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FLOTSAM AND JETSAM, Metal Shock (1985, demo)

The skull:
Maybe I’m prejudiced against any comedy or mockery because I love the first several F&J albums so much (and I believe I can speak for the other BDS friar on that point, as well), but I always thought this skull design was completely killer. Dig the J stabbing its way through the chasms of the eyeholes, drawing blood to boot. The logo is one of the coolest and most stylish from the American thrash wave of the 1980s. Same can’t be said for the demo title font, which I swear I’ve seen used for “Live Wire” somewhere, whatever “Live Wire” is. I know I’ve seen it. And about a million other album and fanzine titles of the era. But yeah, the skull and logo? I’d wear a shirt with that on it.

The music:
Four songs here, only one of which appeared revamped on the next year’s debut, Doomsday for the Deceiver (“Hammerhead”). There is also, of course, “I Life You Die,” which appeared later, also revamped, on their perfect-expect-for-THAT-song second album. These versions are great — obviously rawer, but with a different guitar noodle here or a different Erik A.K. shriek there. Then we have “The Evil Sheik,” which boasts a variety of riffs that are all Armored Saint-meets-Omen, a few King Diamond-ish vocal moments, and an ending that is total Iron Maiden circa 1980. Overall it’s a good song, just not great enough to pass muster for the considerably speedier debut, and obviously the most derivative of any of the Jason Newsted-penned early Flots tunes. “The Beast Within,” now this is interesting. I always felt this song lacked something next to the other three, something that easily fit into a more traditional mold. It has that spandex-and-spikes vibe of the many bands of the era that had one foot in true heavy metal and the other in cock rock. I didn’t realize until today, in examining this skull and the music inside, that it’s actually a cover song. Weird choice too: a song from Stormtrooper’s EP, Armies of the Night (1985, Ironworks)Why? Was Jason Newsted out of ideas, or from Ironworks or Stormtrooper have some blackmail-worthy dirt on him? Incidentally, Stormtrooper featured guitarist Mick Sweda, who later went on to fame in King Kobra and then again in Bullet Boys. (No wonder I smelled hairspray.) I had to check out the original version, and it’s pretty killer, like a rougher, tougher early Ratt (and I love early Ratt). Very “early Metal Massacre comps” if you know what I mean. So, not a bad song, you just wonder why Newsted and Flotsam relied on it for their second demo. Weirdness.
— Friar Wagner

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NUCLEAR ABOMINATION, Nuclear’N’Fucking Roll (2010, demo)

The skull:
This skull is obviously related to this guy, what with the radiation symbol monocle, so maybe this is black metal? But not so fast: a black metal band would never use that kind of typewriter font for the title. That’s obviously the work of a crust or grindcore band. Except, hold on, that logo could only be for a thrash band (pentagram be damned!), and in the roshambo of logo/image/typeface, logo always wins. This is thrash. And so concludes today’s lesson in heavy metal visual taxonomy. This will be on the test.

The music:
If, looking at this cover, you suspected that Nuclear Abomination would sound like demo-era Toxic Holocaust, then I will applaud your stereotyping instincts, because that’s exactly what Nuclear Abomination sounds like. They’re maybe a little more thrash and a little less hardcore, but definitely in the same vein. Like Toxic Holocaust, Nuclear Abomination are a band with mediocre riffs, bad vocals, and a pervasive corniness, but Nuclear Abomination clearly take themselves (or himself, I should properly say) even as seriously as their (his) American counterpart(s). I mean, you wouldn’t name your demo Nuclear’N’Fucking Roll if you were serious, right? And you definitely wouldn’t name it that if you last demo was called Nuclear’N’Roll. But then again, what isn’t improved by more Fucking? Anyway, back to the Toxic Holocaust comparisons: Nuclear Abomination released this demo as a limited cassette, so it’s probably already too late for you to be a completist when it comes to this band, but then again, the hunt for all this rare crappy rethrash is definitely way more fun than actually listening to it, and if that’s the thing that really tweaks your nips, you’d better start penpalling with the most underground Frenchmen you can find, because you’re gonna have to dig deep for this one.
— Friar Johnsen

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DISARM GOLAITH, Man, Machine and Murder (2008, Casket)

The skull:
Man? We’ll take their word for it that this skull belonged to a male.

Check.

Machine? It’s sort of cyborg-y, this skull, and a fightin’ cyborg at that, judging by the bullet hole. So okay, a machine.

Check.

Murder? Do they really have to spell it out for us? This skull – which once carried the flesh and guts of a male member of the species – is a goddamn fightin’ machine, and if that red color behind him is to symbolize all the blood he’s bathing in after all that fightin’, then yeah, there’s a ton of murderin’ goin’ on in this cyborg skull’s warring world.

Check.

The music:
If Onslaught had kept Steve Grimmett on vocals and continued their evolution, kind of working backwards in the development of heavy metal’s sub-genre expansion, might have, in another album or two, arrived it a sound like the one claimed by Disarm Goliath, this kind of raucous yet classy, tough but melodic traditional heavy metal sound. Unfortunately D.G.’s Man, Machine and Murder EP is not recorded very well, and while the passion is clearly there, not even the most earnest delivery can help if the songs are mediocre, and these songs are mediocre without exception. The spirit is there though, so if your standards for traditional heavy metal aren’t sky-high when it comes to newer bands, then this will fit your craving for merely decent metal (I checked out another D.G. song, “Embrace the Abyss,” from their second album, which came out several years after this EP, and holy cow, it sounds a lot like Onslaught’s “Shellshock.” So there you go.)
— Friar Wagner

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VIRGIN KILLER, (2010, demo)

The skull:
This image is actually a little disturbing. It’s so grainy that it pretty much has to be a video screen cap, and although I guess it could be from some corny 70s horror movie, it looks a lot more like something that would have come out of Cambodia during the Pol Pot days. Why is this naked man (or boy?) holding a skull filled with sand, his hands wrapped in chains? Fuck if I know, and I’m pretty sure I don’t want to know. There’s no way there’s a happy story behind this, but let’s pretend. We’ll say that out of frame, attached to the chains, is the rubber seat of a swing, which this man is going to hang in a tree to delight the village children. But before he hangs it, he’s saying, “Here’s some shaved ice, to beat the heat! It’s lemon flavored. Sorry about the weird bowl, though. I was down in the basement yesterday getting out the Halloween decorations and I found this, so it was clean in the dish drainer today, and I figured I might as well get the most out of it. I promise it’s food safe! And hey, isn’t it funny that in America, it’s cold on Halloween? Not so down here in Colombia! Anyway, eat up, kids, there’s plenty for everyone, and I’ll have this swing up in a jiff!” And the children, living as they do in the peaceful nation of Colombia and knowing nothing of violence or skulls or virgin killing, happily tuck into the shaved ice and squeal with delight at the prospect of the new swing.

The music:
God, not another Colombian speed metal band! What have I done to deserve this? At least it’s not a rehearsal room demo, although probably this was recorded on a Tascam 4-track. In 2010. For fuck’s sake. Anyway, Virgin Killer sound like a really raw tribute to Vendetta or some other decidedly subprime band from Germany in the mid 80s. The vocalist amusingly splits the difference between Schmier and Mille, and again we’re talking 1986 here. This isn’t the worst thing of this sort I’ve ever heard, but it’s definitely pretty bad. Seems like the band got better fairly quickly, though, as their 2013 demo is listenable if still totally goofy. They have the silly energy of a Japanese retro band, where you’re not sure if the whole thing is a joke or not. It’s almost certainly not a joke, but it’s also almost certainly better to treat it as such. For your own sanity.
— Friar Johnsen

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SONIC REIGN, Monument in Black (2013, Apostasy)

The skull:
Technically this is a really excellent piece of artwork. It’s got a certain mood, and its realism is tilted just slightly into the realms of dark macabre vibes by the webby, shadowy slashes. But why? I mean, why? Why the fuck? There’s nothing happening here worth capturing in paint-on-canvas. And with band name and album title both so completely, underwhelming generic, you gotta wonder if a decent hired artist (or stolen piece of artwork from a coffee table book) is all this German band is able to muster.

The music:
Well, it’s boring. So much like the artwork it’s not funny. The guys can play well and they bring along with them a certain creepy atmosphere that’s made clear by the precision playing and modern recording. It’s basically like dull, middle-era Satyricon (Now, Diabolical; Volcano). It’s rendered very well but the actual ideas are shallow. There’s just not much to bite into here. Like the dull gray skull on the cover; like the band name that’s devoid of any real thought; like the retread, heard-it-already-a-thousand-times album title…it’s all so incredibly amazingly barely exciting.
— Friar Wagner

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ASCHENGLAS, Von Toten Gesungen (2006, demo)

The skull:
Though it looks a bit like a one-toothed baby monkey fashioned out of play-doh, I assume this is meant to be a human skull, placed as it is in a Catholic reliquary. Perhaps this is the skull of St. George. Not that one. I’m talking about St. George the Lesser, patron saint of curiosity. A pagan native of Africa, St. George was converted to Christianity and brought to the new world by a flamboyant missionary known more for his outlandish raiments than his piety. Though the earliest recorded deeds of George include a litany of criminal offenses, he would eventually assume the role of comforter and aid-giver, and was canonized for, among other works, miraculously curing a terminally ill little girl, although some scholars continue to maintain that the little girl was going to be discharged from the hospital anyway, and was in fact only there to have her tonsils removed. He was ultimately martyred by grown-ups whose places of business were destroyed during one of the saint’s periodic outbursts of mayhem. George was captured, bound, and finally murdered by lethal injection after biting a small boy, even though the boy dared George to do it, and even though the wound was a minor one. Today, the faithful pray to George for aid in focusing on boring tasks and avoiding the temptation to leap out windows to chase ducks.

The music:
Say what you will about BDS metal, but at least it’s usually not goth metal. Usually. Aschenglas defies the stereotype of BDSers as racist Frenchmen producing terrible black metal in their parents’ attic. Indeed, Aschenglas is the one-man bedroom project of a lonely Austrian who moans in German about the awful beauty of nature, probably. Musically pitched somewhere between Crematory and Type O Negative, Von Toten Gesungen is overwrought and ponderous, not to mention cheap-sounding. At least one song prominently features synthesized shawm. Though this demo is not entirely incompetent, it is mostly dull and comically pretentious. And, according to Metal Archives, “[t]wo songs feature programmed guitars only, although it is unknown which ones.” Now, there’s a first.
— Friar Johnsen

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SZRON, Death Camp Earth (2012, Under the Sign of Garazel Productions)

The skull:
Swear we’ve seen this before. But that’s probably skull fatigue talking. And really, after you’ve recently studied skulls smoking cigarettes while wearing headphones; skulls wearing ridiculous Egyptian headdresses drawn in black crayon by children; and skulls hatching human heads that are puking black blood…well, this skull is bound to lack impact. A less jaded skull aficionado would surely find this skull fearsome, its sight partially obscured by barbed wire wrap and a common runic character stamped onto its forehead, but after those other recent beauties this is like a trip to the frozen yogurt shop on the corner, where the spicy mango flavor pales next to the banana garlic, seaweed bacon and bubblegum catsup ones.

The music:
At times these Polish black metallers favor the wide-expanse, hugely majestic, all-six-strings kinds of chords that remind of those great early Borknagar records. When they’re not going all epic, though, it’s extremely orthodox modern black metal – seething in the right spots, vocals vile enough to fit the bill, shades of darkness black enough to conjure melancholy ‘n’ might…and boring as hell. I doubt any but the most insatiable black metal gourmand needs to sit down and dig in. Long songs, too: four of them in nearly 40 minutes. Please note that Metal Archives says this band’s lyrical topics touch upon “Anti-Humanity, Anti-Christianity, Death, Evil.” Fresh new ground for a black metal band, basically.
— Friar Wagner

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FAITH OR FEAR, Demo of Fear ’86 (1986, demo)

The skull:
Who’s not scared of pirates, right? I mean, when you imagine your worst nightmare, the most abject terror, of course you picture the Jolly Roger. THAT’S that kind of fear we’re talking about. And not just any pirates, either, but ’86 pirates, with goofy haircuts and clothes that are a patchwork of dayglo neons and corporate logos. That’s some serious shit-your-pants fear, right? Right?

The music:
Some people only know Faith or Fear as the band who donated guitarist Meritt Gant to Overkill, but in truth, Gant was only in the band for about a year. Anyone else who knows Faith or Fear is likely to consider them a very poor substitute for a great melodic thrash band like Forbidden. It’s not that Faith or Fear were terrible, because they were reasonably good. It’s just that “reasonably good” among thrash bands in the late 80s put you pretty far down the ladder. I always wanted to like this band more than I do, because I have a soft spot for thrash bands with melodic singers, but Tim Blackman just isn’t a very good vocalist. His range is pretty narrow (excepting a few screams) and he doesn’t do a whole lot with what he has. But, he’s not awful, and the music is crunchy and more-or-less well written, so even though Faith or Fear were a decidedly third tier band, I guess you could say they were one of the better bands in that cohort. This is their first demo, and while only one of these songs made it to their lone full-length (recorded before their reunion, I mean), their sound was more or less in place from the start. Again, imagine Forbidden, minus the trickiest riffs and most of the hooks. That’s Faith or Fear. Of course, hailing from New Jersey, Faith or Fear were more likely to sprinkle in tough guy posturing than their left coast contemporaries, but at least they never devolved into goofy silliness, a la Anthrax at their worst (or best, I guess, if that’s how your tastes run.) Obviously, if you’ve never heard this band, you’ll want to start (and probably end) with their 1989 full length, Punishment Area, and even if you get beyond that, there’s a new album (which I haven’t heard) and a compilation of rerecorded demo tracks (although not stretching back so far as to encompass this particular demo), so you’d have to be really, really into Faith or Fear to have any reason to listen to Demo of Fear ’86 and probably everyone who would ever be that into this band already owns an original cassette copy.
— Friar Johnsen

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DERANGED, Premonotory Nightmare (1988, demo)

The skull:
He wakes up in a sweat and rolls over to embrace his wife. He is shaking and clearly disturbed.

He: Baby, I had the scariest dream. It was a premonotory nightmare.

She: Oh, babe, don’t you mean “premonitory”?

He: Yeah, that’s what I said.

She: No, you said “pre-mon-OH-tory.” It’s “pre-mon-IH-tory”

He: Whatever. You’re the English teacher. Anyway…There I was, inside this dome of bone, trapped and desperate to escape. I pounded and pounded at this bone-dome —

She: Hee-hee!

He: I know. Anyway, I finally crack through this dome to find I was trapped inside of a skull! It was so weird! And by the time I emerged I was pretty much dead, one of my eyes was dangling out of its socket and I was vomiting blood! Ohhh, baby, it was AWFUL!!!

She: Sounds really scary, babe. But what’s so premonitory about it?

He: [fuming now] Never mind…

The music:
Not to belabor the theme too much, but I’m guessing the guys in Canada’s Deranged weren’t the brightest bulbs in the chandelier, know what I’m sayin’? As far as I have read, and even observed first-hand, Vancouver, B.C. is comprised mostly of straight-up English-speaking denizens (and lots of Asians, but these guys look caucasian). So, with the misspelling in the cassette title, and the song title “Different Executioning,” you gotta wonder if any member of this five-piece band owned so much as one single dictionary among them, or made it past the 6th grade? But hey, let’s give ‘em some slack and get into the meat of the music. What we have here is some incredibly raw and vicious thrash metal that reminds a lot of early Sadus (D.T.P. demo, Illusions), Pleasure to Kill-era Kreator, Gammacide’s Victims of Science, and Morbid Saint’s Spectrum of Death. With the later receiving enough posthumous acclaim that the band reunited, you hope that eventually this demo and and the next one, 1989’s Place of Torment (which is even better and more intense than this), would find a proper reissue and repackaging. I would totally buy it. The riffs are good, some are even unique enough as to be memorable, the energy is very high, the playing is pro, and Scott Murdoch’s vocals are absolutely maniacal. They may have performed poorly in English class, but they were experts in the ways of ultra-intense thrash metal, and for that, I give them a solid A grade.
— Friar Wagner

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BONE SICKNESS, Bone Sickness (2010, demo)

The skull:
There isn’t much to say about this skull except to note that the sickness in question seems to cause cracking and fissures in an infected skull. A tough break, for sure. What most tickles me about this cover is the efficiency with which they reused the N and E in their logo. No sense wasting the ink on two Ns and two Es, when one each will suffice. Clearly these anarcho-punks are of the enviro- sort. If only they could have found a way to cut down on the Ss.

The music:
This here’s some rehearsal room d-beat death metal that sounds like someone trying to reverse engineer Amebix from the first Bolt Thrower album. As crusty stuff goes, it’s very well written, but it’s hard to listen to anything so shitty sounding. Hard for me, at least — this demo has been reissued twice, on cassette and 7″ vinyl, so I guess the fidelity is sufficiently high for at least a few hundred die-hards. Do you think Hellbastard sold out when they released a full length album? Do you own at least five bands that start with Dis-? Have you ever stencilled anything in white out on your leather jacket? If you answered yes to any of these questions, then you need this shit. Like, right away!
— Friar Johnsen