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BATTLERAGE, Battlefield Supremacy (2012, Metal on Metal)

The skull:
“Dude, I fucking owned the battlefield! I showed up, and I killed pretty much every fucking body. They came at me with axes, swords, maces, pikes, you name it, and I fucking knocked that shit down and killed some motherfuckers! You should have fucking seen it! God damn, it was beautiful.” “Bullshit, man! You got fucking killed just like the rest of us!” “No, man, I wasn’t talking about this battlefield. Duh. I mean, yeah, obviously my supremacy of this battlefield was contested and pretty harshly rebuked. I’m talking about that last battlefield. The one from last week. I was totally supreme there!” “That’s not what I heard. I heard some fucking wizard showed up and killed everyone with like a green cloud or something, and then took off, and then you showed up late because you were taking a dump and then you ran your mouth off and took all the credit” “Fuck you, man, that’s bullshit! Cause like, if that happened, how would anyone know about the wizard, because they all got killed. People are just fucking jealous the way I totally supremed that battlefield, and they made up that shit about the wizard.” “Whatever, man. Who cares anyway. We got killed this time.” “Yeah, but still. That last battlefield… so fucking supreme!”

The music:
This is a weird, stupid compilation of Battlerage’s first album, Steel Supremacy, and four songs from their “EP” Battlefield Belongs to Me. I put EP in quotes because the original release is 50 minutes long and has twelve tracks. Did I mention that Battlefield Supremacy is a cassette-only release, limited to 66 copies? I see that I didn’t, except to say that this thing is stupid. Which it is. Anyway, Battlerage are fine. They’re somewhere between German speed metal and South American true metal. Don’t expect sophistication or innovation, but if you own and enjoy a lot of albums with axe-wielding musclemen on the cover, then you’ll love this shit. I’m not overly impressed, but I’ll grant that Battlerage do their thing well, and the singer is surprisingly good, especially for a Chilean singing in English. Even the sound is good, and you know that’s not a given for this kind of thing. Of course, if you really wanted to hear Battlerage, you’d probably just pick up the CDs, or download it, or whatever, and not trawl eBay for a ridiculously limited cassette without any exclusive songs, but hey, don’t let me tell you how to live your life.
— Friar Johnsen

SKULL422

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BUTTOCKS, …War Kills… (1990, demo)

The skull:
As a young friar, I spent most of my days in the priory studying the sacred texts of our order, contemplating the mysteries of the Skull, producing illuminated copies of Metal Forces back issues, and so forth. The usual duties of an ascetic. But on our day of rest (which is Wednesday according to the calendar most of you would be familiar with) we were encouraged to explore the surrounding forests and meadows and commune with our inner skull. One day, on a walk that took me many miles from the cloistered walls of my home, I encountered a stiff wind from the north, which soon brought a driving rain upon me. I sought refuge in a small copse of trees and huddled in my cowl beside a large rock, which afforded some cover from the elements. In the sheltered lee of this rock, I found the remains of a fire, and amid the ashes, soot, and charcoal, I saw a glimmer of white. I reached into the pile, and withdrew the white thing, which was the singed but mostly intact jacket of a cassette tape, the identity of which I assume now is obvious. As I waited for the storm to pass, I stared at this unlikely bit of detritus and pondered the significance of its title. I marveled at the chain of events that led me to this place and the discovery of a Big Dumb Skull heretofore unknown to my order. But above all, I giggled like a schoolboy because some band called themselves Buttocks and thought anyone would take their social commentary seriously.

The music:
Sadly, I was not able to find any songs from this demo, and had to content myself with a spin of their 1991 demo, Urcemurcel Turkus. It’s simple but slightly off-kilter Norwegian death metal, not dissimilar to the first Cadaver album, minus the tuba. Really, nothing special, which is sad, because I had such high hopes for Buttocks. There are a LOT of songs on this demo, though; far more than on their later recordings, and this makes me wonder if maybe they didn’t start as a Napalm Death style grind band. I may never know, but I take comfort in the fact that this ridiculous band existed at all.
— Friar Johnsen

SKULL411

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LAST ETERNAL BREATH, From a Tormented Soul (2011, demo)

The skull:
This one is a textbook example of a skull photo scanned from a textbook. It’s a photo taken without even the slightest artistry, but the skull is quite large, and if nothing else the 3/4-from-the-top profile is something we don’t see too often in the BDS compound. The chunks of what looks like concrete are the only fun detail here. I imagine that the former owner of this skull tried eating them, maybe while high on PCP, and puked them up in his last eternal barf. His final thought was, “Fuck. They’re totally going to figure out that I was eating cement. I’m gonna look so stupid.”

The music:
Busy, technical death metal not unlike Decrepit Birth or Obscura, although not as brutal as the former nor as exploratory as the latter, Last Eternal Breath are nevertheless a fairly good example of the form. This demo is not especially well-recorded, but it’s not horrible sounding either, and it’s a pleasant change of pace to hear music like this that hasn’t been sampled and quantized to death. This is very much the sound of a band who could only afford four days to record and mix, and rehearsed the shit out of their material in advance of their studio session. These days, “technical death metal” can mean a lot of things, and in most cases, it means I’m not gonna like it, but these guys fall in that narrow range that appeals to me, even if I can’t wholeheartedly endorse them. A little more time spent on songwriting and developing at least one original hook would help, but even if they just polish what they’ve got to a high sheen, they’ll be good enough to compete with all but the very best bands working this style in no time. And even at that, they’re already much better than most of the bands on Unique Leader.
— Friar Johnsen

SKULL29

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BLODULV, III – Burial (2005, Eerie Art)

The skull:
Staggering in its simplicity, we have yet another black-and-white photograph of a skull on a black background. That’s it. Its lower mandible is missing, as seems to be all the rage in the world of real skulls. You need springs to keep a skull intact, and apparently these are in short supply or something. The Blodulv logo, a boring old stock font we’ve seen a million times over, is superimposed on the forehead. We love it big and dumb here at Big Dumb Skulls HQ, and it doesn’t get any more exemplary than this. 10 out of 10 fucking skulls.

The music:
Blodulv are a minor but noteworthy entry in the pantheon of 2000s-era U.S. black metal. They kept it more traditional than the disturbed psychedelia of peer bands such as Xasthur and Leviathan. Blodulv sounds downright polite, really, recalling Under a Funeral Moon- / Transilvanian Hunger-era Darkthrone. I know, YAAAWWN, right? Those are such highly copied albums, and there’s nothing better than the original. And even Darkthrone, love their early stuff as I do, were not exactly original on those influential albums. So, Blodulv is dust now, leaving three albums and numerous demos, splits and EPs behind as legacy. Next!!!
–Friar Wagner