CRYSTAL LAKE, Terror Machine (2007, self-released)

The skull:
It’s like, “how much more brown could this be?” and the answer is, “None. None more brown.” Any cover where the background is basically just noise should set off aesthetic alarms. Yes, I can see that there’s some barbed wire in there, and I guess some… pipes? but really, it just looks like a seamless tile for your evil desktop. It appears that the terror machine is really just an apparatus for skull ventilation, which doesn’t seem so sinister to me.

The music:
Modern thrash with death metal production values. Think Krisiun doing Dew Scented covers or something. Yeah, that good. A strong Slayer influences dominates the riffing, but this being a Brazilian band, there’s a thorough undercurrent of much sloppier oldschool shit derived from German sources. Vocals are a joyless barking. The band is tight, but the songs are dull. If you’re the kind of person who’s totally worn out your Carnal Forge discs, then I guess maybe you’d like Crystal Lake, but if you’re really that kind of person, you’re probably too irony deficient to be reading Big Dumb Skulls in the first place.
— Friar Johnsen