Category Archives: Skull

Skull of the day

SKULL86

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EMPATHY, Skulls on Fire  (2007, demo)

The skull:
We love our skulls on fire here at Big Dumb Skulls. We’ll take ’em any way we can get ’em, but there’s just something about skulls on fire. It takes an extremely high temperature to burn bone, but these skulls? They’ll take whatever punishment you dish out. [See prior Skulls 68 and 55 for more examples of flaming skulls.] This one is rendered in a neon-like glow in matching neon color. It’s not exactly threatening looking, and would be a not-very-well-though-out tattoo choice. Apparently the lines in the corners are either lightning, or cracks. Your choice! I choose lightning cracks.

The music:
A lot more intense and threatening than the album cover suggests (I expected something like Saxon here). This obscure UK band have since changed their name to the not-exactly-unique Painkiller, but here we have the original 4-song demo/EP by Empathy. The only song I was able to track down is “Burial,” but I’m going to assume the other three songs are in a similar vein. That vein? Think of the lost Kreator album that might have existed between Pleasure to Kill and Terrible Certainty. The riffs bristle with crisp energy and the vocals are dead-on Mille Petrozza circa 1986. The drumming is probably technically better than Ventor, but I like Ventor. As 1986 is my favorite Kreator/Mille era, I cannot help but give this a thumbs up, even if it does cruise by in a blaze of redundancy. But hey, we’ve all got our soft spots, and one of mine is this era of Kreator, so I’ll listen to anything that sounds like it once.
— Friar Wagner

SKULL85

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SLAYER, South of Heaven (1988, Def Jam)

The skull:
This cover is so famous and so iconic that it’s easy to miss pretty much all the details. When was the last time you looked at this up close? The skull itself would have to be massive, a hundred feet tall or more, if the perspective is to be trusted and the scale of the gothic architecture in the background is commensurate with other structures in the style. The skull is impaled on an equally large crucifix, and the entire scene is awash in a literal sea of blood, with artist Larry Carroll’s Bruegelian beasties cavorting about the skull in a scene to make Bosch blanche, even if the guy in the skull’s right eyesocket looks a lot like those crazy-haired trolls that elementary school girls used to put on top of their pencils. The tininess of the (all-time great) logo accentuates the hugeness of the skull, and the weird artlessness of the title, set in a block of red that looks like it was literally cut and paste over the image, only serves to heighten the gravity and horror of the entire design. This is a near perfect cover, and an absolutely brilliant big dumb skull to boot.

The music:
While I can acknowledge that, objectively, this album is not quite on par with its predecessor, this was my first Slayer album, and probably forever my favorite. That said, while it is not as consistently awesome as Reign in Blood, there are elements to this album that honestly transcend the blitzkrieg of its precursor. Knowing they couldn’t out-pace the frantic Reign, the band wisely mixed up the tempos, with success at every speed, from the dirge-like slowness of the gutsy opening title track, to the almost oppressive monotony of “Mandatory Suicide,” to the moderated midpace of the underrated “Behind the Crooked Cross” to the all-out fury of “Silent Scream,” and that’s just side one! Sure, the Judas Priest cover feels like padding on an already short album, but they do a shockingly good job of making that song their own, and yeah, maybe Tom’s moaning on “Spill the Blood” isn’t quite as spooky as he intended, but even the lesser side two of this album is packed with brilliant riffs and killer songs. The absolutely parched production, almost impossible dry, accentuates the mastery of songcraft at which the band had arrived. It’s really no surprise that after Reign in Blood and South of Heaven, the band had nowhere to go but down. Seasons in the Abyss isn’t a terrible album, but it feels at all times like a pale imitation of this one. It’s an album that sounds like it was made by some hacky British knock-off, not the proper follow-up to the greatest one-two punch in the history of thrash. And of course, after that, the band only got worse and worse, to the point that Slayer these days is little more than a sad caricature of Slayer, even if they’re more popular than ever. But none of what has come since can diminish the monumental accomplishment of this album.
— Friar Johnsen

SKULL84

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SKULLVIEW, Skullview  (1997, demo)

The skull:
This image appeared on a demo cassette, which helps fill the frame with one humongous skull! The skull seems to be leering at what it views: endless humans, clones apparently, all with shaved heads, looking like victims in some hellish concentration camp (is there any other kind of concentration camp?). They are not at all happy, and in fact look quite desperate, while the skull grins as if to say “I diiiig what this skull is viewin’, baby.” One can imagine the wider picture, too, the skull perched on top of its skeletal frame, sitting on a chopper riding down a highway in the valley of the damned. Pure evil, or something. An interesting image, one of my personal favorites in the BDS Skullection.

The music:
I have a soft spot for this sort of stuff, and while bands like Omen, Heavy Load, Manilla Road and even early Nocturnal Rites epitomize the purest heavy metal, constant rehash by newer and younger bands almost dilutes the whole idea. There are few bands that have landed in the 2000s doing something extraordinary, although Lost Horizon and Pharaoh should be mentioned, yet even those bands have a more refined, modern feel. As for the likes of Enforcer, Portrait and In Solitude, I get it, but the older bands still wrote better and more lasting songs. All this to say that Skullview were right there in 1997, when this sort of thing was at its lowest ebb of popularity, at least until Hammerfall blew up later that year. This demo sounds like some Metal Blade band circa 1984, and it’s hard not to like, even in rough demo form. The three songs here made it onto the band’s first album, and they’ve been flying the traditional heavy metal flag ever since. Skullview has a dark gothic vibe before gothic meant “Nightwish” and that sort of junk, and while it’s nothing original, their hearts are clearly in it for life, and the relative complexity of the arrangements ensures multiple listens. There’s no mistaking it for any other band: Skullview manage a sound of their own despite originating from a place of total elder gods worship. I’m sure we’d all have a blast together cranking up some Medieval Steel and Gotham City records while slamming down some beers, so yeah, I’m on Skullview’s side for sure.
— Friar Wagner

SKULL83

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DUSK RITUAL, With Rum, Skull and Crossbones (2005, demo)

The skull:
A clipart skull and crossbones on a parchment-looking background, with a few spots of blood. Or, I guess, really oddly colored rum. No, that doesn’t make any sense, unless maybe it’s some kind of rum cocktail with grenadine. But then, the title would have to be, at a minimum, With Rum, Mixers, Skull and Crossbones. So yeah, it’s probably blood. For whatever stupid piratical reason. In any case, the only cover art I could find was incredibly small, so it looks extra bad blown up to the not-especially-large standard to which we hew at BDS headquarters.

The music:
There’s really only room in the world for two pirate metal bands, and Dusk Ritual is unfortunately neither Running Wild nor Swashbuckle. Although, I guess I can’t say for certain that Dusk Ritual are actually a pirate metal band, since I can’t understand the lyrics or find them on the internet. The cover art and title are damning, however, even if the German bio on the Austrian band’s still-extant Myspace page (this 2005 demo is their only release, so one assumes this is just an abandoned online outpost of a forgotten band) seems to refer to them as “party metal”. A grim party, that. Musically, this is just crappy thrash-flavored melodic death metal, so it’s no wonder Dusk Ritual failed to light the world on fire. But, they were ahead of the pirate metal boom by a few years, and it’s not like Alestorm is any good, so maybe theirs is simply a case of being too far ahead of their time.
— Friar Johnsen

SKULL82

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SKULLDEMON, Demons of the Black Abyss  (2005, demo)

The skull:
One of the most obscure pieces in the Skullection, this cover comes from a band buried way down deep in the underground of Finnish black metal. It’s simple as hell, assembled in junior high homeroom, perhaps. Kinda Olde English style font for band name and demo title, with a negative image of a skull slapped onto a particularly un-evil looking background (a pattern more appropriate for bathroom tile than unholy hymns to the dark one). The two tiny horns on top are apparently an attempt at evilness, but it’s all pretty Mickey Mouse level stuff in the end.

The music:
Total one-man band bedroom black metal right here, complete with programmed drums. Buzzing and raw, the songs operate at a variety of tempos (moderate medium tempo to repetitive blasting). The vocals offer slight diversity, the most interesting approach being a hilarious throaty bellow that sounds like a cross between Wizard of Oz’s Wicked Witch and Sam Kinison. Inspired by Burzum and Bathory, no doubt, but not at all inspiring. Pointless, but thanks for the skull, buddy!
— Friar Wagner

SKULL81

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SKULLCRUSH, Skullcrush (2009, self-released)

The skull:
Really, Skullcrush, would it have been so hard to crush the fucking skull? Like, you’re halfway there, guys! You’re not “Tallskull” or “Tophalfofskull,” you’re Skullcrush. Just crush it already! And don’t try to tell me that black area up top is a sign of crushing. That just looks like someone set off some firecrackers on the skull’s forehead. So, next time, keep it simple like this, but get the details right. A crushed skull on a black background, with your crappy typewriter logo on top, just like this one. That’d be perfect.

The music:
It’s not everyday you hear Macedonian metal, and while I was expecting the worst, really, this isn’t so bad. The base formula for Skullcrush is late 80s German thrash of the second-tier: Assassin, Protector, Living Death, that sort of thing. Fast picking, a few inspired riffs, and a lot of the basketball beat, with vocals that are almost hardcore shouting (and in… Macedonian? I guess?) The production isn’t the best, but I’ve made do with less, and the tunes are solid if you don’t care that you’ve heard a hundred others just like them. Hardcore thrashers looking for something new could do a lot worse than to pad out their collections with this sort of thing, and of course you can impress your friends by being able to name a Macedonian thrash band. In any case, this is better than all those lame American and British rethrash bands writing songs about moshing and beer.
— Friar Johnsen

SKULL80

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SUBHUMAN, Delirio No. 1  (2005, demo)

The skull:
You can’t really lose copping an H.R. Giger painting for your album cover. From ELP to Celtic Frost, bands have made good use of it. I even remember Argentinian band Vibrion snagging a detail from an H.R. Giger cover and making it their own. And there are many others. So, of course this cover is amazing. A grinning, or more likely mouth-raped skull is having something forced into its maw, a gun or something phallic, or something approximating either. Fun for the viewer to decipher and interpret! The skull sits amongst a typically Giger-esque world of bluish gray, in what looks like a gargantuan wall of syringes and machinery, largely symmetrical and absolutely mammoth in scope.

The music:
On the surface, this band should be amazing. An H.R. Giger cover, the good taste to Subhuman-ize Faith No More’s excellent “Surprise! You’re Dead!!!,” and the Coroner-ish first minutes of “Il Vecchio Bastardo.” But I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that most of the rest of the music does not live up to the cover. While this demo has its moments, it loses itself chasing its tail in a bland near-Meshuggah sort of chunka-chunka death/thrash uber-aggro throwdown. There’s something inspired boiling under the surface, and there are some great guitar leads here, but otherwise it’s probably a good thing it’s a demo, because it sounds and acts like one. Maybe the two albums they have released since capitalize on whatever potential is here? Go check it out and get back to me on that, okay?
— Friar Wagner

SKULL79

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SKULL HARVEST, Skull Harvest (2001, demo)

The skull:
“How’d the harvest go, pa?”
“Not so good, ma.”
“How many?”
“Just one. Well, part of one.”
“Are we gonna lose the skull farm, pa?”
“‘Fraid so.”
This cover is spectacularly ugly, full of weird pixelated noise and blacks that don’t match. You used to see a lot of this sort of thing in the 90s, when the unqualified dudes tasked with making their band’s album cover first started using computers but didn’t realize that screen and print resolutions were very different. Even so, I’m baffled by the junk surrounding this sad, lonely skull. Did someone just scribble it in MS-Paint? If nothing else, it was nice of the nameless, incompetent designer to paste the skull on top of the logo. That’s dedication to the big dumb skull!

The music:
Metal Archives classifies Skull Harvest as thrash, and maybe they were in 2001, but the only tunes I could find online were from nearly a decade later, and I guess you’d call that stuff death rock, maybe. Occasionally the music veers toward Sabbathy doom, but the bellowing vocals really feel out of place then. Everything about Skull Harvest sounds kind of amateurish, making me think this is the German equivalent of the crappy groove metal you encounter at shitty bars on thursdays here in the States.
— Friar Johnsen

SKULL78

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SKULL HAMMER, Fear the Truth  (2008, self-released)

The skull:
The skull leers with a sinister smile, a mouth fulla teeth. It’s hand-drawn by someone moderately talented and the hammer shape that frames the word “Hammer” is nice. There are umlauts over the “U” in skull so that you know how to pronounce it properly. It’s the choices of color I don’t get…blue, purple and various shades of yellow, with the logo colors nearing pastel shades. This brings down the potential metal-ness/wickedness of this cover. Sorry, not even that bad-ass lightning bolt can help. As Big Dumb Skulls go, though, this is a remarkable entry!

The music:
In the intro of this website (“About”), I noted we would be, among other things, trying to determine how the choice of a simple skull on an album cover correlates with the music inside. Is the skull making a statement, is it purposely playing on recognizable metal motifs, is it a lazy choice mirrored by equally lazy music? In Skull Hammer’s case, you get a boring-ass bunch of music with your skull. Their music is thrash, I guess…mid-paced to mildly fast, in some ways reminding of mid-period Overkill. But worse. “Groove thrash,” I guess you’d call it, but it doesn’t have the groove to make your booty move, and I have a hard time seriously calling it “thrash,” as there’s nothing intense or violent about it. Vocals are vanilla tough-guy style, and there is nothing remarkable about any of the riffs in any of these four songs on this mercifully short EP. For trivia seekers, the main dude in the band, vocalist/guitarist Steve “Ace” McArdle, used to be in Lethal Fury, who released two so-so (mostly “so?”) demos in the late ’80s and early ’90s.
— Friar Wagner

SKULL77

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BRUTISH CREATION, Death Pursues Us (2006, Macabre Mastermind)

The skull:
Big, dumb, and framed by two very terrible fonts. I read an article recently which suggested the overbite that pretty much everyone has (meaning, when you close your mouth all the way, your lower teeth nestle behind your upper teeth in the front) is a relatively recent phenomenon, caused (it is hypothesized) by the use of utensils. This guy here appears to lack this overbite, so perhaps this skull predates the widespread adoption of utensils? If the skull is Death himself, then I guess that would make sense. Death don’t need no fork.

The music:
Bob Egler is Brutish Creation, and Bob Egler is not very good at music. Obviously recorded in Bob’s bedroom, featuring a cheap drum machine and beats no actual drummer could (or would) play, Death Pursues Us is a grim slab of thrashy death metal (or deathy thrash metal: take your pick) that reminds me distantly of early Sepultura, although I can’t say exactly why. It’s certainly not the riffing, or the songwriting, or the vocals (which Bob belts out charmlessly), but I guess maybe the guitar tone sorta reminds me of the Brazilians? Who knows. This demo-level recording is a tough listen, and while Bob’s produced a few more “albums” since this, I have no interest whatsoever in knowing if he got any better.
— Friar Johnsen