Category Archives: Skull

Skull of the day

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SPINAL TAP, Christmas With the Devil (1984, Enigma Records)

The skull:
A long-horned skull opens his gaping mouth, ready to swallow all sinners into the evil fires behind him. While wearing a Santa hat. The green and red color scheme is a nice touch, and the artwork is pretty much a literal depiction of the song title. Long live the Tap!

The music:
Typically silly, of course. The song’s groove is lurching, slow, bluesy, and almost sexual in its rhythmic slo-mentum. Almost nothing to do with traditional Christmas music as we know it, save for the church organ sounds. Borders on proto-doom in the second half. It’s Spinal Tap, so it’s intentionally dumb but also a lot of fun…and gotta love this lyric: “The elves are dressed in leather and the angels are in chains / Sugar plums are rancid and the stockings are in flames.” B-side “scratch mix” version is a redundant waste of time, really. This song is legitimately better than a hundred or so more serious-minded German hard rock/heavy metal bands from the same era.
— Friar Wagner

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WITCHFINDER GENERAL, Live ’83 (2006, Nuclear War Now! Productions)

The skull:
Simple white skull and white lettering on black background. As unadorned as it gets, except for the tiny nuances: fangs and flames burning in the eye sockets. Total horizontal egg as skullcap. Appropriately old-school looking for this ancient doom metal recording.

The music:
The first pressing of this live album was altered to make the songs sound slower than was actually the case. Or maybe it was a mistake. Regardless, listening to the truest version of this recording, it’s a raw but entirely listenable document of Witchfinder General at their peak. Most songs are represented from the band’s first two and only worthwhile albums, and it’s testament that they, along with Saint Vitus, Nemesis and Trouble, were among the most important doom bands to emerge from the early ’80s underground. Great band who apparently brought the goods live. Hilarious stage banter from vocalist Zeeb Parkes in the beginning of the 10-minute “Quietus”: “For anybody that likes real heavy rock, this is gonna be the number!” Uh, hey, thanks for letting us know. He should have also let us know about the too-long and too-boring unaccompanied guitar solo at the end.
— Friar Wagner

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SWORD, Sweet Dreams (1988, GWR)

The skull:
A rubber snake on a plastic skull.  Well, maybe the snake is alive, but that skull never was.  The massive logo steals some of the skull’s thunder, but certainly not much: this is as classic as it gets.  Plunk down a skull, set up some spooky green lights, take the picture.  Done.

The music:
Like the cover, this album simply gets shit done.  No frills, mid-paced heavy metal with deep songs and a killer singer.  Whenever I listen to this album (which is often), I remember the review that turned me onto it, which compared singer Rick Hughes to Dee Snider (but with a much better range) and imagined the music as what NWOBHM might have become had Metallica not intervened.  Many people prefer the band’s debut, Metalized (which also sports a skull cover, but it’s far too stylized, metaphoric even, to be considered for the skullection), and while I can definitely understand the appeal of that album’s speedier US power metal (even if the band is Canadian), there’s a depth and a maturity to Sweet Dreams that puts this album over the top for me.  Sword are even back together, but unlike most of the nostalgia acts working the oldies circuit, Sword is working with the entire original lineup, sounds amazing, and the singer still has it.
— Friar Johnsen

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MERCYFUL FATE, Time (1994, Metal Blade)

The skull:
This band can lay claim to one of the greatest skull covers of all time, 1983’s Melissa, although that screaming skull was deemed too fancy/arty/busy by the Council to enter our Skullection. The Time skull, however, is picture-perfect full-on skullacious skullness. We get it: time ravages all but the bones. Great. This is an unimaginative yet somehow striking enough cover. Just a plain old skull, its left side in the shadows, the cap at some point sawed laterally for shits ‘n’ giggles. The epitome of what we’re looking for with the Skullection; it’s big, although certainly not the dumbest.

The music:
Time came out around the time that King Diamond’s vocals started to cross the fine line from chillingly awesome to self-caricature. It’s also when he stopped using reverb on his voice — big mistake. His vocals are on the dry side, as is the overall production. There are some great riffs here, and of course those Shermann/Denner solos are nothing less than excellent; they work even on the worst songs (“Witches’ Dance,” “The Mad Arab”). I’m a huge fan of this band but don’t listen to Time a lot. When I do, moments to look forward to include “Angel of Light” and one of few Fate classics outside of the ’80s, “Lady in Black.”
— Friar Wagner

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PARALEX, White Lightning (1980, Reddingtons Rare Records)

The skull:
This is the first of several Worried Skulls in the Skullection. Looks like he’s fretting about something, perhaps because he forgot an umbrella, which he’ll need for that oncoming storm behind him. Super-crude artwork lacking all imagination, although there’s a nice bit brightness in the skull’s eyes, making his worried self look just that little bit more paranoid.

The music:
If I found this 12″ EP cheap, I’d buy the shit out of it and immediately re-sell it for big money.This is the kind of junk that New Wave of British Heavy Metal collectors uphold and praise, but probably because of its rarity rather than its musical quality. These three songs are what the British might call “naff”: trashy music, stumbling vocals, generic song writing. Maybe would have sounded dark and heavy in 1980, but it can’t compete with the stuff that was already around in 1980 and already 100 times better (Angel Witch, Iron Maiden). As obscure NWOBHM bands go, there are way better. The perfect pairing: a big dumb skull, big dumb music.
— Friar Wagner

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KROKUS, Headhunter (1983, Arista)

The skull:
Totally bare bones (no pun intended): a skull and bones made of steel. That’s it. Black background with a Krokus logo and album title flying at top. Big, dumb and boring, but kind of attractive in its straightforward generic metal-ness. Probably took them 4 seconds to conceptualize it and 5 second to shoot the picture.

The music:
Not really a Krokus fan, they were always too AC/DC-ish for me (not a fan of AC/DC). Mark Storace is especially reminiscent of Bon Scott, although huskier and not as annoying. But Headhunter is the most individualistic thing they did in the ’80s, and remains the only Krokus album I would ever own if I decided I needed to own a Krokus album. I’ve heard this one a lot, as I had a bunch of friends back in the day way into it, and in 1983 it sounded like pretty bad-ass stuff to some people. But a Bachman-Turner Overdrive cover song? Pleeease. Songs I have to recommended, even to Krokus-sceptics, include “Headhunter” (a metal anthem, no doubt), the emotive, textured “Screaming in the Night,” and the album-ending two-fold jab of relatively experimental instrumental “White Din” and majestic “Russian Winter.”
— Friar Wagner