Author Archives: Friar Johnsen

SKULL117

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BAJEN DEATH CULT, Bajen-a-voo-doo (2004, Tifo)

The skull:
A leering skull, silhouetted in green, and wearing a bone necklace or something. He looks quite smug, actually, which is not too surprising, considering he’s just some asshole Swedish hooligan (although surely there’s a more appropriate Swedish term of art). We apologize for the shitty low-res scan of the cover, but physical copies are only available at the stadium, and the people who already own this keep it behind glass in their personal shrines.

The music:
People in the United States often take sports WAY too seriously, but there is really nothing in American sport that compares to the insanity of European football superfandom. Take for instance Bajen Death Cult, a band formed by members of Grave, Unleashed, Grand Magus, and Necrophobic in order to sing songs about their local team, Hammerby IF. Grown men, in other words, writing, rehearsing, and recording songs about soccer. This is not an isolated incident, either. All metalheads should know by now that “Up the Irons” is a rallying cry not so much for Iron Maiden, but for West Ham United. Years before their first album, Vanden Plas released a single in tribute to 1. FC Kaiserslautern. Bobby Schotowski (Crows, Sodom) and Waldemar Sorychta (Despair, Grip Inc., producer of every good LP on Century Media ever) formed Dortmunder Jungs to celebrate BVB-Meisterfeier. You see the pattern here. These people are all crazy. They choose their cars based on the availability of their team’s colors. They name their children after players from the 70s. They see a phrase like “Central Attacking Defensive Center Back” and nod in sage understanding. Getting back to Bajen Death Cult and their EP, this is basically raucous Hellacopters-style metal punk, with a ballad thrown in for good measure. The lyrics are all in Swedish and are about saves and slide tackles and penalty shots and handsome Nordic men taking dives and punching one another in the groin when the refs aren’t looking. I assume. Naturally, there is no reason for anyone to seek this out, lest they live in whatever tiny part of Sweden that pledges allegiance to this particular team. Go sports!
— Friar Johnsen

SKULL115

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IMMENSE DECAY, From Ashes Till Remains (2011, self-released)

The skull:
The Council sees a lot of covers like this, which frame a central, large skull with some vague, abstract textures. It’s as if the band asked for just a big dumb skull, dead center, for their cover, but then saw the first draft and were beset with a nagging doubt in their creative vision. So, they sent the artist back to fill in the empty areas, and maybe could he work in a little color? It looks like this image is supposed to suggest carven stone, but I doubt any sculptor, ancient or modern, would spend the time needed to chisel the brain folds or coils of intestines that adorn the space around this otherwise handsome skull. Who knows, though. Maybe Immense Decay had it planned out all along. “Picture it: a skull in a gutpile, slathered in stucco! It’s literally gritty!” Seriously, picture it, that’d be pretty cool.

The music:
As you’d expect from a band called Immense Decay (if you’re not already singing “Angel of Death” to yourself, you’re not much of a metalhead!), this is pure Slayer worship. The production is modern, but the riffs are straight out of the King/Hannemann playbook. That said, even some random band from Poland can put out a better Slayer album than Slayer in this day and age, and if you don’t need originality in your thrash (and really, at this point, how could you?), From Ashes Till Remains might tickle your fancy. The band is tight, the songs are decent, and the vocals are acceptable. Plus, you can impress your thrash friends with the obscurity of your taste and the reach of your acquisitiveness. That alone is worth something, right?
— Friar Johnsen

SKULL113

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KOZELJNIK, Wrecked in Ruins of Solitude (2007, Spiritual WarArt Productions)

The skull:
A shitty low-contrast photo of a skull, washed out in a murk of very dark aquamarine. Is this skull’s solitude ruinous? It’s hard to say. He looks a little wrecked, maybe, but I think that’s more on the hands of the designer than on the solitude. Big, dumb, and ugly.

The music:
Here at Skull HQ, Friar Wagner and I generally tackle skulls on an even/odd basis. We occasionally mix it up, but generally we’re at the mercy of a skull’s divisibility by two. By pure coincidence, most of the primitive/raw/underground black metal has landed in Friar Wagner’s queue, which has worked out well considering his greater familiarity with black metal. But, with skull113, my number is up, and I’m forced to confront a release that’s pretty far outside my wheelhouse. My interest in black metal tends toward the progressive and well produced. Darkthrone enthusiasts need not knock on the door of Friar Johnsen. So, when confronted with this sort of Eastern European, tr00, kvlt, black-as-in-darkness-and-evil kind of stuff, I’m somewhat at a loss. Listening to Kozeljnik, about all I can tell you is that they sound like a lot of other bands. Unfortunately, I can’t really tell you which bands they are. This isn’t even bad stuff (well, two of the four tracks are rehearsal recordings, and one of those is a cover, and those are at a minimum unnecessary), but fuck if I can say more than that. This isn’t Darkthrone-style primitivism — there are a lot of riffs and some interesting ones at that — but there also aren’t any surprising elements on offer. The production is buzzy and raw but not confrontationally no-fi, and while the playing is rough around the edges, it’s not amateur-level sloppy. To me, this is like hundreds of other ill-defined black metal bands, and since Wrecked… came out in 2007, it’s virtually guaranteed that none of the ideas hereby presented are even remotely original. So if you want to learn more about this band from Big Dumb Skulls, you’ll just have to keep your fingers crossed that the band releases another cover with a skull, and that it lands on the even pile. So, maybe check this space in early 2015.
— Friar Johnsen

SKULL111

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THE ORDER, Son of Armageddon  (2006, Dockyard 1)

The skull:
Stark, but not bleak, this skull looks like the logo for a comic book from Dark Horse or Vertigo: some kind of crime story with a horror twist. It’s hard to tell because of the lack of shading, so maybe this skull is just pictured from a high angle, but I prefer to think he’s just got a very tall brainpan. The band logo is even a little clever: the cutouts in the top of the Rs are silhouettes of guys playing drums and guitar (and not just any guitar: the greatest guitar ever, the Jackson Randy Rhoads Flying V!) It could be that this skull isn’t even human; it looks a bit simian, and perhaps this son of armageggon is a damned dirty ape. But those apes evolved from people (after they blew it up) so the Council is okay with the possibility.

The music:
Crunchy, sorta old fashioned heavy metal that reminds me more than anything of Judas Priest’s Jugulator. To be fair, The Order are not that bad, but they’re based on the same bad idea: namely to take 80s style Priest and update it for the 90s with high gain amps and 40% more attitude. That this was released in the mid 00s makes the offense even more grave. I’m also reminded of some teutonic AOR bands of the past fifteen years that can’t come to grips with the fact that they’re basically making hair metal, no matter how slamming their productions. They turn the distortion up and maybe add a little double bass, but the songs are still stupid ditties about women and rockin’. Again, The Order aren’t quite as cheesy as that, but an awful lot of the riffing is heavy only in the way Motley Crue’s Dr. Feelgood was heavy. At their best, The Order approach recent Pretty Maids in quality, but without the same bouyant sense of fun. This is the band’s debut, and it appears that their later albums benefit from a bit more levity, even as the music becomes more rocky and less to my taste. And none of those albums feature a big dumb skull, so it really seems that it wasn’t meant to be, for me and The Order.
— Friar Johnsen

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HATCHET, Frailty of the Flesh (2006, demo)

The skull:
Angry skulls chomping on band names are always welcomed by the Council. I think it’s safe to call the weapons flanking this skully fellow “axes,” and not hatchets, but I suppose that’s to be expected when you name your band after a prosaic and utilitarian tool. You gotta do something to make it look scary. Although obviously drawn in pencil, this cover transcends the shittiness of most covers thusly produced, even if it’s also clear that the artist decided that one half of his skull looked a lot better than the other half, and then just copied and flipped the good half for both sides. That’s the kind of shoddy, half-assed work we like to see around here. The band kept up this motif at least for a while, and there’s a second, entirely different version of this image floating around: skull biting logo, backed by axes. Hatchet clearly embraces the skull in a praiseworthy manner.

The music:
Hatchet are one of the better rethrash bands working the US scene these days, better than Warbringer, but not as good as Havok (nor as good as Hexen. I would love to make a 4H joke, but I can’t think of another young thrash band that starts with H. And Hirax doesn’t count, even if everyone in that band but Katon is a kid.) Their latest album has a bit more tempo variation and melody than most of their bedenimed brethren, but this early stuff is pretty uninspired, a joyless catalog of the three or four thrash cliches upon which the entire revival is evidently built. Hatchet are actually from San Francisco, but it must be said that as of 2007, they couldn’t even stand up to the third tier of bands from the first wave of thrash in that great city. They play tightly but there are no surprises in these songs, and the drumming is mercilessly stock. There can’t be more than five different beats on this entire demo, which is maybe appropriate since every song is basically the same tempo. On the plus side, Hatchet doesn’t sing about beer or moshing. I couldn’t actually find a copy of this demo to review, but I was able to find contemporary live videos on YouTube for all these songs, and then they were also all re-recorded for the band’s proper full length debut, Awaiting Evil. I emailed the band and guitarist Julz Ramos got back to me in minutes, but he’s out on tour right now, for at least a month, and couldn’t send me a copy of the demo. Sadly, the skullection can’t wait that long, but I appreciate his cooperation!
— Friar Johnsen

SKULL107

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TORMENTED/BOMBS OF HADES, split (2011 War Anthem)

The skull:
Designed like a slasher movie poster from the 80s, this is a very classy cover. The massive, monocular, slightly bloody skull glares evilly, no doubt irritated by the tiny cobweb affixed to his slimy peeper. He’s got no jaw, but that just leaves more room for the songtitles, without creating a need to obscure skullparts. Basically, everything about this cover works as an homage, while still succeeding brilliantly as a big dumb skull. An unmitigated triumph of BDSery! Bravo!

The music:
Tormented are more or less straight-up Earache 1990: Entombed’s Left Hand Path with a faint but present trace of Hellbastard’s Natural Order, at least on their original track here, “Repulsion Fix”. This song is less ambitious than really anything Entombed was doing back in the day, but Tormented do their work briskly and professionally and “Repulsion Fix” is a very fun tune. Their second track is a straightfoward and fairly pointless cover of Kreator’s “Tormentor”. I can’t say I’m a huge fan of the first couple Kreator albums in any case, but I think the appeal is inextricably bound up in the energy and naivety that only earnest young men can deliver. Bombs of Hades are a grimier, grittier band although the basic template is still late 80s Stockholm. More Unleashed than Entombed, perhaps. I find this willful primitivism unappealing in the main, but BoH aren’t a bad band at all. Their original tune, in addition to the obvious Stockholm nods, also strongly reminds me of several songs on Sodom’s overlooked Tapping the Vein album. Maybe this is a coincidence, but if it’s not, I at least salute the band for that. They round out the split with a cover of Loud Pipe’s “Clean Your Head.” I’ve never heard of that band, but from the sounds of it, they were just some kind of D-beat band, making this cover even less essential and interesting than “Tormentor”.
— Friar Johnsen

SKULL105

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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

SKULL103

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ILLDISPOSED, The Prestige (2008, AFM)

The skull:
Here we have a rounded, almost simian skull plummeting through the black abyss, leaving some kind of osseous vapor trail. It’s actually an eye-catching image, even if it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. The photoshop work on the boney miasma is not very convincing, but the lighting and simplicity of the base skull image are quite nice. Ironically, the Council agrees that the digitial foofery dramatically diminishes the prestige of this cover, which, had it been just the skull, would have been through-the-roof!

The music:
Grooving mid-tempo death metal a la Gorefest, although obviously not as good, because no one does this like Gorefest. Illdisposed, from Denmark, add a bit of the requisite Scandinavian melodicism to the riffery, but the formula is basically song-oriented death metal reminiscent of the times when “song oriented death metal” wasn’t an oxymoron. I had never heard Illdisposed before this, and I have to say I’m fairly impressed overall. This is a pretty late release for them, their eighth, and they’ve been around since 1993, which made me wonder if their earlier stuff was better, and in fact, that seems to be the case. If anything, their more recent output is perhaps a bit too polished. The extra brutality of the earliest albums, while never overweaning, is definitely missed now. But while they seem to have maintained a remarkable quality in their songwriting over two decades, the vocals have always been kind of bad, a sort of mushy gurgle of a growl, the work of a guy trying way too hard to sound evil. You’ll get that with death metal, even some good stuff, but it’s still always a bit disappointing. I can live with the singing, though, because the music is good, and I think there’s a good chance I’ll even buy some of this stuff.
— Friar Johnsen

SKULL101

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SARCASM, Revolt (2006, On-Parole Productions)

The skull:
For as big and central as this skull is, this cover couldn’t be less exciting. It fails to properly capture true dumbness, and neither does it offer even a whiff of adolescent heavy metal cool. The motion blur in the lights and the fuzziness of the skull are obviously a desperate attempt to make any artistic statement at all with this cover, but what that statement is, and how it relates to the title, I couldn’t say. Nevertheless, this is probably the perfect embodiment of a color I would never have thought possible: neon brown. What could be dumber than that?

The music:
Slovenia’s Sarcasm started as a fairly typical eastern European thrash band, attempting a relatively melodic take on the genre but playing it with the precision of mid 80s German thrashers (note: not a compliment). It appears they took the 90s off, taking thirteen years to follow up their 1989 debut, and in that time they mellowed significantly, with Revolt sounding more like speedy traditional metal (bordering occasionally on power metal) than thrash. Arakain, a favorite of mine from the Czech Republic, made a similar transition, albeit with more grace (and much better tunes). Sarcasm are hobbled by congenital sloppiness: the playing is haphazard, the half-barked, half-sung vocals are rather bland, and no attention is paid to the details. But, the songs are generally pretty fun, with some good riffs that recall the better middle-tier European speed metal acts of the 80s, and the production is appropriately but not distractingly old school. About half the lyrics are in what I assume is Slovene, but the rest are in English, and it must be said that these are not good. Slovene (or whatever it is) is an excellent metal language, like Czech, but even when singing in their native tongue, they make some regrettable choices, notably the chorus to “Silicon Carne” which REALLY sounds like “Chili con carne”. I’d love it if this play on words was intentional, but it almost certainly was not. Revolt is maybe not quite good enough to really get excited about, but it at least stokes an interest in their other releases. Unfortunately, this appears to be the apex of their melodic sound (their lone release since is not as good), and the earliest, pure thrash album, while perhaps more successful on those terms, is not as good in an absolute sense. If I happen to notice the release of a new Sarcasm album, I’ll probably check it out, but not with a great deal of optimism.

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ANCIENT NECROPSY, Ancient Necropsy (2003, Nice to Eat You)

The skull:
Looking like a three-for-a-dollar rubber skull set out in a basket as an impulse buy at the Halloween Adventure store, this skull was clearly not menacing enough on his own, so the cover artist helpfully added some slanty “angry” eyebrows, straight out of an Archie comic. And then, you know, some fire and lightning and shit. What’s even going on here? Is this necropsy so ancient that it predates the earth taking form, happening amidst the fiery tumult of planetary creation? Or is this skull merely out grillin’ in a lightning storm, having used too much lighter fluid again?

The music:
Question: what do you get when you cross Pyaemia with Brodequin, in a Colombian bedroom? Answer: Sweet hell, don’t even make me think about it!
— Friar Johnsen