Tag Archives: flames

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NIGHTMARE CITY, Nightmare Tape (2014, Electric Assault)

The skull:
Now this here is a stunningly awesome hand-drawn Big Dumb Skull. The best way to look at it is to imagine that the giant flaming skull is neither attacking the city nor being attacked, but rather is just sitting there. Like, one night people looked out the windows of their high rise condominiums and instead of the sunset saw an enormous skull with smoke and fire pouring out of its eyes. What could be more terrifying than that? I mean, aside from the skull smiling.

The music:
Imagine if Sodom had recorded their debut EP with the relative instrumental prowess of Venom (a massive upgrade, if you can imagine it). That’s what Nightmare City sounds like, more or less. I guess that Nightmare City are a lot more concerned with the powers of Rock than the powers of Satan, and they lean a bit more punk than metal sometimes, but in those cases, just imagine a missing link between The Damned’s Machine Gun Etiquette and Tank’s Filth Hounds of Hades. These guys capture the raw early 80s more or less perfectly, and they do it while avoiding the winking tone that scuttles a lot of these sorts of retro acts. I like a lot of the bands that inspire Nightmare City and their ilk (think: Superchrist, Asomvel) but I’m not totally sold on the need for anything new in this style, but if you’re on board with the scene, you need to check these guys out.
— Friar Johnsen

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MORBID SLAUGHTER, Wicca (2014, Boris)

The skull:
This valiant skull tried to take a bite (literally!) out of whatever occult, Illuminati organization bears this particular emblem, and look what it got him: a head full of fire. These are powerful people, and not to be trifled with! They install their toothless cronies in the USDA. They set the prices of goat futures with impunity. They cannot be stopped! They condemn lesser skulls than this to be ground into dust and dumped into the sewer. Some forces are simply too vast, too sinister for even the biggest, dumbest skulls, no matter how righteous, but this martyred skull, this crusader for good governance and transparency, shall not be forgotten so long as the name of “Morbid Slaughter” is on the tongues of good people everywhere.

The music:
The first song on this 7″ has three riffs. Three! One is the solo riff, played once, and the other is like a bridge or something, and it comes up a few times, but at least 80% of this song is a single riff, and not a good one at that, but rather some rudimentary take on Venom, played slightly faster than Venom’s default tempo. The vocals are a corny black metal whisper/snarl, and are awful. The second song has slightly more riffs than the first song (like, maybe it has four), but none of them are any better, or more original, then the other three. What a stupid fucking band. Morbid Slaughter are from Peru, where this kind of oldschool garbage never really went out of style, but these guys operate with all the conviction and vitality of a hipster throwback band from Brooklyn. Screw this noise.
— Friar Johnsen

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THE NEW BLACK, II – Better In Black (2011, AFM)

The skull:
So, what, this flaming skull was stenciled onto a shed or something? Painted on some random hunk of wood, or maybe, yeah maybe the sign above the swinging doors of a dangerous biker bar? The New Black Saloon, enter if you dare! Art like this, trying as it does to evoke the grit and recklessness of some half-remembered or imagined motorcycle culture, is a sure sign that the band it’s advertising is not particularly rowdy. I basically believe that there’s really no such thing as a dangerous musician, and if there is, he probably isn’t signed and definitely isn’t making albums that look like this. Practicing your instrument, writing songs, posing for promotional photos: these are not activities willingly undertaken by the genuine badass. At most you’ll get the likes of Zakk Wylde, spoiled alcoholics with beer muscles and unkempt beards. An album cover like this is supposed to say, “I don’t give a fuck!” Instead, it loudly broadcasts, “I give quite a few fucks, actually, and I’m deeply invested in your believing that I am really tough. Please feel threatened by me, and maybe just a little aroused.”

The music:
I guess you could call this radio metal, or something? I don’t really have the vocabulary to describe these new pop metal styles, stuff made for the mass market in the post-nu-metal era. There are tons of bands like this out there – you hear them on the radio in the rental car when you forgot to bring a CD, or maybe at sports bars or something. I guess Alter Bridge and Stone Sour are the pacesetters in the genre, a sort of ubiquitous, low-grade quasi-metal that sounds edgy if don’t pay attention, but won’t offend if you do. These guys would probably recoil at the notion that they’re basically the same as Papa Roach, but really there’s no great distinction. As metal, this shit barely passes: there are almost no real riffs, the songwriting is barely a step up from pop punk, and everything is polished to a plastic shine. With a band like The New Black, you might actually imagine their favorite Metallica album is Load. When I hear this sort of music, I immediately assume the entire enterprise is a cynical grab for rock stardom, but when you notice all the little ways they stray from the top 40 path, like a guitar harmony here or a solo there, you have to consider the possibility that these guys just have atrociously bad taste and honestly just want to make exactly the sort of bland dad metal they’re making. And that’s how a band like this ends up on AFM, I guess. If they were just in if for the money, they wouldn’t even bother slogging it out for three albums with an indie; they’d either land that Roadrunner deal or they’d give up, each dude reappearing a year later in some new band that wants to be the next big thing. I don’t know what’s more depressing: making music like this in a mercenary effort to underestimate the taste of the public, or making it because this is where your sad-sack muse led you.
— Friar Johnsen

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FEAST FOR THE CROWS, When All Seems to Be Burned  (2007, Bastardized Recordings)

The skull:
For once my attention is not on the skull itself, but on the nonsense idea/graphics happening below. These two guys (identical twins, apparently) are talking simultaneously, saying “when all seems to be burned.” Very pessimistic, boys. They look dopey with their heads maned with what looks like yellow fire or sunflower petals. I’ll go with sunflower petals, just for fun. The skull itself, well he’s just hanging out above these guys, his ear holes having sprouted dragons and sporting wings behind him. You know how it is. Happens all the time. These wings apparently have no practical purpose for either skull or dragon. An ugly mess of yellow, this cover, with a concept that’s pretty much random nonsense without any meaning whatsoever. And yes indeed, I am looking for PROFOUND meaning in these skull covers! Maybe that’s the problem.

The music:
For a band who I’ve seen labelled as both “melodic death metal” and “metalcore,” I will give Feast For The Crows props: they are certainly melodic and deathly enough to qualify as “melodic death metal,” and if they’re “metalcore,” they certainly have equal amounts of metal and, uh, “core” to skate by. It’s not really my sort of thing, especially when they get into the slower breakdowns (as within “Abandon”) but they’re quite good at what they’re trying to achieve. The performances are all strong, although the drums sound much too fake/plastic. Getting further into the guts of this album, this is almost the missing link between Odium and Feel Sorry For the Fanatic that Morgoth failed to deliver. You know, that kind of German metal that sits in a genre-less nether-region, borrowing bits of this and bits of that and ending up with precision attack cold metal. F.F.T.C. give it a more modern/generic twist, but that’s the general wheelhouse this thing sits in.
— Friar Wagner

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VIKING SKULL, Chapter One  (2003, Grand Union)

The skull:
Generic stoner rock background hosts a skull that could be that of a Viking, but also could not. Who the hell knows? All skulls are created equal…but not all skull album covers are. This one is on the gaudy side of the tracks. Those wings on either side of the head remind me of the Red Wing shoe company logo and look hopelessly out of place floating there like that. What appear to be crossed knives at the bottom I first saw as joints. Which they might as well be, considering the rest of this cover, and the music. And if they are knives, they don’t look all that deadly. Then there’s the skull itself, which is just kind of there, wearing a leering sarcastic smile as if to say “…and I have to float here under THIS ‘logo’? Kill me now…again.” We hail Viking Skull’s commitment to skull covers, but this is the only one we’ll allow into the Skullection.

The music:
Big, bruisin’, burly traditional heavy metal. Maybe. Who knows if it’s 100 genuine, their roots are in a band called Raging Speedhorn, who I remember being really boring noise rock/metal stuff. This first release from Viking Skull, and all others since, seem to be aiming for the hearts of all those folks who like fourth-rate rehashed traditional heavy metal, when we all know that most of the best stuff came out in the ’80s. Besides, this is just crap stoner rock masquerading as heavy metal. “Beers, Drugs and Bitches” and “Crazy Trucker”…junky stuff that I never ever want to hear again. I’d rather listen to White Wizzard…any day.
— Friar Wagner