Author Archives: Friar Johnsen

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RECIPIENTS OF DEATH, Recipients of Death (1988, Wild Rags)

The skull:
A standard issue horny skull impaled on an upside down cross. This whole thing screams “1988!” One thing that I do like about hand-drawn covers like this is how the logo and the title are worked in as components of the art. No Photoshop layers here: you get it all in one glorious shot. I wonder, was this photocopied straight off someone’s textbook wrapper (do kids still wrap their books?), or was it redrawn from that original and inked in sharpie for the final art? The skull-cross, evidently the band’s totem or mascot, would make a second appearance on the band’s next, and last release, this time in a much finer, painted form, but where’s the charm in that?

The music:
As goes the cover, so too, the music: this is as generic a slab of late 80s Angelino thrash as you could imagine. Dark Angel is a good starting point, with a little Slayer thrown in for good measure, although I do detect a tiny hint of the groove that would creep into thrash as the 90s approached, especially from up the coast, and more than a hint of California hardcore. The playing is decent and the production is more than good enough, especially for a Wild Rags release. The vocals are the weak link, naturally, delivered with a crossover sneer obviously modeled after Kurt Brecht. When the basketball beat goes full-court-press, these overly wordy, barked vocals really underscore the monotony of the material. There’s a reason why this band only managed to eke out a couple EPs, but I’d still rather listen to this than Municipal Waste or Toxic Holocaust.
— Friar Johnsen

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TOURNIQUET, Where Moth and Rust Destroy (2003, Metal Blade)

The skull:
You can’t fault Tourniquet for failing to address the title with their big dumb skull, as this guy here is indeed rusting through and beset by moth. The logo and even the white background are also falling apart, which earns the band bonus points for total thematic unity. None of that makes this cover any cooler, unfortunately. If I didn’t know this came out in 2003, I’d say it could have been done in some iPad drawing app, and I’m certain that it was knocked out with the minimum of effort by some friend of the band with a Wacom tablet.

The music:
Tourniquet were never very good, although for some reason I pretend that their 1992 release Pathogenic Occular Dissonance was alright. It really wasn’t, but it almost could have been. It’s got a nicely overwrought title that suggests some kind of tech thrash, and their singer back then was not bad, but Tourniquet’s brand of aspirationally progressive thrash has always come up short in the quality department. After their original singer left, a dude going by Luke Easter (which is a very suspicious name for a guy in a Christian metal band) took over, and while his snarly Mustaine-meets-Hetfield delivery isn’t bad, per se, it nevertheless comes off as cut-rate. The music, at least since their 2000 “comeback” (after a few years trying to make a go of selling out) is also vaguely Megadethian, following the pattern of the Friedman years without even quite reaching those middling heights. And at that, Where Moth and Rust Destroy is about good as it gets for post-Occular Tourniquet, although to be fair, I haven’t heard their most recent album. There are even some nice Dimension-era Believer influences coming through here, and a song about giant squids. As with a lot of Christian bands, Tourniquet seems to get by on the guaranteed sales at Mustard Seed stores or whatever; no secular thrash band this mediocre would be able to secure label support year after year. Well, maybe they could now, especially if they played up the squids and played down the Jeebus.
— Friar Johnsen

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SCOWL, Impetus Ex Caenum (2013, Speed Ritual)

The skull:
Man, that’s a lot of bullets. But, if you look closely, you can see the outline of the lower jaw, and from its position, it doesn’t appeal that the teeth are parted. So, maybe these bullets were drawn in after the fact? The way they extend around the back, it’s as if the entire skull were opened up to accomodate them, when clearly that’s not the case. But, whatever, man: Scowl’s artist didn’t waste his time in school time learning anatomy or perspective from The Man. He draws what he knows, and what he knows is a big dumb skull in a silly hat with a mouthful of bullets. What’s not to like?

The music:
The music, that’s what, Impetus Ex Caenum is low-fi D-beat of the dullest sort. If it wasn’t recorded live in their rehearsal room, then they certainly spent too much at whatever studio they went to. Everything about this is a sloppy mess, but the drummer deserves a special mention for his ineptitude. I don’t know why anyone would go to the hassle and trouble of starting a band, just to make this. Scowl makes me long for the fabled creative genius of Skullfather.

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SKULLFATHER, Order of the Skull (2008, self-released)

The skull:
A garden variety skull photo, limned in red, and framed by a terribly ugly and distorted, tattoo-parlor olde English typeface for the logo and title. What else is there to say? The Council does commend Skullfather for the singularity of their commitment to the skull. It’s in their name, their demo title, and on the cover. A trifecta! But, we’ve seen some variation on this cover several times since Big Dumb Skulls was launched, and we’re hardly one-fifth of the way through all the skulls collected by The Council. It’s gonna be a long couple of years, I think.

The music:
One man, bedroom Entombed worship. And not even the good stuff, but the watered-down, post-death rock throwback stuff from the mid 00s. Then again, maybe Skullfather isn’t an Entombed clone, but a Desultory clone. Double meaning! Allx (sic), the presumed Skullfather, does a pretty good job emulating the Sunlight Studios guitar tone, but his songs are boring, his vocals unimpressive, and his drum programming pedestrian. I guess even Allx was bored with this shit, because he only produced these four songs before his one man band broke up. I won’t miss them.
— Friar Johnsen

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MÄAX, Six Pack Witchcraft (2010, Abyss)

The skull:
A skull, an ace, a pair of wings, two knives, and an umlaut: it sure looks like Mäax is trying to muscle in on Motörhead’s territory. Substitute Snaggletooth for Mäax’s more generic skull and you’d have a perfect cover for a mid 90s Motörhead album. The other two Mäax discs have entirely different covers that also incorporate 100% of these design elements, so I guess they’re part of this band’s “thing.”

The music:
Mäax are a bunch of thick guys in leather vests making extra-filthy, Venomized, Motörhead-style “rock and roll”. It’s shitty metal to anyone with ears, but bands like this always fetishize the inspiration they draw from Elvis or Buddy Holly or Little Richard or whomever. The vocals are so bad that even the grunting has to be run through effects to give them any character, and the playing is far too loose for its own good. But, the main offense of music like this is its blandness. It styles itself as hard and rebellious, but it comes off as just another bunch of too-old barroom braggarts trying to pass as 70s tough. Nein!
— Friar Johnsen

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DEFYANCE, Voices Within (1992, demo)

The skull:
I’m not sure what all that curvy business is; is is part of the logo? Some kind of ornate Poe-style bladed pendulum? Demonic headgear for skully orthodontia? Whatever it is, the skull looks a little surprised. “Oh hey! What are you doing? I didn’t see you there…” He’s probably embarrassed to be caught posing for this low-rent demo. “It’s just a quick pencil sketch for some metal band, nothing serious,” he says, and you nod in understanding, but he knows you’re giggling on the inside.

The music:
I don’t think I personally own this demo, but I’m fairly certain I own the band’s first self-released disc, which came out in the mid 90s. Melodic metal was thin on the ground in the States back then, and we who loved that shit were reduced to buying some truly rotten crap in the hopes of finding some lone holdout for power metal in the aggro decade. Defyance were certainly not the worst of the bands working that circuit back then, but they also didn’t stand out as particularly great. These four songs have a commercial slant not unlike, say, Fifth Angel, but not as good. That this demo is form 1992 is a sign that probably these guys also listened to their share of hair metal, but preferred to make their metal a little heavier, even if they couldn’t get away from the corny lyrical cliches. Probably the singer was more into Cinderella than Iron Maiden, but the other guys in the band had to put up with his corny lyrics because it’s so hard to find a guy who can hit the high notes. You can easily imagine Defyance as the second local opener for a Savatage club show circa Streets. Good enough that you’d tap your foot while you were at the bar talking to your buddy, but not so great that you’d consider moving closer to the stage. Just good enough, in other words, and no better.
— Friar Johnsen

SKULL139

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SUIDAKRA, Command to Charge (2005, Locomotive)

The skull:
I suppose we’re expected to understand the background to be a splashing pool of liquid metal or something, but to me it looks more like fancy satin sheets, and because that interpretation especially confounds any possible meaning in this cover, I’m going to go with it. The skull is undeniably metal, maybe chromed steel, with some celtic designs printed thereon, because this German band is really into Ireland and Scotland, for some reason. Most puzzling is the bullet casing in the skull’s teeth. At first I thought this was another case of an artist not knowing how bullets work, expecting us to think the skull caught a fired bullet in his teeth. But then I noticed the smoke and have to conclude that the skull, for some reason, was holding a cartridge in his teeth when someone else struck the primer, expelling the lead backward. Or something. Sure, the smoke should be coming from the other end of the cartridge, but whatever. Artistic license. From the way the skull is positioned, I guess the bullet would probably clear the base of the skull in the back, and maybe that’s why the skull looks so smugly pleased with himself and his badass trick.

The music:
When I first heard Suidakra in the late 90s, they were an also-ran melodic death metal band of the sort you couldn’t get away from back then. Think early In Flames mixed with a little Dissection, even, but not as good as that sounds. They were fine, but undistinguished. Then some time in the early 00s, they hitched their wagons to bagpipes and jigs, and were all set for the coming popularity of “pagan metal,” which is a label that makes less and less sense every year. By the time of Command to Charge, all of the genuine heaviness had been purged from the band’s sound, turning them into, in effect, a low-tuned power metal band with some death vocals. The clean vocals are rather bad, too. The whole affair, while not exactly unpleasant, is almost offensively bland: death metal for kilt enthusiasts. Where’s that bullet to the brain when you need it?
— Friar Johnsen

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DESTRUCTION, Metal Discharge (2003, Nuclear Blast)

The skull:
A metal skull, cracking apart. About as literal as it could be, for an album called Metal Discharge. But, this isn’t the first time the band has used this exact skull: he appeared on the previous studio album, The Antichrist and on the intervening live album, Alive Devastation. The artistic laziness displayed here is almost staggering. I’m sure the artist worked up the illustration in Adobe Illustrator or something and just applied different textures for each album. I can’t even begin to imagine why Destruction, a popular and well capitalized band, would approach their album covers with such lackadaisical disregard for ingenuity, but here we are. We at Skull HQ have chosen this particular cover because it so singularly emphasizes the skull, without even bothering to cram some stupid crap in the background. Bonus points are awarded for the tacky, graffiti-style addition of the word “Discharge,” a hacky design gimmick wrenched through time from the distant year of 1991.

The music:
It would be a stretch to call any of the post-reunion Destruction albums essential, but they also haven’t released any real stinkers or embarrassed themselves, which, in light of other reunions, should be considered a rousing success. Personally, I think the band peaked with the weird techthrash of Release from Agony, and even the Schmier-less Cracked Brain is more creatively satisfying than the reunion stuff, but the first few of the new albums, especially, are good fun. Schmier actually sounds better now than he did back in the 80s, and what their recent songs lack in ambition, they make up for in enthusiasm and brisk timekeeping. Guitarist Mike Sifringer is an underrated riffmeister, and every song is jam packed with excellent rhythm work. Obviously, not every riff is a homerun, but sometimes quantity is its own quality. I think if you mixed up songs from this album, and the ones before and after it, I’d be really hard pressed to tell you which came from what album, but some might find that consistency admirable.
— Friar Johnsen

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UNHOLY GRAVE, Revoltage (2007, Agromosh)

The skull:
A skull with a neckbeard. What will they think of next? The horns feel a bit like lily-gilding, but I guess the artist just got on a roll that study hall, or maybe the parole hearing went on a lot longer than expected, and the horns just happened. And all that other bony crap littering up the cover. I’m sure this will look really nice on someone’s shoulder, next to a Crass logo or something.

The music:
Unlistenably noisy crust grind. It sounds like it was mastered boombox-to-boombox. EVERYTHING is distorted, all the time. The only thing I own that I can even remotely compare to this garbage is an old Hellbastard demo, and while I don’t take any special enjoyment from that, it’s a classic for the ages by comparison to Unholy Grave. Perhaps not surprisingly, Unholy Grave put the absolute minimum amount of care and effort into their recordings, having produced one hundred and forty demos, singles, splits, EPs and LPs in the last 20 years. Only the good die young.
— Friar Johnsen

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MINDS EYE, Minds Eye (1992, self-released)

The skull:
Gnarly logo (with embedded eyeball!) splits skull. The concept couldn’t be simpler, and yet pretty much everything about this painting is wrong. For starters, the way the skull is opening up suggests it’s malleable and not, in fact, brittle bone. Then, if you imagine the two halves coming together, the left half would be like two inches taller than the right half. And while the idea was obviously to cleave the skull neatly down the middle, a perspective error has it looking like the split is slanted. But despite all that, I still love this cover. It’s adorably ridiculous in the way only an amateur painting could possibly be. The fuzzy reproduction of the already hazy art makes it feel like soft-focus skull porn from the 70s. Brilliant!

The music:
Minds Eye played a distinctly early-90s hodgepodge of styles: some thrash, some traditional metal, some groovy blues, all thrown together in a weird creative bid to move metal away from the hairsprayed excesses of the 80s without altogether eschewing the possibility of commercial appeal. Some of the best music of the time was like this. But, this is not some of the best music of the time. The songs are run-of-the-mill, guitar tone is thin and bad, and the vocals are weak, although I’ve certainly endured much worse without complaining. All that said, I do have a soft spot for this sort of thing, especially for bands with enough vision to self-release a CD in 1992, and you can be sure if I ever ran across a physical copy of this, I’d pick it up in a heartbeat. It’s probably worth a fortune, too. But, if I really wanted to hear this kind of metal I’d make a beeline for my Wrathchild America discs (and since Minds Eye were also from Maryland, it’s impossible to imagine Wrathchild weren’t an influence). Hell, even Mindfunk were probably a little better at this game, and if that’s not a damning comparison, I don’t know what is (and I say this as someone who inexplicably owns all three Mindfunk albums.)
— Friar Johnsen