR, Skull Torture (2012, demo)

The skull:
Sure, it looks like a skull on a stake, but look closer at that alleged pike: doesn’t it look a lot like these? And if that’s just a concrete nail, then this skull is incredibly tiny. I think the artiste who crafted this fine piece of art just pulled the skeleton out of his aquarium and popped the skull onto a nail for his model. I suppose that constitutes torture of a sort. Or maybe it’s the most horrifying torture you can subject a skull to, rendering him badly for a shitty demo. “Tell me everything I wish to know, aquarium skull!” “You can’t break me! I’ll never talk!” “Very well. Then it won’t bother you at all if I submit this crudely sketched likeness to a bunch of Swedish posers for their old school black metal demo.” “You wouldn’t!” “I would, mister skull, and if you don’t start cooperating, the next drawing is going to a death metal band in Ecuador.” “NOOOOOOO!!!!!!”

The music:
This plays a little like a parody of the first Bathory album, with songs built on braindead Venom-style riffs (like, two per song), croaky frogman vocals, and lyrics that would have been too dumb for Tom Angelripper circa 1982. I can’t imagine a person who would like this demo and also enjoy the humor of Big Dumb Skulls, but on the off chance you listen to this kind of thing ironically, well, bust out your mustache wax because it’s going to be an event to remember.
— Friar Johnsen

SKULL603

Posted on August 26, 2014 by Friar Johnsen

NIGHTMARE CITY, Nightmare Tape (2014, Electric Assault)

The skull:
Now this here is a stunningly awesome hand-drawn Big Dumb Skull. The best way to look at it is to imagine that the giant flaming skull is neither attacking the city nor being attacked, but rather is just sitting there. Like, one night people looked out the windows of their high rise condominiums and instead of the sunset saw an enormous skull with smoke and fire pouring out of its eyes. What could be more terrifying than that? I mean, aside from the skull smiling.

The music:
Imagine if Sodom had recorded their debut EP with the relative instrumental prowess of Venom (a massive upgrade, if you can imagine it). That’s what Nightmare City sounds like, more or less. I guess that Nightmare City are a lot more concerned with the powers of Rock than the powers of Satan, and they lean a bit more punk than metal sometimes, but in those cases, just imagine a missing link between The Damned’s Machine Gun Etiquette and Tank’s Filth Hounds of Hades. These guys capture the raw early 80s more or less perfectly, and they do it while avoiding the winking tone that scuttles a lot of these sorts of retro acts. I like a lot of the bands that inspire Nightmare City and their ilk (think: Superchrist, Asomvel) but I’m not totally sold on the need for anything new in this style, but if you’re on board with the scene, you need to check these guys out.
— Friar Johnsen

SKULL601

Posted on August 24, 2014 by Friar Johnsen

THE YEAR OF OUR LORD, The Year Of Our Lord (2002, Willowtip)

The skull:
This looks like the homemade invitation to someone’s Halloween party. Someone who takes Halloween entirely too seriously, but is also not very good at it. You know the type. Like, sure, winged skulls can be pretty scary, but this winged skull is not, and while I’m sure the card-making program made it easy to wrap the whole thing in those borders, were they really a good idea? And what the fuck does any of this have to do with The Year Of Our Lord? Unless your lord is Charlie, nothing.

The music:
With a cover like this, I fully expected some kind of biker doom, but The Year Of Our Lord are a pretty decent melodic death metal band. It was only after I started listening to them that I noticed they were on Willowtip, a label that is very unlikely to have ever signed a sludge band or whatever. Anyway, this is specifically that kind of melodic death metal where you’d expect to hear a violin (or a synthesized simulation thereof) and the lyrics are about windswept moors and other other mopey, romantic shit. Romantic like Lord Byron, not Jackie Collins. Now, I love a clubfooted playboy as much as the next guy, but that’s not really my scene. If you like your MDM brooding and gothic, however, this band is WAY better than their art would suggest, and you’d probably enjoy them.
— Friar Johnsen

SKULL599

Posted on August 22, 2014 by Friar Johnsen

MORBID COMMAND, Vox Spectrum (2011, demo)

The skull:
Ordinarily, the presence of a spine is enough to disqualify a skull from being a proper Big Dumb Skull, but The Council occasionally allows it when, as here, the spine is not so much a suggestion or part of a skeleton, but some kind of wicked rat rail for a gnarly skull. And this skull is definitely gnarly. He could be bigger, but he couldn’t be dumber, or angrier, possibly because he’s sick of dragging his goofy spine around. His skull buddies started calling him Snake Dickskin, and that’s really starting to chap his (metaphorical) ass. They’ll be (figuratively) ribbing him, and he’ll be like, “You know I can’t get it off, because I don’t have any hands either, but if one of you fucking jokers wants to bite it off, be my fucking guest!” So far, he’s had no takers.

The music:
This is the sort of demo that might now be a classic had it come out in 1985 — a murky, sloppy slab of Teutonic death/thrash that plays up the elements of the style that would later influence black metal. But even so, demos like that only really became classic in retrospect, when the bands who made them grew up and got a little better. Had Destruction stopped with Bestial Invasion of Hell, or Kreator with End of the World or Sodom with Witching Metal, would anyone but the most diehard lovers of shitful noise care? Sure, those tapes found an audience in the early 80s, but they’re only known now because of Release from Agony, Pleasure to Kill, and Persecution Mania. And it’s not clear that Morbid Command ever reached anything near those heights before breaking up in 2013 (although I will grant they were definitely starting to get there by the time of their last split release). A certain kind of retro metalhead will love this, the kind who has bootleg Warrant and Poison and Slaughter patches on his denim and still gets kind of pissed when people think he’s boosting hair metal bands, like he’s some kind of fucking poser.
— Friar Johnsen

SKULL598

Posted on August 21, 2014 by Friar Johnsen

AFTER EARTH, Ruin (2012, self-released)

The skull:
You probably think it’s just perspective that makes the skull loom so large in the frame, but no, this is a giant wrecking skull and it just knocked down that building. Who knew the Morlocks were such an ornamental people, and that their flair for embellished design would extend even to their heavy construction equipment?

The music:
Remember back in 1997 or so when pretty much every death metal outfit was trying to sound like Dark Tranquillity and/or In Flames? Those were the good ol’ days, at least for After Earth, who were sadly too young to have ripped off the Gothenburg bands when it was still fashionable to do so. But they’re here now, and if you miss those halcyon times when Night In Gales and Gardenian rode high on the hog, you can party with After Earth like it’ll be 1999 in a year or two.
— Friar Johnsen

SKULL597

Posted on August 20, 2014 by Friar Johnsen

SIN OF GOD, Satan Embryo (2010, self-released)

The skull:
I imagine the members of Sin of God kicking down the door of some illustrator’s studio like barbarians, possibly even carrying their guitars for some reason, shouting, “Painter man! We demand a cover! We want a big ass skull, and a big ass snake, and make the whole motherfucker red and evil! NOW!” and then standing there, panting and stinking, while the artist scrambles to throw something together, fearing for his very life. When he sheepishly turns his monitor around after about 27 minutes to present his work, the musicians grunt and the guitarist declares, “It is good,” throws down a pile of hides as payment, and leads his warband out of the studio, stuffing a flash drive with the art into his filthy jerkin.

The music:
Mix up Vader and Morbid Angel with a little Krisiun, and you’ve got Sin of God. Straight-ahead modern death metal like this doesn’t do a lot for me, but Sin of God are definitely better than most of their kind. Their riffing isn’t exactly technical, but it’s very precise, and although they employ an awful lot of blast beats, they do it with some sense of measure and a mix that doesn’t bury the guitars in percussive white noise. The drums are in fact probably programmed, and if they’re not they’re at least sample-replaced, but for some reason, I don’t really mind. Even the vocals are pretty good! It sounds like at least a couple guys are chipping in with growls and grunts, and I wouldn’t say that any of them are particularly noteworthy, but they’re at the same time just what the music calls for, and the Hungarian accents lend an exotic twist to the vocals. I don’t see myself craving this sort of thing much, but if you listen to brutal death metal with any regularity, you should check these guys out. This EP was tacked on as bonus tracks to their debut full length, Limbus (which I haven’t heard), so if you should be so inclined to indulge in Sin of God, that’s probably your best bet.
— Friar Johnsen

SKULL596

Posted on August 19, 2014 by Friar Johnsen

MIDNIGHT BULLET, Faraday Cage (2012, Inverse)

The skull:
I’m not sure the skull would make a very effective shield for electric fields, but what the hell, if you’re going to give your album a title as stupidly specific as Faraday Cage, why not have some fun with it? Then again, why is the lightning coming from the skull? Shouldn’t the skull be absorbing it, or deflecting it, or something? Far be it for me, though, to suggest that Midnight Bullet don’t understand the electromagnetic principles they’re invoking; I’m sure they’re all PhD physicists in their day jobs.

The music:
For obvious reasons, I expected very little from Midnight Bullet, but I almost immediately enjoyed them and by the time I had finished the album, I was looking for a way to buy it. They’re not doing anything especially clever, but they remind me of a bunch of bands I really like, and they mash up those (apparent) influences in a pleasing way. Most obviously, it sounds like Midnight Bullet formed to relive the exciting sounds of 1996, as they more or less sound like a mix of Rage’s poppy, post-Manni, pre-Victor albums, and the similarly poppy first few Sentenced albums featuring Ville Laihiala (Down and Frozen specifically). But as much as those two bands, Midnight Bullet sounds to me like my beloved Jester’s Funeral, particularly the last two albums, which make good on what little promise Metallica’s black album offered. There’s no easy genre tag to describe something like this, even though this is not a band I’d call “sui generis,” and any synthetic label, like “Heavy Pop Death Rock,” is going to make the band sound awful, but believe me when I say that Midnight Bullet makes some very catchy music that manages to be heavy and toe-tapping at the same time. And they do it with that inexplicable Finnish polish that mysteriously makes every band from that nation sound like seasoned veterans, even if they’ve only been together for a year. And though when the album started I was ready to criticize vocalist Tuomas Lahti for his lack of range and the general inappropriateness of his deathy voice, by the end I was converted, as he reveals more and more of his abilities as the album progresses (which is necessarily to say that he does sell himself short in the early songs.) This is a fun and worthwhile album for anyone who likes any of the bands I’ve mentioned, and with a second album coming soon, I’m expecting more good things from these badly named Finns.
— Friar Johnsen

SKULL595

Posted on August 18, 2014 by Friar Johnsen

SKULLCRUSHER, Demo Version 2002 (2002, demo)

The skull:
It’s like this skull and this skull fucked and made an ugly skullbaby, who quit high school and took a job on a pirate flag for a buck over minimum wage and was like, “Fuck you losers, I’m outta this shit town for good!” and they were like, “You’re an ingrate and a bum and we never loved you!” and he was all, “Fffuuh!”

The music:
I couldn’t find this demo anywhere, but from the looks of this cover I’d say this is blackened rethrash, like Destruction doing Bathory covers while Greek. Releasing a cassette demo in 2002 was a pretty bold move: at least as contrarian as releasing a vinyl demo in 2035 or whatever.
— Friar Johnsen

SKULL594

Posted on August 17, 2014 by Friar Johnsen

TOXIFIX, Rise from the Ashes (2011, Gravedigger)

The skull:
I suppose the ashes from which this skull has arisen are the ones in the hospital incinerator. Fortunately he’s still labeled as a biohazard (that fireproof paint was a smart investment), so if you see him, steer clear. He might have hepatitis C or meningitis or something. Prevention is the best medicine.

The music:
Rise from the Ashes is a bedroom demo of slightly blackend thrash metal. It’s mostly okay, I guess. When the band sticks to the thrash, it’s completely generic and utterly forgettable, but when they mix in more modern black and death metal sounds, as on “Gravedigger,” they start to approach something interesting. The vocals, however, are shit throughout, a sort of black metal frog croak run through pretty much every effect you can imagine. As is basically always the case when the vocals are this awful, they come courtesy of the main songwriter (usually the guitarist), whose ego is clearly too bloated to admit that he cannot do it all. So yeah, with a little musical polish, a better studio, and basically any other singer they could find, Toxifix could probably have grown into something interesting, but they broke up in 2013, so this is it, and it’s not much.
— Friar Johnsen