SKULL578

EVIL ARMY, I, Commander  (2013, Hells Headbangers)

The skull:
We’ve seen this motif before, the guns, the helmet, the sneering grin of a skull so maniacal that no rubbery flesh could corral the madness within. War, violence, insanity…we’ve seen all that before too. The simplistic stencil-logo and bored-in-study-hall drawing for the album cover. Been there, done that. Is there nothing left for a skull to do that a skull hasn’t already done zillions of times before? We have to wonder if the music is going to illuminate us in a way this cover definitely does not. We have our doubts.

The music:
This is a three-song 7″ release, each song borrowing heavily from Persecution Mania-era Sodom. Tight, rabid riffs, dive-bombing solos, artillery-fire drumming, and caustic vocals that spit fire just like Tom Angelripper. It’s adequate, and the part of me that totally loves Persecution Mania has to give this a pass. The record is well-rounded, the playing full of passion and ability, the writing better than most playing at this game. Shades of Tankard and At War are heard too, but really, it’s 99% worship of a very specific era of a very specific band. It’s a cool, compact eight minutes and 17 seconds. By third song “I Must Destroy You,” you kind of have to laugh to yourself at the ridiculously single-minded purpose here, like, “This is all you’ve got?” — even if what they’ve got is pretty good. I’d be real surprised if each of the members of Tennessee’s Evil Army didn’t have at least three different iterations of Persecution Mania in their collection.
— Friar Wagner

SKULL552

DEZPERADOZ, An Eye for an Eye (2008, AFM)

The skull:
The typography is obviously inspired by the handbills and wanted posters of the mythical old west, and dem crossbones is pistols, but this whole design looks more like an ad for a sad burlesque revival featuring hipsters in Betty Page push up bras and ten gallon hats winking and pointing toy guns at the ironically mustachioed crowd, while making corny double entendres and singing along to some jaunty number performed on a tinny upright piano. Which is to say, it takes me to a very sad place inside and makes me want to cry.

The music:
I first encountered this band, originally known as Desperados, in a used CD shop in Palm Desert, CA in 2001. I was on a desperate and lonely work assignment, and deep in a sour mood when I found the shop in some ungodly strip mall, and I must have arrived there shortly after some metalhead dumped a large part of his fairly interesting collection. I must have bought 25 discs from that place, and one of them was Desperados. I picked it up to examine because it had the GUN logo on it, and when I saw that the band included none other than Tom Angelripper of Sodom, I put it in my pile immediately. From maintaining a Sodom fanpage back in the mid 90s, and from several interviews I conducted with Tom, I knew him to be a huge wild west enthusiast, but I had never heard of the band, which turned out to be a project led by Alex Kraft, who also spent time in Tom’s Onkel Tom joke band. Anyway, that first album sounded basically like low grade, late 90s Sodom, but all the songs were about the wild west. It was mildly amusing, but not so good that when the band changed names and issued a second album without Angelripper, I had any interest in keeping. But here I am, nearly 15 years later, forced to contend again with Dezperados. An Eye for an Eye is the band’s third outing, but most of the thrash is gone, replaced with a kind of souped-up spaghetti western metal. Imagine some guy pitching “Ennio Morricone meets Rammstein” to the suits at AFM, and you’ve pretty much got the idea. I suppose this is a successful realization of the concept, but the concept just doesn’t do much for me. If you love the soundtracks to old western shoot-em-ups, but wish they featured a few more crunchy riffs, then this, my friend, is the disc for you. Elsewise, relegate Dezperadoz to that part of your brain dedicated to odd metal trivia and move on with your life.
— Friar Johnsen

SKULL532

E.S.T., Live in the Outskirts of Moscow (1993, Mausoluem)

The skull:
Da, comrade, we are having knife. Yes, and gun. You need gun? Take gun, take! Is lightning you need? Also we are having lightning, and star too, yes. Is warm hat you need? Take hat, is bearing leaf of marijuana plant, is very cool. We are having everything you need comrade, and hard rocking, also. E.S.T. has eye out for you! Ha, comrade! You like joke? We are having good humor, for spirit of worker is in us. E.S.T. have many things, have all things, provided by party, for glory of Russia. Go, comrade, and fight, and rock for Russia!

The music:
I’d never heard of E.S.T. (which stands for Electro Shock Therapy) before, but that’s no great surprise, as my awareness of Russian metal is pretty scant. Then again, if I had ever encountered this band before, I would have quickly beat feet in the other direction, as they sound like the non-union Russian equivalent of Razor’s Edge-era AC/DC, with a bit of late The Cult thrown in for good measure (and okay, a little of the more rockin’ Aria sounds of the late 80s, which is really the best thing about E.S.T.) The first half of this compilation is their performance at the 1991 Monsters of Rock festival in Russia (supposedly, although rumors of live-in-the-studio abound), so clearly they were a band of some stature in their homeland, and their music is well played and well put together (even if the vocals are rather shitty, in a Chris Boltendahl way), so I guess if you like that kind of not-quite metal and you don’t mind (mostly) Russian lyrics, then you’d probably love this like I love Aspid and Valkyria, but if you already think one AC/DC was one too many, then you’ll find them twice as bad as their dull inspirations.
— Friar Johnsen

SKULL392

BLACK BONES, Pirates of the Coast (2009, Black Blood Brigade)

The skull:
This cover is good enough to be the sign for the premier attraction in the finest of New Jersey’s boardwalk amusement parks. Taste the salty tang of adventure as you plunge more than two stories on the most piratical roller coaster you can experience for eight tickets in the peak season.

The music:
The entire BDS project is an exercise in sustained redundancy, but I nevertheless find it astonishing that I’m being called on to review another Italian pirate metal album. The last one, by Los Pirates, was actually quite good. Good enough that after reviewing it, I purchased it. I can’t say the same of Black Bones. Half the time, they’re only about as metal as a Misfits tribute band with a little more distortion on their guitars, but the other half, they’re at least as heavy as your average folk metal band. The music is rudimentary but I guess catchy enough, in the stupidest way possible. The songs are basically what you’d expect from pirate metal — singalong punk metal sea shanties — but the vocals are abysmal. Imagine Glenn Danzig doing an impression of an Italian Elvis impersonator. Go on, imagine it! But even if the singer had been awesome, this would still be a shitty album. It’s bad enough to sing about pirates; the moment you start sounding like you want people to know you’re singing about pirates, well, it’s all over.
— Friar Johnsen

SKULL318

WARPATH, Malevolent Reprisal  (2010, Underground Movement)

The skull:
A scowling skull decked out for war, backed up by quite the arsenal: all manner of gun, knife, blade and, uh, bear trap. It looks incredibly imposing, but maybe what we’re really dealing with is comparable to those guys that drive huge monster trucks because they have a small penis. That’s the psychological theory, anyway, and I’ll bet something like that is going on with this guy.

The music:
Here’s another metal moratorium worth proposing: no more using the Gladiator sample “at my signal, unleash hell.” It’s been done probably a hundred times. I know it must have seemed like a great a idea the first time (it was), but by now, using this sample is totally beat. Now, to the music: Warpath play Brutal Blasting Irish Death Metal exclusively! It’s like Dying Fetus meets Malevolent Creation meets Bolt Thrower stripped of any distinguishing personality. Technically they’re proficient, and they’re extremely heavy, but as well-performed as it is, Warpath cannot save themselves from slotting in shoulder-to-shoulder with the many vanilla-flavored brutal death hordes out there. You have to admire the conviction and ability, but that’s about all you have to do before forgetting this ever happened and moving onto something actually worth spending time with. Definitely gonna dock a point or two for their decision to cover Hatebreed. Ugh.
— Friar Wagner

SKULL217

SADISTIK EXEKUTION, Fukk II (2004, Osmose)

The skull:
Fire! Fire! Fire! Fire! This is a cover that would really rile Beavis up! It’s got fire, guns, some barbed spear thingies and a poorly-spelled curse word, and every fucking tooth is a fang! Crack the dome and throw in a crown of thorns and you’ve got one damned fine Big Dumb Skull.

The music:
Sadistik Exekution are often called “cult,” which is basically code for “just another shitty, grindy deaththrash band.” Mindless speed delivered with maximum slop that caters to people who can tell how much they’ll like an album by the density of bullet belts in the band photo. Fukk II is indeed a sequel to the original, ostensibly classic Fukk and which probably ties up all the loose ends in the story. Like, it finally reveals who fukked Mary, or something. Usually album sequels are just shameless cash-ins made long after a band has lost its mojo, but Fukk II is not merely the spiritual successor of Fukk but the literal successor as well, issued a mere two years later. Maybe like the Keeper of the Seven Keys albums, there was just too much Fukk for Sadistik Exekution to fit on one album, and the label balked at the notion of a double album. Whatever the case, I’d much rather conjecture along these lines than spend more time actually listening to this horrible crap.
— Friar Johnsen

SKULL191

SUBMISSION, Failure to Perfection (2010, Listenable)

The skull:
Brown and mustard. Not off to a good start. The rayed background is lame, too. The skull, which is shamefully obscured by a very boring logo, is flanked by a couple guns, and then some dog skulls or something? And then there’s a big screw. This is about as random as it gets, but it’s also a pretty good representation of the title, which itself fails to even form a syntactical sentence fragment. What we have here is a total commitment to half-assing it.

The music:
Groovy melodic death metal, kind of like recent Dark Tranquillity, with fairly awful growls and a smattering of reasonably good clean vocals. Submission aren’t doing anything new, but they work this style admirably well, with some really cool guitar riffs to keep things moving. The drums, while proficiently played, offer no surprises, and there are too many core-style breakdowns for my liking, but overall, Submission are alright. I doubt I’ll go out and buy their disc, but at least listening to it for this review wasn’t painful. Anymore, that’s about as good as it gets here at Skull HQ.
— Friar Johnsen

SKULL150

HATEFUL AGONY, In the Name of God (2008, self-released)

The skull:
This skull is a martyr for all the world’s ills: a crown of thorns (or black stuff that sorta looks like thorns) sits atop his head as he sadly peers down at the futility of it all. Images of religion, money, guns and sheep are obvious or symbolic reminders that no matter what, oppression, greed, violence and conformity are comin’ ta get ya. All in the name of God, apparently.

The music:
These Germans first released music in 1998, and have self-released five albums since that time. This one is their fourth, and it kinda shows why they’ve never been on a label: they’re boring. They play fairly violent thrash with gruff, not-quite-deathly vocals, and everything you hear on the 11 songs of In the Name of God has been done before. Whether it’s a collision of Vio-lence and Kreator (“Son of Sam”) or Any-Given-Bay-Area-Thrash-Band meets Schizophrenia-era Sepultura (everything else), it comes off as competent but hardly mandatory or even important. Their influences can’t be disputed — I’ll gladly listen to all the originals, but Hateful Agony are just the sort of derivative thing I can’t get excited about. Hateful Agony seem a hapless but harmless trio of dudes out for a good time, some brews, and some early slots at mid-level festivals. Apparently they’re not super-ambitious, but hey, they can’t all be Vektor, right?
— Friar Wagner

SKULL58

MADE OF HATE, Bullet in Your Head (2008, AFM)

The skull:
Welcome, friends, to the album cover motif that never ends. Made of Hate play melodic death metal in the Children of Bodom vein, but this album cover design looks like that popularized by Hatebreed and the like. And we can go back further, sifting through the catalogs of the Victory, Equal Vision and Facebown labels to find more examples of this sort of thing. Very tattoo-y, this particular cover finds a skull comin’ out swingin’, packin’ heat where ears used to be (a bullet hole in the forehead adds insult to injury). Blood spatter forms a background, and the literal interpretation of the album title is duly noted. [Note: the band used to be known as Archeon, whose only album, End of the Weakness, features a skull on the cover that currently resides in BDS’s Honorary Mentions wing. We hail these Poles for their commitment to the skull.]

The music:
Man, from the album artwork right down to the band name itself, these guys are sending all kinds of mixed signals. As noted above, they present themselves as a straight up traditional hardcore band but sound a lot like Children of Bodom, complete with flashy lead guitar work. Were I an enthusiast of modern melodic death metal, I’d be scared away by their imagery. But what about the music itself? It’s more than competent in the area of performance, and well-written enough too. The vocals are scathing in the textbook melo-death mold, the melodies are Iron Maiden on amphetamine, the drums are robotic but with nimble fills…par for the course and as generic as most other bands of this type. They’ll be loved by fans who dig this style and don’t demand any sort of originality.
— Friar Wagner

SKULL42

SKULL, You’re Dead (1990, demo)

The skull:
Simple stuff: a wrecked-looking, blinding white skull on black. Has the added appeal of what look like two black guns shoved straight into the eye sockets. Poor guy, he’s not only already dead but apparently couldn’t afford dental insurance while living. That’s some serious bad luck shit right there.

The music:
Second band called Skull for Big Dumb Skulls, this one slightly better known than the Polish band (see Skull13). This Skull is from Sweden, and they feature a former member of Morbid and also have the distinction of appearing on one of the very few metal compilation releases to covet, Projections of a Stained Mind (incidentally, that cover also features a skull). Skull only recorded one demo, and You’re Dead is certainly interesting. It’s only Swedish Death Metal by proxy, because while the guitar tones reminds of early Tiamat and the delivery is fairly demented with very competent performances, Skull are a whole other beast. There’s a strong influence of something that reminds of GBH meets The Accused, and with the chaotic, just-about-ready-to-explode vibe, especially some of the vocals, it’s very hard not to like.
–Friar Wagner