Monthly Archives: August 2013

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REFLESHED, Drown the Sky (2010, self-released)

The skull:
Like the snake who eats his own tail, the ouroboros of legend, this cheesy skull guy feasts on his own spine (plus assorted anatomically incorrect muscle tissue). At least, I’m assuming it’s his own spine. There’s a lot of vertebrae implied out of frame, so for all I know this is some sort of Skullish circle jerk. This guy certainly looks depraved enough to be into that kind of stuff. Look at those leering eyeballs! He’s like, “Aw yeah, give it to me! Gimme that spine!” Not that I’m passing judgment. What a skull does in the privacy of his own brownish hellscape is his own business.

The music:
Refleshed are German, but they really want to be Swedish. Like, really, really badly. You can hear the Boss HM-2 in every scuzzy riff. Entombed and Carnage are the touchpoints here, and while Refleshed aren’t even pretending to be doing anything new, they do this old sound pretty well. In fact, they fare the poorest when they deviate from the Stockholm sound, as when they occasionally throw in a half-assed Gothenburg riff, none of which are particularly inspired. Metal Archives describes this band as Deathcore, but judging only from this EP, that label is totally unwarranted. Maybe they added breakdowns on a later release, but here, they’re just trudging down the left hand path. There’s not much more to say, really, except what everyone is already thinking: these guys should TOTALLY tour with Defleshed.
— Friar Johnsen

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ARBITRATER, Darkened Reality  (1993, Cyclone)

The skull:
Looks like North America is suffering an impossibly gigantic pimple of bone; a hellish, ugly growth that North America does not want its neighbors in Europe and Africa to see. It better wear a baseball cap when it goes out. Added bonus is the reflection of the upper teeth in the water.

The music:
Thrash metal from the UK was a dicey proposition even in the genre’s heyday of 1987/1988, so the prospect of listening to some obscure UK thrash band’s second album from 1993 is a grim one. Surprisingly, this is not half bad. Which means it’s about half good. And only half good. The guitar tone is appropriately fried, and there are moments that compare favorably to early Xentrix or Dyoxen (although “compare favorably to Xentrix” is not necessarily a compliment in my world). The vocals are incredibly average, but this being UK thrash, you expect that. There’s not a lot of super-fast stuff here either — Arbitrater take their time with their thrashing. But listen long enough and you’ll find a scattering of semi-potent riffs that a Bay Area band like Defiance would surely have liked to co-opt (“Deadline,” “No Second Chance”). Unfortunately, songs like “Suicide Commercially” (huh?) and “Guilty of No Crime” offer nothing of use. And I’m referencing bands like Xentrix, Dyoxen and Defiance, so you see that this is decent at best — hardly mandatory thrash. You also see where this sits in the thrash hierarchy — decide for yourself if you need to track it down or not.
— Friar Wagner

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DEFCON, Flat Black Philosophy (2010, Bit Riot)

The skull:
We’ve seen skulls in niches before, but this is the first metaloskull in a technoniche (such as would fittingly honor this guy). And while the skull is obviously just spray painted, I have to say, I’m at least a little impressed by the composition here. Someone came up with the marginally interesting idea to reframe this ancient scene in modern, post-industrial trappings, and it works. Sadly, the cover doesn’t make any sense in the context of the title, but at least there is, as I shall presently explain, a thematic bridge from the cover to the music.

The music:
Remember Circle of Dust? Of course you don’t. They were a Christian industrial metal band on the REX label (along with Believer!) who released three moderately good albums in the early/mid-90s before main dude Scott Albert ran off to do an album or two with frat magician Criss Angel (called Angeldust, get it?) Now he’s working the dubstep circuit as Celldweller. What does this have to do with Defcon? Absolutely nothing! Well, except that Defcon sounds, to these ears, identical to Circle of Dust. And that’s not a bad thing. Industrial metal is notoriously hard to pull off; many have tried, but few have succeeded in blending what seems eminently blendable. The fundamental problem, I think, is that the dancier demands of industrial require steadier beats and less variation in the arrangements compared to metal, where the best bands tend to cycle through a lot of riffs and rhythms. Finding the middle ground is obviously harder than it would appear, and groups that fail tend to sound like half-assed KMFDM tribute acts, which is to say, most fail on the side of the side of industrial. Sometimes Defcon falls into this trap, and the Ministry lifts are many, but for the most part, Defcon makes the formula work. Their programming is appropriately sinister, and the riffs, while not especially creative, are at least properly metallic. I’m even occasionally reminded of Passage-era Samael. Defcon aren’t about to dethrone Pitch Shifter as the greatest industrial metal group of all time, but considering how rare a beast is the enjoyable industrial metal album, Flat Black Philosophy is a welcome addition to the canon.
— Friar Johnsen

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DAWN OF DEMISE, Hate Takes Its Form  (2007, Deepsend)

The skull:
Skull with industrial haute couture mohawk: a mane of hooks, knives and various rusty
implements that look like parts of an old farm tractor, all arranged elaborately atop the bony noggin. The skull is mounted on a kind of large industrial drill bit looking thing. This is a pretty fancy skull as metal skull go, even if adorned with all this dangerous-looking machinery. The way the skull’s head is tilted, it looks as if he’s having real trouble carrying all the weight that sits on top of his cranium.

The music:
Even amongst the zillions of brutal death metal bands and albums that come and go, this
Danish band received an unusual amount of hype and praise when this album was released. That might have had something to do with the presence of ex-Infernal Torment vocalist Scott Jensen, his prior band infamous for their ridiculously depraved lyrics that made Cannibal Corpse stanzas read like a Bon Jovi hit. Basically, Dawn Of Demise has lineage that goes back to influential bands and albums in that whole gore/porn/ultra-“broodal” universe. Thus, Hate Takes It Form is mono-maniacal one-dimensional modern brutal death metal with pig grunt “bree bree shredded wheeeeat!!!” vox. Which means, as well-played and professionally-delivered as this album is, I couldn’t care less.
— Friar Wagner

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THE CHASM, Procession to the Infraworld (2000, Dwell)

The skull:
I suppose this could be a trick of perspective, where a human-sized skull is very close and merely appears to be floating at the center of a nebula, but I think it’s more likely we’re to believe the skull is actually big enough to fill that glowing interstellar cloud of gas and dust, spanning many hundreds of light years. That would make this, easily, the biggest dumb skull we’ve ever encountered in art before. His massive forehead is cracked open to reveal a third eye which itself must be larger than the largest stars. If this guy is at the gate of the infraworld, you’re gonna need some serious sci-fi shit onboard your spacecraft to escape his almost unimaginable gravity. And god help you if that third eye shoots laser beams, as I presume it must! Normally, The Council frowns upon skeletons, but the ban on skeletons is primarily meant to apply to the actual big dumb skull. The two skinny guys here are effectively adornment to the title typography, and so are allowed.

The music:
Mixing Morbid Angel style DM with thrash and black elements, and with a melodic sensibility not unlike early Dark Tranquillity, The Chasm are one of the few extreme bands mixing so many sounds who also do it convincingly. There’s some absolutely crazy riffing on Procession to the Underworld, and some gonzo drumming, and it’s all performed honestly, with a rawness that charms by comparison with today’s ultra-quantized, mercilessly-edited death metal. Back in my zine days, when this album came out, I got a promo copy and I remember thinking it was way better than the logo and art would suggest, but I guess in the crush of free stuff I got back then, I never got around to buying a proper copy or keeping up with the (still-active) band, even despite seeing them live a couple times. This was probably a mistake, as I’ve thoroughly enjoyed revisiting The Chasm and am newly impressed by the passion and even originality on display here.
— Friar Johnsen

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BURDEN OF GRIEF, Haunting Requiems  (2000, Point Music)

The skull:
Dirty, wretched, aged skull hangs eerily in the fog, leering and sneering. It’s the eyes that deliver the creeps: where the pupils would have been there are instead threads of blue electric energy. “Electric eye…in the sky…feel my stare…always there.” What could have been a dull and dumb cover is actually rendered well enough to convey the dread it’s supposed to. Gaze upon its countenance and shudder. Well done.

The music:
For those who lament that “melodic death metal” now means “anemic weak metalcore” versus what the originators of the form intended (early In Flames, early Dark Tranquillity, Eucharist, etc.), Burden Of Grief are here to fly the flag. More Sacramentum than Soilwork, these Germans sound Swedish as hell. The vocals throughout Haunting Requiems recall the scathing tones of early Mikael Stanne (Dark Tranquillity) and the music goes there too, along with a healthy shot of every-era At The Gates. This is like the missing link between early At The Gates and the refinement they underwent on Terminal Spirit Disease — all shimmering, haunting, minor key riffs and melodies, screaming vocals, and a triumphant, Maiden-esque sort of vibe, arranged more consisely than early At The Gates yet not quite as stripped down and ferocious as AtG would become. There’s even a cover of Iron Maiden’s “Prowler” here. The comparisons to better and better-known bands tells you Burden Of Grief are second-tier (“Smashed to Pieces” is so close to early Dark Tranquillity that it can be called a rip-off), but it’s certainly some of the better second-tier melodic death metal you’ll come across. Worth checking out if your hunger for the sound of real melodic death metal takes you out of Sweden and out of the ’90s.
— Friar Wagner

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BEYOND THE SILENCE, Soulless Entity (2010, self-released)

The skull:
A snake crawling out of a socket, a giant eyeball, and a logo that screams “crappy deathcore,” this is clearly a cover that takes sucking very seriously. Rendered in the government-issued browns and yellows that are the official colors of BDS nation, this skull futher attempts to gild the shitty lily with some kind of faux-halftone screen effect, for some reason. Probably because the guy who was tasked with assembling the disparate elements of this ur-generic cover just learned how to do it in Photoshop. “This will look great in my portfolio, and will demonstrate to clients and employers my facility with the many functions of CS5,” you can practically read in a thought bubble above some terrible designer’s head. Translated from the original French, of course.

The music:
Super sloppy melodic death metal with gurgly, low, brutal death metal growls, Beyond the Silence appear to be trying to inject some early 90s style Swedish death metal into the melodic framework of modern deathcore. This is neither a good idea nor defly executed. The drummer is the hapless hero here: he consistently reaches for beats and fills well beyond his ability, and his constant flubbing lends the music a shot of honest naivety. He never elevates the proceedings to even the lowest reaches of what could be considered “good,” but there’s something about an old-fashioned Russian Dragon that delights the death metal nostalgist in me. The breakdowns and the burpy vocals, however, dispel that goodwill rather quickly, as do the utterly generic riffs. Beyond the Silence emerged from the French ether to issue this lone EP in 2010 and have evidently done nothing since, so I can now attempt to revert to my natural state of not knowing or caring about them.
— Friar Johnsen

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SPIDER KICKERS, Recognize the Corpse  (2001, self-released)

The skull:
Now how are we supposed to recognize the corpse when there’s nothing but a partial skull and petrified French fries strewn about? That’s nothing to go on — everybody eats French fries! It doesn’t help that this is viewed through some kind of infra-red lens or something. Nope, not gonna be any corpse-recognizing happening here today. Whaddya think we are, CSI or some shit?

The music:
What an incredibly stupid band name. Taken literally, these guys must be jerks if they go around kicking spiders. I’d like to see them kick something a bit less defenseless and puny, like a scorpion, or a badger. They’re from Greece, so maybe something’s getting lost in translation here. These guys wallowed in demo/self-release purgatory until the Sleaszy Rider label came calling in 2007, although even that doesn’t seem to have raised their profile much. It’s probably because their music skirts that crowded line where hundreds of others sit, thrashing away furiously, shouting about alcohol, sodomy and death. Speaking of death, the Kickers play thrash metal that sits on the death metal side, comprising a true death/thrash synthesis, for whatever that’s worth to you. Now and again a sneaky, snaky, cool thematic lead line will emerge out of these songs, and I like the conviction with which the vocals are spit out, and they’re pretty tight and ferocious…but in the final analysis, it’s competent yet nothing-special sort of stuff. Investigate further only if you must…you gullible metalhead, you. — Friar Wagner

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BENEDICTION, Subconscious Terror  (1990, Nuclear Blast)

The skull:
This one rules. The skull is big enough to qualify its inclusion into the BDS Skullection, but its placement is subtle compared to everything else going on. First are the upraised arms, clearly not part of the skull, but a suggestion of murder-by-big-ass-knife. These arms threaten to plunge the knife into the middle of the island at the bottom of the image — the island just happening to have the profile of a human face. Floating in the ocean. Looking like a face. About to get stabbed. We’re not sure what’s happening here, but we like it. And then they fly the awful/awesome Benediction logo in red and yellow above all this. Voila! A pleasing if cluttered eyesore. Personally, I love their logo: primitive crayon-yellow lettering dripping blood, flanked on the left by a nun and on the right by an, err, evil nun. Don’t forget about the skull, which sits grimly in the back, a detached witness to something seriously demented. A subtle skull, yes, but it lords over this scene of terror with enough ghostly authority that we wholly approve!

The music:
Here’s a rare album where the intro piece is a highlight of the whole album: on “Portal To Your Phobias,” Barney Greenway (pre-Napalm Death, yessir) narrates in a totally demented fashion while nightmarish sounds whirl and howl underneath (Barney’s narration reminds of Von’s “Lamb,” if that means anything to you). On the proper songs, Barney sounds like Kam Lee of Massacre, and early Massacre is pretty much where Benediction’s first album is coming from. I’ve always had a soft spot for Subconscious Terror, and it’s one of few Benediction recordings I’d call “mandatory” while also recognizing that it’s no classic. It’s just mandatory in my world. You can do what you want. After their Dark is the Season EP, they started to decline, ending up at full-on brown metal by the mid ’90s, but this thing undeniably reeks of ancient death metal primitiveness. As said, it sounds a lot like early Massacre, and that’s terrific to these ears. The production is raw and clangy and not at all pretty. Its basement-death metal vibe gives the music a certain aesthetic, sounding, if not like death, then like hell. Hell in a garage. The rhythm guitars sound like vacuum cleaners and the guitar leads are slightly more structured/melodic than your typical Rick Rozz ridiculousness/awesomeness. Tempos shift often enough to keep you guessing, but there’s no real complexity here. Doesn’t need to be either. The whole thing sounds like it’s rattling around in a big old steel bucket, dark, hollow and helpless (thank you Mr. Mick Harris, who produced this loveable ugliness). If I could change one thing it would be a remix that brings down the drums in volume — sizzly cymbals and paint buckets both — which dominate the album way too much. But I’ll take Subconscious Terror “as is.”
— Friar Wagner

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WORMROT / I ABHOR, split (2010, Scrotum Jus)

The skull:
This image appears to have been ripped from some old ’40s crime magazine or pulp fiction paperback. The skull hovers above a woman seemingly in distress. He leers with a perverted grin and is enormous in size compared to the woman. While the hand in the lower left corner suggests a skeleton — breaking BDS’s ‘No Skeletons’ rule — we’ll overlook it and move on. The woman is unidentified thanks to the black bar over her eyes. On second thought, maybe she’s expressing pleasure, a hussy who only enjoys sex with humongous skulls. Oh, the lascivious thrill…

The music:
Bonus points immediately given for the intro to this split. I Abhor’s “Downfall” starts with Sesame Street classic “12” (remember the funky song and pinball animation?). Things get remarkably less exciting after that brief sample. I Abhor rages and blasts in a way that puts the “core” in grindcore, and they’re good, even excellent at what they do, but this stuff always bores me shitless after the first song or two. The noisier, muddier, bleaker Wormrot is slightly more interesting, but it still gets dull quickly. I appreciate them more than I Abhor (the tempo variation helps) and I can understand why grind connoisseurs hold them in high regard. Two bands, 13 songs, 11 minutes. Inconsequential stuff in my world. Almost invisible.
— Friar Wagner