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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

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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

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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

SKULL593

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RIVERGE, Rebirth of Skull (2009, Rock Stakk)

The skull:
This has to be the worst reincarnation ever: reborn as a cheap-ass Giger knockoff, a crappy biomechanical skull poked full of ugly dripping tubes. At least he’s a little scary-looking, maybe. I wonder what this guy was in his previous life? Probably an accountant or something. An evil accountant.

The music:
This is medium-sloppy Japanese thrash that generally fails to impress. It almost has the feel of crossover, but there really isn’t any hardcore in Riverge’s sound – it’s almost like they took their Leeway and Crumbsuckers albums and excised the NY hardcore, leaving only hyperactive caveman thrash. The singer sounds like a Japanese Tom Araya, but not young and awesome Tom. Instead, the Riverge dude sounds like late 00s Tom, a yelling, greying gorilla, now with a thick Japanese accent. That said, Riverge are not exactly a Johnny-come-lately thrash act; they have existed in some form or another since the mid 80s, and some of the songs on Rebirth of Skull, their first actual album, date from the band’s earliest days. Japanese thrash generally doesn’t do much for me, and that’s more or less the case here, although I’ll admit that overall, Riverge are better than most of the other Japanese thrash I’ve heard, and in fact a bit better (if only barely) than most of the rethrash I encounter. Their newer album sounds a bit better, so that’s probably a better starting point for those interested in Riverge, but you’d have to be a pretty serious thrash maniac to bother.
— Friar Johnsen

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ASTAROTH, Astaroth (1984, demo)

The skull:
A skull in a legionaire’s helmet. Simple. Brilliant. It looks quite metal, and has an unexpected relevance to the band — back in the 80s, Astaroth used to actually dress as Roman soldiers on stage, several years before Beefcake the Mighty popularized the galea among heavy metal fashionistas. Clearly, Astaroth were ahead of their time.

The music:
An early Italian metal band, Astaroth in 1984 sounded like a better-than-average NWOBHM band, with maybe a little Riot thrown in for good measure. This demo has that same working-class, everyman vibe as a lot of NWOBHM, where no one in particular sounds like a special talent (particularly the singer), but the enthusiasm of the band carries the day in the end. Still, this is a bad sounding demo that’s never gotten any sort of reissue, so probably only hardcore old metal nerds should even consider looking for mp3s or whatever. Somewhat surprisingly, the band is back together, and their 2012 album, which is actually their first full length release, is reasonably good. It’s more polished than their 80s stuff, of course, but it also lacks the youthful charm that animates their demos. I’m sure the master tapes to their old demos are long since lost, and that’s too bad, because I think people would eat this stuff up now if it was available.
— Friar Johnsen

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SUSPENDED, Prelude to Indignance (2008, self-released)

The skull:
I love skulls that look like they were drawn in MS-Paint. Every element looks like it was added to distract from another, until you’re staring at a giant pile of mistakes feebly coalescing into a whole. What are those yellowish-brown things in the background? Chains? Made out of baby puke? And why is the skull glowing green? Just because it matches his eyes? And speaking of eyes, this skull must be baked, because his eyes are completely and comically bloodshot. He’s screaming because he can’t close his mouth (his fangs get in the way) and if you’re gonna gape, you might as well yell. Of course, the two headstocks (Jacksons, from the looks of it) poking out of the top can’t be comfortable, but this is a skull who is entirely unused to comfort anyway. I’d say the prelude is well over. This skull is very much indiginant, en ce moment.

The music:
Suspended walk a line between thrash and Death-worship, and while the playing and songwriting are a bit raw, the ideas and ambition are here. Vocalist Melynda Montano is the weak link; her gasping rasp is not particularly interesting in itself, and she has a tendency toward wordiness that overextends her voice in a bad way too often. You’ve heard worse singers, for sure, but that doesn’t offer much relief when you’re listening to Prelude to Indignance (which is a thrash title if ever I heard one.) One thing I can say about Suspended is that despite being a new thrash band, they don’t really sound like all the other new thrash bands, with their single-minded fixation on Slayer and Exodus. There’s a little bit of crossover to be heard here, but it’s an influence and not an aspiration. And there’s the aforementioned Schuldinerian vibe, with a lot of riffs reminding me of Chuck’s early forays into more melodic areas on Spiritual Healing. Suspended aren’t awesome, but they’ve got a lot of potential, and should be showing on your thrash radar, if you are so equipped.
— Friar Johnsen

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LIMB, demo 2012 (2012, demo)

The skull:
Take away the fuzzy shit in the background (it looks like the artist just shook his dryer’s lint trap over his scanner) and this is a pretty bare cover. That dust makes all the difference. But: King Diamond wants his little symbol back. I know he got it from Anton LaVey, but King’s pretty much trademarked it in the heavy metal space, so don’t be intruding on his jam, Limb.

The music:
Ah, fuzzed-out doom. It’s been a while! You’re looking well. You still sound like shit, but you are what you are, I suppose. What’s new? Ha ha, I’m only kidding. I know nothing’s new. No one’s done anything new since Vol. 4 amiright? Okay, okay, fair enough – “sludge” is newer than that. So who are these kids you’re hanging out with now? Limb? Not the sharpest tools in the shed, huh? And that singer, jeez. Yeah, I saw the bassist’s SG. Very authentic, I guess. A little cliche, though, don’t you think? Well, sure, I bet they’re all really nice people, but does the world really need another band like this? No, I was asking rhetorically. Of course you’d say yes! Anyway, it was nice to see you again. Take it easy. I’m sure I’ll catch you around soon enough.
— Friar Johnsen

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BATTLERAGE, Battlefield Supremacy (2012, Metal on Metal)

The skull:
“Dude, I fucking owned the battlefield! I showed up, and I killed pretty much every fucking body. They came at me with axes, swords, maces, pikes, you name it, and I fucking knocked that shit down and killed some motherfuckers! You should have fucking seen it! God damn, it was beautiful.” “Bullshit, man! You got fucking killed just like the rest of us!” “No, man, I wasn’t talking about this battlefield. Duh. I mean, yeah, obviously my supremacy of this battlefield was contested and pretty harshly rebuked. I’m talking about that last battlefield. The one from last week. I was totally supreme there!” “That’s not what I heard. I heard some fucking wizard showed up and killed everyone with like a green cloud or something, and then took off, and then you showed up late because you were taking a dump and then you ran your mouth off and took all the credit” “Fuck you, man, that’s bullshit! Cause like, if that happened, how would anyone know about the wizard, because they all got killed. People are just fucking jealous the way I totally supremed that battlefield, and they made up that shit about the wizard.” “Whatever, man. Who cares anyway. We got killed this time.” “Yeah, but still. That last battlefield… so fucking supreme!”

The music:
This is a weird, stupid compilation of Battlerage’s first album, Steel Supremacy, and four songs from their “EP” Battlefield Belongs to Me. I put EP in quotes because the original release is 50 minutes long and has twelve tracks. Did I mention that Battlefield Supremacy is a cassette-only release, limited to 66 copies? I see that I didn’t, except to say that this thing is stupid. Which it is. Anyway, Battlerage are fine. They’re somewhere between German speed metal and South American true metal. Don’t expect sophistication or innovation, but if you own and enjoy a lot of albums with axe-wielding musclemen on the cover, then you’ll love this shit. I’m not overly impressed, but I’ll grant that Battlerage do their thing well, and the singer is surprisingly good, especially for a Chilean singing in English. Even the sound is good, and you know that’s not a given for this kind of thing. Of course, if you really wanted to hear Battlerage, you’d probably just pick up the CDs, or download it, or whatever, and not trawl eBay for a ridiculously limited cassette without any exclusive songs, but hey, don’t let me tell you how to live your life.
— Friar Johnsen

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ELEGY FOR EULISZA, demo 2005 (2005, demo)

The skull:
Alas, poor Eulisza! I knew her, Horatio. Like, in the biblical sense. She hath borne me on her back a thousand times, you know what I’m saying? Woof! And now she’s dead, gross. Here hung those lips that I kissed I know not how oft. With tongue, all the way! Where be your good vibes now? Now get you to my old lady’s chamber and tell her, let her cut a line an inch thick, with that party favor she must come! Aw yeah.

The music:
I can’t be sure I’ve actually heard anything from this demo, but two of the tracks on Myspace (which still exists, believe it or not, and is an invaluable time capsule for us Friars who are occasionally tasked with sampling the least noteworthy bands of the mid 2000s) are dated from 2005, so let’s just assume they were released on the demo in question. Judging from those, Elegy for Eulisza were a not-entirely-terrible melodic death metal band, kind of like a sloppy throwback to early Dark Tranquillity. Their singer, however, is entirely terrible, an inarticulate screamer whose voice might also be distorted by effects. There’s something refreshing in hearing a band attempt rather complex music without incredible precision – nowadays, just about any mistake can be fixed after the fact at even cheap (or home) studios, but I guess in 2005, these guys didn’t have the time or budget to corrections (which reminds me, again, of early Dark Tranquillity, whose music was just a bit too hard for them to play perfectly.) The two later songs on Myspace, from 2007, sound almost like a different band. Though they retain some of the noodly MDM of the 2005 demo, most of the music is instead more like crusty grind. The band may or may not still be together, but it probably doesn’t matter, because they’re clearly not going anywhere.
— Friar Johnsen

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XCURSION, Xcursion (1983, Rampage)

The skull:
This EP is sometimes called Skull Queen for obvious and awesome reasons. Look at this thing! Although it’s obviously a cheap, one-piece plaster replica, the crowned ladyskull with diamond eyes is nevertheless a thing of beauty and a big dumb metaphor to boot (even if it could and should have been framed larger in the shot.) The presumably sumptuous, velvet pillow is icing, but for my money, the element that MAKES this cover is the grid. In the early 80s, “GRID = THE FUTURE” for some reason. Think Tron. Nowadays, you see something like this and you wonder, “What’s the deal with the grid?” but contemporary viewers in 1983 would have accepted it as a signifier that made sense. But even they might have noticed that the grid only goes back like 2 feet and scowled, because the whole point of these things was to suggest an ordered infinity, not a just an ordered few square meters. If nothing else, this Xcursion cover reminds us of the good ol’ days when, if you wanted a skull on your cover, you were just as likely to call a photographer as a painter. Nowadays, if you wanted an infinite grid, you could have it even if you started with this selfsame photo. But back then, budgetary and technological limits were as hard as the men who put skulls on their albums. Maybe even harder.

The music:
Xcursion’s claim to fame is that it was Mark Slaughter’s first band, but don’t hold the man’s subsequent poser activities against him when considering Xcursion, who were actually a fine heavy metal band. Through they hailed from Las Vegas, XCursion remind me more of early L.A. metal bands like Lizzy Borden, 3rd Stage Alert, Malice, etc, not to mention Detroit’s Seduce, whose first album is very much of a piece with Xcursion’s output. Recall, 1983 was before hair metal as we would grow to hate it became its own thing, and back then, legit metal bands might play songs titled, “Love Is Blind,” and even heavy bands would sometimes resort to hard rock stylings. Xcursion were not exactly master musicians, but they got the job done, and while Slaughter lacked the fine control he would later develop over his reedy falsetto, his young voice is nonetheless less shrill here than on “Fly to the Angels” or any of his other execrable hits. If you like early U.S. metal, then you’ll probably get a kick out of this. It’s hardly essential, but once you’ve collected all the classics, this is well worth tracking down. Xcursion’s complete works were “reissued” on Old Metal Records, but that disc is long out of print, and I’d imagine the LPs are even more scarce, so probably blogs and YouTube are your best bet for hearing this curious but of H.M. history.
— Friar Johnsen