Category Archives: Skull

Skull of the day

SKULL166

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ANNIHILATOR, Double Live Annihilation  (2003, AFM)

The skull:
Animal skulls are generally frowned upon here at Big Dumb Skulls. The Council prefers that submissions depict only human or human-esque skulls. Take the horns away from this one and you’re pretty close to human, so we’ll let it slide. This bison-man skull thingy hovers above a sea (or puddle) of blood, one that is active and bubbling, indicating, mmm, maybe…Hell??? Whatever the case, wherever he hovers, he’s got “Double Live” etched into his forehead, and his eyes glow like fiery coals, presenting to you the word “Annihilation.” Skulls hover a lot, don’t they?

The music:
Isn’t it weird how “King of the Kill” could have been on those ’80s era Piledriver albums? How “Striker” is like Iron Maiden trying to play thrash (not a novel idea anymore, though), and “Murder” opens this album but is still as stinky as that whole Remains disaster? You get it all here, Annihilator fans. It was difficult for me to care about Annihilator past album #2, but if you’re a devotee, Double Live Annihilation will please, especially the career-spanning song selection, which is so career-spanning it hardly has any room for much from their first and best album. The sound is very good, the performances all totally pro. Vocalist Joe Comeau has a weird history: singer in Liege Lord, then became a guitarist in Overkill, formed Ramrod, then sang in Tad Morose for about three seconds, and he winds up as vocalist in Annihilator. (Although with the frequency of lineup changes in Annihilator, we’re all bound to be in Annihilator eventually.) Comeau has a  flavorless delivery, but it’s less annoying than Randy Rampage, so hearing a song like “Alice in Hell” without Rampage is a pleasure, as it’s one of Jeff Waters’ best compositions. The rest is what Annihilator specializes in: lots of great riffs, very few great songs.
— Friar Wagner

SKULL165

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NEURASTHENIA, Possessed (2007, UKDivision)

The skull:
I was going to start with, “I’m no expert on skull horns…” but then I realized I probably am about as close as it comes to such a thing, so I can just flat-out say that I don’t think that’s where the horns go. The only justification I can imagine is that Neurasthenia is positing a very literal kind of possession, where a little demon actually sets up shop inside your head. This seems like an awful way to go, I must admit! But, these Italian thrashers must really love the idea, because basically this exact skull appears on their next album as well, albeit ringed by a necklace of smaller, evidently unpossessed skulls. I guess they’ve gone all in and decided to also steal the concept of recycling skulls from Nuclear Assault, which is odd, but I’ll allow it.

The music:
Thrash, but not your typical rethrash. I guess almost all thrash, at this point, is inherently retro, but Neurasthenia seem to be shooting for the weird not-sure-of-itself thrash of the early 90s, like the weird groovy miscalculation of Nuke Assault’s little-loved Something Wicked or the third Xentrix album. Those comparisons are sure to make Neurasthenia sound worse than they are, but I can’t think of a better frame of reference. At their hookiest and most melodic (as in “Filthy Lucre”) Neurasthenia are pretty good, actually, tempering their old thrash tendencies with a helping of melodic death metal, and they rarely plod in the unfortunate fashion of bad 90s thrash. Singer Neil Grotti makes the best of a limited range, eking out some fairly catchy melodies with less than an octave of Hetfieldian yarl, and while the riffing is short on stand-out exemplars, it also doesn’t offend with naked derivation. Overall, this is a moderately pleasing, if slight, late thrash entry that functions as something of a corrective to all the pizza mosh bullshit out there.
— Friar Johnsen

SKULL164

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EXILED, Exiled  (2002, Hellion)

The skull:
The fact that this is Exiled’s first-ever release — no demo, no EP, and on a fairly well-known label — and it looks like THIS tells you that almost no thought whatsoever went into the artwork. They’re like a baby fresh out of the womb that’s expected to get dressed in its finest and make an immediate public appearance. No wonder Exiled just went “uh…skull, that’s it!” Grab any skull you can find on your favorite clip-art page, make it glow and stamp a barcode on its forehead…voila! There you have your first album cover. Brilliant.

The music:
Well-crafted, highly energetic, aggressive power metal with plenty of speed but also enough timing shifts to keep you on your toes. The vocalist hovers in a mid-range, but dips low sometimes and every now and then well move to higher ground — he’s pretty good, although lacks something truly identifiable. The capability of each musician is fairly high too, and the songwriting is solid, if nothing groundbreaking. Exiled do what they do pretty well, delivering passion, darkness, melancholy and spirit in equal measure, played with remarkable ability, and you can’t help but like it at least a little bit. I wouldn’t return unless they really started finding their own unique muse, but it was good for one-time listen.
— Friar Wagner

SKULL163

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RELLIK, Killer  (2001, Doomed Planet)

The skull:
This skull looks so desperate for a bite, he’ll chomp down on any damn thing. A logo made of stone, a rat, a mushroom cloud…whatever’s in the vicinity, he’s gotta eat it. And if you haven’t figured it out yet, Rellik is Killer backwards. But the skull don’t care. He just wants to keep eating whatever you throw his way. Killer cover!

The music:
I remember reading about this California band in Metal Rendezvous ‘zine back in the day. They sounded interesting, but their 1986 EP was pretty much impossible to find, so I’ve never actually heard them until now. Rellik inhabits that special little space occupied by bands such as Serpent’s Knight, Slauter Xstroyes, and S.A. Slayer. The vocals are especially in line with any of those bands (squeaky, high and weird), the music a bit more straightfoward than S.A. Slayer or Slauter Xstroyes, but you get the idea. Basically Snakepit-metal, if that makes any sense to you. Which can sometimes be a totally great thing, but sometimes it’s just another forgotten old band who deserved obscurity because they just weren’t that good. While Rellik’s music is pretty okay in spots (the solo section of “Street Sinner”), there’s nothing here that requires immediate investigation. This compilation combined the only recordings they made, from 1986 and 1990, with three other tracks that never saw the light of day. If you’ve lived without them this long, you can keep living a Rellik-less life.
— Friar Wagner

SKULL162

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MALICIOUS ONSLAUGHT, Thrashed Black (1988, demo)

The skull:
Crude lo-brow artwork here, but it’s a death/thrash demo cassette from 1988, what do you expect? This poor guy is hanging on desperately to his remaining eye and hoping for no more damage. Here’s been through enough already. An eye out and a cleaved skull that slices his head from the upper left side almost clean through to the opposite eye. There’s hardly a demo cover more crudely cult-looking than this!

The music:
I love all those old bands whose name or album title tried to exactly describe their music. Albums like Extreme Aggression or Intense Brutality. Thanks for letting us know! Does Malicious Onslaught deliver a malicious onslaught? Yes they do! It’s pretty raw, which is appropriate for what they’re doing: a fusion of Show No Mercy-era Slayer with the caffeinated aggression of early Sadus and R.A.V.A.G.E. Only without the same skill level. You can hear these guys are pretty green on this tape. It’s a bit junky, a bit malnourished. But I like it. An otherworldly vocal approach would have worked better — this dude sounds too hardcore, in the D.R.I. vein. More Petrozza and less Brecht would’ve been cool. There’s a weird part in “Revenge of the Innocent” that brings in a cosmic element, followed by a short passage that gets back into metal but stays weird, then it goes all too quickly back to thrashing and crashing. Interesting stuff that I’d recommend to fans of the aforementioned bands, and anyone into madcap Florida band Hellwitch too. Glad I stumbled upon this — it’s not as bad as expected. I thought maybe it would be second-rate death metal or clunky necro black metal, considering the labels that later released their records (JL America and Unisound, respectively), but it’s more interesting than that, and a little weird at times. They did change quite a bit by the time of the death-swamped Brutal Gore album (more truth in advertising), but Thrashed Black is just good harmless intensity. Some of the clumsy playing actually adds to the strangeness and charm.
— Friar Wagner

SKULL161

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NOCTURNAL DEPRESSION, The Cult of Negation (2010, Avantgarde Music)

The skull:
Very bummed, this skull: he’s so sad. You can tell because he’s pointed down in 3/4 view. He’s probably upset to find himself hovering in such a shitty part of town. Look at this dump! Rubble and weeds everywhere, and an obviously empty parking garage in the background. Even the logo, set in some font which must come standard with French versions of Windows, is weepy. I guess we can assume the setting is “nocturnal”, but it’s so hard to tell with this crappy black and white cover, and let’s face it, this neighborhood would be depressing in broad daylight.

The music:
Evidently there’s a branch of black metal called “Depressive Black Metal,” or at least so says Metal Archives. If Nocturnal Depression is a representative sample, then DBM is basically just doom metal with terrible production and raspy vocals, and I guess that’s as good a delineating feature set as any. Historically, black metal was defined by the three ‘S’es: speed, satan, and six/eight, but Nocturnal Depression mostly gets by without any of them, although they do occasionally dial up the tempo. The songs are dull, but what really rankles is the feeling that these guys are trying just SO hard to come off as the saddest sacks in the land, which always rubs me the wrong way. If you’re gonna be black as in evil and darkness, at least sound like you MIGHT shoot a motherfucker.
— Friar Johnsen

SKULL160

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IN BATTLE, In Battle  (1997, Napalm)

The skull:
A skull floats through a cemetery, possibly haunting the burial grounds and its groundkeepers who could not actually bury him because his entire body was so damn big. Unless this skull somehow grew to become as wildly out of proportion as pictured. The ghost-skull is so laughably big, I picture him clumsily knocking around from headstone to headstone like a pinball slamming into bumpers. “Oops, sorry!” “Excuse me!” Or maybe he’s not haunting at all, but instead trying to eat that big headstone. Why the carved sliver of bone lodged vertically through the nose and coming out the roof of the mouth? Might be a toothpick and, lacking hands or pockets, this is where he has to put it. What a totally great album cover.

The music:
On their first album, Marduk were apparently quite a big influence on these Swedes, as this 12-song album blazes by in a flurry of hyperspeed drum beats, blurry guitar hurricanes and seething vocal screeching. Prototypical pure Swedish black metal. Marduk, Setherial, Blodsrit, Dark Funeral…you know the deal. But In Battle does have some differences. A song such as “Ruler of the Northern Sphere” features an almost folk-like melody, giving the material a sliver of depth, and “Doom of the Unbeloved” revolves around slightly slower (or, less fast) and more hypnotic spaces that recall the sound of classic Norwegian black metal. Overall it’s well-played and genuine, yet despite the attempts to inject some variety, it gets pretty boring after a couple songs.
— Friar Wagner

SKULL159

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PERSECUTOR, Wings of Death (2008, Rawblackult Productions)

The skull:
You’d be forgiven for thinking this demo was released in 1985, but no, it came out in 2008. There was a time when covers this bad were obviously the product of overeager teenagers doing their best to bring their evil visions to life, but in this late and derivative age, men probably in their late 20s or older are making covers like this to conjure a false nostalgia for an era they were born too late to know firsthand. You almost have to wonder if the job of drawing the skull went not to the guy in the band with the most artistic skill, but to the guy with the least, just for the sake of some misunderstood authenticity. You also have to wonder, “Where are the fucking wings?”

The music:
Unsurprisingly, it’s throwback thrash with a black metal twist, but it’s played with more verve than you might expect, and with no small amount of actual musical skill. I’m especially impressed by the rubber snake bass that burbles throughout with an almost spastic business. It’s excessively overplayed, in the best way. The riffing is also fairly clever at times, although this is one of those reverse synergy situations where putting everything together smooths over the most interesting elements to create an overall atmosphere of familiarity. I’ve been exposed to a lot of music like this since BigDumbSkulls.com came online, and this is one of the better examples, but I still probably wouldn’t listen to it unbidden by duty. But, if raw throwback German style thrash with nods to first wave black metal if your kind of thing, then you’d probably love Persecutor.
— Friar Johnsen

SKULL158

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FACESHIFT, Chokehold  (2007, Black Lodge)

The skull:
Classy cover. Logo and artwork bordered in rectangle and square, it’s all about an
orderly aesthetic. The skull hangs in a mist of various shades of gray, wearing an afro of dead trees. Sorta like a Chia Pet skull for the goth metal set. It’s an interesting and somewhat creative piece of art. A different sort of image from the norm we usually see ’round these parts.

The music:
From looking at the artwork, the band name, the label and the members’ origins, I assumed this would be melodic death metal. And it sorta is, just minus the death. Faceshift plays melodic metal that sounds like a mixture of latter-day Sentenced and newer Nocturnal Rites, only not as good, and with a vocalist that has absolutely no edge whatsoever. This is a single, so the only song it offers is “Chokehold.” It’s a polite stab at accessible, infectious melodic metal, but far too nice and harmless, lacking any kind of depth. Very “assembly line” in its approach and dull mid-paced momentum. This song is, in fact, so incredibly squeaky clean it’s barely metal. The dudes come from a heavier and longer-running band called Eternal Oath, so we’ll give them the benefit of the doubt and allow them into the hallowed halls of Big Dumb Skulls. The ultimate verdict: cool artwork for a pretty weak song. Incidentally, this song also appears on their Reconcile album, which features two skulls joined by the same sort of dead trees seen on the cover of this single. Continuity, man, continuity.
— Friar Wagner

SKULL157

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SCUM, Voyage into Depth of Insanity / Macabre Moors of Morgoth (1993, Sickness)

The skull:
Lit from above and deeply shadowed, this stark skull drawing is a nearly perfect example of black and white BDSery. No jaw, no logo, no title. The essence of Big Dumb Skull.

The music:
Original entry:
Friar Wagner collected this skull, but he failed to adequately record its provenance, so its identity remains unknown even to The Council. For close to two years, Friar Johnsen has labored to uncover the identity of the band, scouring the obscurest of mp3 blogs and frequently entreating Tineye.com for assistance, but he has so far failed in his epic quest. Friar Wagner has all along insisted that the band is a metal band, and supposing that’s true, the likelihood of it being a black metal band is close to 100%. The Council welcomes any and all information about SKULL157, the only mystery skull in the entire Skullection.

Update 2013-08-10:
It was only a matter of time, but finally the mystery skull has been identified! Thanks to Sami at Bestial Burst Records we now know that SKULL157 is actually a 7″ by the Finnish death metal band Scum. Like early Sentenced, Scum takes the Stockholm formula and adds a weird twist, producing something that’s mostly familiar without sounding entirely derivative. Both songs are excellent (and both appear on the band’s full-length debut, Mother Nature), particularly the slinky plodding bits of “Voyage”. Honestly, I wasn’t expecting much from the mystery skull when it was identified, but I’m pleasantly surprised by this discovery. Thanks again to Sami!
— Friar Johnsen