Tag Archives: fangs

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

SKULL657

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NIGHTSIDE GLANCE, Twilight Visions of the Night (2005, demo)

The skull:
There’s a whole lot of “night” happening here, and I love the idea of “twilight visions of the night.” It’s like a glimpse into the future, but only an hour or so into the future. This seems to be an alternate or reissue cover, as the original has no skull but instead a pair of glaring eyes, rendered with just slightly more artistry than the Invader cover. That cover also featured a lot of lightning, and also a bit more of a twilight feel, but who needs thematic purity when you can have a skull? This guy looks like he’s auditioning to be a stuntskull for an Iced Earth cover or something, and he hardly seems interested in either twilight or glancing, but at least he’s putting in some effort, which is more can be said for a lot of the skull models we’ve seen.

The music:
This is straight-up Dimmu Borgir/Old Man’s Child worship from Belarus. I guess you’d call it “symphonic black metal” but there’s not very much here that qualifies as black metal in the traditional sense. There are a few more 6/8 parts than usual, and the vocals are croaky instead of gurgly, and maybe the lyrics are about Satan, although they’re probably just about the night. What you do get are a lot of cheesy keyboards and a powerful evocation of 1997, when this sort of thing was all the rage. If Born of the Flickering is your favorite album of all time and you collect anything that sounds like that, then you probably already own this, along with like 3000 similar discs, but on the off chance your trading network didn’t extend too far into the former Soviet bloc, then I guess now’s the time to right that wrong and pick up some Nightside Glance.
— Friar Johnsen

SKULL642

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SLAUGHTER LORD, Taste of Blood (1986, demo)

The skull:
“Grrrrr!!! You get me down from this cross right…this…minute!!! God damn you kids! I did not ask for this! What??? … I don’t care if it’s upside down! GRRRRRR… Come back here you rapscallions! What’s that??? This is King Diamond’s microphone holder? Well I still don’t give a shit! I’ve got a pie in the oven! God damn you kids!!! Get back here right now. GRRRRR…………”

The music:
I’ve tried to get into Slaughter Lord several times. They’re at least semi-legendary, Australia’s answer to the most vicious phases of Kreator, Slayer, Sodom and Canada’s Slaughter. But their music leaves me cold. And the guitar solo in “Die by Power” is dippy. Guess there’s a fine line between stupid and awesome Exodus-ish dive-bombing whammy bar destruction solos after all. Oh hell yeah, it’s cult…but how good is it really? I don’t get much out of return visits either. I’ve tried. Kinda the same feeling I have with Canada’s Slaughter – tons of respect, but a sense that both bands are slightly overrated.
— Friar Wagner

SKULL607

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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

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MORBID COMMAND, Vox Spectrum (2011, demo)

The skull:
Ordinarily, the presence of a spine is enough to disqualify a skull from being a proper Big Dumb Skull, but The Council occasionally allows it when, as here, the spine is not so much a suggestion or part of a skeleton, but some kind of wicked rat rail for a gnarly skull. And this skull is definitely gnarly. He could be bigger, but he couldn’t be dumber, or angrier, possibly because he’s sick of dragging his goofy spine around. His skull buddies started calling him Snake Dickskin, and that’s really starting to chap his (metaphorical) ass. They’ll be (figuratively) ribbing him, and he’ll be like, “You know I can’t get it off, because I don’t have any hands either, but if one of you fucking jokers wants to bite it off, be my fucking guest!” So far, he’s had no takers.

The music:
This is the sort of demo that might now be a classic had it come out in 1985 — a murky, sloppy slab of Teutonic death/thrash that plays up the elements of the style that would later influence black metal. But even so, demos like that only really became classic in retrospect, when the bands who made them grew up and got a little better. Had Destruction stopped with Bestial Invasion of Hell, or Kreator with End of the World or Sodom with Witching Metal, would anyone but the most diehard lovers of shitful noise care? Sure, those tapes found an audience in the early 80s, but they’re only known now because of Release from Agony, Pleasure to Kill, and Persecution Mania. And it’s not clear that Morbid Command ever reached anything near those heights before breaking up in 2013 (although I will grant they were definitely starting to get there by the time of their last split release). A certain kind of retro metalhead will love this, the kind who has bootleg Warrant and Poison and Slaughter patches on his denim and still gets kind of pissed when people think he’s boosting hair metal bands, like he’s some kind of fucking poser.
— Friar Johnsen

SKULL595

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SKULLCRUSHER, Demo Version 2002 (2002, demo)

The skull:
It’s like this skull and this skull fucked and made an ugly skullbaby, who quit high school and took a job on a pirate flag for a buck over minimum wage and was like, “Fuck you losers, I’m outta this shit town for good!” and they were like, “You’re an ingrate and a bum and we never loved you!” and he was all, “Fffuuh!”

The music:
I couldn’t find this demo anywhere, but from the looks of this cover I’d say this is blackened rethrash, like Destruction doing Bathory covers while Greek. Releasing a cassette demo in 2002 was a pretty bold move: at least as contrarian as releasing a vinyl demo in 2035 or whatever.
— Friar Johnsen

SKULL593

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RIVERGE, Rebirth of Skull (2009, Rock Stakk)

The skull:
This has to be the worst reincarnation ever: reborn as a cheap-ass Giger knockoff, a crappy biomechanical skull poked full of ugly dripping tubes. At least he’s a little scary-looking, maybe. I wonder what this guy was in his previous life? Probably an accountant or something. An evil accountant.

The music:
This is medium-sloppy Japanese thrash that generally fails to impress. It almost has the feel of crossover, but there really isn’t any hardcore in Riverge’s sound – it’s almost like they took their Leeway and Crumbsuckers albums and excised the NY hardcore, leaving only hyperactive caveman thrash. The singer sounds like a Japanese Tom Araya, but not young and awesome Tom. Instead, the Riverge dude sounds like late 00s Tom, a yelling, greying gorilla, now with a thick Japanese accent. That said, Riverge are not exactly a Johnny-come-lately thrash act; they have existed in some form or another since the mid 80s, and some of the songs on Rebirth of Skull, their first actual album, date from the band’s earliest days. Japanese thrash generally doesn’t do much for me, and that’s more or less the case here, although I’ll admit that overall, Riverge are better than most of the other Japanese thrash I’ve heard, and in fact a bit better (if only barely) than most of the rethrash I encounter. Their newer album sounds a bit better, so that’s probably a better starting point for those interested in Riverge, but you’d have to be a pretty serious thrash maniac to bother.
— 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

SKULL529

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HELL MUÑECO, Doom Core (2009, demo)

The skull:
This guy reminds me of a Japanese Oni, what with his curved horns and fangs, not to mention the salacious look in his hideous peepers. With dentition like that, closing his mouth is probably next to impossible, but I imagine he gets by, mainly by screaming at all times and avoiding labial consonants. Then again, even if he could get his mouth shut, I guess the absence of lips would still make that sort of sound challenging, but other skulls manage to make them somehow. How, I don’t know! It’s times like this that make me wish we had a skull linguist on retainer to answer these burning questions.

The music:
Droopy doom metal with a cheap drum machine. Hell Muñeco are at least doom of the Solstice sort, and not a straight Sabbath knockoff, so you can expect riffing that’s a little more creative, and a little less reliant on the fuzz pedal for impact, than you get with your average weed-obsessed sludge merchant, but at the same time, the terrible vocals and Casio-grade drum samples really make this an unenjoyable listen, which is a pity because the writing and guitarwork are generally pretty solid, and certainly better than most of the doom bands we encounter around these parts. If the band found a stronger singer and a real drummer, they could probably grow into something interesting, but that could be said of an awful lot of bands, so I’m not holding out for a masterpiece from Hell Muñeco.
— Friar Johnsen

SKULL448

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HAMMER HEAD, Rock Forever  (1987, Power Outage)

The skull:
The dudes in Tacoma’s Hammer Head were sitting around one rainy day in 1987 chugging cans of Olympia beer and listening to Thor when they came up with the metalhead’s alternative to the Rock, Paper, Scissors game. They called it Rock, Hammer, Skull, and while the specifics of the rules are still being hammered out (no pun intended) decades later, they do know that the outcome of the game is always the same: rock wins, because rock is forever. As seen from the panel of the game instructions the band used for their album cover, it has been determined that hammer smashes skull. We’re not sure what the official game rules state regarding the specific powers and weaknesses of the skull, but we’re pretty sure they’ll be releasing the final rules booklet for Rock, Hammer, Skull any year now. And please note the innovative use of pink…probably an attempt to attract the women-folk.

The music:
In a nutshell, Hammer Head sounds a lot like Anvil in the Metal Blade years (Strength of Steel, Pound for Pound) without the ability to craft memorable songs. Even the vocals are Lips-esque, here draped in a chilly fog of reverb, just enough to keep it from sounding dry. The drums have a similarly processed/effected sound, while the guitars crank out in standard-issue ’80s heavy metal style without much in the way of unique personality. While Hammer Head’s songs are dull in their composition, the execution gets plus points thanks to the tasty guitar work of Greg Martin. I’ll bet if Mike Shrapnel had heard this guy back in the day, he would have signed Hammer Head based on Martin’s work alone. Certainly not for the songs, but Shrapnel were not always concerned about songs as much as having another kickass guitarist was in the house. A song like “Point Nine” has absolutely nothing going for it other than the lead work, while the title track is a plodder in the vein of Anvil’s “Strength of Steel.” “Stone Cold Crazy” is not the Queen song of the same name; it sounds like Ultimate Sin-era Ozzy in the verses, and, again, Anvil in the chorus. “Angel” is a worthless ballad, not because ballads are automatically worthless (they’re not), but because it’s a worthless ballad. “Holocaust” is an acoustic guitar-led semi-epic, but its cock-rock delivery and cheeseball sound effects are not very holocausty. Ultimately Hammer Head should be given credit for attempting to craft a fairly diverse album, but lacking any discernible vision and without much songwriting acumen, they’re doomed to be remembered by the small handful of metal fans who will eat up any US metal band that released an album on a tiny label in the 1980s. Probably goes for $300 on eBay.
— Friar Wagner