Category Archives: Skull

Skull of the day

SKULL136

Posted on by
Reply

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

SKULL135

Posted on by
1

1349, Demonoir (2010, Indie Recordings)

The skull:
Credit where credit is due: this is a pretty badass skull. Deep watercolors and dark shadows evoke a genuinely hellish vision, here. The jagged teeth of the gaping, inarticulate maw are especially disturbing: not screaming or grimacing this skull, but thoughtless, agape and hungry. The brilliant but limited palette perfectly captures the monochromatic starkness that is the ideal in black metal, but to greater effect than all but the best of the black and white pretenders. This is some seriously evil shit.

The music:
I’ve always enjoyed 1349’s semi-sophisticated take on black metal. Of course, Frost is one of, if not the best drummer in black metal, but unlike the recent stripped-down stupidity of his main band, 1349 brings the speed and angular weirdness that Satyricon so artfully deployed on their classic mid 90s releases, the godlike Nemesis Divina in particular. 1349 are still too blazingly fast, all the time, for my tastes, but there’s no other band working at these tempos that can even begin to hold my interest. The slower sections work best for me, and songs like “Pandemonium War Bells” that really mix up the speeds are the highlights of the album. The clean production goes a long way toward keeping 1349 listenable: even through the blasting, the riffing is articulate and audible. The vocals are pretty standard issue, but if you’re listening to black metal for the vocals, well, you have some weird priorities.
— Friar Johnsen

SKULL134

Posted on by
Reply

RETRO GRAVE Again (2008, Upland)

The skull:
A quickie still life, probably done digitally but at least pretending to be an oil sketch or something, this is actually pretty classy as big dumb skulls go, but every bit as unambitious as the rest. Considering how badly this band wants to be 40 years older than they are, it’s kind of funny how little effort they put into the typography and design of this cover. The illustration might have passed retro muster, but nothing else does.

The music:
Psychedelic stoner metal, as you could probably have guessed. Total 70s style throwback music. Like Witchcraft or more recent acts like Blood Ceremony and Kadaver, Retro Grave don’t make even the slightest effort at originality, content to emulate their inspirations in every way: musically, sonically, aesthetically. Retro Grave is the work of one Jeff Olson, whose greatest claim to fame is as a footnote in Trouble’s history. Weirdly, this album was actually recorded and released twice, which makes the title sadly literal. Poor Friar Wagner also had to listen to this crap, but his review was swallowed by the cruel gods of the database, and I didn’t have the heart to make him review this stinker a second time.
— Friar Johnsen

SKULL133

Posted on by
Reply

THE AWAKENING, Countdown to Misanthropy (2005, Twilight Vertrieb)

The skull:
A cartoony skull (making no allowances for dentition) in a busted-up cog, floating over a… puzzle of the badlands? In a loading zone? Who can say what’s supposed to be going on here, or how this cover could possible relate to the poorly conceived title. Are we to imagine the skull thinking, “All you humans out there? You’d better hold on to your asses because I’m gonna start hatin’ the shit out of ’em in a few minutes…” Adding to the confusion is the weirdly double-set title, no doubt the result of the band being unable to choose between the gritty modern font and the evil olde-tyme font. See also the logo and that symbol hiding behind the nondescript lettering: that’s a leftover of the A and G from their old logo, when The Awakening played pagan metal. These guys really just can’t make up their minds.

The music:
I was certain, looking at this cover, that the music it adorned would be Pantera/Machine Head style groove metal, but surprisingly, that’s not at all what The Awakening are about (now, at least. Maybe one of their other albums, though!) This is modern death metal, mid paced to quick, but rarely blasty. Sure, there are some thrash influences, but only as ornamentation. What you mostly get is Malevolent Creation / Monstrosity style DM, with a touch of the weirdness that informs a lot of German death metal, even the rotten stuff. This is not my preferred form of death metal, but some of this album really isn’t bad. I know I shouldn’t be saying nice things about a song called “Payment in Skin,” but it’s slithering riffs and barely-in-control drumming more or less work. Sure, the vocals are generic and the lyrics are dumb, but this can be said about even a lot of good death metal. That said, it appears that The Awakening broke up half a decade ago. Countdown averted, misanthropy delayed.
— Friar Johnsen

SKULL132

Posted on by
Reply

MAGOR, Túl Mindenen  (2008, demo)

The skull:
This poor skull! All manner of junk is going into his boney being, for a reason we will likely never know. Túl Mindenen means “beyond all” in Hungarian, and the torture this skull is enduring here is truly beyond all reasonability. Some big ol’ stubby cylindrical thing has been jammed into the top of his head while various tubes run in and out of both sides of the skull. He’s chained in four spots, like he’s gonna get drawn and quartered, and to add insult to injury his forehead’s been stamped with a barcode. Wisps of smoke or some gaseous stuff trails from the tubes on the right. He silently screams “I’m not an animal, I’m a…skull!!!” There’s just no dignity in what’s happening here.

The music:
Lately I’ve been real hard on newer bands here at BDS, but admit something: if you’re a modern band putting a skull on your cover and playing fifth-generation tough-guy metal, you have no reason to exist. Hungary’s Magor are another band that toss together one-dimensional riffs and terrible yelled vocals and call it metal. But they do have some distinctive elements that make them a bit more enjoyable than the bland norm. One thing Magor does is throw in sublime lead guitar lines and thematic passages, as heard near the end of this demo’s third and final song, “Rejts el Magadban.” More of that and less of almost everything else would be cool. I appreciate the tightness displayed in “Arccal a Feny Fele,” so credit drummer Zoltan Csatai on that, and the doom-ish element within “Túlélő Vagyok, Nem Aldozat” keeps things interesting, so that’s appreciated. Still, Magor will likely sound pointless to any seasoned metalhead. But if you just got turned onto Sepultura, Metallica and Pantera yesterday, and you live in Hungary, you’re gonna love this.
— Friar Wagner

SKULL131

Posted on by
Reply

VOMITOR, Bleeding the Priest (2002, Metal Blood Music)

The skull:
Although it’s probably supposed to look like it was photocopied (or Xeroxed, as we’d have said in 1986) a dozen times to remove any nuance of shading, this is surely just some skull scanned from a book (or another demo!), with the colors reduced to two in Photoshop. As with all things, it’s way easier to be cult in this day and age than it used to be.

The music:
Possessed meets Bathory. Sloppy as shit, derivative as fuck, pointless as hell. I’m sure you can already hear it in your head: buzzy guitars, tinny drums, reverberated vocals. There isn’t a single original idea or riff on this entire album, although first half of “Reaper’s Carrion” is pretty cool, before it turns into some terrible Obsessed By Cruelty outtake. This is so stupidly oldschool that this 2002 release was reissued on cassette in 2013. I look forward to the flexi box set packed in a Trapper Keeper that’s set to be released in 2016. Based on all the surface details, I assumed Vomitor were Brazilian, but the internet assures me they’re Australian, which really just makes them the poor man’s Slaughter Lord, nearly 20 years late. A dubious distinction, that.
— Friar Johnsen

SKULL130

Posted on by
Reply

VANEXA, 1979-1980  (2010, Jolly Roger Records)

The skull:
When you have an obscure band unearthing boring music from decades ago with a totally lame album title, what can you do but pair it with a simple skull cover? That’s what Vanexa did. Props to them for at least coming up with a skull that is uniquely their own, a bit more stylized than we normally see and certainly not trying to keep it real by depicting like a genuine human skull. The Vanexa skull (wonder if they called him Van? Van X-A?) hovers in the middle of a simple geometrical pattern of two squares and a circle. Cool, dude.

The music:
What are the chances I would get served two consecutive skull-laden albums compiling the early works of junky traditional heavy metal bands from Italy? This skull-digging is some dirty business sometimes. Vanexa have been around since 1979, and even though their last album, the fourth, came out in 1995, they’re apparently still together. You can see from the title that this album collects their earliest material in demo and live form. It’s mostly forgettable hard rock/heavy metal that’s typical of the day, in terms of style (ie. NWOBHM-sounding stuff) but lacking any noteworthy invention or vision. Horrible yelping vocals don’t help. Something like “Hiroshima” can be cited as proto-speed metal in the same way early Raven and Accept can, I suppose, but these guys ain’t Raven or Accept. Pass!

SKULL129

Posted on by
Reply

GOATWHORE, Carving Out the Eyes of God (2009, Metal Blade)

The skull:
A bleak black and white skull with some occult symbol scrawled in the forehead, probably from the corny Simon Necronomicon published in the early 80s (see also: Morbid Angel). The skull is flanked by two scythes, which I can’t imagine are the ideal tools for eye-carving, but underneath the skull are two of those ridiculous “combat knives” you’re likely to find at that cutlery store in the mall that also sells Klingon weaponry. I guess you could those to carve out the eyes of God, even if a straight blade is almost certainly a better choice. The skull obviously has no eyes, so maybe it’s supposed to be God’s skull, but if it is, eye carving is probably the least of this skully God’s problems. He’s got no skin, and Cthulhu is on his case!

The music:
I’ve never been able to get into Goatwhore, but since most of my time not enjoying them is spent actually seeing them live (they open for a lot of bands I like), I usually forget that their albums are really not so bad. They’re just not my thing. Goatwhore are basically a stew of Slayer, Deicide, and Celtic Frost: mid-to-fast paced thrashy death metal with a swaggering groove. Their earlier albums feature a pretty strong black metal influence, but that’s less evident on this, their third full length. But from album to album, and then song to song, there’s very little variation and almost no genuine creativity, and the entire enterprise feels too calculatedly engineered to interest angry adolescents in nail-studded bracers. Slayer’s been working that beat for years, and even they can’t turn that mission into good music, so what chance does a band from New Orleans have?
— Friar Johnsen

SKULL128

Posted on by
1

ANGUISH FORCE, RRR 1988-1997  (2009, My Graveyard Productions)

The skull:
I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again:  give us something we can use!!! This is about as basic as it gets, and we’ve seen it many times: white skull ‘n’ crossbones on a black background. But that’s the business we’re in here at BDS, and if it gets too fancy the Council gets cranky, so we’ll take it! Notable is the sinister grin and leering eyes looking downward at the clunky album title. This skull looks like he’s up to absolutely no good. Please note that if you’re going to use the word “Force” in your band name, it seems ridiculous to the outside world to have the word “force” in such a small font. Not very forceful.

The music:
I can only find evidence of this Italian band releasing material since 1998, and in those early days as Anguish (they added the tiny “Force” later). But if they’re telling us they’ve been around since 1988, I guess we have to believe them. The stuff all sounds very modern in production, so I’m guessing some of these songs were conceived by one of the guys back when we was 13 years old and they finally recorded them once they had a few official albums under their belt. No idea why this collection’s title is preceded by “RRR.” Nevertheless, there are 12 songs here, including Uriah Heep and Grave Digger covers (“Sympathy” and “Heavy Metal Breakdown,” respectively, although you could probably guess that Uriah Heep never wrote a song called “Heavy Metal Breakdown”). Their originals are pedestrian speed/power metal, in the vein of, but less than the German bands who popularized this approach — you can hear Helloween in here, and even a more obscure band like Attack. It’s okay, very well-played, just not conceived by visionaries or anything. As with many Italian metal bands, the vocals suffer due to a strong and not particularly attractive accent. And, yet again, we have an example of the album cover reflecting the band’s own musical laziness. With titles like “Fire From Hell,” “Death in Hell,” “Priest of War,” “The Witch of the Castle” and “Heroes of Metal,” you probably won’t be surprised to know that much of their material is interchangeable. Stock, stocky and stockiest riffs galore. You have to appreciate the longevity, though, whether they got their start in 1995 or way back in 1988. (You know, Voivod put out Dimension Hatross in 1988, which is apropos of nothing, I just wanted to write about a great band on this site for a second…)
— Friar Wagner

 

 

SKULL127

Posted on by
Reply

CANNAE, Troubleshooting Death (2000, East Coast Empire)

The skull:
Staring at a screengrab of this weirdly glowing skull, filthy with gravegrime, a weary Hyderabadi tech support agent asks, “Have you tried rebooting it? Is the skull plugged in?” He’s never quite understood the job of troubleshooting death, nor is he even comfortable asking who is ultimately paying him, but the wages are good. “Maybe these thorns are the issue. Were they there when the problems started?” He’s going off script, which rarely makes anyone happy, but he doesn’t know what else to say. “That stuff in the background is probably blood,” he muses. “Maybe when the flesh was removed…” he begins, when the caller curses at him and hangs up. He doesn’t care. He’s paid by the call, and the queue is deep.

The music:
Typical deathcore crap, a mix of the worst Obituary riffs and desultory breakdown chugs. There’s not much to say about this kind of music, so I’ll take this opportunity to appreciate the editorial decision of Metal Archives (the Council’s second favorite internet destination) to deny this entire style a place in its hallowed halls. For as much as I hate this stuff, I’d say it’s undeniably metal, and while all deathcore is completely awful, the same can be said of pornogrind, which is heartily welcomed in the Archives. One imagines that the embargo is not based on the music, but on the haircuts, or maybe the logos. Who knows, but it’s just another reason Metal Archives rules, even if it sometimes makes our jobs here at Skull HQ a little harder.
— Friar Johnsen