Tag Archives: simple

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DEMONICAL, Darkness Unbound (2013, Cyclone Empire)

The skull:
Another of the more densely-populated Subdivisions of the Big Dumb Skull Cover, the Screaming Skull is, more often than not, a cartoony guy. But not this guy. This is one tormented dome of bone. His wretched grimace conjures fear, misery, despair, doom and all the other fun stuff once can associate with meeting one’s end. But what’s with the doohickey affixed to the skull’s top left side? Skeletal remains of a blowfly? A petrified feather? A JFK-ish shard of bone caught just as a bullet grazes the dome? Write down your top 100 guesses and mail it to Big Dumb Skulls, c/o The Council. Only entries written in the blood of a virgin on aged parchment paper will be accepted. One entry per person.

The music:
This skull cover is exclusive to those who bought the limited digipak edition, the one with the cover of Kreator’s “World Beyond.” Skulls are worth the extra effort, and cash, so we applaud this marketing decision. The cover version is pretty much what you’d expect a death-blasted, de-tuned death metal cover of a Kreator song to sound like (the guitar lead is killer, very much respectful of Frank Blackfire while severely out-intensifying him). The original is better, but that’s usually always the case. As for Demonical’s originals, these guys clearly have the patented Brutal Swedish Death Metal sound nailed down tight. With a couple guys from Centinex, you’d expect that. It’s just so incredibly straightforward and unvarying that it gets old fast. And I love this sound, but by 2013, even the brootal-Swede-death revival has lost its luster. We will always return to the first generation when we want the real deal. Unless it’s Tribulation or Morbus Chron or the like, bands actually moving the style forward in leaps (Tribulation) and extra-wide bounds (Morbus Chron). But yeah, I’ll take Toximia or Uncanny over Demonical any day, even if this is undeniably pro and superior in what it’s trying to accomplish.
— Friar Wagner

SKULL576

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VISE MASSACRE, Expendable Humans  (2012, self-released)

The skull:
It was just a few short years ago that the kid who would go on to be the drummer of Vise Massacre sat there in art class, despondent in front of a lump of clay. Then the lightbulb went on — he swiftly fashioned the grimmest clay head the teacher had ever seen. Raiding the teacher’s desk, lunchbox and supply cabinet in an inspired frenzy, he tossed together an unholy assemblage of clay, oatmeal, Chicklets gum and covered the mess in sticky white paint. Behold!!!

The music:
A bunch of hootin’ and hollerin’ happenin’ on this 15-song album from New York City’s Vise Massacre. Not sure which borough they hail from, but I’m guessing Brooklyn. And if I had to put money on an even more exact location, I’d go with…um…let’s go with Williamsburg. So, Expendable Humans looks like punk/death/grind/crust on the surface, and that’s the basic ballpark, but it’s much less noisy and far cleaner than I imagined it would be going in. Imagine a well-recorded, modern, streamlined Amebix re-recording the Monolith album, with Napalm Death’s Danny Herrera on drums and  a vocalist who took the style of Believer’s Kurt Bachman (in the Sanity Obscure era) and intensified it by a thousand. There you have Vise Massacre. There’s a technical element to some of this that makes it stand out from the legions of other bands aligning themselves with NYC crust/grind/death/punk, as heard in the precision-controlled tumult of “Eyes of Fire.” The brief English Dogs-ish guitar breaks in “Hail to the Wicked” are pretty cool too. There are some good riffs scattered throughout, and it manages to keep the interest most of the way through, but Expendable Humans wears out its welcome near the end. And the vocals become tiresome by the fifth song or so, but at least Vise Massacre aren’t as typical as their name, album title and imagery promises. That’s something.
— Friar Wagner

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CELTIC FROST, The Collector’s Celtic Frost  (1987, Noise)

The skull:
Celtic Frost’s “screaming skull” happens to be one of the coolest and most recognizable skull designs in metal. (Remember that Frost’s heptagram design also featured a skull.) The cover of this single is simplicity incarnate, but also entirely effective. There’s no need for anything else — it works just like it is. The skull still possesses one gushy orb of an eyeball in his left eye socket, and his elongated maw screams in horror as strings of what I’ll say is mucus stick to his upper and lower teeth. Weird, cool and tailor-made for t-shirts and tattoos.

The music:
Tom G. Warrior had a talent for spotting quirk, darkness and eccentricity in various non-metal songs, taking them into the world of Celtic Frost and molesting them into nearly unrecognizable new versions. He’s done it with Bryan Ferry, David Bowie and Wall of Voodoo, and this 1962 Dean Martin song, “In the Chapel in the Moonlight” (the sole song on this 1987 12″ single). I’m not any kind of lounge/crooner fan or anything, but the original has an undeniable appeal. The Frost version is a total perversion of the original, naturally: it brings in a militaristic cadence that changes the song considerably, especially the snare work of Reed St. Mark in the chorus section, and a conviction in delivery that turns this strange idea into a tiny little success. The female backing vocals are appropriately ghostly, as well. Tom’s vocals are fiery and fucked up. This was recorded during the Into the Pandemonium era, which was the first and last time his voice had this particular quality (it was much gruffer before this, and a lackluster bark afterward). Yet another cool nugget of nuttiness from Celtic Frost.
— Friar Wagner

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TAAKE, Nekro  (2007, Dark Essence)

The skull:
Stark and haunting, skully and spooky, moonlit and creepy, this is a very effective skull cover which would have been PERFECT without that stupid “True Norwegian Blah Blah” banner in the bottom right corner.

The music:
There might not be a more prototypical Norwegian black metal band than Taake. They’ve been doing it since 1995 and continue to this day, no major changes and no turning away from what they originally set out to do. This EP came out in 2007, and its main song, the 11+ minutes of “Hennes Kalde Skamlepper,” is as good an example of Taake’s sound as any. Cold, buzzy, reverb-drenched riffs, fast-and-faster rhythms, and your usual Quorthon-derived vocals on top (ie. the guy sounds like Nocturno Culto in Darkthrone’s early/mid ’90s era, but sharper and even more scathing). There’s a bit of ambient guitar landscaping in the middle of this lengthy song, and after it kicks in again there are some odd Skoll-like bass lines happening (think Ved Buens Ende). Shorter track “Voldtekt” opens up the EP; it’s a frosty, blazing sort of thing, akin to something off Darkthrone’s similarly single-minded Transilvanian Hunger. Taake also covers Von’s “Lamb” here, and it works well enough to draw the line of influence from Von’s primitive weirdness to the basics of “True Norwegian Black Metal.” Which, by the way, Taake boasts about playing on the cover of Nekro, in case there was any question about it. This little banner also adds “Piss Off & Fuck Off,” which I will do right now. It’s cool that they don’t ask us to die after fucking off, which is usually how it goes, you know?
— Friar Wagner

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VOMITOR, Bleeding the Priest (2002, Metal Blood Music)

The skull:
Although it’s probably supposed to look like it was photocopied (or Xeroxed, as we’d have said in 1986) a dozen times to remove any nuance of shading, this is surely just some skull scanned from a book (or another demo!), with the colors reduced to two in Photoshop. As with all things, it’s way easier to be cult in this day and age than it used to be.

The music:
Possessed meets Bathory. Sloppy as shit, derivative as fuck, pointless as hell. I’m sure you can already hear it in your head: buzzy guitars, tinny drums, reverberated vocals. There isn’t a single original idea or riff on this entire album, although first half of “Reaper’s Carrion” is pretty cool, before it turns into some terrible Obsessed By Cruelty outtake. This is so stupidly oldschool that this 2002 release was reissued on cassette in 2013. I look forward to the flexi box set packed in a Trapper Keeper that’s set to be released in 2016. Based on all the surface details, I assumed Vomitor were Brazilian, but the internet assures me they’re Australian, which really just makes them the poor man’s Slaughter Lord, nearly 20 years late. A dubious distinction, that.
— Friar Johnsen

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JOE THRASHER, Metal Forces  (2009, self-released)

The skull:
Love it. Just endearingly dumb, this silly skull grins madly under a dorky logo. The black and red simplicity makes it look like some NWOBHM 7 inch. Very much looks like the skull of famous DC comics villain the Joker, if he were to be de-fleshed…particularly the ’50s/’60s era one, if we’re being really nerdy.

The music:
Plus points for naming this album after the great UK metal magazine of yore. Onslaught had their “Metal Forces” song decades ago, but Joe Thrasher probably doesn’t know that, or maybe they just don’t care. What do we have here? We have a group of Canadians hellbent on playing the strictest interpretation of ’80s thrash possible. They’ve studied up on their countrymen, as lots of this album reminds of Canuck thrashers like Razor and Piledriver. The playing is fine, the riffing and solos are vice-tight, so it does the requisite thrash thing there. The vocals are a not-very-vicious snarl that’s like Vince Neil trying to do thrash, or Steve Souza trying to do Vince Neil. At just under 27 minutes, these nine songs blaze by without much to distinguish one from the other. They all thrash like hell, though every now and then they churn along in a mid-paced bore (“The March”). “The March” is worse than the worst Manowar (and I like Manowar, for the most part). The lyrics are dumb as fuck. This would have gone mostly unnoticed on an old label like Mean Machine or New Renaissance back in the day, so it sure as shit doesn’t measure up now.
— Friar Wagner

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COME SLEEP, The Skull of Ahab  (2004, demo)

The skull:
Man, just when you think you’ve seen the simplest of simple skull album covers, here comes Come Sleep. I very much doubt this is the skull of Ahab, unless he was of the Homo Habilis species, and somehow I think the dude was younger than 1.4 million years old. But hey, Come Sleep have provided artwork that’s beautiful in its simplicity, with the understated band non-logo tattooed across the skull’s left eye. What a hipster.

The music:
This Swedish band rank at about a 5 on the Sludge Boredom Scale. It’s not the boring-est sludge ever, as it has various layers and textures that keep it just a little bit colorful, and some of the vocals are actually emotive in a way that ape-thug shouts can never be. You can tell they’ve studied the requisite Neurosis and Mastodon albums, but ultimately this five-songer does indeed beckon me to slumber. It’s just not my thing, but if you like sludge, there’s lots worse out there, and the band’s obscurity is not quite deserved.
— Friar Wagner

 

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SKULLDEMON, Demons of the Black Abyss  (2005, demo)

The skull:
One of the most obscure pieces in the Skullection, this cover comes from a band buried way down deep in the underground of Finnish black metal. It’s simple as hell, assembled in junior high homeroom, perhaps. Kinda Olde English style font for band name and demo title, with a negative image of a skull slapped onto a particularly un-evil looking background (a pattern more appropriate for bathroom tile than unholy hymns to the dark one). The two tiny horns on top are apparently an attempt at evilness, but it’s all pretty Mickey Mouse level stuff in the end.

The music:
Total one-man band bedroom black metal right here, complete with programmed drums. Buzzing and raw, the songs operate at a variety of tempos (moderate medium tempo to repetitive blasting). The vocals offer slight diversity, the most interesting approach being a hilarious throaty bellow that sounds like a cross between Wizard of Oz’s Wicked Witch and Sam Kinison. Inspired by Burzum and Bathory, no doubt, but not at all inspiring. Pointless, but thanks for the skull, buddy!
— Friar Wagner

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SKULLCRUSH, Skullcrush (2009, self-released)

The skull:
Really, Skullcrush, would it have been so hard to crush the fucking skull? Like, you’re halfway there, guys! You’re not “Tallskull” or “Tophalfofskull,” you’re Skullcrush. Just crush it already! And don’t try to tell me that black area up top is a sign of crushing. That just looks like someone set off some firecrackers on the skull’s forehead. So, next time, keep it simple like this, but get the details right. A crushed skull on a black background, with your crappy typewriter logo on top, just like this one. That’d be perfect.

The music:
It’s not everyday you hear Macedonian metal, and while I was expecting the worst, really, this isn’t so bad. The base formula for Skullcrush is late 80s German thrash of the second-tier: Assassin, Protector, Living Death, that sort of thing. Fast picking, a few inspired riffs, and a lot of the basketball beat, with vocals that are almost hardcore shouting (and in… Macedonian? I guess?) The production isn’t the best, but I’ve made do with less, and the tunes are solid if you don’t care that you’ve heard a hundred others just like them. Hardcore thrashers looking for something new could do a lot worse than to pad out their collections with this sort of thing, and of course you can impress your friends by being able to name a Macedonian thrash band. In any case, this is better than all those lame American and British rethrash bands writing songs about moshing and beer.
— Friar Johnsen

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SIX FEET UNDER, Graveyard Classics (2000, Metal Blade)

The skull:
Two grubby hands hold a skull freshly plucked (it is presumed) from the grave. I do appreciate that the hands are placed in such a posture as to maximize the viewable area of the skull, even though no one would ever pick up a spheroid in that fashion. But perhaps the hands belong to a blind novice bowler groping to find the finger holes. His asshole friends titter in the background as he thinks, “This bowling alley smells awfully peaty, and I think this ball is broken.” Big, dumb, and skullacious, this cover is easily the greatest artistic success of this band’s entire career.

The music:
Six Feet Under were founded at the start on a stupefying premise: “What if you assembled the worst members of Death, Obituary, and Cannibal Corpse to form an all new band?” While there have always (and inexplicably) been Chris Barnes partisans, I’m pretty sure no one ever said or thought the following: “Cause of Death would be SO much better if Alan West was on it,” and “I like Human, but I really miss Terry Butler.” This is basically the worst imaginable band, the literal antipode to excellence, and from day one, they made it their mission to deliver on that promise of musical misery. Still, no hapless listener could have prepared himself for the galactic enormity of Graveyard Classics, an unfathomable covers compilation insulting the hard rock legends who theoretically (if not audibly) influenced this shittiest of bands. It’s bad enough to hear SFU mangle the likes of “Hell’s Bells” or “Purple Haze,” but Savatage? Angel Witch? The Hague has adjudicated atrocities of lesser magnitude. Barnes’s growl, the worst in the history of death metal, is patently without charm or nuance, and he adds absolutely nothing in the way of rhythm or menace to make up for the vocal melodies he displaces. Unadorned by reverb or delay, his flaccid gurgle is the vile mold atop a weeping, rancid cheese. That so many of these songs are slowed down doesn’t sound like an aesthetic choice so much as a necessary one, adopted when it was realized no one could play “Smoke on the Water” at tempo. For as bad as Six Feet Under’s original albums are, Graveyard Classics is unquestionably worse, but in abject defiance of good taste and sanity, it was evidently popular enough to prompt TWO sequels. To everyone who bought this album I feel compelled to say, “You are the worst person in the world.” I mean it.
— Friar Johnsen