Author Archives: Friar Johnsen

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OBÚS, Pega con Fuerza (1985, Chapa)

The skull:
Ladies and gentlemen, this is how they did it before Photoshop: with scissors and glue. Why isn’t the skull chromed like the pipes? Because that’s not the skull they had to work with. This looks a bit like an art project from a grade-school kid, albeit a kid with odd aesthetic sensibilities, and I bet it still probably cost some Spanish record label over a million pesetas. But, as a big dumb skull, it’s awesome. Pega con Fuerza translates to “Hits hard” (more or less), and that only makes literal sense with this image if it’s a car grill or something, but whatever. Its figurative impact is great. This can’t be denied.

The music:
You’ve probably never heard of Obús, but they’ve been around since the dawn of time and have released nine full-length albums. They just don’t sing in English. Had they sung in English, they’d be at least as well known as Cannon or Underdog. Imagine an even lighter take on early 80s Priest, (or Def Leppard, even), but sung in Spanish, and you’re imagining Obús. Which is to say: they’re not that bad! The music can be pretty corny, but it’s catchy and very well-sung, and I’m sure the lyrics are fucking terrible, but unless you’re fluent in Español, who cares? Not being able to understand the lyrics is basically the primary upside of listening to foreign-language metal. Anyway, I’m not about to suggest that Obús are some kind of hidden gem; they’re still fairly cheesy, and finding their stuff is probably more trouble than it’s worth (if you demand more than a YouTube video, at least), but if you can’t get enough of vaguely poppy mid 80s metal, and you thought you already had it all, then maybe you need some Obús in your collection.
— Friar Johnsen

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WHITE SKULL, Under This Flag (2012, Dragonheart)

The skull:
If you were met on the field of battle by an army of zombies bearing a giant fucking skull flag, you’d crap your pants and die on the spot. And that’s before the skulls in berets showed up. In the end, this particular branch of special forces was disbanded because by the time they showed up, everyone was already dead. Sometimes, a skull is just too badass.

The music:
White Skull are a fairly terrible Italian power metal band who just won’t go away. They’ve got about 600 albums, and they’re all bad. The thing that sets them apart from most terrible Italian power metal bands (which are legion) is singer Federica de Boni, who is like a female Chris Boltendahl, and evidently the only thing that’s worse than Boltendahl’s voice is his womanly equivalent’s. The music is reasonably well played, I guess, but the riffing is so fucking generic and uninspired that it almost makes me long for the comparative mastery of Hammerfall. To top it all off, Under This Flag boasts the sound of a mid 90s Underground Symphony album. It’s rotten all around, and to be avoided.
— Friar Johnsen

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AOSOTH, Our Crown of Sins (2012, Inferna Profundus)

The skull:
I guess it doesn’t quite work to call a simple picture of a massively deformed skull “classy,” but the longer I do these reviews, the less language seems to mean anything anymore. It’s a bit hard to tell up from down on this skull, which looks almost like a photorealistic painting, but is probably just a very nicely done Photoshop job. In any case, the artist surely just concocted in his imagination the contours of this unfortunate skull, and the effect is pleasingly jarring. At first glance, you just see a skull, but on closer inspection you realize this skull is completely fucked up. Unsurprisingly, “Aosoth” seems to have some occult meaning, so maybe this skull represents some figure in the made-up evil mysticism the band (probably) claims to endorse, but regardless, it’s genuinely creepy, and a job well done.

The music:
Pretty typical French black metal, a little like early Deathspell Omega (that is, pre-Si Monumentum Requires, Circumspice), although not even that good. The pace is almost totally unrelenting (although there is some respite from the blasting on side B of this single), and while the expected French quirk is there, it (sadly) rears its head so rarely that you’d be forgiven for thinking these guys were Swedish. The playing is tight, at least, and the production clean enough to not totally annoy. There’s nothing happening in either of these songs to make me want to investigate the band further, but they have the surface qualities of a black metal band who might NOT suck, so if you’re really into this sort of thing, perhaps further investigation is required. Me, I’ll pass.
— Friar Johnsen

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WEAPON, Embers and Revelations (2012, Relapse)

The skull:
Sometimes we at Skull HQ complain about covers jammed up with just too much shit, but here’s a fine example of maximalism done right. Let’s start with the snakes: usually when you see a symmetrical design like this, the snakes are an obvious cut and paste job. But if that’s the case here, the artist at least went to some lengths to make sure each snake looked like his own serpent. For that matter, most artists would have just doubled that wolf, but here the artist wisely went with a tiger/wolf thing. The circle behind the skull is unique the whole way around, the crown is actually lighted, hell even the horns are distinct (and while it looks goofy, I appreciate the more realistically goat-like placement thereof.) The skull looks childish, which is a motif we always appreciate here, and the background is nicely textured and NOT BROWN. Really, there is basically nothing to complain about here, except that what the hell does any of this have to do with embers or revelations?

The music:
If Rebel Extravaganza-era Satyricon and Covenant-era Morbid Angel had a demon skull love child, it might sound like Embers and Revelations. That’s a good thing! This is a rather excellent black/death metal album that might lean a bit more heavily in the black direction, but is still supremely heavy and riffy after the fashion of the best death metal. The songs show variety and even some genuine imagination (the phased-out ending of “Disavowing Each in Aum” is so cool I listened to it three times!); the production is stellar, and the performances all around are top notch. Though it’s rare that I really crave this sort of thing, this is exactly what I’d want to hear when I do (assuming I can’t find my copy of Old Mand’s Child’s In Defiance of Existence, at least). There are a ton of bands on Relapse that I can’t stand, but that’s almost always because I don’t care for the specific type of music. Damned near every band on that label works at the highest levels of its respective subgenre, and Weapon is a sterling example of that. Shame that the band broke up after this, but what an exit!
— Friar Johnsen

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WICKED LESTER, Better Off Dead (1998, RSR)

The skull:
These guys thought no one would care if they stole the original name of the band that would become KISS, but when they tried it, a couple of goons showed up and roughed up the band’s mascot, knocking out a few of his teeth. Undeterred, Wicked Lester pressed on and released an album, but I think it’s not a coincidence that they never released a follow-up. This poor skull, or what’s left of him, is probably in the cement under the newest pool in one of Gene Simmons’s mansions.

The music:
Wicked Lester released their demo in 1989, but didn’t follow it up until 1998 with this full length album, and knowing that, Wicked Lester make a lot of sense. This is clearly a band whose musical sensibilities were formed in the 80s, but they obviously didn’t have their shit together to capitalize on the brief (in retrospect) popularity of this sort of melodic heavy metal. By the time they finally managed to eke out a disc, they had compromised their vision (such as I imagine it was) with a bevy of lame attempts to do what the biggies were doing in the 90s, from Pantera (the beginning of “Mad as Hell” is a complete “This Love” ripoff) to Megadeth (the entire album reeks of bad Mustaine-style “grooves”). At their best, Wicked Lester roughly approximate the US power metal of bands like Leatherwolf and Fifth Angel (see: “Rage,” an almost great song), but at their worst, they’re exactly the sort of overconfident and undertalented band that sadly littered the mid 90s trad metal scene in the States. If I had heard this when it came out, I might have treated it generously as a demo, imagining the band capable of something better. But this album was the end of the line for Wicked Lester, and judged on the merits, Better Off Dead isn’t good enough to compete with the great 80s albums that inspired it, and it didn’t do enough to distinguish the band during the dark days of the late 90s.
— Friar Johnsen

SKULL573

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BESATT, Hellstorm (2001, Seven Gates of Hell)

The skull:
Man, what a mess. It’s like someone decided to make a montage cover using only photos of magazine prints of bootleg pressings of eastern European records from the 70s. And maybe a denture ad. There are actually two versions of this cover. There’s this one, which I presume is the original, then another where all this is faded to near invisibility and pasted into some generic lightning photo. Though that might better communicate the “storm” aspect of the title, this better captures the “Hell,” and anyway, here the skull is bigger and so much dumber. Just so fucking dumb.

The music:
It seems like it’s been a while since I was assigned a straight-up black metal album. I still don’t like it. Besatt are boring as all fuck, although I guess they’re relatively competent as these bands go. They’re kinda like Gorgoroth, I guess. Maybe old Satyricon. When you think about it, if you’re playing “traditional” black metal, you’re ripping off one of, like, five bands, and you’re going to suck in the same way they did. Your guitars will be murky, your vocals screechy, your keyboards paddy. Your drummer will record the entire album with only three beats and two fills. If your songs are in English, then they’ll have titles like “Baphomet,” “Funeral Wind,” “For the Glory of Satan,” “Gates of Hell,” etc. The only difference is that you won’t be the first to suck the way you do, but the MILLIONTH. Seriously, there are a metric fuckton of bands like this, and the world doesn’t need more. But so what? You’re in a shitty band, or maybe you just love shitty bands. Maybe you also love Marmite, Full House, and the films of Uwe Boll. Just keep that crap to yourself, and we can still be friends.
— Friar Johnsen

SKULL572

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TÖRR, Kladivo Na Čarodějnice (1993, Monitor)

The skull:
Törr love the Big Dumb Skull. I mean, they really love it. This compilation cover is basically the same as their first demo, with the logo moved up a bit to obscure less of the skull, and that’s why we chose it, but several of their other albums feature skulls that are even bigger and dumber. For all I know, “Törr” is Czech for Skull. In fact, that’d be so great that I’m just going to assume it’s true, without doing any research that might disprove it. Anyway, this guy looks positively crestfallen, so bummed out, but he’s got so much going on. I want to say, “Hey man, dry your eye holes! You’re a skull! You’re big and dumb, and I mean that in the best way. You’ve got fangs! You’ve got crossbones! You’ve got an upside-down cross earring, for fuck’s sake! You’re the star of the show, alone on a black background! Do you know how many skulls are forced to languish on fields of scratchy brown nonsense? How many skulls are forced to share the stage with Photoshopped snakes and cheap looking fire? You’re drawn by hand, you’re a total badass, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise!”

The music:
If you find yourself in a place with a lot of dudes in denim vests covered in patches, at least one of those vests will sport a Törr patch. And that’s about as much as I knew about Törr before now. I guess I always assumed they were a black metal band of low fidelity and repute. Instead, they’re a kind of weird Czech band (which, I realize, is something of a redundant description) who play a thrashy heavy metal with a serious Venom/Bathory influence. It’s not super aggressive, and it’s not particularly extreme. And I like it! They’re kind of like a light Czech Sodom (and if you find yourself listening to some of their later stuff, like Tempus Fugit, the notion that Törr is just a straight-up translation of Sodom to Czech is inescapable). This release is a compilation of re-recorded tracks from the band’s early days, and while most bands of this sort, if they had the chance to re-record their demos, would make them heavier, bigger, more, but Törr instead opted to clean everything up a little bit, and while the rawness that defined the original material is more or less polished away, what’s left is a refined take on what was evidently a little more sophisticated than anyone might have imagined. From what I can tell, the band got heavier again after this, and rawer, so maybe they didn’t like the way these tunes came out the second time, but personally, I think they work well.
— Friar Johnsen

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OSCO, Death (2012, demo)

The skull:
I once did a very similar pencil drawing in art class, only the skull had a hole cut into it and a little peg inserted underneath. It was a birdhouse, you see. How clever I was. The skull was actually very well drawn (I still have it) although that was only possible because I spent hours and hours merely transcribing the lines from a realistic plastic skull I had bought at the Halloween store. I had to ask my art teacher for help with the peg, because I couldn’t get the perspective right without actually seeing the thing in real life. My point is that even a high school kid with almost no artistic skill could have drawn this skull. But it took a real hack, a person of low morals and even lower technical ability, to have inserted these glowing spiders, stars, and #f00 red blood with MS Paint or whatever cheap drawing program came preinstalled on his Dell. The modifications made to this skull drawing practically count as vandalism.

The music:
This demo is the work, I must assume, of a kid in his mid teens, because I refuse to believe that any adult would release something so terrible into the wider world. This kid can’t write, can’t play, can’t growl, has no idea how drums are played (and so no idea how to program lifelike beats), and can’t work Garage Band. This is so bad that it wouldn’t even convince as a jokey ridicule of death metal in a rotten TV show. There doesn’t appear to be any bass at all. There is generally only a single guitar, and that guitar is almost never in time. If you’re a fan of outsider art, then maybe this will tickle every ironic bone in your body. If you’re a fan of the Osco chain of pharmacies, however, you’re in for a rude awakening here.
— Friar Johnsen

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NECROCURSE, Shape of Death (2012, Aftermath Music)

The skull:
I’m certain we’ve seen this exact skull before, ‘shopped into some other dull cover, but I’m not about to look it up. Here he is, tinted pink, smiling atop some very fascist-looking lightning bolts and an upside-down cross. It’s all impossibly dull, but the saving grace is that this was released as that rarest of novelties, the shaped CD. In 2012, no less. In fact, I’m not sure there’s even a printed-on-paper cover, just this disc in a clear case. That’s kind of cool, as a physical artifact, but it doesn’t excuse the total dullness of the design. Necrocurse has done other good work in the medium of Big Dumb Skulls, for which The Council is grateful, but if they keep up this kind of shoddy work, they might find themselves without the friendship of some very important, hooded figures.

The music:
Necrocurse are a bunch of old dudes from medium-famous underground bands (Runemagick, Swordmaster, and the biggest, Nifelheim) united in their common love of Swedish death metal demos of the late 80s. If you like Carnage, Merciless, Nihilist, Grave, or Nirvana 2002, or modern knock-offs like Entrails or Repugnant, then you’ll probably like Necrocurse. I know I should like all these Stockholm syndrome bands about as much as I like the 10,000 new thrash bands who aren’t as good as Havok (which is to say: not much), but I really haven’t been exposed to too many Retombeds to be totally annoyed, and anyway this particular bunch of dudes have at least some claim to the sound. Shape of Death is a compilation of a couple EPs with a few bonus tracks tacked on, and it’s solid, but probably not the best introduction to the band. Then again, their lone EP is ever-so-slightly less derivative, and that could be a good or bad thing depending on your disposition.
— Friar Johnsen

SKULL569

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KAOS, Kaos Among Us (2003, Oblivion Entertainment)

The skull:
Fashioning a chaos symbol out of swords was an inspired idea, and of course cramming them through a skull was the right thing to do. I like the bonus spiky flails as well; they have no business being there, and that’s what makes them work. But I could have done without the generic background of brown and fire. The whole thing looks like an ad for a Games Workshop product, and though that was pretty cool when Bolt Thrower did it in 1989, whatever metal cred being able to field a 3000 point Chaos Space Marine army might have once established, now you just look like some video game dweeb when you lay on the grimdark too thick.

The music:
When I first started spinning this, I thought it was pretty good modern rethrash, if a bit heavy on the crossover elements. I mean, it’s not awesome, and it’s not original by any stretch, but it’s got the fire and energy of a band who at least believe they’re doing more than recreating the sound of a scene they were too young to have experienced firsthand. But then I looked up the release date and saw that this came out long, long before the current trend for mosh exhumation, and it all started to make sense. In fact, Kaos started turning out demos in 1988, making them an honest-to-god first wave thrash band, even if it took them until the year 2000 to release a proper album. Imagine if Sadus started drifting toward hardcore after Swallowed In Black, and you’ll have a pretty good idea of what Kaos sounded like circa 2003. Not too shabby! Unlike 99.999% of today’s young thrashers, Kaos obviously have more inspiring source material in their record collections than Exodus, Slayer, and Ride the Lightning. The vocals are like a blown-out holler, none too pleasing, and no one is going to accuse Kaos of breaking new ground on their riffing, but this album was clearly made by lifers who knew what they were doing. As I get older and more jaded, I more on more rely on these gut-level inferences about a band’s intentions, which I know is not rational, but whatever. Kaos aren’t awesome, but better them than Toxik Holocaust.
— Friar Johnsen