Tag Archives: black and white

SKULL417

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CEREKLOTH, Halo of Syringes (2011, Hells Headbangers)

The skull:
SCENE III. A room of rehearsal.
Guy from Cerekloth at his post. Enter an artist.

Guy from Cerekloth: Thou art the master artist of our time.
What hast thee in thy mind for our EP?

Artist: A skull, perforce. What other thing could do?

GfC: I knoweth not, and yet my mind is ill
at ease. How doth the skull, in shape or sense
upon our music most unclean comment?

A: The gravity of death thy tunes proclaim, or so
I do detect.

GfC: You are correct, and yet
the title of this grim, unholy slab
is “Halo of Syringes.”

A: Then perhaps
around the figure’s bony brow should I
in ink that selfsame halo circumscribe.

GfC: Indeed! Thy genius is unmatched in all
these dark and Danish lands. So, hie thee now
unto thy scrivener’s desk to craft in black
and white that face unmasked, itself a mask
for all the seven inches of our songs!

Exeunt

The music:
Slow to crawling black metal, mainly reminding me of Blood Ritual-era Samael, down to the croaky Vorphalackian vocals and the distant, hollow guitar tone. The riffing is a little more advanced than Samael, and certainly owes something to late 90s black metal (particularly the groups not so interested in remaining tr00) and more modern stuff, particularly the angular oddness coming out of France. For some reason, Cerekloth bills themselves as death metal, and I guess it’s an open question if a band can actually be called “black metal” without blast beats, but to me, this doesn’t sound much like death metal at all. It’s perfectly serviceable stuff, but there are only two songs and a filler instrumental on this EP, so you’d probably be better off starting with the band’s full length debut, which came out a couple years after this.
Friar Johnsen

— Friar Johnsen

SKULL377

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BARE BONES, Defleshed (2008, self-released)

The skull:
To me, the best thing about this cover is how the font of the title is so similar to the logo of the band Defleshed. I wonder if Bare Bones even realizes they did that? They probably just subconsiously associate that typeface with the word, without questioning why. “We should call it ‘Defleshed.'” “Woah, yeah, like a bare bone man!” “Exactly.” Anyway, this is just a one color, photocopied skull, way short on teeth. It’s nice and big, unadorned and unobscured by text. I wonder if they were able to save money by using the same screen for the CD booklet and the shirt?

The music:
It seems like only yesterday, but in fact it was 290 days ago (to be exact) that I was last required to listen to this boring, entry-level Polish death metal band. Then, I was reviewing their first demo; now, I’m reviewing their second and last demo. To be brief: they didn’t get any better.
— Friar Johnsen

SKULL375

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LUCIDO, Demo 2 (2007, Inquisitoris Ex Mundus Novus Productions)

The skull:
With its stark woodcut-style design, this is actually a very sharp, cool, distinctive skull. From the chin to the nose, there’s not much to say. The lower half looks nice, and if the artist had rendered the top half in the same style, this would still be a cut above most BDSes, but it appears that the acid kicked in around the time the artist got to the eyes, and he just rolled with it. The pentagram feels a bit forced, but those massive will-o-wisp eyes are awesome, and they make the whole cover. My hat goes off to you, unknown French metal demo cover artist!

The music:
I couldn’t find any music from this demo, but I was able to track down the band’s first demo (and only other release), the equally brilliantly titled Demo 2005. It’s weird sloppy French thrash metal with some punk and black metal influences. The vocals are a kind of blackish troll growl and are quite lame. The music is shambling and disorganized, but its made with the same buffoonish charm that animates, say, Obsessed by Cruelty. Of course, no one really likes music that inept as a rule, unless they first heard it as a kid or it was made long before they listened to metal. Coming out as this did in 2005, well, it’s a little late to the party. Lucido even seem to know this, as they labor to play messy music with something closer to the basic instrumental proficiency people demand these days, but trying to have it both ways never works well in these contexts. Lord knows where they went, musically from here, but Metal Archives seems to think they ended up playing black metal. If so, well, that was about the Frenchest thing this band could have done.
— Friar Johnsen

SKULL285

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GRÄFENSTEIN, Skull Baptism (2010, Black Hate Productions)

The skull:
They went literal here, and found a pair of hands holding a skull, as if to dunk it in a baptismal font or something, and then, I guess, they did a really bad job with the magic wand tool in Photoshop, grabbing a messy blob of the original image and plunking it on a white background. Then they made it all dark and murky and evil. Then they called it a day. Well, they did slap the band’s logo on the skull, but it’s impossible to read, so thanks for nothing, guys.

The music:
Although Gräfenstein are nominally a black metal band, 25% or more of the riffs in their songs are straight up thrash. It’s a weird combination, because for the most part they don’t blend the two styles (except for an occasional black metal barre-chord riff with a thrash beat). Instead, they just alternate between the two distantly-related modes. So while “Monarch of Scorn” starts with a barrage of thrash riffs that go on for close to a minute, it ends in a blur of black metal blasts and expectorative rasping. Both identities of the band are competent, even good, although I prefer the thrashing to the blackening, because that’s my nature. They even throw in a little neoclassical noodling in “Vermin.” All in all, this is a strange album that I can’t say I love outright, but I do find it generally appealing. The playing is sharp, the sound is abrasive but not off-putting, and the intensity is undeniable. If they’re able to better incorporate their disparate elements in the future, I could see myself really digging this band.
— Friar Johnsen

SKULL269

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ONSLAUGHT, What Lies Ahead (1983, demo)

The skull:
Yet another cracked up skull on a demo. Yawn. There’s a certain desperate look to this guy, though, that I like. A sadness, even. He knows he’s in a bad way, but he lost the ability to reason when his brain leaked out. Wracked with confusion, he’s only just realizing he can’t even scream “FUCK!” without lips. If he knew that what lies ahead is like four more demos of this shit, well, I think he’d completely wig out.

The music:
I’ll admit that I’m not a great fan of the first two Onslaught albums, which are held to be classics by many people. I vastly prefer their third album, the shamelessly Metallica-inspired In Search of Sanity, which also features one of my favorite British metal singers, Steve Grimmett, formerly of Grim Reaper. But, even were I fond of Power from Hell and The Force, I don’t think I’d particularly love this demo. It’s as much punk as it is metal, sounding like a Discharge cover band that also loved Venom. That’s not entirely a bad thing, and I can at least appreciate the energy on display, but the execution is just too raw for my tastes. A lot of the songs on this demo made it to the band’s proper debut, and while they don’t change much, the shift from hardcore to thrash is striking. Going from the demo to the album, the vocals changes from barking to snarling, and the guitarists learned how to properly speed pick for their LP while on the demo they’re just strumming their simple chord progressions. But if you like crusty pseudo-thrash along the lines of Hellbastard, or if you like Power from Hell but not as much as you love Hear Nothing See Nothing Say Nothing then maybe What Lies Ahead is worth a listen.
— Friar Johnsen

SKULL249

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THORIUM, Cast from Hell (2007, Prutten)

The skull:
A stock-photo skull (with cheesy fangs) is cheaply interwoven with an upside-down star in an image more than little suggestive of the Sisters of Mercy logo. The object of a casting is usually thrown down from its original location, so the title of this EP suggests a sub-hell heretofore unconsidered by mainstream Christian theology. Evidently it’s a black and white plane of inscrutable geometries that can be cheaply photocopied for maximum underground cred. Wicked.

The music:
Thorium is full of dudes from other bands, but the only one worth a damn was Withering Surface. They were one of the very best melodic death metal bands of all time, and I adored even in their slightly embarassing chasing-after-Soilwork groove phase. Sadly, while Withering Surface passed on, Thorium remains. Vocalist Michael Anderson was the main guy in Withering Surface, but let’s be honest: he was never a particularly noteworthy singer, and his low growls here are even less interesting than his higher-pitched rasp he used back when he was all about whorebrides and whatnot. Thorium’s music is fine, a sort of unspectacular Eurodeath that’s not exactly brutal but also isn’t making any effort to smooth over the rough patches. I rarely listen to this sort of thing because it all kind of sounds the same, but if you were into, I dunno, Vader, then maybe you’d enjoy Thorium. I’m not, so I don’t.
— Friar Johnsen

SKULL219

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CELTIC FROST, The Collector’s Celtic Frost  (1987, Noise)

The skull:
Celtic Frost’s “screaming skull” happens to be one of the coolest and most recognizable skull designs in metal. (Remember that Frost’s heptagram design also featured a skull.) The cover of this single is simplicity incarnate, but also entirely effective. There’s no need for anything else — it works just like it is. The skull still possesses one gushy orb of an eyeball in his left eye socket, and his elongated maw screams in horror as strings of what I’ll say is mucus stick to his upper and lower teeth. Weird, cool and tailor-made for t-shirts and tattoos.

The music:
Tom G. Warrior had a talent for spotting quirk, darkness and eccentricity in various non-metal songs, taking them into the world of Celtic Frost and molesting them into nearly unrecognizable new versions. He’s done it with Bryan Ferry, David Bowie and Wall of Voodoo, and this 1962 Dean Martin song, “In the Chapel in the Moonlight” (the sole song on this 1987 12″ single). I’m not any kind of lounge/crooner fan or anything, but the original has an undeniable appeal. The Frost version is a total perversion of the original, naturally: it brings in a militaristic cadence that changes the song considerably, especially the snare work of Reed St. Mark in the chorus section, and a conviction in delivery that turns this strange idea into a tiny little success. The female backing vocals are appropriately ghostly, as well. Tom’s vocals are fiery and fucked up. This was recorded during the Into the Pandemonium era, which was the first and last time his voice had this particular quality (it was much gruffer before this, and a lackluster bark afterward). Yet another cool nugget of nuttiness from Celtic Frost.
— Friar Wagner

SKULL188

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BARSHASKETH, Defying the Bonds of Cosmic Thraldom  (2010, Wolfsvuur Records)

The skull:
Standard issue occult-skull stuff, something we’ve seen a few times already: a plain and lonely skull encricled in a ring of occult writing and symbols. White on black. But look closer and the scrawl is actually the wordy title written in an Arabic kind of script. Their logo? The usual black metal band name font. As black metal-looking as it gets without the use of pentagrams and upside-down crosses.

The music:
I don’t defy the bonds of cosmic thralldom often, but when I do, I listen to Barshasketh. This is some pretty okay stuff, nothing amazing, but it presses enough of the right buttons if you like older, rawer, cavernous, crazy-ass sounding black metal. The playing is generally good and the arrangements fairly ambitious. The guitarist struggles with fluidity in the acoustic guitar section of “Illuminated by Shadow,” but they get flying pretty good when they stick to electric guitar, bass and drums. The final section of “Whisper of Abyssal Winds” is a highlight of this 44-minute presentation. Once I got into Deathspell Omega via Kenose and Si Monumentum…, I worked my way back in hopes that their more straight-forward black metal material was interesting, but it wasn’t. This recording by New Zealand’s Barshasketh is more what I was hoping for in that quest. It’s generally pretty insane, otherworldly-sounding stuff. Of the thousands of bands in this mold, Barshasketh are one of the rare ones putting forth something in the traditional mold that’s actually worth some time. It succeeds because it doesn’t draw from just the classic Norwegian style, or the cult Greek style, or American black metal, it instead fuses a bunch of shades and elements of the genre into its own semi-unique take. Bleakness and darkness intended, bleakness and darkness achieved. These guys are okay by me, although Split Enz remains my favorite New Zealand band by a long shot.
— Friar Wagner

SKULL157

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SCUM, Voyage into Depth of Insanity / Macabre Moors of Morgoth (1993, Sickness)

The skull:
Lit from above and deeply shadowed, this stark skull drawing is a nearly perfect example of black and white BDSery. No jaw, no logo, no title. The essence of Big Dumb Skull.

The music:
Original entry:
Friar Wagner collected this skull, but he failed to adequately record its provenance, so its identity remains unknown even to The Council. For close to two years, Friar Johnsen has labored to uncover the identity of the band, scouring the obscurest of mp3 blogs and frequently entreating Tineye.com for assistance, but he has so far failed in his epic quest. Friar Wagner has all along insisted that the band is a metal band, and supposing that’s true, the likelihood of it being a black metal band is close to 100%. The Council welcomes any and all information about SKULL157, the only mystery skull in the entire Skullection.

Update 2013-08-10:
It was only a matter of time, but finally the mystery skull has been identified! Thanks to Sami at Bestial Burst Records we now know that SKULL157 is actually a 7″ by the Finnish death metal band Scum. Like early Sentenced, Scum takes the Stockholm formula and adds a weird twist, producing something that’s mostly familiar without sounding entirely derivative. Both songs are excellent (and both appear on the band’s full-length debut, Mother Nature), particularly the slinky plodding bits of “Voyage”. Honestly, I wasn’t expecting much from the mystery skull when it was identified, but I’m pleasantly surprised by this discovery. Thanks again to Sami!
— Friar Johnsen

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SKULLTORCH, demo (2007)

The skull:
It would seem this skull is floating in a forest in autumn, with leaves actively falling across his brow. And he looks pretty pissed off about the situation. Very simple black and white, with a totally generic logo at the top. The skull is not even mounted on top of a torch or anything. Maybe he’s on a quest for the torch, roaming through dense endless forests, and when he finds it in the castle the reunion will be glorious and many elves and dwarves will come together to celebrate the completeness of skulltorch and all will be joyous in the kingdom.But it’s probably just another ill-conceived album cover from a band that lacks a bit of vision.

The music:
This Belgian band haven’t followed up this utterly forgettable four-song demo yet, so we’re going on six years there. Not surprising, as they really had nothing important to say in the first place. It doesn’t get much more boring than this: Pantera-influenced groove metal punctuated with the kind of mid-paced death metal Unleashed were doing around the time of the Warrior album or what Gorefest started doing on False and Soul Survivor. But see, that makes Skulltorch sound almost good, and they’re not. While the drummer is clearly talented, the two-chord chug riffs and even some of the vocal patterns are not that far from nu-metal level inanity. I’ll take a pass and hope that someday one of these modern metal bands with a skull cover on their demo will be totally amazing.
— Friar Wagner