NUNSLAUGHTER, SathaSlaughter (2009, Universal Tongue)
The skull:
This poor guy’s eye is falling out, which is really not that surprising because he’s grotesquely deformed and nothing seems to fit together right. But, you’d think the other eye would be the first to go, considering how small it is compared to its socket. And while I know the thing surrounding the skull is probably supposed to be a cowl, it looks an awful lot to me like Jaws from the movie poster, so I imagine this guy thinking, “Aw shit! My eye just fell out! How could this day get any worse?” right before the Great White bites him in half.
The music:
Nunslaughter play time-capsule death metal, sounding perpetually like a Morbid Angel demo from 1987. Rude and crude death metal about how Jesus is a square. They’re the masters of the cult-of-limited-edition, releasing dozens on dozens on dozens of incredibly limited cassettes, 7″s, splits, EPs, live albums, etc. Someone once told me that the main Nunslaughter dude worked at a music repro plant, which is how he could afford to do all that shit. Probably they have more Big Dumb Skull covers, but we don’t have the patience to look for a better one than this, and this one is more than good enough. I don’t know how a person gets hooked on Nunslaughter in the first place, but once it happens, that person is in for a world of frustrating collection. Personally, I find their music to be unimaginative and dull, but for the style, it’s perfectly fine. If you want caveman death metal, they’re as good as anything, I suppose. This EP starts with a bunch of covers (all of them curated for maximum underground cred, of course, and including a version of “Jaws of Satan” by Sathanas, whose demo was, coincidentally, SKULL211) before wrapping up with a few songs they probably recorded seven or eight times elsewhere, like for some Romanian Tour EP limited to 27 cassettes. Somewhere out there is some insane superfan with every one of this band’s intentionally obscure releases, and that person must have the worst taste/judgment ever. I’d kind of like to meet him. How could he not be fascinating, on an anthropological level? And I wonder how long you could pronounce the band like “Nun’s Laughter” before he lost his shit?
— Friar Johnsen