Tag Archives: snakes

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WEAPON, Embers and Revelations (2012, Relapse)

The skull:
Sometimes we at Skull HQ complain about covers jammed up with just too much shit, but here’s a fine example of maximalism done right. Let’s start with the snakes: usually when you see a symmetrical design like this, the snakes are an obvious cut and paste job. But if that’s the case here, the artist at least went to some lengths to make sure each snake looked like his own serpent. For that matter, most artists would have just doubled that wolf, but here the artist wisely went with a tiger/wolf thing. The circle behind the skull is unique the whole way around, the crown is actually lighted, hell even the horns are distinct (and while it looks goofy, I appreciate the more realistically goat-like placement thereof.) The skull looks childish, which is a motif we always appreciate here, and the background is nicely textured and NOT BROWN. Really, there is basically nothing to complain about here, except that what the hell does any of this have to do with embers or revelations?

The music:
If Rebel Extravaganza-era Satyricon and Covenant-era Morbid Angel had a demon skull love child, it might sound like Embers and Revelations. That’s a good thing! This is a rather excellent black/death metal album that might lean a bit more heavily in the black direction, but is still supremely heavy and riffy after the fashion of the best death metal. The songs show variety and even some genuine imagination (the phased-out ending of “Disavowing Each in Aum” is so cool I listened to it three times!); the production is stellar, and the performances all around are top notch. Though it’s rare that I really crave this sort of thing, this is exactly what I’d want to hear when I do (assuming I can’t find my copy of Old Mand’s Child’s In Defiance of Existence, at least). There are a ton of bands on Relapse that I can’t stand, but that’s almost always because I don’t care for the specific type of music. Damned near every band on that label works at the highest levels of its respective subgenre, and Weapon is a sterling example of that. Shame that the band broke up after this, but what an exit!
— Friar Johnsen

SKULL553

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LUTHOR, A Shadow Out of Time (2012, self-released)

The skull:
There’s a lot going on here, but are those horns made out of snakes? Because that would be pretty awesome! Not awesome enough to redeem this mess of a cover, probably, but it couldn’t hurt. Rainbow covers like this are maybe even worse than brown covers. I mean, this was obviously meant to be brown all over, but someone, maybe the artist, maybe the band, realized near the end that they were looking at a very lame brown cover, and they tried to fix it by inexplicably adding some more color, like throwing a green gel over the projector when Frankenstein appears on screen. This is not a solution. The solution is to recompose the entire scene in a way that allows for a realistic spectrum of colors. You can’t just spray paint your lame brown cover and call it a day. It doesn’t work that way! And anyway, the reason this cover is a BDS is probably just that no one in the band could really parse Lovercraft’s descriptions of the Elder Race. We should be looking at a Big Dumb Rugose Cone, possibly the first of its kind, and yet here we are, puzzling over the 553rd Big Dumb Skull. I’d say that’s a hell of a missed opportunity.

The music:
From my years spent in the prog metal trenches, I know this type of band well. All these dudes probably grew up on Queensryche and that sort of operatic progressive metal, but when Nevermore came out, they realized the days of Mindcrime-worship were over, and they’d have to heavy up if they wanted to get anywhere. A huge part of the Nightmare Records catalog documents this phenomenon. That’s not to say that these bands are bad. Plenty of them are fine, maybe even good. But I think at the core, there’s a compromise in evidence here that taints the work in some fundamental way, if you know where to look. Or maybe it’s just me. Anyway, Luthor are pretty good at what they do, musically at least. Their singer is another story. Despite a Halford-esque range, his voice is charmless, his melodies dull, and his lyrics painfully on-the-nose, plus he’s very loud in the mix. As you might have guessed from the title, this is a concept EP based on the H.P. Lovecraft story of (almost) the same name, and if you bother to listen to the words you’ll get a Cliff’s Notes summary of the plot. As a concept album, this is about as successful as Nostradamus, although it has the benefit of brevity – it’s under 20 minutes long. There are some fine riffs scattered about here, the playing is tight, and the production is top notch, but I just can’t get excited by Luthor. They do show some potential, and maybe I’ll check out their new album, because if they can get their singer under control, they could probably do some damage. Maybe.
— Friar Johnsen

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NEAL SMITH, Killsmith Two (2011, Kachina)

The skull:
This looks like a circus tent design, more specifically something lugged around by a traveling county fair troupe. You know, the kind of thing worked exclusively by chain-smoking ex-con rednecks  You can see this fearsome image (cough cough) on the tent with a barker at the entrance: “Ladies and gentlemen and children of all ages, step right up! See the amazingriffic, terrifispendous Neal Smith, banging drums and singing songs of skulls and snakes to give you the shakes! The original rocker, straight from the pits of Hell, sent to thrill and chill, only one dollar bill! Oh, what a shriek! Step right this way folks, step right this way…”

The music:
Had Neal Smith not been part of the original Alice Cooper group, people would laugh this shit off as the lunk-headed cock-rock sleaze that it is. This is terrible. It’s easy to throw the “Spinal Tap” insult toward any bad band playing super-dumb heavy metal or hard rock, but in this case it’s a completely accurate comparison. “Strip Down,” “Legend of Viper Company,” “Evil Voodoo Moon”…every one of these songs is dreck. Check out the video for “Squeeze Like a Python.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nO22Ttr_adM
See? Maybe Killsmith One is the masterpiece, I dunno.
— Friar Wagner

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THRALL, Vermin to the Earth  (2011, Moribund)

The skull:
Thrall not only love the skull, but they love the skull with snakes knotting themselves in and out of various cavities within our favorite boney body part. This one is a little more complex than the other Thrall art we featured way back in Skull183. While we like to take shots at all the stupid artwork that comes our way in this project, there’s nothing here to poke fun of. It’s a seriously great piece of art, and this Friar is especially down with the black blood dripping out of the skull’s eye sockets. Totally morbid.

The music:
I’d heard of Thrall quite a bit over the years, but never actually gave the band a listen until today. The first thing my ear goes to is the quality of the sounds. Not so much the songs, but the overall atmosphere. Thrall achieve an interesting sonic aesthetic: the guitars
are crisp and earthy, the drums dry and raw (but not dinky), the bass pumps out at just the right level, and the vocals are layed over everything perfectly, neither dominant nor buried. Other than a few minor effects on the vocals, everything sounds unadorned. Where that
might otherwise be a criticism (I dig studio manipulation), Thrall makes it work. It betrays a leaning toward traditional hard rock values, although Thrall don’t necessarily rock (well, “Plague of Man” sorta does). They don’t hide behind a ton of reverb or other effects, because they have the playing capability to twist sounds and melodies into otherworldly things without needing to overuse effects. But are the songs good? They’re okay. Something like “Oblivion” is even more than okay, featuring a couple interesting riffs. It partly exhumes the old-school simplicity of Bathory and Darkthrone, but with a kind of inspired intellectualism that resides in the realm of a band like Deathspell Omega, yet not quite that complex or tangled. Basically, Thrall straddles the line that separates ancient black metal and more modern approaches. I can continue to live without it — there’s probably not a metal sub-genre I’m pickier about than black metal — but I know a lot of people really like this band, and I can totally understand why.
— Friar Wagner

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BLACK FLAME, Septem  (2011, Behemoth Productions)

The skull:
I tend to think of skulls as male for some reason, but who really knows the gender of these boneheads we’re evaluating? Four-hundred thirty-four skulls in and this is the first time one immediately strikes me as female. Possibly, in part, due to its modest size and reasonable proportion, but more because the skull looks like it belongs to Medusa, the Greek Gorgon whose main claim to fame was having snakes where her hair should be. Which begs the question: does the carpet match the drapes? It doesn’t appear that this artwork will be helpful in answering that timeless query. However, I do think I see a clue, or some kind of symbolism, in that triangle. Am I right, guys?

The music:
There are so many Italian metal bands with large discographies that no one knows much about. That’s largely because there are a ton of Italian metal bands that are technically very good at their chosen sub-genre (black metal, black/death, thrash and power metal being especially popular there), but deficient when it comes to having an engaging, distinctive musical voice. And many of these bands sound like mere analogs of more globally-recognized, non-Italian bands. This leads us to Septem, who have been around since 1998 and, unsurprisingly, are pretty okay but nothing more. They deliver a cruel, believable mesh of death and black metal, something that draws from the old Greek black metal scene and the Norwegian masters as much as it does more modern, precision sorts of sounds (think Behemoth). Sometimes they sound like Samael if they had continued down the dark path of Ceremony of Opposites instead of going the martial/industrial route. Sometimes they sound like Root if Root had suddenly decided to play with the intensity and adopt the robust production values of Vader instead of taking the progressive/eccentric path. But usually they just sound like they want to be Behemoth — and what modern death/black band doesn’t secretly wish they were Behemoth? Thing is, Black Flame don’t even make it a secret. It’s all there on Septem, right out in the open. What’s more: they’re signed to a label named Behemoth Productions. You can’t make this shit up. — Friar Wagner

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SIX FEET UNDER, Death Rituals (2008, Metal Blade)

The skull:
Florida’s Six Feet Under have been one of the major upholders of skull album cover artwork since they arrived on the scene in the mid ’90s. Hail to them for that! Skull #51 is their first appearance in the Skullection, and while several other SFU covers could be inducted, we tend to limit a band’s inductions to two or three max. Commandments is another worthy one, and they have a couple others that might pass muster too. We’ve decided to add 2008’s Death Rituals into the Skullection. It’s a dandy. It takes a very traditional/generic looking skull as its base and adds a bunch of snakes and other reptilian looking creatures flying every which way out of the skull. Clearly a take on Greek mythology’s Medusa. The skull looks pretty happy about the whole thing too! Whoever designed this didn’t bother to throw any color at the image. Just stark black and white. Appropriate for the band’s musical approach.

The music:
This album starts off like any given Metal Blade album circa 1985, a tranquil, minor key bit of picking that melts into a foreboding doom-laden passage before…aw, darn it, it’s more generic Six Feet Under death metal. But that first minute? Great! I love Massacre and always found Six Feet Under an attempt at the Massacre sound. “Attempt,” I said. They also treat us to a cover of Motley Crue’s “Bastard,” which, if you’re familiar with 6FU’s  Graveyard Classics cover album series, you’ll not need to be told that it’s completely ridiculous thanks to Chris Barnes. Barnes is a lousy excuse for a death metal vocalist and has been since the first Cannibal Corpse album, and he sounds even worse doing cover songs. Thanks for all the skull album covers over the years fellas!
— Friar Wagner