Tag Archives: missing teeth

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WICKED LESTER, Better Off Dead (1998, RSR)

The skull:
These guys thought no one would care if they stole the original name of the band that would become KISS, but when they tried it, a couple of goons showed up and roughed up the band’s mascot, knocking out a few of his teeth. Undeterred, Wicked Lester pressed on and released an album, but I think it’s not a coincidence that they never released a follow-up. This poor skull, or what’s left of him, is probably in the cement under the newest pool in one of Gene Simmons’s mansions.

The music:
Wicked Lester released their demo in 1989, but didn’t follow it up until 1998 with this full length album, and knowing that, Wicked Lester make a lot of sense. This is clearly a band whose musical sensibilities were formed in the 80s, but they obviously didn’t have their shit together to capitalize on the brief (in retrospect) popularity of this sort of melodic heavy metal. By the time they finally managed to eke out a disc, they had compromised their vision (such as I imagine it was) with a bevy of lame attempts to do what the biggies were doing in the 90s, from Pantera (the beginning of “Mad as Hell” is a complete “This Love” ripoff) to Megadeth (the entire album reeks of bad Mustaine-style “grooves”). At their best, Wicked Lester roughly approximate the US power metal of bands like Leatherwolf and Fifth Angel (see: “Rage,” an almost great song), but at their worst, they’re exactly the sort of overconfident and undertalented band that sadly littered the mid 90s trad metal scene in the States. If I had heard this when it came out, I might have treated it generously as a demo, imagining the band capable of something better. But this album was the end of the line for Wicked Lester, and judged on the merits, Better Off Dead isn’t good enough to compete with the great 80s albums that inspired it, and it didn’t do enough to distinguish the band during the dark days of the late 90s.
— Friar Johnsen

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HOUR OF 13, 333  (2012, Earache)

The skull:
We know…this should have been SKULL333 in the Skullection. You smart ass, lot, you. But the skulldiggers in the employ of the Council hadn’t unearthed this gem in time. Once found, the prickly hair-on-end feeling that our archaeologists usually get upon uncovering a skull was only half as creepy as usual. And the skull was missing half its teeth. And the nine-pointed star that emanated from its being was only half as evil-seeming as some 18-pointed star that our head archaeologist saw once. Still, we take all comers, as long as its a skull with lineage to heavy metal. We had to wonder if the music it represented was going to be half as good as all the best doom metal bands? Our research was only half concluded (or half begun, if you’re an optimist).

The music:
In their short career (2006-2014), North Carolina’s Hour of 13 made some pretty sizable waves in the doom metal community. And weirdly enough, I hadn’t taken the time to listen to them until duty called here at Big Dumb Skulls. Opener “Deny the Cross” is not only not an Overkill song, it’s not half-bad. The rhythms, melodies, guitar tones and vocals are all appropriately macabre-sounding, akin to the more straightforward lurch of classic Candlemass and the lightly abstract surrealism of that same band’s Dactylis Glomerata. Phil Swanson’s vocals possess the kind of character you’d hope for, neither being too overtly close in style to Ozzy Osbourne or Messiah Marcolin, or any of the other vocalists that doom copyists favor (and, every now and then, he recalls Alan Averill in Primordial’s A Journey’s End era). I know some others have charged Swanson with being too Ozzy-like, but he’s no Dan Fondelius (Count Raven) in that category, and I suspect those “critics” have very narrow reference points when it comes to doom (like, Black Sabbath, Black Sabbath and Black Sabbath. And solo Ozzy). There are even quite a few killer riffs here. Ultimately I find most newer doom bands charged with the impossible task of impressing beyond the godfathers of the genre, who laid down an nearly impossible-to-match blueprint. But Hour of 13 does a pretty damn good job of it, and the fact that they’re relatively original for a band of this style speaks volumes for their integrity. One of their main strengths is their incorporation of true/dark/traditional heavy metal elements, so that fans of Dio, Slough Feg, Manilla Road and Judas Priest could get into this. Not bad at all, and recommended to discerning doom fans who haven’t yet checked it out.
— Friar Wagner

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LUNAR AURORA, Of Stargates and Bloodstained Celestial Spheres  (1999, Kettenhund)

The skull:
Never has an album with such a great title been sullied by such a silly album cover. If the color is supposed to look “bloodstained,” they failed. It’s more blood orange stained. And the skull? His teeth are redneck, his eyeballs black olives, and his look says “Oh my, you caught me doing naughty things to myself in the photo booth!!!” in a squeaky Mr. Bill voice.

The music:
Lunar Aurora is a highly regarded German band, and in 2012, after nine full-lengths, they called it quits. This is their third album. The basic description of Lunar Aurora could be “well-recorded epic and melancholy black metal,” but then we’ve heard that one before, and even this is too simplistic a definition. Their music has a swirling, hypnotic quality, and it doesn’t always take lightspeed tempos to achieve this — they work in moderately slow to medium paces, for the most part, yet their sense of invention and world-building keeps the songs from ever becoming dull. The technical level is high but never sinks down into arid complexity — they know how to channel their talents to create effective and affecting compositions. There’s a healthy degree of textural variety here, too, as heard on “Blutbaum” and instrumental track “Moorleiche.” As for the oboe solo — yes, oboe solo — in “Die Quelle im Wald,” it works much better in practice than in theory. This is how I always wished Summoning’s more traditional black metal passages sounded but didn’t. Of Stargates… is comprised of huge, escapist, captivating material, and the whole is satisfyingly overwhelming. I didn’t give the band much time over the years, but am sitting here feeling like I missed out on something special. I’ve already checked out more of their material, and their final album, Hoagascht, is pretty incredible. I assume I’m not the only one who missed out on these guys first time around. We’ve got some catching up to do!
— Friar Wagner

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MONSTER MASH, He Gambled with Satan and Lost (2009, demo)

The skull:
It feels like it’s been a long time since we had a nice, simple, skull-on-a-table type cover, so today’s BDS is a comforting one indeed. I guess this guy wagered his teeth when he placed his bets with the devil. Or maybe it was, “If I win, you fix the teeth my ex knocked out with a hammer, and if I lose, then you can condemn my skull to an eternity on the cover of a South American thrash demo.” Either way, the title gives away the ending.

The music:
This is odd thrashy power metal with melodic high vocals that sound like a spit-take on James Rivera’s warble (although he sounds more like Kai Hansen when he does his weak falsetto scream). There’s actually another singer who is a dead ringer for this guy (or vice versa, I guess), but he’s so generic and without defining character that I can’t actually summon the name to memory. It’ll come to me one of these days. Maybe. Musically, I’m reminded in places of pre-Dark Saga Iced Earth, but of course Monster Mash are not as together as Shaffer’s troupe. The drumming is a mess, and a lot of times, it feels like the band is only barely on the same page. That said, for a band called Monster Mash, they’re not entirely bad, and with some practice they could possibly shape up into something rather decent. There’s certainly a shortage of bands like this, walking the fine line between speed and melody, and it’s always nice to hear a thrash band with a proper singer. That’s something that used to happen all the time, and now it’s exceedingly rare.
—Friar Johnsen

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RIGOR MORTIS, Rigor Mortis (1988, Capitol)

The skull:
The smashed out eyes make this a particularly distinctive skull, and that feature is also, amazingly, unique in the Skullection. Here at Skull HQ, we’ve seen skulls that have suffered all kinds of abuse, but this is the first and only example of occular disembonement. But while that negative space is what draws the eye (so to speak), it’s the maniacal grin that really seals the deal. This skull (who doesn’t seem to have a name, although I spent a fair amount of time looking) just doesn’t give a fuck that he’s got no distinct eye sockets, and he’s even proud to hover there with the mace that did it. The axe and bone are bonus accoutrements that nevertheless can’t compete with this skull’s luxurious mane. “I’m so fucking bad, they put me in the logo, too. Twice.” While a nice, real skull, staged and photographed, might have made a better 300th skull, those are shockingly hard to come by, and as illustrated BDSes go, this Rigor Mortis cover is about as awesome as they come.

The music:
A shocking number of thrash bands managed to land major label deals between 87 and 90, but few were as mediocre as Rigor Mortis. Meliah Rage comes close, maybe, and even they had a couple truly excellent songs. Rigor Mortis were weirdly lightweight, lacking the depth and punch of a Testament, while being sillier even than Exodus at their goofiest. Their riffing and songwriting, as with most Texas thrash bands, were thoroughly pedestrian for the times, and the anemic production didn’t do them any favors. Finally, they were saddled with a vocalist who lacked any unique character and whose lyrics were stupid (and not funny, which is the one possible salvation of stupid lyrics). They were far from the worst thrash band on the scene in 1987, but there were probably scores of bands more deserving of the opportunity afforded Rigor Mortis (who of course completely squandered it and were dropped in a couple years). Nevertheless, they’re a band that’s developed something of a cult reputation, perhaps due to the rarity of the album on compact disc. Their subsequent EP and full length can be had fairly readily, but the debut on Capitol commands a rather stupid price. You could spend $100 for this middling effort, or you could save yourself at least twenty bucks and pick up the infinitely superior Wargasm debut, which is similar to Rigor Mortis in many ways but always much, much better.
— Friar Johnsen

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SOULFLY, Savages (2013, Nuclear Blast)

The skull:
I’ll tell you what’s savage: this guy’s dental regimen, am I right? He should have spent a little less time with a tattoo needle, and a little more time with a brush and some floss. But I guess when you’re decked out as fabulously as this guy is, with a black feather fright wig and a massive collar necklace (is this skull a drag queen?) then maybe you can get by with half a mouth of choppers. Probably they all get covered up with a jewel encrusted grill before he goes out anywhere.

The music:
It’s kind of weird to think that Max Cavalera made good music for only about six years, and that’s generously including his formative years in Sepultura. Since Roots he’s basically made nothing but shit (although that first Cavalera Conspiracy album was okay), and while I haven’t been following Soulfly closely over the years, I’ve seen them a couple times and heard enough of their music to give them a wide berth. So when I first saw this cover, I thought, “Of fucking COURSE Soulfly would do a BDS!” and I licked my chops at the prospect of tearing Max a new one. But then something funny happened. I listened to the album, and I… I didn’t hate it. It feels dirty to even admit that. I listened to a Soulfly album and it wasn’t complete shit. I mean, it’s not awesome. It’s not the second coming of Arise. It’s probably not even as good, overall, as Chaos A.D., which I consider to be a fairly rotten album. But, it has a certain swagger, and while, for sure, it’s still got its fair share of idiotic breakdowns and thumpy nu metal grooves, it’s also got a lot of genuinely cool riffs. Max, for a change, sounds like his old self, not some bloated, dreaded, knapsacked caricature, and the production is heavy. The first two songs, especially the second, “Cannibal Holocaust” are rock solid, and while the third starts to reintroduce the breakdowns and 90s-style harmonic riffs, it’s not until the fourth track (featuring the dude from Clutch) that this becomes obviously Soulfly and not some mythical not-awful Max band. Track five, “Master of Savagery” pulls out of the nosedive a bit before the next number goes all in on the numetal Soulfly stupidity I was expecting all along. That song, “Spiral,” is every bit as bad as I know, deep-down, Soulfly to be. But then the album rebounds a bit with “This Is Violence,” which would rank pretty high in the Machine Head ouvre, before taking another bad turn with a tune that brings in Mitch Harris from Napalm Death, and another featuring the bassist from Static X (worst guest spot ever?) The last tune, the atrociously titled “Soulfliktion” dares to echo the memorable “who”s of “Beneath the Remains”, but isn’t a completely rotten tune on its own terms. To say this is the best Soulfly album is certainly no great compliment, and the middle is an unpleasant slog, but I would never have imagined when I first hit play that I’d have made it to the end at all. I won’t be buying this, so it’s not like Max has won me back, but for the first time in a long time, I guess I’m willing to consider the possibility that the old dog might still hunt.
— Friar Johnsen

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GRINNING DEATH’S HEAD, No Afterlife (2009, Youth Attack)

The skull:
I picture the artist commissioned to illustrate this album spending about five minutes thinking, “How am I going depict ‘No Afterlife’? Hmm,” before saying, “Fuck it. I’m just gonna do the band name.” Boom. Done. Although truthfully, this is a pretty awesome grinning death’s head. He clearly took a serious beating, and he’s still smiling. It all started with some asshole yelling, “Oh yeah? Well how’s about I wipe that smile offa your face for ya?” and it ended with the same asshole walking away highly frustrated.

The music:
This is the absolute worst sort of no-fi black metal bullshit. It sounds like the band set up at the bottom of a stairwell while one of their toadies operated the boombox “mobile recording studio” at the top. It’s basically impossible to tell what anyone is doing here, and I can’t imagine what this band was hoping to accomplish. I mean, maybe this sort of thing was shocking or transgressive or whatever in 1992, but in 2009? For fuck’s sake. Grinning Death’s Head used a big dumb skull for their subsequent demo as well (it’s a skull in a chalice!), but no way in hell are any of us at Skull HQ going to listen to this band ever again, for any reason.
— Friar Johnsen

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INFERNOISE, Hellriders  (2006, self-released)

The skull:
Swear we’ve seen this picture, this very same skull before. It probably comes up near the top if you type “skull” and “images” into Google. It’s missing a few teeth and looks bored hovering there in the black, circled in yellow and thinking “this release is so obscure, no way am I going to be discovered running around with this low-rent crew.” But then he didn’t count on us skull-hunters at BDS. This is big, this is dumb…and lotsa yellow too!

The music:
This short-lived Spanish band were produced by Stratovarius guitarist Timo Tolkki at one point. The music on this mercifully short three-song EP sounds like the tossed off junk from Pantera’s final album. Or any post-Power Metal Pantera, really. Infernoise, then, is groove metal with thrash elements that has absolutely no reason to exist. The vocalist really, really wants to be Phil Anselmo too. About as much creativity went into this music as the cover idea. C’mon, people, give us something we can use here!
— Friar Wagner

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WITCHTRAP, Witching Metal (2000, NNYDA & Malignant)

The skull:
No sarcasm and no irony meant when I say: this is a great album cover. The slightly overhead view is nice, and the black borders to left and right lend an almost classy feel. The skull itself comes complete with occult symbols scattered around the cranium (evidently carved into the bone) and the missing teeth somehow don’t make the skull look too goofy. Perfect placement of the band’s cool logo, with album title and pentagram tucked into the lower right corner…yeah, it’s a work of effective artistic simplicity. I wish I had it on vinyl, but then I don’t really like the music much, so…guess I’ll worship it from afar.

The music:
In Witchtrap’s world, it’s 1986 all year, every year. This might as well be an Assassin demo or Morbid Saint rehearsal or any other such insane thrash metal. The Sodom reference of the EP title is appropriate and probably deliberate. These Colombians have studied their first-wave German thrash metal closely. They’re probably even the kind of guys who think albums like Persecution Mania and Terrible Certainty are sellouts. The recording is unadorned but holds lots of clarity. Well-captured mayhem, raw but not unlistenable, well-played but not too well-played. It’s just kind of pointless if you already own Protector and Vulcano albums, you know?
— Friar Wagner

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ARCH ENEMY, Doomsday Machine (2005, Century Media)

The skull:
A dusty, aged-looking skull, missing a tooth and looking quite tough, haloed by a biomechanical representation of Arch Enemy’s circle-with-four-protrusions symbol, the whole assemblage floating over the most generic industrial-looking backdrop you can imagine. I interviewed Mike Amott when Stigmata came out, and he vaguely alluded to a secret meaning behind the symbol, a meaning which he vowed to never disclose. I found that fairly annoying, and have never made any further effort to learn if he kept that promise. I always assumed it had something to do with the (then) four members of the band, but of course after Johan Liiva left, the band became a five piece. If there is a meaning to it, it’s almost surely far less clever than Amott imagined, which brings us back to this skull. Is this halo/collar supposed to be the doomsday machine? If so, can it really be considered as such if you need to clamp it on to every person you want to doom? This is not how mad science works. As always with this sort of Photoshop art, the various elements don’t quite look like they inhabit the same space, but the skull itself if pleasingly big and undeniably the focus of the cover.

The music:
I love the first couple Arch Enemy discs to death. They’re exactly the blend of Carcass-style melody and Carnage-style aggression that we all wanted from Mike Ammot, who was mostly just dicking around in Spiritual Beggars at the time. (No slam on Spiritual Beggars, though — as stoner/psych metal goes, they’re about as good as it gets.) But even by the third album, the melody/brutality balance was falling out of whack. When Liiva left and Angela Gossow joined, it felt like the band decided to leverage the appeal of their attractive singer to create the most marketable death metal band possible. It’s not that their albums immediately got bad – they didn’t. But, while Black Earth and Stigmata felt like the heavy albums Ammot really wanted to make, the Gossow albums, pretty much all of them, feel like the heavy albums Ammot is obligated to make. His death metal day job. The confrontational spirit of the earlier albums, a spirit pretty much essential to good death metal, more or less vanished, and the rough edges were mercilessly sanded down. All of the Gossow albums would be better with a melodic singer. They’re no more death metal than, say, Nevermore. In fact, death vocals be damned, on average there’s considerably less aggression on display in these latter-day Arch Enemy albums than in all but the weakest Nevermore discs. So while Doomsday Machine has more than its fair share of killer riffs (the ending of the title track is pretty awesome), and even some very well assembled songs, the vibe is just somehow off. This album just doesn’t rile me up the way Black Earth does, to this day, and Gossow’s over-effected and bland, if serviceable, vocals (say what you will about Liiva, he has an unmistakable voice) utterly fail to sell the evil. The super slick production doesn’t help either. Daniel Erlandsson (always the lesser Erlandsson), can blast in time, sure, but the mix utterly tames these supposedly furious beats. Is it painful to listen to Doomsday Machine? Not at all. Just pointless.
— Friar Johnsen