Tag Archives: feathers

SKULL492

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CRUX, Terrific Warrior  (1992, demo)

The skull:
[The scene: post-battle, two military men wander a wasteland that has been hosting hundreds of rotting dead for weeks. They come upon a freshly defleshed skull.]

Commander: How well did that warrior fight, Lieutenant?
Lieutenant: He was terrific. Just terrific.
Commander: Does he deserve the Feather Commendation?
Lieutenant: He certainly does, Commander. He was a terrific warrior.
Commander: “Terrific warrior,” you say? I love that demo!

The music:
Unfortunately, I could not find a copy of the Terrific Warrior demo to review, but its songs, as well as some songs from the band’s first demo, 1991’s Rev Smrti, are not only the same, but also appeared on their one and only album, 1993’s Rev Smrti. Confused? It’s a weird little history, but one worth investigating if you dig early Root or black/thrash type stuff in the vein of Sodom, Bulldozer and later Norwegian band Aura Noir. Their music is crude but not exactly primitive, and generally recommendable. The fact that two of Crux’s members played on lots of the classics by Root should tell you there’s a fairly respectable performance level. Crux isn’t innovative in the least, but the spirit is there, and with a handful of beastly yet memorable riffs and some nutso gravel-laced vocals, they’re worth checking out.
— Friar Wagner

 

SKULL436

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KRYPTERIA, All Beauty Must Die  (2011, Liberatio Music)

The skull:
Another obviously female skull (see Skull434), what with those pretty eyes and all. The smile is not one of happiness, nor is it maniacal. It looks like a forced giddiness…and it is. You see, we here at Big Dumb Skulls HQ are often privy to various goings-on behind the scenes of the covers we present to you, dear reader. And we know that a gun was indeed being pointed at her in this frame, the weapon wielded by a villainous cretin repeating the album title to the skull, ordering her to smile for the artist painting her portrait. Kind of an old-school version of the snuff film. The feathers are there to add even more “beauty” to the whole scene, but why? That skull is beautiful enough, and…no…wait…what’s the deal with the Snidely Whiplash mustache? Despite that bit of confusion, we were just about to intervene and save this skull from its fate. We normally wouldn’t interfere — we are mere watchers and chroniclers, after all — but in this case we felt terrible for the gal. But then we heard the music and decided to leave the skull to its fate.

The music:
With such a lame album cover, should I have been surprised at the junkiness of the music? I faintly remember this band riding on a wave of hype in the mid 2000s, something talked up by people who like this sort of female-fronted symphonic gothic power metal crud. The whole album is junky, but “Turn the World Around” has a ridiculous sub-nu metal sort of male vocal accompaniment that is beyond unlistenable. It’s a sound and genre strictly for girls who know nothing about metal, guys who have never been laid and never will be, and little children. The vocals of Ji-In Cho are way, way too melodramatic, and are especially nauseating in “(How Can Something So Good) Hurt So Bad,” which sounds like something from a Little Mermaid soundtrack. If that’s your thing, go for it. As for Krypteria’s inclusion here on Big Dumb Skulls, if it weren’t for the Chris Broderick-level sweep-picked leads, I would have not recognized a single iota of this as “metal.” And even if there are a couple impressive riffs and other musical passages throughout final song, “The Eye Collector,” this is mostly the sort of music that makes me have to listen to something else immediately, as if to wash out my sullied ears with soap. (And Sadus debut Illusions will be that soap.) Please, kill the beauty. Now.
— Friar Wagner

SKULL404

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KITTIE, I’ve Failed You  (2011, E1 Music)

The skull:
Aesthetically this has a goth rock sort of feel, what with the roses (which are starting to dry up) and the feathers (which I’m assuming are not attached to the bird anymore, and also starting to dry up). And the skull, which is also something once living now dead. It’s a fairly well put together image, if on the generic/predictable side of skull covers. And that’s an interesting parallel to what this band is doing, musically.

The music:
I’ve successfully avoided listening to the music of Kittie since their inception. They’re one of those late ’90s bands that started out playing nu metal and then realized how crappy nu metal is and have since branched out to find their own style. It can be done, and sometimes a former nu metal band turns into a fantastic one; a couple post-nu units — Dredg and Deftones — count among the the greatest bands of recent times (the former having the good sense to drop the “nu” as early as their demo stage). Can Kittie do it? They claim influence from Pantera, Testament, Carcass, At the Gates, Acid Bath, Van Halen and Metallica, and you can hear all of that in I’ve Failed You. The album isn’t as horrible as I expected. The worst of it sounds like Sonic Syndicate fronted by Arch Enemy’s Angel Gossow, and that’s pretty awful. But there’s more variety than that would suggest. It’s like a survey of all popular heavy music since the grunge era: the Alice In Chains-esque “What Have I Done,” latter-day In Flames vibes with “We Are the Lamb,” and Trivium-esqe guitar work on “Empires (Part 2).” It’s performed well, showing them to be a highly competent group of gals, but there’s also a lack of authenticity, like they’re too-deliberately trying to please everyone, coming off with a passionless factory assembly line sort of feel. Some of it, like “Come Undone,” couldn’t be more generic in its psuedo-Gothenburg-isms, and I wouldn’t want to be caught dead listening to the emo-junk of “Never Come Home.” It’s not all bad, and I’m almost embarrassed to admit that, but when something like “Ugly” gets past its first few horrible minutes to lay out a seriously brooding atmosphere and some excellent guitar work, I have to get over myself and offer credit where it’s due. Overall, though, it panders way too much to the extreme metal mainstream — as such a thing exists — for me to feel much attachment to. And it’s not compelling me to return once I’ve done my duty of reviewing it for Big Dumb Skulls. But I will give Kittie a smidgen more credit than I might have about 90 minutes ago.
— Friar Wagner

SKULL312

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AGABUS, Mitakuye (2008, self-released)

The skull:
Though there are about 75 Photoshop layers on display here, the entire cover basically boils down to a Big Dumb Skull and some feathers. At least, those are the elements that catch my eye. It’s not clear how one relates to the other, but considering the origins of the title as half of the Lakotan phrase “Mitakuye Oyasin,” probably some cliched Native American theme was intended. In any case, the core idea is so lacking that it’s easy to see why the artist decided to just pile on with the other shit, like the glowing spots (with lens flare!) for eyes, the streaky background that looks like the cover of a speculative book on string theory, a phases of the moon calendar, etc. It’s not clear why he stopped where he did, but this was made in 2008, so maybe his Mac was just running out of memory.

The music:
If we take it as axiomatic that “crossover” was (roughly speaking) a hybrid of thrash metal and hardcore punk circa 1987, then Agabus can be viewed as “crossover ’08”, a horrible Frankenstein of late aughts thrash and millennial hardcore that perversely selects the worst elements of each style for inclusion: go-nowhere riffs, threadbare breakdowns, and vocals like the hoarse, cracking shrieks of an adult throwing a tantrum. About the best that can be said for Agabus is that their album sounds pretty good, and it’s novel to hear toughguy sprechgesang in Italian, instead of Spanish (Ill Niño, I’m looking at you, but there are no shortage of West Coast metalcore bands who employ the device.) Especially infuriating is the sheer length of most of these songs, which all sound like shorter songs played twice in a row. But hey, at least they trimmed the titles down: while their debut was littered with such turgid gems as “Void, Predicant of Nothing,” Mitakuye‘s titles are all single words like “Numby” and “Fiux.” So at least they’ve got that going on.
— Friar Johnsen

SKULL297

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SOULFLY, Savages (2013, Nuclear Blast)

The skull:
I’ll tell you what’s savage: this guy’s dental regimen, am I right? He should have spent a little less time with a tattoo needle, and a little more time with a brush and some floss. But I guess when you’re decked out as fabulously as this guy is, with a black feather fright wig and a massive collar necklace (is this skull a drag queen?) then maybe you can get by with half a mouth of choppers. Probably they all get covered up with a jewel encrusted grill before he goes out anywhere.

The music:
It’s kind of weird to think that Max Cavalera made good music for only about six years, and that’s generously including his formative years in Sepultura. Since Roots he’s basically made nothing but shit (although that first Cavalera Conspiracy album was okay), and while I haven’t been following Soulfly closely over the years, I’ve seen them a couple times and heard enough of their music to give them a wide berth. So when I first saw this cover, I thought, “Of fucking COURSE Soulfly would do a BDS!” and I licked my chops at the prospect of tearing Max a new one. But then something funny happened. I listened to the album, and I… I didn’t hate it. It feels dirty to even admit that. I listened to a Soulfly album and it wasn’t complete shit. I mean, it’s not awesome. It’s not the second coming of Arise. It’s probably not even as good, overall, as Chaos A.D., which I consider to be a fairly rotten album. But, it has a certain swagger, and while, for sure, it’s still got its fair share of idiotic breakdowns and thumpy nu metal grooves, it’s also got a lot of genuinely cool riffs. Max, for a change, sounds like his old self, not some bloated, dreaded, knapsacked caricature, and the production is heavy. The first two songs, especially the second, “Cannibal Holocaust” are rock solid, and while the third starts to reintroduce the breakdowns and 90s-style harmonic riffs, it’s not until the fourth track (featuring the dude from Clutch) that this becomes obviously Soulfly and not some mythical not-awful Max band. Track five, “Master of Savagery” pulls out of the nosedive a bit before the next number goes all in on the numetal Soulfly stupidity I was expecting all along. That song, “Spiral,” is every bit as bad as I know, deep-down, Soulfly to be. But then the album rebounds a bit with “This Is Violence,” which would rank pretty high in the Machine Head ouvre, before taking another bad turn with a tune that brings in Mitch Harris from Napalm Death, and another featuring the bassist from Static X (worst guest spot ever?) The last tune, the atrociously titled “Soulfliktion” dares to echo the memorable “who”s of “Beneath the Remains”, but isn’t a completely rotten tune on its own terms. To say this is the best Soulfly album is certainly no great compliment, and the middle is an unpleasant slog, but I would never have imagined when I first hit play that I’d have made it to the end at all. I won’t be buying this, so it’s not like Max has won me back, but for the first time in a long time, I guess I’m willing to consider the possibility that the old dog might still hunt.
— Friar Johnsen