SKULL56

Posted on February 25, 2013 by Friar Wagner

SIX FEET UNDER, Death Rituals (2008, Metal Blade)

The skull:
Florida’s Six Feet Under have been one of the major upholders of skull album cover artwork since they arrived on the scene in the mid ’90s. Hail to them for that! Skull #51 is their first appearance in the Skullection, and while several other SFU covers could be inducted, we tend to limit a band’s inductions to two or three max. Commandments is another worthy one, and they have a couple others that might pass muster too. We’ve decided to add 2008’s Death Rituals into the Skullection. It’s a dandy. It takes a very traditional/generic looking skull as its base and adds a bunch of snakes and other reptilian looking creatures flying every which way out of the skull. Clearly a take on Greek mythology’s Medusa. The skull looks pretty happy about the whole thing too! Whoever designed this didn’t bother to throw any color at the image. Just stark black and white. Appropriate for the band’s musical approach.

The music:
This album starts off like any given Metal Blade album circa 1985, a tranquil, minor key bit of picking that melts into a foreboding doom-laden passage before…aw, darn it, it’s more generic Six Feet Under death metal. But that first minute? Great! I love Massacre and always found Six Feet Under an attempt at the Massacre sound. “Attempt,” I said. They also treat us to a cover of Motley Crue’s “Bastard,” which, if you’re familiar with 6FU’s Graveyard Classics cover album series, you’ll not need to be told that it’s completely ridiculous thanks to Chris Barnes. Barnes is a lousy excuse for a death metal vocalist and has been since the first Cannibal Corpse album, and he sounds even worse doing cover songs. Thanks for all the skull album covers over the years fellas!
— Friar Wagner

SKULL55

Posted on February 24, 2013 by Friar Johnsen

FLAMING SKULL, Brutal Murder (2006, demo)

The skull:
A flaming skull! The name says it all, and there’s really nothing NOT to like about this cover. Despite some serious-looking fissures in his dome, and some inexplicable dental issues (are his teeth on fire?), this skull looks quite happy, as if all he ever wanted to do was to flame. There are even cute little fires burning in his eye sockets. When this guy flames, he flames all out. It’s the conflagration sensation that’s sweeping the nation. I also appreciate that while the skull itself is fairly well rendered, the flames look like they were painted by a young child who has perhaps never seen fire firsthand. Lastly, the amateurishness of the logo contrasts nicely with the generic blandness of the title font. This BDS is truly a work of art.

The music:
Death metal from Bogata that parties like it’s 1986. Scream Bloody Gore and early Autopsy are the touchstones here: sloppy, inarticulate, and totally forgettable. There’s a certain charm to the guilelessness of early death metal that’s basically impossible to recapture. Those bands were messy and artless because they were just dumb teenagers who didn’t know any better. I don’t understand why anyone would want to try to recreate that, after 20 years of further innovation and refinement. You can suck like Mantas, but you’ll never be Mantas.
— Friar Johnsen

SKULL54

Posted on February 23, 2013 by Friar Wagner

WITCHTRAP, Witching Metal (2000, NNYDA & Malignant)

The skull:
No sarcasm and no irony meant when I say: this is a great album cover. The slightly overhead view is nice, and the black borders to left and right lend an almost classy feel. The skull itself comes complete with occult symbols scattered around the cranium (evidently carved into the bone) and the missing teeth somehow don’t make the skull look too goofy. Perfect placement of the band’s cool logo, with album title and pentagram tucked into the lower right corner…yeah, it’s a work of effective artistic simplicity. I wish I had it on vinyl, but then I don’t really like the music much, so…guess I’ll worship it from afar.

The music:
In Witchtrap’s world, it’s 1986 all year, every year. This might as well be an Assassin demo or Morbid Saint rehearsal or any other such insane thrash metal. The Sodom reference of the EP title is appropriate and probably deliberate. These Colombians have studied their first-wave German thrash metal closely. They’re probably even the kind of guys who think albums like Persecution Mania and Terrible Certainty are sellouts. The recording is unadorned but holds lots of clarity. Well-captured mayhem, raw but not unlistenable, well-played but not too well-played. It’s just kind of pointless if you already own Protector and Vulcano albums, you know?
— Friar Wagner

SKULL53

Posted on February 22, 2013 by Friar Johnsen

DETENTE, History I (2008, Cognitive)

The skull:
A big red skull (but not the Red Skull), hastily pasted onto a black background with some red ravens, or something. A faint glow-line surrounds the skull which is not so much an aesthetic effect as an artifact of poor matting in Photoshop, and this glow is thematically reinforced by the zen-like ugliness of the generic, free font in which the text was set. The (jawless) skull itself was probably originally done in charcoal, and as big dumb skulls go, it’s a fine example (central and unadorned) but it probably could have been bigger. Compilations like this are a perennial occasion for BDSery, but even by the low standards of the cash-in demo compilation, this cover stands out for its laziness and ineptitude.

The music:
History I collects Detente’s first demo, and several demos by Catalepsy, the band formed by the three guys fired at once by singer Dawn Crosby. Since there are six Catalepsy tunes to only four by Detente, it would have made more sense to call this a Catalepsy release, but of course no one knows who they were, while Detente are still a warmly remembered second-tier thrash band from the golden years. All four Detente tracks appeared on the band’s classic Recognize No Authority album, and the sound quality here is actually quite good for a demo rescued from the clutches of 1985. The Catalepsy tracks are also fairly well preserved, and they do faithfully continue in the tradition of the Detente album. The main appeal of this band was always the barbed-wire vocals of Crosby, so it’s actually fairly surprising how similar in sound and effectiveness her Catalepsian counterpart, Veronica Ross, is on her tracks. Both women bring an unchained, but still vaguely melodic charisma to the well written but hardly original thrash that was the stock and trade of Detente. Catalepsy included drummer Dave McClain, later of S.A. Slayer, Sacred Reich, and Machine Head, and both Detente and Catalepsy were anchored by guitarist Ross Robinson, who went on to fame and fortune as a producer, bestowing on the world such immortal classics as Korn’s self-titled debut and Limp Bizkit’s Three Dollar Bill, Yall$. So, it’s fair to say that it wasn’t Robinson who threw this disc together, as he sure as shit doesn’t need the money.
— Friar Johnsen

SKULL52

Posted on February 21, 2013 by Friar Wagner

BLACK LABEL SOCIETY, Sonic Brew (1999, Spitfire)

The skull:
Black Label Society have shown much love for the skull, and for that we give them great respect. A defleshed noggin’ o’ doom graces almost every one of their album covers, but Big Dumb Skulls is wary of featuring multiple albums by bands obsessed with the skull. We appreciate those bands’ efforts, of course, but we need to give every skull-rockin’ metal band their chance in this illustrious spotlight. We’ve chosen Sonic Brew to represent BLS’s contribution to the Big Dumb Skullection. The artwork on their debut displays a motif similar to what you might see on the back of a biker jacket. Simple and classic. The floating skull lacks a mandible, and the image is seemingly taken from a medical textbook that I can pretty much guarantee no one in Black Label Society has ever read. I can’t even claim the guys in the band are literate in any way, shape or form.

The music:
Black Label Society is basically Black Sabbath for the trailer park set, but since I intend no insult to the Birmingham gods, how about: Black Label Society are like a laid back, Southern rock-inspired Pantera. And if that sounds as unappealing to you as it does me, you probably also haven’t taken the time to listen to the band any more than you have to. But as a responsible moderator of Big Dumb Skulls, I’ve listened, and I’m here to tell you: you ain’t missin’ much. I like Zakk’s playing to a degree, I own one album with him on it (Ozzy Osbourne’s No Rest for the Wicked) and that’s plenty for me. He rips, I’ll give him that, but it all starts sounding the same after five or more minutes of immersion. If you love Zakk’s playing but can’t stand his vocals or the Generic White Trash Metal they play, here you go, all the solos from BLS’s first album and nothing but the solos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KzHQRPNZfsQ
— Friar Wagner

SKULL51

Posted on February 20, 2013 by Friar Johnsen

SIX FEET UNDER, Graveyard Classics (2000, Metal Blade)

The skull:
Two grubby hands hold a skull freshly plucked (it is presumed) from the grave. I do appreciate that the hands are placed in such a posture as to maximize the viewable area of the skull, even though no one would ever pick up a spheroid in that fashion. But perhaps the hands belong to a blind novice bowler groping to find the finger holes. His asshole friends titter in the background as he thinks, “This bowling alley smells awfully peaty, and I think this ball is broken.” Big, dumb, and skullacious, this cover is easily the greatest artistic success of this band’s entire career.

The music:
Six Feet Under were founded at the start on a stupefying premise: “What if you assembled the worst members of Death, Obituary, and Cannibal Corpse to form an all new band?” While there have always (and inexplicably) been Chris Barnes partisans, I’m pretty sure no one ever said or thought the following: “Cause of Death would be SO much better if Alan West was on it,” and “I like Human, but I really miss Terry Butler.” This is basically the worst imaginable band, the literal antipode to excellence, and from day one, they made it their mission to deliver on that promise of musical misery. Still, no hapless listener could have prepared himself for the galactic enormity of Graveyard Classics, an unfathomable covers compilation insulting the hard rock legends who theoretically (if not audibly) influenced this shittiest of bands. It’s bad enough to hear SFU mangle the likes of “Hell’s Bells” or “Purple Haze,” but Savatage? Angel Witch? The Hague has adjudicated atrocities of lesser magnitude. Barnes’s growl, the worst in the history of death metal, is patently without charm or nuance, and he adds absolutely nothing in the way of rhythm or menace to make up for the vocal melodies he displaces. Unadorned by reverb or delay, his flaccid gurgle is the vile mold atop a weeping, rancid cheese. That so many of these songs are slowed down doesn’t sound like an aesthetic choice so much as a necessary one, adopted when it was realized no one could play “Smoke on the Water” at tempo. For as bad as Six Feet Under’s original albums are, Graveyard Classics is unquestionably worse, but in abject defiance of good taste and sanity, it was evidently popular enough to prompt TWO sequels. To everyone who bought this album I feel compelled to say, “You are the worst person in the world.” I mean it.
— Friar Johnsen

SKULL50

Posted on February 19, 2013 by Friar Wagner

HORDE OF HEL, Blodskam (2009, Moribund)

The skull:
Nearly “too arty,” sayeth the Council, although plain and unadorned enough that it squeaks by. “Too arty,” you ask? Only in its monotony and minimalism, rendered in a couple shades of gray with some black speckled around the perimeter. It’s haunting and bleak enough, and appropriate for what is a very orthodox black metal sound, but geez, together with the wholly unoriginal stock font of the band name cruising over its cranium, this is one lazy artwork concept. So lazy they forgot the second “L” in HELL.

The music:
At times lumbering and doom-laden, at times speedy, usually reeling off discordant riffs and always spitting out vocals from a bile-clogged throat, this is not terrible, but it’s entirely unoriginal. It sometimes resembles various Gorgoroth eras, or maybe early Dodheimsgard, but without any of the spark and danger. Adequately morbid and remarkably twisted, but still, I’m not feeling it. At first rumored to be a Marduk side project, it’s since come to light that Horde Of Hel is members of In Battle, Odhinn, and Valkyria. If that’s cause for celebration where you live, hey, go for it.
— Friar Wagner

SKULL49

Posted on February 18, 2013 by Friar Johnsen

APOLION, Death Grows Into Sperm (2009, Bylec Tum)

The skull:
Have I died and gone to Hell? What great deed have I done to deserve so sublimely ridiculous a skull as this? Although the hallmark of the average Big Dumb Skull is a wanton disregard for the theme of the album’s title, in this rare instance, the two coexist in blissful, skullacious harmony. Death grows into sperm. Calvariam cum flagellum. A screaming skullatozoa. Whispy lines framing the skull suggest seminal fluid, and the bluish hue recalls the hazy glow of the ultrasound machine. A tour de force of conceptual unity! It is preferred, of course, that skulls face forward, but here, the orientation is key to the overall composition, and the Council could not be more pleased.

The music:
Apolion is Michele Ricci, who endearingly (and atypically) foregoes a psyeudonym, and Death Grows Into Sperm is surprisingly decent for a one man black metal project. I’m not the foremost expert on the genre, but I hear a mix of Dark Medieval Times and Worship Him, especially in the Vorphalackian vocals and the groovy midpaced sections. Most songs are generally uptempo but not fully blasty, tempered by the occasional clean guitar section, tastefully played. The production is good, perhaps over-clean, and I believe that not only are the drums programmed, but the bass as well, which is amusing. Speaking of midi: I never fully approve of sequenced drums, but they sound extra-wrong in black metal, where the push and pull of a mediocre drummer playing faster than his abilities allow is one of the signature elements of the style. The mechanized precision of the drum machine brings order at the expense of a very necessary chaos. Maybe Apolion would be a little better, or at least more authentic, if Ricci tapped them out in real time on his keyboard. But then again, maybe it’s best that he quit while he was ahead.
— Friar Johnsen

SKULL48

Posted on February 17, 2013 by Friar Wagner

MALEFICIO, Under the Black Veil (2008, Hateworks)

The skull:
Under a gloriously unreadable logo flies a skull, seemingly blasted out of a cannon into the yellow glow of dawn. Or perhaps it’s an LSD-influenced vision by the same artist who conceived the band logo, the skull an illusion created by the dense cloud formation, although what this all has to do with being under a black veil is not entirely clear.

The music:
Unless somebody’s pulling our leg, this Swedish band released 18 demos between 1991 and 2004, and have experimented with their death/black/thrash metal formula by occasionally mixing in flutes and violins. So what we get on their 2008 debut full-length should be astoundingly good and focused, right? Well, it’s just kinda average. Reasonably well-executed death/black metal with some thrashy hints, reminding of the days when bands like Mayhem, Cradle of Filth and Impaled Nazarene weren’t exclusively black metal, but a hodgepodge of sub-genre intersections. What’s even more incredible is not that Maleficio have stuck with it for so long with very little reward, but the fact that they’re one of the only long-running Swedish extreme metal bands where the members aren’t also in 10 other bands. It’s kind of amazing, considering the band’s longevity, but the eight songs here are uninteresting and rather faceless, lacking any sort of individual character, just like the skull that graces the cover.
–Friar Wagner

SKULL47

Posted on February 16, 2013 by Friar Johnsen

HYPOCRISY, Into the Abyss (2000, Nuclear Blast)

The skull:
A dirty, jawless skull in the crosshairs of some kind of reticle, or possibly trapped in a game of Tempest, either emanating or absorbing some weak-looking lightning bolts, and floating over a background of… some brown junk? Dirty pipes or something? Who knows. A skull this lazy just doesn’t have the energy to explain his environment. He’s like, “Man, what do you want from me? I don’t get a say here. I needed some money quick to take care of some shit, and they’re like, ‘Just go float over there, by the red glow,’ and I’m like, whatever, dudes. When do I get paid?”

The music:
If ever a band deserved such a nondescript cover, it was Hypocrisy in the early 00s. Not that their music was terrible or anything, but the meat-and-potatoes death metal with keyboards thing they were peddling at this time was pretty damned uninspired. They had gotten past the “we’re so fucking evil and brutal” out of their system fairly early, and the style of the slow and odd “Fourth Dimension” (my personal favorite Hypocrisy album) evidently didn’t have any staying power. When they settled into the mid-paced middle of their career, it was clear they didn’t really have any particularly good ideas, so they just went with the death metal trends of the day and played the basketball beat over a dozen interchangeable, trebly, black-metal style riffs played high on the fretboard. That is, when they weren’t striving for some buzzy groove, which mainman Peter Tägtgren’s signature ultra-high-gain production rendered in the least comfortable tones possible. It was never really awful listening to Hypocrisy, but it was rarely any fun.
— Friar Johnsen