SKULL475

MORDAX, Violence Fraud Treachery  (2012, Ultimhate)

The skull:
Psyched that an hourglass is served up with our skull here, as that enduring album cover motif is another favorite of both Friars. This still life shows three items sitting politely on a limestone slab, minding their own business. Which one represents violence? Which one fraud? Which one treachery? There seems to be no connection whatsoever between album title and cover art. But then Time Death Flower Pen doesn’t sound very bad-ass.

The music:
One of the most useless metal subgenres is a very specific one: Danish death/thrash. Most of these bands sound like Carnal Forge, who are themselves a few tiers down from the Haunted, who are themselves rather overrated. The Danish death/thrash scene is littered with bands that are copies of copies of copies… image and impact fade further with each generation removed from the root. And while Mordax are from Denmark, and certainly merge death and thrash, theirs is a slightly more interesting approach to the style. Of note is the abundance of slower tempos, edging toward doom but really having more of a Coroner thing happening, many of these riffs sounding like they could have been on some lost album between Mental Vortex and Grin. And the vocalist isn’t your typical barker, having a kind of strained, seething Ihsahn-esque edge to his gruff snarl. “Monarch of All” starts out in this mid- to slow-tempo mold, and it sounds promising at first but never goes anywhere. The tightness of “Trademark Strangulation” is on the Coroner level too, although it clangs and bands itself into redundancy too quickly; it suffers from veering into the usual boring Danish death/thrash mold. Something like “Acts of Aggression” edges toward Meshuggah territory, and quasi-progressive instrumental “Contrapasso,” the longest song on the album, shows there’s more to Mordax than your typical band of this ilk. Unfortunately there are too many moments where this band toes the line of your average death/thrash ho-hum hoedown. You can sorta see why Dan Swano mixed and endorsed this band, because there’s serious potential for growth here — the musicianship is excellent, and there are some fairly good ideas throughout — but in a time when most young bands play it totally safe and fail to evolve in any significant way, my hopes aren’t very high.
— Friar Wagner

SKULL358

MAD MAZE, No Time Left… (2010, self-released)

The skull:
There isn’t much that thrills this Friar more than skull covers, but the hourglass motif comes close. There are around 50 of them in the metal universe, by my current count, and while they’re obviously not as prevalent as tanks and pentagrams, there’s just something about the hourglass. It was a motif popularized by the mid-’90s post-Dream Theater prog metal crowd, but lots of other bands have gotten into the act too. And looky here, a Skullglass, just in time for Christmas! If you add bonus points (and I most certainly will) for the skullglass sitting atop the Earth (meaning this thing measures an ungodly size) and having a freaking maze (a “mad” one, we’re assuming) on top of the skull’s flat head, hey, you have Big Dumb Skulls GOLD here.

The music:
It was bound to happen with all this thrash being thrown at us lately (lotsa Brazilian stuff, Mexican, German, and now this Italian band) — something was going to rise above the rest. Mad Maze are so good that I can only applaud their efforts. And they’re one of few bands I’ve gotten an earful of via Big Dumb Skulls that I’ve actually gone back and listened to voluntarily, after my BDS duties have been fulfilled. They’re basically North American in approach: a heavy whiff of Testament, cleaner Exodus, some Anthrax, Annihilator, and back to the Bay Area. And while they draw as many comparisons to older thrash legends as the other retro-thrash bands do, there’s something about Mad Maze that doesn’t make you want to retch. They are, in fact, quite excellent. The vocals are standard tough guy thrash bellows, basically Chuck Billy-ish, but still defying any truly easy comparison. They’re the weakest element of No Time Left, but every now and then they also impress (as when he pushes into a higher register scream at the end of the opening track). The rhythm section is noticeably good, a capable couple of guys, nimble at the speediest of times and weaving through various tempo shirts with great dexterity. But it’s the lead guitar work that’s most impressive. I’m not sure who to credit here, as they have two guitarists, but when they break into solos I’m reminded of Alex Skolnick around the time of Practice What You Preach, complete with the clean, punchy rhythm backup he got on that album. Yeah, there’s a heavy Testament vibe here, and while I love the first three Testament albums, I don’t really care to hear an Italian version of them, yet here I am, legitimately enjoying Mad Maze. Opener “Lord of All That Remains” is the standout of this short 4-song EP, and if they have even a few songs in that vein on the follow-up full-length, Frames of Alienation, I would gladly give it a listen. There are seemingly a couple hundred new Italian thrash bands playing in the old style, and of the ones I’ve heard (maybe about 30 of them), these guys are the best. Each song offers an event or two that feel relatively unique, using familiar ingredients while also finding a way to also deliver a distinctive Mad Maze stamp. And you can’t say that for most of these other re-thrashers.
— Friar Wagner

SKULL171

HOURGLASS SANDS OF ETERNITY, Journey to Infinity (2002, Secret Port)

The skull:
If there’s one thing that we Friars love on our metal covers as much as as a skull, it’s an hourglass, and the ludicrously named Hourglass Sands of Eternity brings it all together with this excellent double whammy. I love that either the headband or the skull was painted without regard for where the other would go, I love that the weirdly shaped skull is actually weeping sandy tears, I love that the bony leg on the right is broken, I love it all. And while watching an hourglass empty is about as far from a “journey” as you can get, this cover nevertheless communicates exactly what you’re gonna get from the music.

The music:
I will admit to owning an awful lot of discs like this: a hamhanded mix of true metal and progressive metal played badly and produced worse, but for whatever reason I never acquired a copy of this particular release. HSOE (as I’ll abbreviate them) are a Greek band, and Greek prog metal is almost never good, but it’s probably just dumb luck that a vendor I patronized back in the early 00s didn’t foist this one on me. I would have taken it in a heartbeat, based on the cover alone. The songs are dull, in that ponderous would-be-proggy way, and the singing is fairly bad, although certainly no worse than any of the playing. All in all, this squarely inhabits that dread zone of mediocrity where abide all those bands just good enough to not merit special scorn. But even though it’s been over ten years since this, the band’s only release, HSOE are allegedly still active, so there’s still time (har har) for them to salvage their reputation. Hopefully they try that with a skull, too.
— Friar Johnsen