Tag Archives: yellow

SKULL589

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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

SKULL378

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VESPER, Possession of Evil Will  (2010, Düsterwald Produktionen)

The skull:
Although this design is striking and wholly professional, we really wish this skull were bigger. Lots of wasted space with that whole huge area of black and dark rust red. It’s perhaps the yellowest skull and crossbones we’ve ever seen, and the logo looks like it was done by whoever designed the Usurper logo. But yeah, bigger skull next time, Vesper. You’re on notice!

The music:
With the vaguely Nifelheim-ish look (album cover and the band members themselves), and also with the Agonia-style album cover design, we really expected a slab of drunken blackdeaththrashing madness here. And that’s what we got! All the usual influences rear their heads: Venom, Bulldozer, Sodom…you know the deal, you know the sound, you don’t really need to hear this to know exactly what it sounds like. They’re musically adept, especially the drummer, but really, it’s a lot of the same old, same old. And the lyrics, man, I know this is metal, and I can hang, but songs like “Analfisted by Satan” and “Sex Slave Zombie” set the stupid-bar at an astonishingly low level.
— Friar Wagner

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MARK EDWARDS, Code of Honor (1985, Metal Blade)

The skull:
“Warning: Drums Ahead”

The music:
It’s hard to imagine a less-essential release from 1985 than this four track instrumental EP from the drummer in Steeler. It’s not that it’s bad — it’s perfectly serviceable Shrapnel Records style shred stuff (like the filler tracks from Tony MacAlpine or Vinnie Moore) — but really, what’s the point? At least all those guitar hero albums were full of noodly solos, which hold their own appeal (I guess). It’s not like Code of Honor is a showcase for mindblowing drumming, and Edwards only claims a couple of songwriting credits, to boot. His playing is capable, maybe better than most metal dudes in 1985, but nothing more. He even ropes in another drummer (session dude Greg Bissonette) to play some ludicrously dated electronic drums on two tunes, the second being a cover of Cozy Powell’s “Dance With the Devil,” which is itself basically just a drum-centric rewrite of Hendrix’s “Third Stone from the Sun”. Edwards would later enjoy some hairy success in Lion (and in fact, the only CD release of Code of Honor is a 2-for-1 with Lion’s debut EP), but he peaked artistically on Riot’s Thundersteel; Edward tracked four songs for that album before Bobby Jarzombek joined the band. And actually, the 3rd Stage Alert EP released in 1984 is pretty good, too. So, I suppose you could say that Mark Edwards is the Drummer King of half albums, but that’s really not saying much, is it? And of his half albums, this one is maybe the fourth best? Praise comes no fainter.
— Friar Johnsen

SKULL240

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FEAST FOR THE CROWS, When All Seems to Be Burned  (2007, Bastardized Recordings)

The skull:
For once my attention is not on the skull itself, but on the nonsense idea/graphics happening below. These two guys (identical twins, apparently) are talking simultaneously, saying “when all seems to be burned.” Very pessimistic, boys. They look dopey with their heads maned with what looks like yellow fire or sunflower petals. I’ll go with sunflower petals, just for fun. The skull itself, well he’s just hanging out above these guys, his ear holes having sprouted dragons and sporting wings behind him. You know how it is. Happens all the time. These wings apparently have no practical purpose for either skull or dragon. An ugly mess of yellow, this cover, with a concept that’s pretty much random nonsense without any meaning whatsoever. And yes indeed, I am looking for PROFOUND meaning in these skull covers! Maybe that’s the problem.

The music:
For a band who I’ve seen labelled as both “melodic death metal” and “metalcore,” I will give Feast For The Crows props: they are certainly melodic and deathly enough to qualify as “melodic death metal,” and if they’re “metalcore,” they certainly have equal amounts of metal and, uh, “core” to skate by. It’s not really my sort of thing, especially when they get into the slower breakdowns (as within “Abandon”) but they’re quite good at what they’re trying to achieve. The performances are all strong, although the drums sound much too fake/plastic. Getting further into the guts of this album, this is almost the missing link between Odium and Feel Sorry For the Fanatic that Morgoth failed to deliver. You know, that kind of German metal that sits in a genre-less nether-region, borrowing bits of this and bits of that and ending up with precision attack cold metal. F.F.T.C. give it a more modern/generic twist, but that’s the general wheelhouse this thing sits in.
— Friar Wagner