Tag Archives: chains

SKULL662

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FRONT BEAST / MEPHISTO, In League With Evil Metal  (2006, Iron Tyrant)

The skull:
A couple centuries from now, when Big Dumb Skulls – The Big Dumb Coffee Table Book has replaced the Bible as the best-selling book of all time, children will ask their parents and grandparents things like “What was the first big dumb skull ever in the world?,” “Why does Proclamation like horns so much?,” and “What’s your favorite dumb skull, daddy?” It’s likely many of the queried elders will answer of the latter question, “Why, Timmy, I do believe the Front Beast / Mephisto split was the very epitome of the Big Dumb Skull cover: chains, horns, fangs, barbed wire, the Iron Cross. Had it all. Ne’er was a finer one, I’d say.” To which Timmy would reply, “Daddy, what’s a ‘front beast?’”

The music:
Front Beast is terrible. One-man band basement black metal with super-sloppy drumming, crappy riffs, and vocals that make that guy from Switzerland’s Messiah sound like Tony Harnell. This latter element has a weird sort of appeal, but only for a minute or so. They do a cover of Burzum’s “Ea, Lord of the Depths,” which completely lacks the haunting, spectral vibe of the original. It’s obvious this guy took his band’s name from an early, non-album Destruction song because he prefers to think of himself as pretty obscure – I’m also sure this dude is one of those types that thinks Destruction sold out with Infernal Overkill. Mephisto is also terrible. It’s one thing to be raw, feral, primal and all that, but quite another to attempt a spooky melodic intro as in “Fullmoon Damnation” and have the guitars be so wildly out of tune that you’re almost embarrassed for the boys. The drumming is borderline competent, and the vocals are the usual Angelripper-meets-Quorthon sort of deal. It’s all ham-fisted as hell, like early Tiamat playing early Sodom songs while wearing oven mitts. There’s a fine line between audacious primitivism and just plain underwhelming crud like Mephisto.
— Friar Wagner

SKULL633

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VIRGIN KILLER, (2010, demo)

The skull:
This image is actually a little disturbing. It’s so grainy that it pretty much has to be a video screen cap, and although I guess it could be from some corny 70s horror movie, it looks a lot more like something that would have come out of Cambodia during the Pol Pot days. Why is this naked man (or boy?) holding a skull filled with sand, his hands wrapped in chains? Fuck if I know, and I’m pretty sure I don’t want to know. There’s no way there’s a happy story behind this, but let’s pretend. We’ll say that out of frame, attached to the chains, is the rubber seat of a swing, which this man is going to hang in a tree to delight the village children. But before he hangs it, he’s saying, “Here’s some shaved ice, to beat the heat! It’s lemon flavored. Sorry about the weird bowl, though. I was down in the basement yesterday getting out the Halloween decorations and I found this, so it was clean in the dish drainer today, and I figured I might as well get the most out of it. I promise it’s food safe! And hey, isn’t it funny that in America, it’s cold on Halloween? Not so down here in Colombia! Anyway, eat up, kids, there’s plenty for everyone, and I’ll have this swing up in a jiff!” And the children, living as they do in the peaceful nation of Colombia and knowing nothing of violence or skulls or virgin killing, happily tuck into the shaved ice and squeal with delight at the prospect of the new swing.

The music:
God, not another Colombian speed metal band! What have I done to deserve this? At least it’s not a rehearsal room demo, although probably this was recorded on a Tascam 4-track. In 2010. For fuck’s sake. Anyway, Virgin Killer sound like a really raw tribute to Vendetta or some other decidedly subprime band from Germany in the mid 80s. The vocalist amusingly splits the difference between Schmier and Mille, and again we’re talking 1986 here. This isn’t the worst thing of this sort I’ve ever heard, but it’s definitely pretty bad. Seems like the band got better fairly quickly, though, as their 2013 demo is listenable if still totally goofy. They have the silly energy of a Japanese retro band, where you’re not sure if the whole thing is a joke or not. It’s almost certainly not a joke, but it’s also almost certainly better to treat it as such. For your own sanity.
— Friar Johnsen

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SOCIAL DESPAIR, Social Despair (2007, demo)

The skull:
I don’t recall seeing another skull with only half a jaw. For all the violence we’ve seen visited on skulls here at Skull HQ, this seems the most brutal. What holds the thing on, I can’t say, but I bet it hurts like all hell. Fortunately, this guy looks to be riding out his Hellraiser-esque eternity in style, what with that kickin’ mullet and badass fangs. He’s probably like, “Yeah, I’m all chained up through a hole in my top, and my bottom jaw is fucking busted in half, but they didn’t even ding the fangs! Suckers!” That’s some Myth of Sisyphus-level existentialism right there, folks.

The music:
Obviously, this is a thrash band. Obviously. The name, the logo, and of course the cover all give it away. But, they don’t have the sound of a trendhopping rethrash act. Instead, they sound like a bunch of meatheads who wanted to play death metal but found it was just too hard, so they dumbed it down and arrived at some kind of remedial thrash, the sort played by high school bands in 1991 who mostly decorated their denim vests with Metallica patches but who just discovered Deicide. The sound is awful, the playing sloppy, the riffs dull, and the vocals unlistenable. At least the songs are short. Interestingly, Social Despair appear to have released an album only last year — there’s proof of it on their Facebook page — but despite an even more awesome BDS cover, the album doesn’t appear on Metal Archives and I can’t find sound samples for it. So, maybe Social Despair got their act together and turned into a good band, although I can’t say I have particularly high hopes for a record called Refusal for Abreaction.
— Friar Johnsen

SKULL591

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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

SKULL534

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CRACK UP, Heads Will Roll  (1998, Nuclear Blast)

The skull:
This is the first skull in the Skullection to sport “cauliflower ear,” a common affliction of wrestlers (real wrestlers, not the Hulk Hogan type entertainers). Overall, this is just the kind of imagery people who wear Affliction gear might have gotten psyched up about before Affliction came along. But wait, look closer: the skull appears to have been impaled within a tightly-clamped circular prison. He is in the process of committing arson and breaking free of his shackles. It’s becoming clear now: this imagery is Crack Up’s commentary on Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto, their own manifesto of sorts, which also exalts the fall of the bourgeoisie, a fall which will set into motion a glorious new day for the proletariat, that they may loose their chains in revolutionary reconstitution and win back a world that is theirs to gain, the defeat of exchange value and the reclaiming of personal worth. No idea what the naked babes are doing in the background, though. Marx didn’t say anything about that.

The music:
Crack Up are one of these late ’90s German bands who began playing death metal then pretty quickly evolved into what is known by the unfortunate moniker of “death ‘n’ roll.” This is their third album, and it sounds as you’d expect:  fat grooves and tones with a growler grunting along in his best Lemmy-meets-Matti Karki impersonation. It sounds like they’re covering Xysma’s entire Deluxe album without any trace of the perverse attitude and left-field panache that made Xysma so special. It’s not the worst “death ‘n’ roll” ever, and there are even a few riffs that you have to grudgingly admit you were shaking your head and tapping you foot to (“The Assassin”). There are, of course, a number of dumb-ass butt-stompin’ riffs tailor-made for low-IQ metal neanderthals. They cover tunes by Dictators and Turbonegro, too, which probably tells you all you need to know about whether you’re going to like this or not. I’m gonna go out on a limb and guess Crack Up was a pretty lame death metal band in its infancy.
— Friar Wagner

SKULL305

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THE EVERSCATHED, …Again the Chains… (2006, demo)

The skull:
This skull thought he knew the layout of his basement well enough to just float over to reset the circuit breaker in the dark, but then he got all snagged up in the chain web he forgot he was working on last week. “Oh, god damn it. Honey! HONEY! Can you grab a flashlight and come down here and help me out? No, no, I’m alright, I just… Can you just give me a hand? And watch where you’re going, it’s a real mess down here. I really gotta clean this place up. God damn it! And can you bring me a band aid or something? Now I’ve got to go get a fucking tetanus shot. This is just great.”

The music:
The instant the first track, “Shackled by Failure” starts, you know that these dudes love Death. But while most Death clones shoot for the melodic complexity of albums like Human and Symbolic, The Everscathed took the low-ambition route of following in the footsteps of Spiritual Healing, and only half of it at that, as they generally stick to the low-string and power chord riffs in Chuck’s transitional playbook and skip the high melodic lines that define the later Death albums. Both of the songs on this demo are pretty much the same in that regard. As Death knockoffs go, even considering the narrowness of their scope, The Everscathed aren’t bad, but you also quickly realize exactly how important all those tapped melodies and harmonic lines were to Death’s creative success (not to mention an ace rhythm section, which The Everscathed definitely do not have.) Without those trebly excursions, you’re left with a lot of samey-sounding riffs that aren’t nearly as evil or heavy as I think The Everscathed want them to be. As far as I can tell, all of the full length albums by the band follow more or less the same pattern, so I guess if you kinda like mid-period Death but think they were just too noodly, then maybe this is the band of your dreams.
— Friar Johnsen

SKULL247

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DEATHWISH, Demon Preacher (1988, GWR)

The skull:
I’m pretty sure this guy is a distant overseas relation of the skull on all those Nuclear Assault albums. The resemblance is uncanny. Also, for a skull that’s all chained up, to a logo no less, he sure looks pleased with himself. Maybe he’s into bondage, in which case we’re probably looking at a very turned-on skull right now. Which is just how he likes it. I’ll concede that he might be a demon, but all he’s preachin’ is the joy to be found in embracing your kinks.

The music:
Most British thrash tends toward Metallica worship, and most of it is pretty mediocre. There were good UK thrash bands (Xentrix first and foremost) but the birthplace of heavy metal has a pretty poor record when it comes to this particular flavor of the stuff. When Slammer and D.A.M. are numbered among your better thrash acts, you know you’re working with a poor scene. And if Deathwish had stopped after one album (the decent but unimpressive At the Edge of Damnation), they would be held in the same low esteem as Cerebral Fix and Anihilated. But, they pressed on and managed to release the rather excellent Demon Preacher before hitting the skids. Demon Preacher, as thrash goes, is a precise, controlled affair, but it’s still fast and bursting with energy, and frontman Jon Van Doorn, with a voice that splits the difference between JD Kimball and Blackie Lawless, brings the hooks in these well written (and skillfully played) tunes. That said, there’s not actually a lot of music here. Excluding a church-bell and powerchord intro and a seemingly eternal outro that puts to use all those classical guitar lessons David Brunt’s mom made him take when he was a kid, AND leaving off the fine-but-needless cover of Black Sabbath’s “Symptom of the Universe,” you’re left with just over 25 minutes of thrash. That’s scant even by 80s LP standards. But, I’d rather 6 good songs than 9 shitty ones, and these six songs are indeed quite cool. Are Deathwish one of the foremost thrash bands of the 80s? Not by a long shot. But, they were pretty damned good, and Demon Preacher is well worth owning if you have any fondness for thrash at the more melodic end of the spectrum.
— Friar Johnsen

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DREAM EVIL, Gold Medal in Metal (2008, Century Media)

The skull:
Going entirely literal, Dream Evil decided to just show the god damned gold medal in metal already. Except that one can’t escape the feeling that the musical Olympics at which this particular honor was won are a decidedly low-rent affair. For starters, the medal itself isn’t even a medal, but more like a cheap brooch, or a ring they got out of some crappy kid’s toy machine at the grocery store. This “medal” is affixed not to some fancy ribbon, or even a jewelry-grade chain, but the sort of chain you’d use to padlock a gate shut. Only gold. Or photoshopped to look gold, at least. The links are nearly as large as the medal, and you can see the fucking welds! What kind of award is this? The skull itself is squished horizontally to fit inside the flowery border, his jaws agape as if screaming, “WHAT IS THIS BULLSHIT?”

The music:
Dream Evil are the cheesiest of cheese, or at least the cheesiest cheese that I enjoy. Their wink-wink posturing makes it a tiny bit easier to endure their not-good-enough-for-Judas-Priest lyrics, but only barely. Really, they only get a pass for their many sins against good taste because they write unaccountably catchy tunes, and their singer is really, really good. That said, the only truly great album is the debut Dragonslayer, and some five albums in, their schtick has worn quite thin, especially as each turns the “Heavy Metal Cliches” dial up at least a notch. Gold Medal in Metal is a double disc set (some versions also include a DVD, I believe) compiling a live show and a bunch of studio rarities. As with all the Dream Evil releases, the sound and performances are top notch, owing, one assumes, to the engineering/producing magic of guitarist Fredrick Nordstrom, but really, there isn’t a compelling reason to own a Dream Evil live album. The rarities disc is better value proposition, but it’s not like their catalog is so thick with genius that there were truly excellent songs left off the albums. If you own Dragonslayer, and you want more Dream Evil, then this studio disc is pretty much as good as any others, offering the same guilty pleasures as their proper albums. If you don’t own Dragonslayer yet, or you don’t think “HammerFall from Alternate Universe where HammerFall is good” is likely to do much for you, then you can safely leave this medal unclaimed.
— Friar Johnsen

SKULL211

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SATHANAS, Ripping Evil  (1988, demo)

The skull:
Yes! This is what we’re talking about! There is nothing left out here, nothing spared. Front and center is a skull whose forehead is branded with an upside down star. He looks fried and possessed by lunacy. That’s a fantastic start. He’s got horns that look like carrots. There are two cloaked figures flanking him (the Sunn dudes?), each holding a large inverted cross, the crosses chained together in satanic matrimony, crossed in an X behind the skull. They seem to be taking this job very seriously. Fire burns above the entire unholy scene. Ripping evil? Ripping evil what? Ripping evil a new asshole, I say! That makes no sense, of course, and neither does this tape cover. But it rules beyond all holy hell.

The music:
The fact that Pennsylvania’s Sathanas have been active since 1988 is something to respect. This is their very first demo, and it’s clearly influenced by Possessed, Mantas,
Hellhammer, Celtic Frost and possibly even Morbid Angel’s early material. They don’t
have the songwriting and/or playing skills and/or charm of those bands, so appeal is limited, but it’s still a document of the ’80s death metal movement, even if it is of minor importance. Ultimately each of these four songs is mediocre, but the crudeness and conviction with which it’s delivered is notable, and that it was released in the ’80s makes it a bit of a cool relic. Nothing more or less.
— Friar Wagner

SKULL132

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MAGOR, Túl Mindenen  (2008, demo)

The skull:
This poor skull! All manner of junk is going into his boney being, for a reason we will likely never know. Túl Mindenen means “beyond all” in Hungarian, and the torture this skull is enduring here is truly beyond all reasonability. Some big ol’ stubby cylindrical thing has been jammed into the top of his head while various tubes run in and out of both sides of the skull. He’s chained in four spots, like he’s gonna get drawn and quartered, and to add insult to injury his forehead’s been stamped with a barcode. Wisps of smoke or some gaseous stuff trails from the tubes on the right. He silently screams “I’m not an animal, I’m a…skull!!!” There’s just no dignity in what’s happening here.

The music:
Lately I’ve been real hard on newer bands here at BDS, but admit something: if you’re a modern band putting a skull on your cover and playing fifth-generation tough-guy metal, you have no reason to exist. Hungary’s Magor are another band that toss together one-dimensional riffs and terrible yelled vocals and call it metal. But they do have some distinctive elements that make them a bit more enjoyable than the bland norm. One thing Magor does is throw in sublime lead guitar lines and thematic passages, as heard near the end of this demo’s third and final song, “Rejts el Magadban.” More of that and less of almost everything else would be cool. I appreciate the tightness displayed in “Arccal a Feny Fele,” so credit drummer Zoltan Csatai on that, and the doom-ish element within “Túlélő Vagyok, Nem Aldozat” keeps things interesting, so that’s appreciated. Still, Magor will likely sound pointless to any seasoned metalhead. But if you just got turned onto Sepultura, Metallica and Pantera yesterday, and you live in Hungary, you’re gonna love this.
— Friar Wagner