Author Archives: Friar Johnsen

SKULL97

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OVERKILL L.A., Triumph of the Will (1985, SST)

The skull:
Another totenkopf, but look at the size of it! If you’re gonna appropriate Nazi iconography for your album cover, this the way to do it: big and dumb. The copper coloring is a nice touch, too: it tones down the monochromatic harshness that plagues so many totenkopf album covers, although to be fair, this is the earliest example of the form in the skullection. Every cliche was a good idea at one time.

The music:
It really does send some confusing signals to decorate your cover with the insignia of the SS, while also titling it after the infamous Leni Riefenstahl propaganda film glorifying Hitler and his government. Well, no: it sends the rather clear signal that your band are Nazi sympathizers. In this case, the confusion comes later, when you realize that Overkill L.A. (naturally, the geographical suffix was added only after a conflict with Overkill N.Y.) are not a Nazi, national socialist, or in any way racist band. In truth, they’re only barely metal, too, although there’s enough Motorhead in this degenerate west coast punk amalgam to pass muster with the Council. I guess the cover and title are just part and parcel of a punk predilection for provocation, because the lyrics don’t even seem to make much of a special anti-racist statement, either. Just your typical me-against-the-world snottiness typical of mid 80s west coast punk, with a touch of the toughness that would shortly come to define (sometimes parodically) American hardcore. Personally, I’ve known about this album forever, as it used to show up all the time in the record shop section otherwise reserved for the one true Overkill (another skull-loving group), and I’m sure I listened to at least a song of this at some point, but I never listened to the whole thing until now. It’s… not bad! I wouldn’t have liked it at all in the 80s, but as an older, wiser man, I can appreciate its grit and working class moxie. It’s not a great album, and seemingly every song is played at the same middle tempo, but if you like early Motorhead and can also get behind Black Flag and Social Distortion, you might love this.
— Friar Johnsen

SKULL95

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BLITZSPEER, Live (1990, Epic)

The skull:
Finally! Some actual Pushead, to go along with all the pushead knockoffs littering the skullection. This is hardly Mr. Head’s finest work, but it’s still pretty excellent in its simplicity. Skull, eyepatch, crossbones, checkered flags. Looks like the painting was then slapped unceremoniously over a photo of some asphalt, but half-assedness was the order of the day, as we shall see.

The music:
In the late 80s, there was a halo effect around hair metal, the aquanet tide lifting all ships in the metal fleet. Thrash, in particular, seemed like it might be the next big thing, and every major label scrambled to sign any band that might possibly become the next Metallica, or, failing that, the next Testament. A lot of bands without so much as a demo got snapped up and rushed to market well before their due, and as a result you’d see things like Meliah Rage’s Live Kill Blitzspeer’s Live taking up space and creating “buzz” while the bands got their shit together for a full length. As it happened, by the time those LPs were finally shit out, so too had Nevermind been shat, and the thrash Titanic made a beeline for the ocean floor. A lot of great bands undeservedly took it on the chin in those dark times (see: Wrathchild America), but it can’t be said that Blitzspeer didn’t deserve their almost immediate obscurity. A tepid mix of thrash and biker rock, delivered with a well-rehearsed NYC punk sneer, Blitzspeer weren’t bad so much as totally, completely forgettable. Live is actually a really nicely recorded document, and while at least half of these songs appeared on the band’s studio debut (and swansong) Saves, these live versions are clearly more energetic than their properly tracked counterparts. That’s not enough to really make it worth your time to track this stuff down, but I guess if you’re dead set on owning some Blitzspeer, this is the one you want.
— Friar Johnsen

SKULL93

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TASTE OF BLOOD, Skull of Vaccuum / Survive the Rain (2006, self-released)

The skull:
He’s comin’ atcha, this skull, so fast that he’s starting to blur. So fast that you couldn’t snap off a pic before he’d pretty much filled the entire frame. You’re gonna taste the blood, all right, when this guy headbutts you. I guess you might taste some logo, too. Chew that gingerly – it looks sharp.

The music:
In ’99 or so, you couldn’t spit at a label roster without hitting a band like this, just a straight-up In Flames / Dark Tranquillity knockoff (for another German example, see: Night In Gales). They were everywhere, these bands, and because they were playing an inherently inoffensive and palatable style (sugary melodic death metal), none of them were really bad, but you could count on these acts going in one ear and out the other. By 2006, when this single (!) came out, pretty much all the melodic death metal bands in the traditional Gothenburg mold had vanished, supplanted by their sadder, degenerate ancestors, the Killswitch Engage clones and their mopey ‘core brethren. I’ll admit, I’d take Taste of Blood any day over that shit, but that’s really putting the “lesser” in “lesser of two evils.”
— Friar Johnsen

SKULL91

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Enemy of the Sun, Caedium (2010, Massacre)

The skull:
This overly smooth skull (grimy textures notwithstanding) was obviously produced with some kind of 3D modelling software, but probably not by the guy who designed the cover, because the sun-insignia set into the skull’s dome is clearly just a slapped-on photoshop addition and not a part of the wireframe model. You can see that it doesn’t follow the contour of the pate at all. Lazy! Same goes for the very cheap-looking effect of the bullet exploding out of the right temple. It seems like this was added rather haphazardly after someone in the band asked, “Yeah, but what does this have to do with caedium?” at which point the artist looked it up and found it meant, more or less, “murder” in Latin. “How’s about, like, I add a bullet coming out of his brain?” Sold!

The music:
Enemy of the Sun is the latest project from guitarist and producer par excellence Waldemar Sorychta, following Grip, Inc. and Despair (among other lesser acts). Sorychta’s guitar style is as distinctive as his production, which makes it very hard to compare him to anyone else. No one else really makes music in the style he does, either, which is thrashy, but not thrash, and decidedly not death metal. He offers a speculative take on what thrash might have become had it evolved consistently in the decades after it’s early 90s commercial and creative death. That said, there’s a blanket of sameness draped over most of what the man has done since Despair that makes it hard to form a strong connection with it. In Grip, there were Lombardo’s drumming and Gus Chamber’s furious yelling to compensate, but none of the other players in Enemy of the Sun rise above the baseline set by the leader (although I do appreciate the diversity of tones employed by frontman Jules Näveri). On Caedium, you get solid, competent, reliable, and ultimately kind of samey songs that work well enough on their own but fail to meaningfully cohere into an album. There’s nothing at all that’s bad about this album or the band, and I’ll definitely check out anything new they produce, but I can’t say I’m exactly looking forward to it.
— Friar Johnsen

SKULL89

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SACRIFICE, Crest of Black (1986, demo)

The skull:
Even by the standards of the hand-drawn demo cover, this skull is pretty lame. Why does a skull with no eyes need an eyepatch? Why not wear two, then? The pentagram is of course always a welcome addition, and it’s nice that instead of the cliched knife in the teeth, this pirate skull is biting down on a big axe, it’s notched blade glinting in the sun. How he’s going to wield it is another question for another time.

The music:
Early Japanese thrash that’s pretty much exactly as good as you’re imagining. It’s easy to forget when you hear something this murky and terrible that in 1986, thrash was actually pretty advanced. It’s the year of Reign in Blood, Peace Sells, and Master of Puppets, but you’d think from listening to Crest of Black that Hellhammer’s first demo had just been released, that Mantas was still in Venom, and that Quorthon was still squatting over pentagrams. This demo sounds terrible, the songs are awful, and the playing and singing are atrocious. I know there’s a whole scene of people for whom this kind of “authenticity” trumps all other concerns (and it is for exactly this undiscerning crowd that this barely-a-footnote demo was bootlegged on vinyl), but I for one demand a bit more than an unusual (for metal) provenance and a yellowing photocopied tape sleeve. Don’t hear small sound indeed!
— Friar Johnsen

SKULL87

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BARE BONES, Refreshing Old Skull (2008, demo)

The skull:
Old, I’ll grant. A skull? Yes. Refreshing? I’m not sure about that. I suppose it’s refreshing for a band to just own up to the ridiculousness of their BDSery in this way. I mean, the band is Bare Bones. The demo is Refreshing Old Skull. Surely that’s a sign of some self-awareness, right? Right?

The music:
Although it’s rarely a genuine pleasure to suffer through these obscure releases for Big Dumb Skulls, there’s something satisfying about peering into an otherwise untouched and unloved pocket of the scene. This Polish band released two demos in the late 00s and then broke up. Came and went, with no one the wiser for it. Listening to Refreshing Old Skull, it’s pretty obvious why: Bare Bones were a boring midpaced thrash band with crappy death vocals and their demo sounds like the work of a couple weekends in the guitarist’s bedroom. Cheap sounds, bad programmed drums, and dull songs are the order of the day. But whatever – these guys were probably teenagers when they made this. Bare Bones are no worse than the metal bands I palled around with in middle school. Okay, maybe a little worse.
— Friar Johnsen

SKULL85

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SLAYER, South of Heaven (1988, Def Jam)

The skull:
This cover is so famous and so iconic that it’s easy to miss pretty much all the details. When was the last time you looked at this up close? The skull itself would have to be massive, a hundred feet tall or more, if the perspective is to be trusted and the scale of the gothic architecture in the background is commensurate with other structures in the style. The skull is impaled on an equally large crucifix, and the entire scene is awash in a literal sea of blood, with artist Larry Carroll’s Bruegelian beasties cavorting about the skull in a scene to make Bosch blanche, even if the guy in the skull’s right eyesocket looks a lot like those crazy-haired trolls that elementary school girls used to put on top of their pencils. The tininess of the (all-time great) logo accentuates the hugeness of the skull, and the weird artlessness of the title, set in a block of red that looks like it was literally cut and paste over the image, only serves to heighten the gravity and horror of the entire design. This is a near perfect cover, and an absolutely brilliant big dumb skull to boot.

The music:
While I can acknowledge that, objectively, this album is not quite on par with its predecessor, this was my first Slayer album, and probably forever my favorite. That said, while it is not as consistently awesome as Reign in Blood, there are elements to this album that honestly transcend the blitzkrieg of its precursor. Knowing they couldn’t out-pace the frantic Reign, the band wisely mixed up the tempos, with success at every speed, from the dirge-like slowness of the gutsy opening title track, to the almost oppressive monotony of “Mandatory Suicide,” to the moderated midpace of the underrated “Behind the Crooked Cross” to the all-out fury of “Silent Scream,” and that’s just side one! Sure, the Judas Priest cover feels like padding on an already short album, but they do a shockingly good job of making that song their own, and yeah, maybe Tom’s moaning on “Spill the Blood” isn’t quite as spooky as he intended, but even the lesser side two of this album is packed with brilliant riffs and killer songs. The absolutely parched production, almost impossible dry, accentuates the mastery of songcraft at which the band had arrived. It’s really no surprise that after Reign in Blood and South of Heaven, the band had nowhere to go but down. Seasons in the Abyss isn’t a terrible album, but it feels at all times like a pale imitation of this one. It’s an album that sounds like it was made by some hacky British knock-off, not the proper follow-up to the greatest one-two punch in the history of thrash. And of course, after that, the band only got worse and worse, to the point that Slayer these days is little more than a sad caricature of Slayer, even if they’re more popular than ever. But none of what has come since can diminish the monumental accomplishment of this album.
— Friar Johnsen

SKULL83

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DUSK RITUAL, With Rum, Skull and Crossbones (2005, demo)

The skull:
A clipart skull and crossbones on a parchment-looking background, with a few spots of blood. Or, I guess, really oddly colored rum. No, that doesn’t make any sense, unless maybe it’s some kind of rum cocktail with grenadine. But then, the title would have to be, at a minimum, With Rum, Mixers, Skull and Crossbones. So yeah, it’s probably blood. For whatever stupid piratical reason. In any case, the only cover art I could find was incredibly small, so it looks extra bad blown up to the not-especially-large standard to which we hew at BDS headquarters.

The music:
There’s really only room in the world for two pirate metal bands, and Dusk Ritual is unfortunately neither Running Wild nor Swashbuckle. Although, I guess I can’t say for certain that Dusk Ritual are actually a pirate metal band, since I can’t understand the lyrics or find them on the internet. The cover art and title are damning, however, even if the German bio on the Austrian band’s still-extant Myspace page (this 2005 demo is their only release, so one assumes this is just an abandoned online outpost of a forgotten band) seems to refer to them as “party metal”. A grim party, that. Musically, this is just crappy thrash-flavored melodic death metal, so it’s no wonder Dusk Ritual failed to light the world on fire. But, they were ahead of the pirate metal boom by a few years, and it’s not like Alestorm is any good, so maybe theirs is simply a case of being too far ahead of their time.
— Friar Johnsen

SKULL81

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SKULLCRUSH, Skullcrush (2009, self-released)

The skull:
Really, Skullcrush, would it have been so hard to crush the fucking skull? Like, you’re halfway there, guys! You’re not “Tallskull” or “Tophalfofskull,” you’re Skullcrush. Just crush it already! And don’t try to tell me that black area up top is a sign of crushing. That just looks like someone set off some firecrackers on the skull’s forehead. So, next time, keep it simple like this, but get the details right. A crushed skull on a black background, with your crappy typewriter logo on top, just like this one. That’d be perfect.

The music:
It’s not everyday you hear Macedonian metal, and while I was expecting the worst, really, this isn’t so bad. The base formula for Skullcrush is late 80s German thrash of the second-tier: Assassin, Protector, Living Death, that sort of thing. Fast picking, a few inspired riffs, and a lot of the basketball beat, with vocals that are almost hardcore shouting (and in… Macedonian? I guess?) The production isn’t the best, but I’ve made do with less, and the tunes are solid if you don’t care that you’ve heard a hundred others just like them. Hardcore thrashers looking for something new could do a lot worse than to pad out their collections with this sort of thing, and of course you can impress your friends by being able to name a Macedonian thrash band. In any case, this is better than all those lame American and British rethrash bands writing songs about moshing and beer.
— Friar Johnsen

SKULL79

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SKULL HARVEST, Skull Harvest (2001, demo)

The skull:
“How’d the harvest go, pa?”
“Not so good, ma.”
“How many?”
“Just one. Well, part of one.”
“Are we gonna lose the skull farm, pa?”
“‘Fraid so.”
This cover is spectacularly ugly, full of weird pixelated noise and blacks that don’t match. You used to see a lot of this sort of thing in the 90s, when the unqualified dudes tasked with making their band’s album cover first started using computers but didn’t realize that screen and print resolutions were very different. Even so, I’m baffled by the junk surrounding this sad, lonely skull. Did someone just scribble it in MS-Paint? If nothing else, it was nice of the nameless, incompetent designer to paste the skull on top of the logo. That’s dedication to the big dumb skull!

The music:
Metal Archives classifies Skull Harvest as thrash, and maybe they were in 2001, but the only tunes I could find online were from nearly a decade later, and I guess you’d call that stuff death rock, maybe. Occasionally the music veers toward Sabbathy doom, but the bellowing vocals really feel out of place then. Everything about Skull Harvest sounds kind of amateurish, making me think this is the German equivalent of the crappy groove metal you encounter at shitty bars on thursdays here in the States.
— Friar Johnsen