SKULL553

LUTHOR, A Shadow Out of Time (2012, self-released)

The skull:
There’s a lot going on here, but are those horns made out of snakes? Because that would be pretty awesome! Not awesome enough to redeem this mess of a cover, probably, but it couldn’t hurt. Rainbow covers like this are maybe even worse than brown covers. I mean, this was obviously meant to be brown all over, but someone, maybe the artist, maybe the band, realized near the end that they were looking at a very lame brown cover, and they tried to fix it by inexplicably adding some more color, like throwing a green gel over the projector when Frankenstein appears on screen. This is not a solution. The solution is to recompose the entire scene in a way that allows for a realistic spectrum of colors. You can’t just spray paint your lame brown cover and call it a day. It doesn’t work that way! And anyway, the reason this cover is a BDS is probably just that no one in the band could really parse Lovercraft’s descriptions of the Elder Race. We should be looking at a Big Dumb Rugose Cone, possibly the first of its kind, and yet here we are, puzzling over the 553rd Big Dumb Skull. I’d say that’s a hell of a missed opportunity.

The music:
From my years spent in the prog metal trenches, I know this type of band well. All these dudes probably grew up on Queensryche and that sort of operatic progressive metal, but when Nevermore came out, they realized the days of Mindcrime-worship were over, and they’d have to heavy up if they wanted to get anywhere. A huge part of the Nightmare Records catalog documents this phenomenon. That’s not to say that these bands are bad. Plenty of them are fine, maybe even good. But I think at the core, there’s a compromise in evidence here that taints the work in some fundamental way, if you know where to look. Or maybe it’s just me. Anyway, Luthor are pretty good at what they do, musically at least. Their singer is another story. Despite a Halford-esque range, his voice is charmless, his melodies dull, and his lyrics painfully on-the-nose, plus he’s very loud in the mix. As you might have guessed from the title, this is a concept EP based on the H.P. Lovecraft story of (almost) the same name, and if you bother to listen to the words you’ll get a Cliff’s Notes summary of the plot. As a concept album, this is about as successful as Nostradamus, although it has the benefit of brevity – it’s under 20 minutes long. There are some fine riffs scattered about here, the playing is tight, and the production is top notch, but I just can’t get excited by Luthor. They do show some potential, and maybe I’ll check out their new album, because if they can get their singer under control, they could probably do some damage. Maybe.
— Friar Johnsen

SKULL502

DEATHEVOKER, Eternally Rot  (2012, demo)

The cover:
A stylish skull, this one, encircled to bring out the wrath this guy’s going through: drowned in slime, maggots, tendrils, offal and various other unpleasant junk. Par for the course for a death metal skull, basically. This is clearly inspired by Dan Seagrave and could have been a demo cover from the good ol’ days of Carnage or Dismember. It actually closely resembles the artwork on Dismember’s 1990 demo, Reborn in Blasphemy. With the logo looking 1001% Swedish and traditional gothic font used for the demo title, you don’t have to be a fancypants Nostradamus to figure out what kind of music Deathevoker plays. It’s a good little piece of art from this Malaysian band whose every release to date features a skull or skulls — we Friars and the ever-onlooking Council hail their good taste!

The music:
While I figured this demo would totally sound like demo-era Dismember, there’s a bit more going on here. Even if many riffs — monolithic, cruel and raw in the finest Swedish tradition — are deadringers for Dismember, the vocals are of a more scathing, unhinged sort, not as low as a Karki or Petrov, more like a synthesis of early King Fowley (Deceased) and early Pete Helmkamp (Order From Chaos) with a bit of a black metal snarl on the fringes. And they will, occasionally, add a melodic sequence that recalls a majestic Metallica or Megadeth passage, veering closer than you’d guess to balls-out power metal in these rare instances. It’s still death metal through and through, but Deathevoker are somewhat refreshing in that they use their considerable abilities to carve out something relatively unique rather than treading the same old boards most other retro-minded bands are content to.
— Friar Wagner

SKULL454

SA Sanctuary, Abandon in Place  (2011, Butchered)

The skull:
An under-achieving piece of cover “art” on every single level: the skull image is not only dull, but has been used before (skull366); the band’s name is one of those clunky territory-staking ones (is Sanctuary such an amazing name that you have to hold onto it at all costs?); and the album title makes absolutely no sense. Regarding the latter, I amuse myself by imaging this as a square dance call in some highly surrealistic alternate universe: “Swing your partner round and round / heads promenade around  the town / gentlemen, abandon in place!” as the gentlemen perform difficult contortions that look like something from a dada dance troupe. The original cover did not feature a skull, but for god-knows-what reason it was reissued 10 years later with this masterpiece of artwork announcing to the world that SA Sanctuary are not to be forgotten!!!

The music:
SA Sanctuary play forgettable thrash. But first, the name: what is it with San Antonio bands and their unflagging loyalty to their name? First it was Slayer, who changed their name to SA Slayer, then it was Sanctuary, who changed it to SA Sanctuary when the Seattle Sanctuary got signed to a major. Is it worth all the fuss? No, it is not. SA Sanctuary sound like Acrophet. Or a Bizarro World version of Forbidden, where great bands in the real world are mirrored by lesser, failed facsimiles of themselves. Lots of gang vocals too. Typical of many Texas metal bands on the thrashier end of the spectrum, they have a fair amount of traditional metal melody creeping in. Seattle’s Sanctuary are way better. I hear SA Chozzen Phate have a new reissue set coming out, although no one is even sure if there’s actually another Chozzen Phate that forced this addendum to their name. We suspect they did it because it’s just what San Antonio metal bands do.
— Friar Wagner

SKULL381

ACE OF SPADES, Ace of Spades (1994, demo)

The skull:
The odd angle of the skull and the random floating junk, combined with the green palor, immediately made me think that maybe this is some macabre jello-mold. Just out of frame to the right, there’s probably a chunk of pineapple, or a maraschino cherry. Revenge is a dish best served cold. And lime-flavored.

The music:
Although nominally thrash, Ace of Spades don’t sound obviously like any other thrash band, or really any other band that I can think of. It’s not that they have an original sound, it’s just that they seem to have just mashed together every kind of heavy-but-not-extreme style they came across in the late 80s and early 90s and called it a day. Like, 90s Loudness meets Machine Head, maybe? It’s not really good, but at the same time, it’s sort of refreshing to hear a band that’s not trying to be anything in particular. Just metal. I kinda like the singer, whose throaty, more-or-less melodic vocals kind of mix the best and worst of Japanese vocals. He has an accent, but his warbling delivery is fun nonetheless. The riffing occasionally reminds me of weak Megadeth or Annihilator, or even some reject Black Mark power metal band. I dunno. This is a weird thing. Not great, not even very good, but still weirdly endearing. The band released only this one demo, and it doesn’t appear that any of the members went on to do anything else. It’s a time capsule, this one; that’s for sure.
— Friar Johnsen

SKULL126

NODE, In the End Everything is a Gag  (2010, Scarlet)

The skull:
Got the whole Rorschach test artwork approach going on…kind of. You can spot tiny variations, but ultimately it’s yet another skull cover that plants a skull in the middle of the frame and chucks a mess of formless junk at it, plasters it around the skull and calls it good. Is it really good? I guess it’s better than many we see here at BDS HQ. We sure would like to see the skull a lot bigger though…any skull smaller usually gets stuffed into the Honorable Mentions closet and forgotten about. But man, look at all that junk! That skull ain’t gettin’ outta there any time soon. What it all has to do with the album title I have absolutely no idea…

The music:
For as long as this Italian band has been around, it sure seems like no one has cared very much. Constantly under the radar, their music is of a consistently high quality, in terms of performance, but do they deliver something special, something to treasure and revisit year after year? Not really. Albums and songs have their moments throughout their discography, but it never feels essential and never draws you back for repeated listens. This album, their fifth, is their least remarkable yet, ruined by vocals that are the epitome of modern metalcore screaming — interchangeable with the hundreds of other bands that sound like this. So fucking vanilla. Think Anselmo-meets-Lindberg…yep, that thing. Musically, nearly every song has a cool riff, an unexpected rhythmic shift, or a comes-out-of-nowhere spiraling melodic guitar line or theme (“Masks of Life”), but as a whole it’s forgettable stuff. The Billy Idol cover (“Rebel Yell”) is lame, although you gotta give them credit for trying. Ultimately, they’re heading down the metalcore road and that’s a mistake. They’re too experienced to be jumping on bandwagons, and they’ve chosen the worst bandwagon to jump on. Node? Nope.
— Friar Wagner