Tag Archives: crossbones

Crossbones or similar

SKULL450

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BLACKLIST, The Sign of 4  (1984, self-released)

The skull:
This is one of the earliest examples of the “worried skull,” a curious motif we see occasionally here at Big Dumb Skulls HQ. Why he worry? Perhaps because the band put four iron crosses on the cover, and the skull didn’t realize until too late that this might draw accusations of Nazism toward the band. And that casts a bad light on the skull by proxy. A skull’s got a reputation to uphold, right? And how was he ever going to land that big deal with Krokus that was all the gossip in skull circles that year? Ultimately, he didn’t get the gig — Krokus wanted an eyeless skull, and this guy wasn’t willing to have them gouged out. And his crossbones were deemed too dinky for Marc Storace and company. Or maybe the skull’s worried look (and that particularly sunken right eye) is due to the zap of highly charged static electricty we see hovering around him. Either way, none of this worry and mild shock were worth this bullshit minimum wage gig.

The music:
Yet another of those independently-released US metal records from the ’80s that goes for hundreds of dollars on eBay, mostly to Greek kids. And, as with so much of this era’s bands, it could have easily wound up on one of the early Metal Massacre compilations. They wouldn’t have been a highlight of the comp, but they wouldn’t have been the worst. The riffs here are uniformly average, the choruses typical, and the overall vibe “ho-hum.” On the plus side, there are some good guitar leads from Jon Rogue, and occasionally, as in “Steady on the Steel,” he reels off a glory-crammed thematic melody line. All of his work on “Revenge” is excellent. Vocalist Mark Holz is interesting, too. He sounds like a throatier, huskier Vince Neil on “Confrontation,” although not tone deaf and flat-out shitty (Vince Neil is the worst), while his raspy delivery on “Steady on the Steel” finds him mashing up Mark Shelton and Mark Tornillo, thought it’s not quite as weird or ridiculous as that combo seems on paper. This also gets a few extra points for the recording job, which is cleaner, brighter, heavier and much less scrappy than the typical release of this kind. So, Blacklist has a few noteworthy and even impressive elements, but it’s pointless to spread delicious icing on stale cake. This EP is worth a listen, but probably not worth $300, which I’ll bet you $300 it has sold for to some fanatic in Greece.
— Friar Wagner

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PROTECTOR, The Return of Thrash and Madness (2011, demo)

The skull:
Ah, the ol’ skull and flying V crossbones. We’ve seen this before, I think. Actually, looking ahead, SKULL582 is basically the same thing. Mark your calendars: on August 5, 2014 you’re gonna feel some wicked deja vu. Anyway, Protector. It’s hard to tell in this image, but those things in the eyes appears to be flags, and the one on the left features that upright Swedish lion dude. I’m guessing the other one is some kind of German flag, to represent Protector’s migration from the former European capital of metal to the current one. Also, one guitar is inscribed with 666, and the other with 777, perhaps to signal the music on this demo will appeal to fans of both Slayer and Stryper. Which, it should go without saying, would be a total lie. So, this is definitely more 666 than 777. Let’s call it 721.5.

The music:
Although I love the big three German thrash bands, and a fair number of the also-rans (eg Exhumer, Accuser, and some bands that don’t end in -er), I never got into Protector. This could be in part because even in the early 90s, when I was beginning to amass my legendary music collection, Protector discs were already hard to come by, and the band was not good enough for me to pay collectible prices. The situation has only gotten worse since then, and Protector sure as hell haven’t gotten any better, as this comeback cassette (!!!) sadly demonstrates. To compare them to another band, you’d have to imagine a missing link between the primordial rawness of Sodom’s early releases and the precision polish of the Frank Blackfire era. Protector are not sloppy players (although the drumming is not very interesting) but they just can’t write interesting riffs, and the vocals have always sucked. On one hand, I guess it’s nice for Protector fans that this release sounds so much like their “classic” material, but on the other hand, 2011 might have been a good time for the band to actually up its game. There are dozens of young (national) Swedish bands working exactly this same beat, and doing it better than Protector ever did, and none of THOSE bands are any good, really. Add in the rehearsal-room quality of this demo and you’ve got yourself one sad, sad comeback. But, at least they sound better than Assassin do now.
— Friar Johnsen

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MOSFET, Deathlike Thrash ‘N’ Roll  (2012, Refused)

The skull:
Uh oh. This one snuck past the Council’s normally very strict standards. We can clearly see there is more than one skull here. Perhaps the four in the corners were considered so much a decorative part of the border that they were dismissed as mere accoutrement. I don’t know. Somebody’s slipping over there, but I’m not one to criticize the Council so I shall refrain any further comment before they demote me from Friar to Janitor. The skull here, the main one, he’s a shit-kickin’ dust-dog! Smokin’, grinnin’, squintin’, replete with cowboy hat, wings, blood spatter and crossbones. Tattoo-ready! Too bad about the lame band name, but you can tell your tattoo artist to just skip that part. And you’ll save money too.

The music:
Seriously? Are you seriously a deathlike thrash ‘n’ roll band that called your second album Deathlike Thrash ‘n’ Roll??? Mosfet, thank you so much for saving me time! What a lucky break. Here I was, tired of handing out negative reviews to all these mediocre bands and thought “I’m gonna give this Mosfet a little gift and review their album in a totally objective manner, not telling how it is, but only what it is.” But they already did that. Time to kick my feet up and sip on a pina colada from a hollowed-out coconut and take a snooze in the ol’ hammock. Love ya, Mosfet! (Okay, I did listen to the album, couldn’t resist, and stylistically it bears a few similarities to mid-era Sodom, around Masquerade in Blood and Get What You Deserve, and they deliver it professionally enough. It is, indeed, deathlike thrash ‘n’ roll.)
— Friar Wagner

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PITIFUL REIGN, Toxic Choke (2006, self-released)

The skull:
Drawing your album cover with a pencil: that’s oldschool. Adorning it with a grinning, deformed, and dripping mascot skull: that’s going all the way. But if the skull isn’t named Pete Evil (get it?), I’d say that at a minimum, an opportunity was missed. In any case, I appreciate the DIY charm on display here, and the ridiculous skull is exactly the right kind of ridiculous.

The music:
I feel like every time I have to review British thrash, old or new, I end up insulting it by comparing it to Cerebral Fix, so I won’t do that this time. And anyway, Pitiful Reign don’t really sound like them, but they do sound very British, in the worst way, even if the bass tone is 100% Souls at Black, all rubbery and bad. Musically, this would probably fall in the middle of the rethrash quality spectrum, but the production is so bad that it’s hard to appreciate at face value. The vocals, clearly recorded without a pop screen, are clipped so badly that I wonder if the mic used was the one built into the singer’s laptop or phone. The entire mix is punishingly loud and in very short order listening to Pitiful Reign becomes quite taxing on the ears. Coming out as it did in 2006, this album was at least a little bit ahead of the rethrash trend, but it’ sadly no better than anything that’s come out since.
— Friar Johnsen

SKULL320

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HELLEMENTS, Time Machine  (2010, demo)

The skull:
Two dudes walk into a Spencer’s in some Italian mall. They see a wall clock with a skull and crossbones on the clock face. One guy says “Rad! Maybe I’ll buy that.” The other guy responds: [and, get ready, this is the punchline] “Yeah…we can use it for our album cover.”

The music:
Clearly it’s a dodgy album cover. And the album title is a lame pun on the lame album cover. And if “Hellements” is some sort of play on the word “elements,” its cleverness is lost on us. And geezus, did they really have to give the capital “H” a devil tail and Cheshire Cat smile? Doesn’t exactly get you all psyched to hear what this band has to offer. Luckily it’s a mercilessly short three song demo and not a double concept album manifesto. What we have here is traditional heavy metal crossing over to German-sounding power metal, with some Metallica-circa-1986 riffing minus the innovation and a heavily-accented vocalist who possesses an unlistenable warble. This warble ranges from completely unremarkable talk-singing (because he has trouble reaching most notes) and cringeworthy attempts to occasionallly introduce a Michael Kiske squeakiness on top of all this. There are some ham-fisted attempts at Iron Maiden-esque dual leads, and yet some solo leads fly out with laudable precision, but this is nothing you need, even for those of you with a taste for the most execrable of power metal bands. This is metal for little kids…and even some of those would find this intolerable.
— Friar Wagner

SKULL288

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DREADNAUGHT, Dirty Music  (2005, Roadrunner)

The skull:
Well this is a pretty low-rent album cover, huh? Looks like an electrical panel cover that some hooligan tagged with rust-colored spray paint using an admittedly well-made stencil. Exciting.

The music:
This band ended up on Roadrunner in Europe, sorta making them labelmates with Opeth, Dream Theater, Porcupine Tree and Rush…or if you wanna be more cynical, fucking Nickelback. Really, though, they belong on Pavement. Dreadnaught play simplistic groove metal that flirts with death ‘n’ roll, and would appeal to Black Label Society fans. So the guitarist plays some pretty gnarly leads…it doesn’t matter when the foundation is formulaic junk like “Scenester” and “Cut Throat Blues.” I hate to inform vocalist Greg Trull: you are NOT Maynard James Keenan, and I’ll bet Maynard thinks your band sucks. Clean vocal verses, an explosion of aggro in the chorus, repeat ad nauseum. We’ve heard it four zillion times before. Once I figure out how much this 40 minutes of wasted time is worth, I’ll be sending them a bill. What hath nu- and alt-metal wrought? Fuckers.
— Friar Wagner

SKULL256

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BEATEN BACK TO PURE, The Burning South  (2004, This Dark Reign Recordings)

The skull:
Pretty boring cover motif, but exactly what you would expect from a band playing “Southern Sludge/Doom Metal,” which is what Metal Archives says is this band’s modus operandi. Here we have a sketched skull with crossbones laid over a backdrop of ivy and a rebel flag. Zakk Wylde and Jimmy Bower would be proud.

The music:
I expected this to sound like Black Label Society meets Eyehategod, but it’s not like that (thankfully). The rock/metal is of an older school, like maybe early heavy Kiss or Scorpions, and the doom is more traditional, maybe Count Raven or Saint Vitus, and its  melodic sensibility is something more akin to various European metal bands than anything “Southern.” The sludge element comes, apparently, from the propensity of slower tempos and maybe the vocals, but it’s got a more buoyant feel than the “sludge” tag suggests — and it’s not all that de-tuned, either. The music, especially on something like “Where the Sewer Meets the Sea,” is craftily written, with good performances, a cogent and compelling musical story told through thoughtful arrangements, and a diversity of melodic choices and some fairly okay riffs. But it all sinks to a heap of crud when the vocalist opens his mouth. He’s throaty and gruff, yet mixed so far back and so inconsequential it sounds like they took their sweet-ass time recording all the music first, only to be left with one single hour of remaining studio time to track the vocals. They sound that rushed and are that unimaginative. Too bad, because musically this was quite a surprise, and they have something decent to offer.
— Friar Wagner

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ENTOMBED, Entombed (1997, Earache)

The skull:
What we have here is a properly cranky looking skull-and-crossbones stamped into some olde-tyme pirate-booty coin. And then the coin is sorta hazily floating over a peeling coat of lead paint, or something? This is a pretty dashed-off affair that actually recycles the coin image from the band’s earlier Stranger Aeons EP, but in much greater detail. I wonder if this coin is an actual thing that was photographed, or if there’s just a single master image that was manipulated to a greater degree to produce the starker EP image? Who knows. It’s a pretty nice skull, but a pretty hacky recycling.

The music:
Collecting a bunch of EPs, singles, and other ephemera, Entombed is certainly one of the better such compilations in metal history. You’ll get your money’s worth just in the Crawl EP tracks, possibly the three greatest recordings in the band’s history and the reasons for the Council allowing such a dubiously unique cover into the Skullection. On that one EP, recorded after LG Petrov left but before Johnny Dordevic was (nominally) recruited to replace him, Crawl is graced with the awesome guest vocals of Nirvana 2002’s Orvar Säfström. He only did these three songs with the band, but he left his mark as their best vocalist, hands down. The title track would appear later on Clandestine, and “Bitter Loss” originally appeared on “Left Hand Path”, but the versions here are fairly different than their earlier and later counterparts, demonstrating the extent to which Entombed refined their songs through time. A third track, “Forsaken,” is also great. In addition to that EP, this comp also includes the aforementioned Stranger Aeons, which is also quite good, and the Out of Hand and Full of Hell EPs from their deathrock phase, which both feature some fairly good cover songs. A couple other single tracks round out the tracklist. All in all, taken on the strength of the individual songs, this is the last essential Entombed release.
— Friar Johnsen

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SPEED KILL HATE, Acts Of Insanity (2004, Listenable)

The skull:
Originally released by the band with a non-skull cover, this album was quickly picked up by Listenable and graced with a skull. But hold off on the rejoicing, because this is one stock, boring, lame-ass skull cover. Where have we seen this before? Everywhere! Crossbones, flames, Iron Cross, appropriately dumb skull…all of it revealing that, no, Speed Kill Hate had no decent ideas whatsoever for a cover concept and went with this exercise in generic numbskullery. Acts Of Inanity, more like…

The music:
A band featuring members of Overkill, M.O.D. and Bronx Casket Company isn’t anything that’s gonna get this particular Friar all that psyched. When this debut came out, I avoided it entirely — nine years later I’m finally listening to it as per my duties here at Big Dumb Skulls. It’s exactly how I thought it would sound: grooving, aggressive post-thrash that is only for fans of those late ’90s/early 2000s Overkill albums, the most Pantera-esque Annihilator material, and Pantera themselves. Metal for the gullible and easily entertained. At any rate, it ain’t for me. Neither is that album cover. A failure all around, to these ears and eyes.
— Friar Wagner

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NOX, Blood, Bones and Ritual Death (2010, Listenable)

The skull:
You start with a skull and crossbones, and you think, “This is cool, but it kinda looks like we play pirate metal.” So, okay, add a ritual circle or something. It’s not a pentagram, but it at least sort of suggests magick or some Crowley shit. Maybe add some esoteric symbols, like that thing on all those King Diamond albums. Looks good! But then, you start thinking, “This is pretty plain, just a skull and a circle. Maybe some clouds or something to fill in the background?” Except now your cover is mostly white and grey. That shit ain’t evil. Maybe if the whole thing was red? Bingo! Now that’s a fucking cover you can take to the bank!

The music:
When this EP started playing, I was initially a little excited by the slinky weird riff that opens the disc. But then Nox repeated that single riff for a minute and a half, and called that a track. So, that’s how it’s going to be, Nox? After that momentary illusion of interest, the EP settles into competent Morbid Angel/Nile worship, with hints of black metal thrown in for good measure. Some of the guitar work is genuinely interesting, including the generally excellent leads, and across the board the playing is solid, but an over-reliance on blast beats and the pedestrian growling drag the whole thing down. I think if Nox spent a little more time trying to write the best songs possible, worrying less about sounding and looking evil, they might come up with some properly great work. That said, the band is on hold while the guitarist pursues another project, so there’s no guessing if this is the last we’ll hear from Nox.
— Friar Johnsen