SKULL173

Posted on June 22, 2013 by Friar Johnsen

RITUAL SPIRIT, Ritual Spirit (2001, Shark)

The skull:
Lazy, ugly, and brown even by the depraved standards of Big Dumb Skulls, this is one of the saddest covers I’ve ever seen. What band could care so little about their art, what label be so unconcerned with success, to have settled on this image? It’s like a suicide note, this cover, anhedonia expressed through Photoshop. “We feel nothing. The world is without meaning. No one knows anyone, and we all die alone. Signed, Ritual Spirit.”

The music:
Unbelievably, indeed depressingly, I was not able to find even a single song by this band online. Shark Records released a lot of crap to be sure, but they were a big enough label that you’d think someone would have bought, liked, and memorialized it to YouTube, especially since the band was founded by some ex-member of Tyran Pace (known best as Ralf Scheeper’s first band). Almost every big dumb skull has left some musical mark on the internet, down to the most obscure and ephemeral artifacts of three decades past. Ritual Spirit, though, exists only as a collective dream, a half-remembered hallucination of middling power metal. Oblivion awaits us all, and one day the last person to have heard even Metallica will pass from this earth.
— Friar Johnsen

SKULL133

Posted on May 13, 2013 by Friar Johnsen

THE AWAKENING, Countdown to Misanthropy (2005, Twilight Vertrieb)

The skull:
A cartoony skull (making no allowances for dentition) in a busted-up cog, floating over a… puzzle of the badlands? In a loading zone? Who can say what’s supposed to be going on here, or how this cover could possible relate to the poorly conceived title. Are we to imagine the skull thinking, “All you humans out there? You’d better hold on to your asses because I’m gonna start hatin’ the shit out of ’em in a few minutes…” Adding to the confusion is the weirdly double-set title, no doubt the result of the band being unable to choose between the gritty modern font and the evil olde-tyme font. See also the logo and that symbol hiding behind the nondescript lettering: that’s a leftover of the A and G from their old logo, when The Awakening played pagan metal. These guys really just can’t make up their minds.

The music:
I was certain, looking at this cover, that the music it adorned would be Pantera/Machine Head style groove metal, but surprisingly, that’s not at all what The Awakening are about (now, at least. Maybe one of their other albums, though!) This is modern death metal, mid paced to quick, but rarely blasty. Sure, there are some thrash influences, but only as ornamentation. What you mostly get is Malevolent Creation / Monstrosity style DM, with a touch of the weirdness that informs a lot of German death metal, even the rotten stuff. This is not my preferred form of death metal, but some of this album really isn’t bad. I know I shouldn’t be saying nice things about a song called “Payment in Skin,” but it’s slithering riffs and barely-in-control drumming more or less work. Sure, the vocals are generic and the lyrics are dumb, but this can be said about even a lot of good death metal. That said, it appears that The Awakening broke up half a decade ago. Countdown averted, misanthropy delayed.
— Friar Johnsen

SKULL105

Posted on April 15, 2013 by Friar Johnsen

CRYSTAL LAKE, Terror Machine (2007, self-released)

The skull:
It’s like, “how much more brown could this be?” and the answer is, “None. None more brown.” Any cover where the background is basically just noise should set off aesthetic alarms. Yes, I can see that there’s some barbed wire in there, and I guess some… pipes? but really, it just looks like a seamless tile for your evil desktop. It appears that the terror machine is really just an apparatus for skull ventilation, which doesn’t seem so sinister to me.

The music:
Modern thrash with death metal production values. Think Krisiun doing Dew Scented covers or something. Yeah, that good. A strong Slayer influences dominates the riffing, but this being a Brazilian band, there’s a thorough undercurrent of much sloppier oldschool shit derived from German sources. Vocals are a joyless barking. The band is tight, but the songs are dull. If you’re the kind of person who’s totally worn out your Carnal Forge discs, then I guess maybe you’d like Crystal Lake, but if you’re really that kind of person, you’re probably too irony deficient to be reading Big Dumb Skulls in the first place.
— Friar Johnsen

SKULL101

Posted on April 11, 2013 by Friar Johnsen

SARCASM, Revolt (2006, On-Parole Productions)

The skull:
For as big and central as this skull is, this cover couldn’t be less exciting. It fails to properly capture true dumbness, and neither does it offer even a whiff of adolescent heavy metal cool. The motion blur in the lights and the fuzziness of the skull are obviously a desperate attempt to make any artistic statement at all with this cover, but what that statement is, and how it relates to the title, I couldn’t say. Nevertheless, this is probably the perfect embodiment of a color I would never have thought possible: neon brown. What could be dumber than that?

The music:
Slovenia’s Sarcasm started as a fairly typical eastern European thrash band, attempting a relatively melodic take on the genre but playing it with the precision of mid 80s German thrashers (note: not a compliment). It appears they took the 90s off, taking thirteen years to follow up their 1989 debut, and in that time they mellowed significantly, with Revolt sounding more like speedy traditional metal (bordering occasionally on power metal) than thrash. Arakain, a favorite of mine from the Czech Republic, made a similar transition, albeit with more grace (and much better tunes). Sarcasm are hobbled by congenital sloppiness: the playing is haphazard, the half-barked, half-sung vocals are rather bland, and no attention is paid to the details. But, the songs are generally pretty fun, with some good riffs that recall the better middle-tier European speed metal acts of the 80s, and the production is appropriately but not distractingly old school. About half the lyrics are in what I assume is Slovene, but the rest are in English, and it must be said that these are not good. Slovene (or whatever it is) is an excellent metal language, like Czech, but even when singing in their native tongue, they make some regrettable choices, notably the chorus to “Silicon Carne” which REALLY sounds like “Chili con carne”. I’d love it if this play on words was intentional, but it almost certainly was not. Revolt is maybe not quite good enough to really get excited about, but it at least stokes an interest in their other releases. Unfortunately, this appears to be the apex of their melodic sound (their lone release since is not as good), and the earliest, pure thrash album, while perhaps more successful on those terms, is not as good in an absolute sense. If I happen to notice the release of a new Sarcasm album, I’ll probably check it out, but not with a great deal of optimism.