Tag Archives: black and white

SKULL116

Posted on by
Reply

EYEHATEGOD, Southern Discomfort  (2000, Century Media)

The skull:
Surrounded in a square of thorns sits the Eyehategod non-logo and a skull looking bleakly off to the left. The smudge on its forehead is like some weird Ash Wednesday rite, and it’s a simple black and white. Nothing going on here, really…about as much thought went into the album cover as the music inside.

The music:
I liked Eyehategod for about two minutes in the early ’90s. Their take on doom was novel, and you know the take I’m talking about: rancid, crusty, bluesy, sick…but after you peel away the veneer of vomit and blood you face an endless procession of generic sound-alike riffs and bullshit vocals that just add insult to injury. And maybe that’s the whole idea. Depravity and emptiness. Southern Discomfort collects various stuff from between 1993 and 1996 — split tracks, single tracks, demos. Go for it if you just can’t get enough Buzzov*en or whatever. I’ll stick to Saint Vitus and continue to have a grudging respect for the unlikely legacy these guys have created over the years.
— Friar Wagner

SKULL111

Posted on by
Reply

THE ORDER, Son of Armageddon  (2006, Dockyard 1)

The skull:
Stark, but not bleak, this skull looks like the logo for a comic book from Dark Horse or Vertigo: some kind of crime story with a horror twist. It’s hard to tell because of the lack of shading, so maybe this skull is just pictured from a high angle, but I prefer to think he’s just got a very tall brainpan. The band logo is even a little clever: the cutouts in the top of the Rs are silhouettes of guys playing drums and guitar (and not just any guitar: the greatest guitar ever, the Jackson Randy Rhoads Flying V!) It could be that this skull isn’t even human; it looks a bit simian, and perhaps this son of armageggon is a damned dirty ape. But those apes evolved from people (after they blew it up) so the Council is okay with the possibility.

The music:
Crunchy, sorta old fashioned heavy metal that reminds me more than anything of Judas Priest’s Jugulator. To be fair, The Order are not that bad, but they’re based on the same bad idea: namely to take 80s style Priest and update it for the 90s with high gain amps and 40% more attitude. That this was released in the mid 00s makes the offense even more grave. I’m also reminded of some teutonic AOR bands of the past fifteen years that can’t come to grips with the fact that they’re basically making hair metal, no matter how slamming their productions. They turn the distortion up and maybe add a little double bass, but the songs are still stupid ditties about women and rockin’. Again, The Order aren’t quite as cheesy as that, but an awful lot of the riffing is heavy only in the way Motley Crue’s Dr. Feelgood was heavy. At their best, The Order approach recent Pretty Maids in quality, but without the same bouyant sense of fun. This is the band’s debut, and it appears that their later albums benefit from a bit more levity, even as the music becomes more rocky and less to my taste. And none of those albums feature a big dumb skull, so it really seems that it wasn’t meant to be, for me and The Order.
— Friar Johnsen

SKULL98

Posted on by
Reply

EXIT WOUNDS, Exit Wounds  (2008, No Escape)

The skull:
Stark and bleak, this morbid looking photograph of a skull, brought into greater focus by the circle around it and without the distraction of words. Only the number 30 looms in the lower right quadrant, and this is, probably not coincidentally, the number of songs on this album. (Yes, they’re a grindcore band.) The skull’s left eye is so hollow, it’s black as the abyss and ends up looking like an eyepatch…and we dig eyepatched skulls here at Big Dumb Skulls HQ. And, unless it’s just a shadow, the upper right part of the cranium appears to be missing. This would probably be the “exit wound.” Clever.

The music:
There’s nothing interesting about this music whatsoever. It’s well-played, certainly, and I don’t doubt each member of this Polish band knows every Napalm Death, Nasum and Disrupt song title there is. I love ’80s and ’90s-era Napalm Death, and of course Terrorizer and other super-crazy death metal that intersects with grind, mostly from the older days, and I have been exposed to tons of grind over the decades (hey, I used to work at Relapse) but enough already! Give me something I can use. At least this album blazes by in a short 23 minutes…admittedly 23 very punishing, pummeling, violent minutes. I wonder what Friar Johnsen is listening to right now…
— Friar Wagner

SKULL87

Posted on by
Reply

BARE BONES, Refreshing Old Skull (2008, demo)

The skull:
Old, I’ll grant. A skull? Yes. Refreshing? I’m not sure about that. I suppose it’s refreshing for a band to just own up to the ridiculousness of their BDSery in this way. I mean, the band is Bare Bones. The demo is Refreshing Old Skull. Surely that’s a sign of some self-awareness, right? Right?

The music:
Although it’s rarely a genuine pleasure to suffer through these obscure releases for Big Dumb Skulls, there’s something satisfying about peering into an otherwise untouched and unloved pocket of the scene. This Polish band released two demos in the late 00s and then broke up. Came and went, with no one the wiser for it. Listening to Refreshing Old Skull, it’s pretty obvious why: Bare Bones were a boring midpaced thrash band with crappy death vocals and their demo sounds like the work of a couple weekends in the guitarist’s bedroom. Cheap sounds, bad programmed drums, and dull songs are the order of the day. But whatever – these guys were probably teenagers when they made this. Bare Bones are no worse than the metal bands I palled around with in middle school. Okay, maybe a little worse.
— Friar Johnsen

SKULL84

Posted on by
Reply

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

SKULL74

Posted on by
Reply

OTARGOS, Fuck God – Disease Process  (2009, Rupture Music)

The skull:
This skull, shown in a stark black and white photograph, looks off into the distance as if thinking “Where are my fellows? Why am I not in a pile with them? Am I not a pile-worthy skull?” He’s sitting on a cliff face or some rock formation, embedded just enough to look like he’s hovering, and we’re glad he’s alone, because BDS does not accept skull piles (although there are many such album covers, and we respect that). Or perhaps he rests in a tomb, solitary, and grateful to the person who just opened the vault door, which would explain the light on the skull’s forehead. This photo offers much in the way of contemplation and guesswork. For something not very artistically imaginative, there’s plenty to ponder.

The music:
Technically this is very good stuff. Often lightning-speed, this French band’s black metal buzzes like prime Marduk with a slightly artier twist. They’re not afraid of sounding clean and clinical, and that puts across their coldness probably better than choosing to record “necro”/raw. Although each track offers an interesting riff here or mindblowing drum blast there, there’s not quite enough variation, and they’re going for a particular aesthetic that’s been run into the ground by now. But they do it very well. (The band plays Dark Funeral covers, if that helps tell you where their heads are at.) You need but check out opening track “Dawn of the Ethereal Monolith” to know whether this band is for you or not.
— Friar Wagner

SKULL72

Posted on by
Reply

GORGOROTH, Quantos Possunt ad Satanitatem Trahunt  (2009, Regain)

The skull:
My, look at those cavernous eye sockets. This skull manages to look as bleak and grim as the band’s music sounds. It hovers above a black abyss, and the wood-carved design adds a bit of an ancient or medieval vibe to this simplistic yet totally effective album cover. Let’s face it, some of the album covers we treasure here at BDS are a joke, artistically, but this one is truly good.

The music:
Gorgoroth’s eighth album came in the wake of not a little controversy over the band’s name, ex-singer Gaahl’s coming out of the closet, and leader Infernus being accused of all manner of criminal activity, from kidnapping, rape and illegal possession of weapons. Assembling a new band in the form of session drummer Tomas Asklund (also known from Dawn) and bassist Boddel (aka Frank Watkins of Obituary) and welcoming back vocalist Pest, Quantos… manages to be the most interesting Gorgoroth album since 2000’s Incipit Satan and it compares favorably to the band’s classic mid ’90s stuff. But it’s different too. Quantos… sports a clean production and is more melodic than most of their other albums, yet it still does what Gorgoroth does best: cold, epic, ferocious black metal with a few nods to ancient heavy metal traditions (though not quite as overboard as Darkthrone’s last several albums. They ain’t Agent Steel and never will be.) The variety of tempos and textures keeps this album from feeling static, and while Pest’s one-trick pony snarl can get tiring, he puts in a great performance nonetheless. The moments of clean vocal in “Human Sacrifice” are effective in breaking up the monochromatic screeching elsewhere. Infernus offers hypnotic layers and interesting chord choices throughout the album, showing that, despite all the crap he endured and inflicted in the years prior to this recording, he remains a master of black metal guitar. And it’s quite alright if Gorgoroth is taking several years to make records these days, as long as the quality remains on the level displayed here. Quite why Infernus lost his mind and re-recorded 1997’s perfectly-fine-as-it-was Under the Sign of Hell again in 2011, rather than working on new material, remains one of his more questionable moves. Still, Gorgoroth remains king.
— Friar Wagner

SKULL32

Posted on by
Reply

MASSGRAV, Still the Kings (2012, Selfmadegod)

The skull:
Looks like a really good drawing of a really good photo of a really good skull. It’s big and bold and extremely proud to be a big dumb skull. Probably a product of the band not really sure what to depict in relation to the album title. This is crusty thrashing grindcore sort of stuff, and Massgrav is not the kind of band that would depict themselves on thrones with crowns on their heads or any sort of thing like that. The triangle behind the skull gives an added symmetry to the design, maybe suggesting “pyramid power” (remember that?), maybe not.

The music:
Crust punk and grindcore are obnoxious forms of extreme music, but there’s a thick dividing wall between obnoxious in the jokey sense and obnoxious in the “this is absurdly fast and heavy” sense. Massgrav fit into the latter compartment, firing off short round after short round of angry, belligerent, inspired crust/grind. Like a punkier, thrashier Nasum, maybe. Simple, serious and to the point, like the skullwork on the cover.
— Friar Wagner