SKULL639

Posted on October 1, 2014 by Friar Johnsen

BLOOD TSUNAMI, For Faen! (2013, Indie Recordings)

The skull:
He’s got a mouthful of logo, a fanny pack full of weapons, enough bullets to make, like, two bullet-belts, and a title that invokes Satan in Norwegian. This skull is ready for action! He’ll need some help getting to the action, of course, lacking as he does legs or other means of conveyance, but if you’re willing to carry him, he’ll totally fuck some shit up wherever, whenever! Hey, where are you going? Aren’t you going to take this skull with you? I’m sure he’d really appreciate it. No? Well, fuck you then, the Blood Tsunami skull doesn’t need your fucking charity. Dick.

The music:
Sounding a bit like reunited Destruction but looser, Blood Tsunami bring a lot of speed metal riffs to their thrash metal party, and while there isn’t much of a crossover influence here, the overall vibe leans more toward a DIY/punk aesthetic than the Bay Area nostalgia of your average rethrash band. Maybe they’re just channeling the death/thrash of bands like Destroyer 666 and Desaster. They have some legit black metal pedigree in drummer Faust (ex-Emperor) but the actual black metal content in Blood Tsunami is minimal (though not non-existent). This isn’t bad stuff, and it’s packed with great riffs, but this kind of shambling, fuck-you-all-the-time thrash has never been my cuppa. There’s just something about the attitude that I find offputting, but that’s just a personal thing, and if you like your thrash fast, loud, and rude, then this is probably right up your alley. As an added bonus, the production is refreshingly analog-sounding, without triggered drums or buzzy, overworked guitars. This is bullet-belt metal for sure, and meant for a very specific scene, but if that’s your scene, then you definitely need a piece of this.
— Friar Johnsen

SKULL585

Posted on August 8, 2014 by Friar Johnsen

TANK GENOCIDE, Honor and Blood (2012, demo)

The skull:
At least half of the approximately 400 Tank Genocide demos feature a Big Dumb Skull, but we’ve randomly selected only a couple to showcase the band’s commitment to the form. This is actually not even the original cover of this demo – the original featured a viking skull kind of like the one in the band’s (obviously unreadable) logo. The first cover wasn’t as fully skully as this, but I think it’s worth mentioning. Funny how every Tom, Dick, and Varg wants to stake a claim on pseudo-Norse badassery, even when the Dick in question is a French cunt whose pagan ancestors worshipped a pig and the Gallic equivalent of Hermes, god of travel. Swap out the horns on the helmet for wings, and the braided locks for soft Grecian curls, and you’d hit the mark exactly.

The music:
It galls me (ha!) to even acknowledge this shitbag’s existence in print, but my masters in The Council demand it of me, and I obey. This is ultrashitty bedroom Nazi black metal that’s exceptionally bad even by the standards of the genre. It gives me some solace to know that the men who would overturn the world order in order to murder and enslave minorities are so completely incompetent, but it’s still very, very sad to think there’s someone out there who would write a song called “Anders Breivik is a Hero.” Then again, it’s sort of hilarious that someone would record two different versions of said song: the one on this demo is actually “Anders Breivik is a Hero (Version Doom),” because evidently the original tempo wasn’t sufficient to convey Razor’s admiration for one of the most awful people in the world. Razor, by the way, is the nom-de-plume of the fat, chinless, Vichy jizzhole who evidently has nothing better to do with his house arrest than churn out 24 demos in a year. Fuck this guy and fuck every guy like him.
— Friar Johnsen

SKULL485

Posted on April 30, 2014 by Friar Johnsen

NUCLEAR DEATH TERROR, Ceaseless Desolation (2008, self-released)

The skull:
I could be mistaken, but I think this is the first biohazard symbol admitted into the Skullection. At least, I can’t recall another one. Then again, for as cool as that symbol is, it has obviously been poisoned forever by bandana clad jumpmen from Brooklyn, so it’s not too surprising that most of the metal scene has steered wide of that iconography. In this case, you have to actually look pretty hard to even make it out, under the horns, spikes, sword and septagram. What, they couldn’t squeeze in a radiation symbol and a chaos star? It’s especially funny that a band called Nuclear Death Terror would opt for the biohazard symbol over the radiation symbol, but hey, these guys are anarchists and they do what they like!

The music:
This is straight-up Scandinavian d-beat, and while that’s not normally my thing, there’s something weirdly appealing about this. It sounds like Bolt Thrower doing Discharge covers, and the singer bears a more-than-slight vocal resemblance to the mighty Martin van Drunen. Sure, every song is pretty much the same, and that tiring d-beat beat dominates, but the guitar tone is sharp, the songs are intense, and at just over 10 minutes, this EP knows exactly how long it’s welcome. This is a long out of print demo CD, and while I could download the tunes from Bandcamp, I probably won’t, even though I enjoyed listening to them well enough, because I doubt this would have any staying power for me, but just the fact that this assignment wasn’t torture amounts to a ringing endorsement.
— Friar Johnsen

SKULL466

Posted on April 11, 2014 by Friar Wagner

POWERGOD, Evilution Part I (1999, Massacre)

The skull:
A custom-assembled fruit-and-nuts basket to the first Big Dumb Skulls reader who can identify what’s supposed to be happening here. I cannot decipher the meaning. All I see is a floating skull whose dome is so round that it looks more like a skull-shaped baseball than a baseball-shaped skull. This curious skull hovers in a sea of blue sky, surrounded by angels who could be emissaries of evil or good — they’re too small to really say for sure. I’ll go with evil. And the sword, well, its hilt in the foreground seems positioned to place some kind of importance on it, yet I cannot for the life of me figure out its purpose. The skull can’t possibly wield it (no arms or hands!), and the angels seem more concerned with the skull, flying about him like moths around a light bulb. The sword just sits there lonesome: “Hey, look at me! Somebody wield me! Anybody? Anybody up for some sword-wieldin’?” No takers. Very sad.

The music:
Powergod released five albums in a semi-confusing set of two series’: Three installments of this Evilution thing and two in the awkwardly-titled That’s Metal Lesson series. The latter are covers albums. This is the first installment of Evilution. What Powergod serves up is tough-as-nails heavy metal you’d expect from a German band in the late ’90s: equal parts Dio, Judas Priest, Helloween, Megadeth and Accept, modernized by relentless double bass and crystal-clear production. The vocalist is annoyingly whiny, the drum sound so “perfect” that its cold and brittle, and the aesthetic is too dumbed-down. What’s more, Powergod gets stuck between speedy power metal glory and knuckleheaded trad-metal way too often. In fact, dullard cock-rock anthem “No Brain No Pain” is truly, well, brainless. If you’re still buying new Hammerfall albums, you desperately miss Metalium and your favorite label is Pure Steel, then you need this in your collection. You probably already have it in your collection. All others: bust out those Lost Horizon albums again and forget about Powerglob.
— Friar Wagner

SKULL449

Posted on March 25, 2014 by Friar Johnsen

MARK LOWREY, Rusty Mark in the Metal Palace (1985, self-released)

The skull:
When you think of Jack and the Beanstalk, you think about the giant up top, but did you ever stop to consider how fucking big those beans must have been? And if the race of giants cultivated giant legumes, they might well have also grown giant corn, and would probably have invented two prong cob holders so their giant children wouldn’t burn their fingers. To a terrestrial human, these might have looked like swords. Pictured on this album cover is one of the sad predecessors to Jack, who stumbled into the giant’s home sometime in late June, early July and was rather quickly impaled on a corn holder by some impetuous giant toddler. It’s a shitty way to go, no doubt.

The music:
Workmanlike U.S. metal of the sort that padded the space between the great tracks on the early Metal Massacre albums. Think Tyrant, Pandemonium, Thrust, that sort of thing. Totally boring, but accomplished enough that surely someone thinks this is a lost classic. Someone from Austria, probably. Someone with a lot of money, at least, because this album, when it shows up, sells for at least a couple hundred bucks. Go figure. The cover art and impossibly bad title made me suspect that this was some kind of Metal Enterprises quickie release, but no, it appears that Mark Lowrey, a vocalist of no special skill, just really felt his work needed to be heard, so he pressed these up himself. No one from the backing band ever did anything else, but considering there are not one but two guys named “Rusty” in the lineup, I suspect that maybe some pseudonyms were used. If I were an L.A. session dude, I certainly wouldn’t want to be associated with Mark Lowrey. I have a certain fondness for plodding early metal like this (I own 3rd Stage Alert on CD, for fuck’s sake), but even by my relaxed standards this is dull stuff, like Twisted Sister without a sense of humor (and Dee Snider). That most of these songs are about or even include “metal” in the title is just an additional kick in the balls. Lowrey deserves some special award for his lack of irony, though: “Unsung Song” is not an instrumental, and the album’s instrumental is titled “Purple Pyramid.” That’s the kind of brilliant nonsense that no snarky reviewer could make up on his own.
— Friar Johnsen

SKULL413

Posted on February 17, 2014 by Friar Johnsen

SINISTER REALM, The Crystal Eye (2011, Shadow Kingdom)

The skull:
This is the best kind of bad Photoshoppery, the kind that makes a cheap photo look even cheaper in the service of adding a sword and a glowing gem (I guess that’s the crystal eye?) It would have been easy for the artist to toss in some swirling brown background, or some lightning bolts or fire or something, but no, he kept it simple, kept it true. Black background, slightly out-of-focus skull, big sword that appears to mysterious emanate from the side of said skull, and some highly lame typography. While it would of course have been preferable to actually assemble all these pieces and shoot them in situ, even The Council realizes that modern metal bands are highly budget-constrained and are therefore willing to overlook any shortcut that nevertheless yields such a ridiculous Big Dumb Skull. The Crystal Eye: it’s gonna getcha!

The music:
Sinister Realm, previously featured all they way back at SKULL35, work in the medium of mid-paced true metal, a la latter day Dio (with some nods to early Jag Panzer as well). And like Dio’s last however many albums, Sinister Realm suffers for lack of variation in tempo (especially for lack of any real upbeat numbers) but they more or less make it work on the strength of the songs and singing. Vocalist Alex Kristoff has a powerful, meaty voice that commands respect and brings focus to the songs even when a few more ass-kicking riffs wouldn’t have hurt. Of the three Sinister Realm full-length albums, I’d say The Crystal Eye is the best by a nose, thanks largely to the harmonic depth of songs like “The Tower is Burning,” and if you like similar American bands like Argus or Jag Panzer (at their slowest), then Sinister Realm are likely to twist your nipples as well.
— Friar Johnsen

SKULL257

Posted on September 14, 2013 by Friar Johnsen

UNDERLORD, Rise of the Ancient Kings (2003, Rage of Achilles)

The skull:
I do love these covers that feature literally every evil metal signifier possible, crammed into one disjointed composition. A pentagram, upside down crosses (on fire, naturally), crazy swords, occult symbols, and of course a seriously regal skull in the midst of it all. As with the nouveau riche, this nouveau mal skull is just a bit too ostentatious in his displays of malevolence. You just know he drives some fancy luxury hearse with the vanity plate, “EVLSKLL”, and he just never takes that fucking crown off. How else would you know how royally sinister he is?

The music:
An even mix of first and second wave black metal, Underlord offer no surprises and nothing new. The playing is remarkably crisp, considering how shitty the recording is, but the riffs are dime-a-dozen Venom, Bathory and Mayhem knockoffs, with the obligatory croaking vocals and lyrics about war, Satan, and ancient wisdom and what have you. If you think of Hellhammer as more than just the shitty band that eventually became Celtic Frost, or you think Sodom peaked with In the Sign of Evil, then maybe Underlord will tweak your nipples just right.
— Friar Johnsen

SKULL252

Posted on September 9, 2013 by Friar Wagner

BLACK JACK, Five Pieces of Eight (1985, Metal For Melbourne)

The skull:
This is the second skull cover I’ve seen this week that includes a hovering pistol. (And that’s a sentence I have never before typed in my life.) But everything’s levitating here: the gun, the sword, the skull itself — although skulls do lots of floating around these parts. The image is made complete by the headband, earring and eyepatch, even if the latter is functionless on a skull. The dude is clearly out for revenge, ready to kill those who glanced that cannonball off his head and took some bone off the top. And check out the extra contrivance of an ear bone, an artistic prosthesis of sorts, so the skull could sport an earring. Muhfugga’s crazy! This skull has all the goods to rape and pillage on the high seas…except a ship.

The music:
Back in 1983 when Running Wild were still singing about evil, hell, and the occult, this band from Melbourne, Australia quietly invented the genre that Running Wild gets credited with founding: pirate metal. Their ’83 demo flys the Jolly Roger right there on the tape cover and features songs like “Crusader’s Revenge” and “Spanish Lover,” back when Rock ‘n’ Rolf’s only knowledge of a “Jolly Roger” was the gay bar down the street in Hamburg. Black Jack released this EP in 1985 and continued the pirate theme. “Man at Arms” is doom-laden and dirgy, with some loping, soaring guitar leads, and the guy’s pretty good, although the song itself meanders. They pick up the pace on “Highwayman’s Inn” (clunky NWOBHM-style stuff) while “Hot Rocket” pairs terrible lyrics with even worse vocals. The playing is sufficient, and the lead guitarist better than that. The energy is high too, but the recording is downright dire. A bit of a shambles, really, and something for only the most indiscriminate lover of metal obscurities. Ultimately its 25 minutes soar by in a fog of uselessness. On a historical basis, you gotta hail Black Jack, the true founders of Pirate Metal! (Or “Damn you Black Jack!” if you think the whole pirate metal thing is totally fucking silly.)
— Friar Wagner

SKULL169

Posted on June 18, 2013 by Friar Johnsen

EMERALD STEEL, Emerald Steel (1990, Woodstock Discos)

The skull:
First you’re like, “What’s the worst he can do? Bite me? I can handle one fucking skull in a fight,” and then he shows up armed to the (grinning) teeth, and you’re like, “Aw, shit!”

The music:
How on earth have I never heard this before? I knew the name, and based on the cover, I assumed they were crappy NWOBHM. Instead, they’re more like a crappy Crimson Glory knock-off, which is exactly my kind of crap. Singer Wagner Geronymo (obviously his real name), a Brazilian transplant to Florida, has a strong, piercing high voice, and he delivers his lines with exactly the overblown theatricality you want in an act like this. His pitch sometimes doesn’t quite hit the mark, especially when he harmonizes, but when he lands it, he sounds great. The songs are not classics for the ages (see: “Sex Metal”), but they’re certainly better than a lot of other US power metal bands from the late 80s, comparing favorably with early Heir Apparent, Oracle, Sacred Oath, or others in that vein. If, like me, you already own all the classics, and all the second-tier guilty pleasures, and then all of the third tier junk from the heyday of American melodic metal, then it’s time to open a new tab, bring up eBay, and find yourself a Hot Metal bootleg of Emerald Steel, yet another band that deservedly fell through the cracks but is still kind of okay.
— Friar Johnsen