WEST WALL, Conquest or Death (2009, self-released)

The skull:
Tank treads, barbed wire, and two kinds of grenades. Right here are the makin’s for a very nice poster for that weird guy at the flea market who sells WWI memorabilia and smells like cancer. The skull itself displays a resplendent brow, the sort of massive braincase you’d expect to house the hyper-intelligent brain of an ubermensch. But, isn’t it always the way that Poindexters like this are constantly losing shit, like their glasses or their lower jaws? This is probably why Germany lost the war.

The music:
If West Wall aren’t a neo-Nazi band, they’re as close as you can come without out and out heiling Hitler or including the word “Aryan” in your bandname. You could, if you were so inclined to delude yourself, simply read West Wall’s lyrics as being of a piece with, say, Hail of Bullets or Sabaton or any other band that sings about World War II. You could get away with this, even, if you didn’t know that members of West Wall were active in the skinhead scene, or you never saw a photo of the band fully costumed in totenkopf shirts, etc. You might, in that case, just think they were a run of the mill death metal band with a lot of songs about tanks. Panzer tanks. But, now you know, and if you can still listen to West Wall (named after the Siegfried Line) without feeling like a total shitheel, well, good for you, I guess.
— Friar Johnsen