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OUROBIGUOUS, An Oath to Forever Defile  (2011, self-released)

The skull:
This skull was unearthed in a Kentucky backwoods, near a settlement of satanic hillbillies who practiced a particularly strange and disturbing ritual. The cult members kill indiscriminately, then suck the victims’ brains out through their ears, using only a bendy straw. They chase the brains with homemade kombucha made with only the most natural ingredients. You thought they drank blood too? C’mon, that’s sick.

The music:
We unearth skulls in many ways, and we’ve collected hundreds, so it’s difficult to remember exactly where we dug this one up. It wasn’t Metal Archives, because this band isn’t listed there. Which seems strange, looking at the album cover, the title of this work, and the skully trappings. But indeed, they are not acknowledged as being metal enough by that great site. Once I finally found this band’s music (bandcamp), I understood why they were passed over for inclusion on M.A. Ourobiguous is just flat-out WEIRD. There is an elements of black metal here (some of the guitar tones and maybe the vocals), but the songs are impossibly fractured pieces of sound, ridiculously angular and completely lacking in flow. And you understand, from the focused attack, that this is absolutely intentional. Disorienting, maniacal, absolutely fucked up and just plain wrong. If A.C. and Orthrelm played Doctor Nerve covers and recorded the rehearsal, it would sound a lot like Ourobiguous. I would never listen to this again, but I will never forget the experience, and I’m very glad to have come across this incredibly odd Illinois unit. Not for everyone. Possibly for no one.
— Friar Wagner

 

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TANK GENOCIDE, Honor and Blood (2012, demo)

The skull:
At least half of the approximately 400 Tank Genocide demos feature a Big Dumb Skull, but we’ve randomly selected only a couple to showcase the band’s commitment to the form. This is actually not even the original cover of this demo – the original featured a viking skull kind of like the one in the band’s (obviously unreadable) logo. The first cover wasn’t as fully skully as this, but I think it’s worth mentioning. Funny how every Tom, Dick, and Varg wants to stake a claim on pseudo-Norse badassery, even when the Dick in question is a French cunt whose pagan ancestors worshipped a pig and the Gallic equivalent of Hermes, god of travel. Swap out the horns on the helmet for wings, and the braided locks for soft Grecian curls, and you’d hit the mark exactly.

The music:
It galls me (ha!) to even acknowledge this shitbag’s existence in print, but my masters in The Council demand it of me, and I obey. This is ultrashitty bedroom Nazi black metal that’s exceptionally bad even by the standards of the genre. It gives me some solace to know that the men who would overturn the world order in order to murder and enslave minorities are so completely incompetent, but it’s still very, very sad to think there’s someone out there who would write a song called “Anders Breivik is a Hero.” Then again, it’s sort of hilarious that someone would record two different versions of said song: the one on this demo is actually “Anders Breivik is a Hero (Version Doom),” because evidently the original tempo wasn’t sufficient to convey Razor’s admiration for one of the most awful people in the world. Razor, by the way, is the nom-de-plume of the fat, chinless, Vichy jizzhole who evidently has nothing better to do with his house arrest than churn out 24 demos in a year. Fuck this guy and fuck every guy like him.
— Friar Johnsen

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TANK GENOCIDE, Devil Temptation  (2013, Infernal Commando)

The skull:
When the head craniologist (no pun intended) handed the intern a skull and a tiny ruler and said “can you get a measurement on that?,” he wasn’t fucking talking about the goddamn teeth. “The bullet hole, stupid, the bullet hole!” Kid’s interning down at the local Stop-n-Shop convenience store now, fucking up counts of cases of Red Bull and boxes of Slim Jim. No rocket scientist, he.

The music:
Tank Genocide is the work of yet another French fruitcake who hates all non-Aryan human beings and releases about 47 cassette demos per year to tell everyone all about it. Anyone who will listen anyway. Which is probably about 14 people. I’m all for sick, fuzzy, ultra-bleak blizzards of black metal noise, but if it’s junk, it’s junk, and this is junk. Not that I have any concern for the welfare of the Nationalist Socialist Black Metal movement, but it would probably not be such an easy-to-dismiss joke if more of the bands were actually good.  With song titles like “Fuck the Pretentious Wankers” (guess that would include me) and “True Black Metal and a Big Dose of Penetration” (’nuff said), it’s possible the guy is not exactly on-topic with Devil Temptation. But then other Tank Genocide releases Aryan Macht, Nordic Heritage and Fascism is Our Ideal – classics all, to be sure! — take up that slack.
— Friar Wagner

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BLASPHMACHINE, Hell (2012, demo)

The skull:
Sometimes I’m absolutely sure I’ve seen a skull before, and this time I was so convinced I had that I went back through the archives to find its dopelganger, to no avail. This bears some passing resemblance to covers by Conqueror and Revenge (and one of the members of Blasphmachine is pictured on Metal Archives in a Revenge shirt, so the similarity is probably not coincidental) but it’s not exactly like anything we’ve seen to date. So, I guess, kudos to Blasphmachine for making the most derivative-seeming but apparently original Big Dumb Skull yet. This is a dubious honor to stake, but bands like this will take their acclaim where they can get it.

The music:
I’m struggling to remember if I’ve ever enjoyed a rehearsal room demo. Nothing comes to mind, and Blasphmachine’s lone demo Hell isn’t changing that. As grindy death metal goes, I’d say they’re not the worst, but when your tunes are a blur of white noise by design, every last bit of fidelity you can achieve in the studio is helpful for turning your blasting nonsense into something resembling music. For some reason, bands that sound like this are always referred to as “black/death metal” but I don’t hear any black metal at all in their sound. Maybe they like Satan, though. Who knows, or cares? Now, Blasphmachine are from Malaysia, and maybe it’s incredibly hard to record a heavy metal demo there, and so maybe they’re to be commended for grinding this out (so to speak), but that doesn’t really help Hell go down any smoother. I’ll give them some points for including some kind of intro on “Bless the Fall,” though; it sounds like they just played some horror movie on the TV in their rehearsal space and recorded it through the air to their boombox. That’s commitment to the bit. But, ironic chuckles notwithstanding, there just isn’t much to recommend this.
— Friar Johnsen

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CLAIRVOYANT, Curse of the Golden Skull (2011, self-released)

The skull:
Seriously? What’s the title of the album? Curse of the White Skull? Is that it? No? Then print the fucking thing in yellow or something! I’m not asking for gold leaf on a self-released CD, but for fuck’s sake, is a little title/image congruity too much to ask for? Unless… maybe the curse of the golden skull is color blindness? Woah.

The music:
I’m not gonna lie: I didn’t expect much from this. I mean, look at it! This has “shitty demo” written all over it. But, it’s a reasonably good slab of Running Wild style power metal. It might even be about pirates, but I don’t really care to examine the lyrics so closely as to find out. It’s a bit rough around the edges, as you might expect, and as cheesy as any Running Wild inspired band has to be, but the music is about 10000000x more professional than the cover art. The singer reminds me a little of Stefan Schmidt, of Jester’s Funeral and Heavatar (and one other band I won’t mention), doing his euro Hetfield thing. He’s got enough range to deliver catchy melodies, and not much more, but he works well with what he has, and fits well with the rigging. The rest of the band have their shit together, too, and the guitarists in particular play well together. After releasing this album, the band changed names to the even worse Wölfrider, but they’ve yet to follow this with another full length. Still, good new power metal is thin on the ground these days, so while you wait for the next Solar Fragment disc, maybe these Poles are worth checking out.
— 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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EVIL ARMY, I, Commander  (2013, Hells Headbangers)

The skull:
We’ve seen this motif before, the guns, the helmet, the sneering grin of a skull so maniacal that no rubbery flesh could corral the madness within. War, violence, insanity…we’ve seen all that before too. The simplistic stencil-logo and bored-in-study-hall drawing for the album cover. Been there, done that. Is there nothing left for a skull to do that a skull hasn’t already done zillions of times before? We have to wonder if the music is going to illuminate us in a way this cover definitely does not. We have our doubts.

The music:
This is a three-song 7″ release, each song borrowing heavily from Persecution Mania-era Sodom. Tight, rabid riffs, dive-bombing solos, artillery-fire drumming, and caustic vocals that spit fire just like Tom Angelripper. It’s adequate, and the part of me that totally loves Persecution Mania has to give this a pass. The record is well-rounded, the playing full of passion and ability, the writing better than most playing at this game. Shades of Tankard and At War are heard too, but really, it’s 99% worship of a very specific era of a very specific band. It’s a cool, compact eight minutes and 17 seconds. By third song “I Must Destroy You,” you kind of have to laugh to yourself at the ridiculously single-minded purpose here, like, “This is all you’ve got?” — even if what they’ve got is pretty good. I’d be real surprised if each of the members of Tennessee’s Evil Army didn’t have at least three different iterations of Persecution Mania in their collection.
— Friar Wagner

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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