Tag Archives: pushead ripoff

SKULL663

Posted on by
Reply

TOXIC TWINS, Menace to Unity (1997, Brennus)

The skull:
This is surely just a photo of the underside of a skateboard from the 80s, right? What else could it possibly be? It’s pretty cool, in that very-low-rent Pushead knockoff kind of way, even if the riveted metal motif doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. If anything, the fastened-together look more like a defense, rather than a menace, of unity. But anyway, the bandana is a nice touch, and I’m sure that if this guy’s jaw is open to speak, the word he’s speaking is, “Gnarly!” or its Corsu equivalent.

The music:
You’d think, with a name and a cover like this, that Toxic Twins would be some mid-grade new thrash band, but you’d be wrong. In fact, this Corsican (!!!) act have been around since at least 1994, and this, their second album, is a surprisingly interesting historical curiosity. The main vibe I get is “LA 1986,” as Toxic Twins sound like nothing so much as a cross between Warrior and Motley Crue, although that glammy base is leavened by a bit of the weirdness you’d sometimes get from bands like Saigon Kick or Warrior Soul. If that list of names does nothing for you, I can assure you, aside from Warrior (whom I love), it does little for me, but Toxic Twins blend it all up in a mid 80s stew that is nonetheless fairly enjoyable. The music isn’t especially heavy, but it’s definitely metal, and the glammier aspects feel more vestigial than intentional. I have no idea who is singing (basically all of the members are credited with vocals) but most of the lead vocals are sung by just one guy, and he sounds a lot like Warrior’s Perry McCarty, minus the upper end of McCarty’s (once) astounding range. This midrange rasp is put to great use, and some catchy melodies are eked out of not a lot of notes. There are a couple longer passages sung by another guy, and he’s not nearly as good, even if he isn’t terrible. My main complaint with Menace to Unity is that it rarely really gets going, and by the end of the disc, all the mid-tempo tunes start to blend together, but this was a serious problem across the board in melodic (non-power) metal in the mid 90s, and the tunes here are generally strong enough to overcome this as a serious handicap. While the other two Toxic Twins albums appear to be long out of print, evidently Musea (of all labels) reissued this about a decade ago and it’s still available. Supposedly the band is still around, but their last release came out in 2008, so who knows? But, this album is sufficiently good that I think I’m going to have to spend a little time trying to track down those other albums, if only digitally, because there’s some chance that they might be pretty good.
— Friar Johnsen

SKULL383

Posted on by
Reply

HAIL! HORNET, Disperse the Curse (2011, Relapse)

The skull:
This looks like an all-digital ode to Pushead, but that’s not so bad. I guess he’s chomping through a net or something, maybe a beekeepers mask. Does anyone keep hornets like bees? Probably not – why would you? But the more I think of it, the more this kind of looks like some kind of attack on an apiarist, what with the smoke in the background. I guess if you’re on team hornet, you’d probably have some kind of beef with team bee, so maybe that’s it. Send the skull over to fuck that guy’s hives up, show him who the real kings of the Apocrita suborder are. “I’m here to disperse the curse! And by curse, I mean your teeth, motherfucker” Wham!

The music:
I expected full-on Kylesa-style sludgy crap when I queued this up, and given the pedigree of Hail! Hornet’s members (Buzzoven, Weedeater, and Alabama Thunderpussy) I think I was not crazy to do so. But while the vocals are full-on supershitty, the rest of the band are actually alright, sounding kinda like something not-too-popular on Earache Records in 1992. The music splits the difference between English grindcore (the slow parts, ha ha) and Scandinavian death rock. It’s simple, but it’s well done, and the grimy but not fuzzy production is perfectly suited to it. The problem is, the songs don’t have a whole lot going on. They tend to inhabit a fairly narrow range of tempos, and man, that vocalist is really bad. He sounds like some run-down tweaker with pneumonia. I’ll give these guys credit for exceeding my dire expectations, and for easily besting the next best thing any of them has done, but I think they’ll need to improve a bit before I truly care.
— Friar Johnsen

SKULL59

Posted on by
Reply

THE AGONY SCENE, Get Damned (2007, Century Media)

The skull:
This guy is damned alright: damned to a face full of chopsticks and half a mouth full of summer teeth. He deserves it, too, for the crime of ripping off Pushead. Die young and leave a big dumb skull. Really big, and really dumb. The CD came packaged in a slipcase that was all text, except for a cutout that exposed the coffin graffiti on the skull’s forehead. Amusingly, fans of the band seem to think this was some kind of censorship, and not a commercial compromise with the record label, who weren’t exactly thrilled by the notion of a cover without the band name or title. But, you wouldn’t listen to a band like this if you weren’t so sure that people just don’t get you, man.

The music:
Straight up metalcore, which is to say watered-down post-Machine Head pseudothrash with herniated tough guy bellowing, The Agony Scene are more or less exactly as boring as every other metalcore band. Their slower tunes approach deathrock, another godforsaken subgenre of last resort. To their credit, they don’t generally stoop to crooning sensitive lyrics about their sadness in the choruses, preferring to yell at all times about lord knows what. Probably something about how their shift manager is such a dick.
— Friar Johnsen

SKULL30

Posted on by
3

LUNATICS WITHOUT SKATEBOARDS INC., Welcome to the Asylum (1989, Aaarrg)

The skull:
A jawless skull smashing (exploding?) a skateboard! And, do I detect swirls of hypnosis and/or mesmerism in the sockets? A very nice painting that would make Pushead happy, until he realized that copyright law generally protects this kind of shameless style-aping from prosecution. This is a solid and well executed BDS in every way. You might even call it professional, befitting a legally incorporated band. Hopefully they filed as a C Corporation, as I’m sure Lunatics Without Skateboards Inc was a money-losing venture from the start.

The music:
Braindead speed metal that never stops. Everyone remembers the many great bands on Aarrg like Target, Mekong Delta, and Siren. Then they recall that the label also hosted some enjoyable if generic acts such as Holy Moses and Living Sacrifice. Only in the dim recesses of nightmare, at the midnight of the soul, do collectors realize that if they want to own the label’s entire, highly-collectible discography, they’re going to have to buy Welcome to the Asylum and that Calhoun Conquer LP. Night terrors ensue. Fortunately for no one, this album was reissued a few years ago with bonus demo tracks.
— Friar Johnsen

SKULL14

Posted on by
1

DEVASTATION, Idolatry (1991, Combat)

The skull:
This band are committed not only to skull covers, but they have a particular fascination with blindfolded skulls. Their first album, 1987’s Violent Termination, featured multiple skulls, which got them kicked out of the Skullection, but the prominent skull was blindfolded. This motif repeats here, on the original cover art for their their third album, but this time it’s a drawn cover (the first album was a photograph). The cover art resembles Pushead’s style, although it’s not him. It’s a legitimately great cover, but between cannibalizing their own ideas (blindfolded skulls), using artwork that looks like a Pushead rip-off, and never having found their own musical voice, Devastation are the epitome of unoriginality.

The music:
This Texas band’s first album was shabby death/thrash with terrible vocals; their second album was a Dark Angel ripoff; Idolatry, their third, is probably their best, but it too finds the band looking for some kind of unique identity. It sounds like Possessed in the Eyes of Horror era, only not as good. Vocalist Rodney Dunsmore sounds especially like Jeff Beccera (here’s where I say again: “only not as good”). Cool production, quality drum and guitar sounds. One can spot sonic references to Massacre’s From Beyond, just in a more thrash-oriented framework. But it all falls flat when the songs aren’t that good and the riffs are dull.
— Friar Wagner