SKULL606

OLD WOUNDS, Terror Eyes  (2011, RDG)

The skull:
Assuming this skull is actual size, the serpent is immediately rendered unthreatening since it’s the size of a baby garden snake, and the candle would be kinda tiny too, stuck in the eye like that. Probably a cinnamon-scented joint straight outta Pier One. You’re gonna have to put a lot more terror into those eyes to freak us out here at BDS, and doubtless other curators/lovers of the skull will be left unimpressed. This ain’t nothin’.

The music:
Terror Eyes = Terrorize, eh? Clever. As hell. This is a 7” and it only sounds metal if you’re not very familiar with metal. The metal-or-not distinction is only relevant here because Big Dumb Skulls reviews metal albums with skulls on the cover. No punk, no rockabilly, no alt.country, or any other genre with an affection for the skull. But this is close enough to the kind of hipster Brooklyn-core pseudo-metal that’s all the rage these days, and even sounds like something Relapse might sign. Kind of Unsane meets Botch meets Trap Them, but in much more generic form. It churns and spits and rages appropriately, but that’s about all it does. There’s no underlying, existential purpose behind these five short songs, nothing that grabs you by the throat and screams anything important at you. It’s too dry and one-dimensional. Probably hugely inspirational to a young kid with very few reference points for what extreme music is like, but I’d be surprised if many old vets would find much of interest here.

— Friar Wagner

SKULL597

SIN OF GOD, Satan Embryo (2010, self-released)

The skull:
I imagine the members of Sin of God kicking down the door of some illustrator’s studio like barbarians, possibly even carrying their guitars for some reason, shouting, “Painter man! We demand a cover! We want a big ass skull, and a big ass snake, and make the whole motherfucker red and evil! NOW!” and then standing there, panting and stinking, while the artist scrambles to throw something together, fearing for his very life. When he sheepishly turns his monitor around after about 27 minutes to present his work, the musicians grunt and the guitarist declares, “It is good,” throws down a pile of hides as payment, and leads his warband out of the studio, stuffing a flash drive with the art into his filthy jerkin.

The music:
Mix up Vader and Morbid Angel with a little Krisiun, and you’ve got Sin of God. Straight-ahead modern death metal like this doesn’t do a lot for me, but Sin of God are definitely better than most of their kind. Their riffing isn’t exactly technical, but it’s very precise, and although they employ an awful lot of blast beats, they do it with some sense of measure and a mix that doesn’t bury the guitars in percussive white noise. The drums are in fact probably programmed, and if they’re not they’re at least sample-replaced, but for some reason, I don’t really mind. Even the vocals are pretty good! It sounds like at least a couple guys are chipping in with growls and grunts, and I wouldn’t say that any of them are particularly noteworthy, but they’re at the same time just what the music calls for, and the Hungarian accents lend an exotic twist to the vocals. I don’t see myself craving this sort of thing much, but if you listen to brutal death metal with any regularity, you should check these guys out. This EP was tacked on as bonus tracks to their debut full length, Limbus (which I haven’t heard), so if you should be so inclined to indulge in Sin of God, that’s probably your best bet.
— Friar Johnsen

SKULL524

PSYCROPTIC, Initiation  (2010, Stomp)

The skull:
At first glance I was struck with a thought that I don’t believe has ever coursed through my gray matter before: “This snake is wearing cockrings!” But no, a closer look reveals that what I saw was simply a ringed door-knocker. Darn. The rest of the image is something we see often around here: a snake encircling a skull. This snake — unlike many other snake-centric entries in the Skullection — is not penetrating the eye and/or nose sockets of the bony noggin, but I’ll bet anything we’re just a few slithers away from a serious reptilian skull-fucking.

The music:
This was released as a CD/DVD, but the BDS bylaws drawn up by the Council in 1874 (or 2009, or something) state that a Friar need not review the DVD portion of a CD/DVD release. So, we have here a live album by Psycroptic, and not being one to get excited about live albums, this holds little appeal. I suppose most will feel the same, unless they are, of course, massive fans of Psycroptic. And those fans are out there, because these Aussies have been plying their brand of technical death metal since the early 2000s and have found a large following. This puts them not only well ahead of the current pack, but proves them to be spearheads in a death metal sub-genre that has become quite the unstoppable phenomena this last decade and a half. So, how is this live Psycroptic album? It’s a live Psycroptic album. The tunes vary not at all from their studio counterparts, save for a few subtle nuances. The performances are, of course, completely tight and ultra-finessed. But it feels redundant, and you wouldn’t be missing anything the studio albums don’t deliver, unless you love Jason Peppiatt’s stage banter. And why would you? It’s kinda funny when he asks the crowd, “Are you having fun out there?” While there is a degree of entertainment or fun with all of this, I’m not sure that’s ever what a death metal bands hopes to communicate. Fun? Really? I don’t know about you, but I want death metal to be thrilling, and dark, and otherworldly, and escapist, and heavy as fuck, but fun? Speaking of the vocalist, his delivery is generic, but that goes for so many bands of this type. You just have to accept that the John Tardys, David Vincents and LG Petrovs — ie. death metal vocalists with their own recognizable personalities — are a dying breed these days. So, hey, go for it if you’re a Psycroptic completist. Good luck to the band too, they’re quite excellent at what they do, but they don’t have that weirdness factor I want to hear in my tech-death. I’ll stick with Gigan…or early Atrocity.
— Friar Wagner

SKULL487

OMINOUS CRUCIFIX, The Spell of Damnation (2012, F.D.A. Rekotz)

The skull:
This all started with a photo of a ghastly scene painted in the alcove of some church, and the weird incongruity of the votive candles beneath a violent image of the damned, framed by gothic stonework, would have made for a perfectly excellent cover on its own. But this was not enough for Onimous Crucifix. Presented with the photo, they said, “¡No, se necesita una cavalera!” So then the artist spent about five minutes in Photoshop to paste a skull on top of the photo, and he presented it to the band again for review. “¡Ahora necesita una serpiente!” “¿Una serpiente, también?” the artist asked, exasperated, but he was already back in Photoshop, cramming a snake into the skull’s eyehole. How did it get in there? Who knows, and who cares. The photo was already ruined, so if they want a snake, they can have a fucking snake. “¿Es bueno?” “Es muy malo! Gracias!”

The music:
Considering how overly processed and artificial-sounding most modern death metal has become, it’s nice to hear some good, old fashioned, by-the-numbers material like this, played by dudes who just don’t care if their timing is not perfect and their drumming without flams. This is mid-paced stuff that reminds me more than anything of the old Dutch band Thanatos, although this being Mexican death metal, you can also expect at least a little Deicide in the mix. The riffs are unpretentious but interesting, and the guitar solos tend toward gratuitous whammy workouts, with nary a sweep in sight. It’s marvelous. Of course, a little of this sort of thing goes a long way, at least for me, and I’m not sure if this is so good that I’d consider adding it to the period classics of the style that are already in my collection, but honestly, I’m tempted nevertheless. This is a rock-solid album that sounds evil in the way the best old death metal did, before it was taken over by nerds with 7-string guitars. Me gusta.
— Friar Johnsen

SKULL420

STONED JESUS, First Communion (2010, Solitude Productions)

The skull:
Can I get an “Amen”? There’s nothing about this cover that makes sense in the contexts of “Stoned Jesus,” or “First Communion,” unless the communion in question is one between skull and snake, with tongue. Back in my day, we’d have just called that first base. But, there’s no denying the general awesomeness of this cover, from the blissed-out noggin on a plasmatic sun, to the brilliantly ugly purple background, to the best use of a snake yet on a Big Dumb Skull. The skull could be bigger, sure, but this is a great example nevertheless of a cover that manages to cram together a bunch of elements in a way that accentuates the skull, that doesn’t distract from what is rightfully the central element of the composition. Would it have been better if the skull was wearing a crown of thorns? Yes. If the snake held a eucharistic wafer on his forked tongue? Of course. If the skull were smoking a massive doob? Absolutely. But, as they say, the perfect is the enemy of the good, and he who is without sin should be the first stoned, or something. It’s a great cover, is my point.

The music:
Although it’s always to be hoped that a band won’t sound exactly as you imagine they’ll sound, generally, it’s best to not get your hopes up. Stoned Jesus are just another boring Sabbath knockoff, one of millions, offering nothing that hasn’t been heard a billion times already. It’s tempting to ascribe this almost uniform worthlessness in stoner rock bands to the stoning, but I suppose you get this pretty much everywhere. No one automatically assumes that the latest metalcore band is so unambitious because of pot, no one points their finger at the reefer to explain the latest power metal abortion. But still. At least those bands sometimes play fast. That makes them seem less lazy, somewhow. Anyway, Stoned Jesus. I guess it’s mildly intriguing that a band from Ukraine would take up this style, but that interest is not enough to make it through even a single song without a plenitude of sighs and eye-rolls. This release is actually only four long songs, but it might as well be eight, or twelve, because none of them seem to really have a through-line that justifies the ten-plus minute lengths, and every single riff and song sounds exactly the same anyway. Why not release a 7″ with your best 5 riffs on one side, and a cover of “Sweet Leaf” on the other? Save everyone a lot of time.
— Friar Johnsen

SKULL418

RAHOWA, Cult of the Holy War  (1995, Resistance)

The skull:
I was sitting around on the 4th floor of the Big Dumb Skulls compound, chatting it up with a spokesperson for the Council, when we both realized it had been too long since we’d enjoyed a skull with a snake weaving in and out of it. Could it be that we last saw it with Skull149 (Kataklysm)? Then we started talking about the old days, all the way back to Skull4 (Sword). Then we opened our eleventh bottles of some strong Belgian ale and marveled at this cover, the mighty Skull418, which has that slightly pornographic motif we were looking for:  a skull penetrated in several holes at the same time by one mean looking serpent. Then the spokesperson started sobbing uncontrollably about how much he wishes the Council would come around on the S.O.D. Speak English or Die skull (currently in the rejected pile) and then I blacked out.

The music:
I remember all the controversy about this band (and label, and magazine) back in the mid ’90s, but avoided the music because there’s even less great white supremacist metal out there than great Christian metal. But I also remember hearing that this album was a “masterpiece,” something that even people outside the band’s political realm were claiming. I still didn’t check it out, but noted the reverence. Now that all’s said and done with Rahowa, I feel okay listening to this album via Youtube. The first thing that strikes me are the vocals. They vary from clean folk-ish choir vocals to gruff, semi-sung passages that recall the worst of Tim from Pyogenesis (a band I have much affection for, despite Tim’s occasional silliness). In fact, many moments in Cult of the Holy War remind of Sweet X-Rated Nothings, or maybe those Cemetary albums when the band was steering its death metal into more gothic areas. I even hear that orchestral/gothic post-metal feel of mid ’90s Tiamat and Paradise Lost in spots. Another way to frame what Rahowa’s doing is to call it “post-Bloody Kisses” (look no further than “Hall of the Heroes” and “The Last Battalion” for two particularly blatant Type O Negative ripoffs). There’s also a strong presence of gang chants and a decidedly folky flavor to the music, which probably provides a link to Rahowa’s Oi! roots and might appeal to people who like junk like Korpiklaani, but what the hell do I know about Oi! or Korpiklaani? Not much! Lyrically it’s obsessed with the idea of white power, making Cult of the Holy War the least-angry metal album of its type, at least that I’ve heard. Despite the fact that their philosophy is fucked, I appreciate the sensitivity they show on something like ballad “In the Fires of 1945.” Some of this is positively upbeat, and hey, I guess there’s something to be said for not giving a worse name to white power bands. Ultimately there’s a ton of variety here, and some of it is even truly good, although the bad stuff is hilariously bad (“Anvil of Crom” = Manowar circa Gods of War). For every good moment there’s a shoddy off-key vocal or some clunky rhythm that makes you wish they’d used a drum machine. And really, this is no masterpiece. It is, in fact, for all its ambition, quite a mess. Too many ideas, too many directions, too many cooks, really, without the ability to tie it all together cohesively. There’s a serious lack of self-editing skill here, too, as if every single idea they had for the album went onto the album. The white power thing is something band leader (and founder of the Resistance label and magazine) George Eric Hawthorne completely turned away from and now denounces. Apparently he’s now in a band with Jewish and black people called Novacosm, and good for him. Hopefully the music’s better than what’s on offer within Cult of the Holy War, but this at least has several interesting moments.
— Friar Wagner

SKULL281

THE MASS, Towards Darkness (2004, Great White North)

The skull:
Now what do you think that snake is doing up there? Skulls, as we know, are often found levitating above cemetaries and whatnot, and of course it’s not uncommon for swords to arrange themselves behind such floating skulls. Walk through any graveyard and you’re likely to see such a scene. But then there’s this snake all wrapped around that shit, and barely holding on, to boot. What’s his game? Is he lying in wait for his prey, the unsuspecting mourners he expects to file past these crooked and ancient headstones? Or is he maybe playing a trick on some of his snake buddies? Did he call them up and say, “Yeah, dudes, meet me under the floating skull. I got something awesome to show you!” knowing full well that his serpentine pals would just slither there on their bellies, like they always do, never thinking to look up? And then when they’ve all been waiting for like 10 minutes, wondering when the fuck he’s doing to show up, BAM! He drops on them yelling “Booga booga!” and scaring the shit out them. That’d be a real fucking gas, right?

The music:
Doomy death metal or deathy doom metal, take your pick, The Mass trade in more sophisticated riffs than the fuzzed-out Sabbath-worshipping stoner doom crowd, but can’t at all compete with the paralyzing dirge of true doom death masters like Morgion. Nor do they capture the gothic solemnity inherent to the best albums from, say, My Dying Bride. No, The Mass just plays really slow. And they sometimes play with a real lack of weight, as when the single guitar switches to clean melodic lines or a lead, and all that’s left to hold down the fort is a fizzy bass and the incredibly dry drums. I suppose it’s to their credit that they don’t attempt to fill that empty space in the studio when they know they can’t bring it live (having only a single guitarist), but still, when the rhythm guitars go away, it feels like some of the band just left the room. The Mass aren’t terrible, but they are pretty dull, and while I’d take them over pretty much any band to whom the descriptor “sludgy” could be fairly applied, I’d probably just as soon listen to nothing.
— Friar Johnsen

SKULL227

BEYOND THE SILENCE, Soulless Entity (2010, self-released)

The skull:
A snake crawling out of a socket, a giant eyeball, and a logo that screams “crappy deathcore,” this is clearly a cover that takes sucking very seriously. Rendered in the government-issued browns and yellows that are the official colors of BDS nation, this skull futher attempts to gild the shitty lily with some kind of faux-halftone screen effect, for some reason. Probably because the guy who was tasked with assembling the disparate elements of this ur-generic cover just learned how to do it in Photoshop. “This will look great in my portfolio, and will demonstrate to clients and employers my facility with the many functions of CS5,” you can practically read in a thought bubble above some terrible designer’s head. Translated from the original French, of course.

The music:
Super sloppy melodic death metal with gurgly, low, brutal death metal growls, Beyond the Silence appear to be trying to inject some early 90s style Swedish death metal into the melodic framework of modern deathcore. This is neither a good idea nor defly executed. The drummer is the hapless hero here: he consistently reaches for beats and fills well beyond his ability, and his constant flubbing lends the music a shot of honest naivety. He never elevates the proceedings to even the lowest reaches of what could be considered “good,” but there’s something about an old-fashioned Russian Dragon that delights the death metal nostalgist in me. The breakdowns and the burpy vocals, however, dispel that goodwill rather quickly, as do the utterly generic riffs. Beyond the Silence emerged from the French ether to issue this lone EP in 2010 and have evidently done nothing since, so I can now attempt to revert to my natural state of not knowing or caring about them.
— Friar Johnsen

SKULL183

THRALL, Away from the Haunts of Man (2010, Total Holocaust)

The skull:
As an entry in the increasingly crowded “skull full of snakes” subgenre of Big Dumb Skulls, this Thrall cover is one of the finer specimens, although I really do think these bands and artists have a funny idea of skull physiognomy. I guess they think that the eye sockets open into the interior of the skull with no diminution of diameter, but in fact it’s a rather small hole in the back of the sockets. Just big enough for the optic nerve, actually. Not many long snakes would be able to squeeze through a tiny opening like that. But, this Thrall skull is fairly busted-up, and the snake(s) fairly skinny, so I suppose we could generously assume there are some fissures in the backs of the sockets as well, although anything that would cause that kind of cracking is probably just going to break the skull into pieces. Also, I find it unlikely that any snake, just in the course of day-to-day wriggling, would ever literally tie itself into a knot (see the lower right). What I’m saying is, I find some elements of this heavy metal album cover to be far-fetched.

The music:
One man black metal from Australia. At least it’s not from France, I guess. I’m reminded a little of American bands like Weakling and Woe, but as I’ve said many times before, my black metal knowledge is incomplete. I’ve heard worse, and I’ve heard better than Thrall. I will say that the vocals, or at least the way they’re recorded and mixed, are especially annoying here. I think it’s possible that Tom Void (the aforementioned one man) sang through a cardboard tube into his webcam mic or something. Kvlt.
— Friar Johnsen

SKULL149

KATAKLYSM, Serenity in Fire (2004, Nuclear Blast)

The skull:
It’s been a while since the last real Photoshop abomination here at Skull HQ, so this truly abysmal effort is almost a welcome reminder of just how fucking dumb a skull can be. Really, it’s hard to imagine how the snake here could look less like it was actually coiled in and around the skull, which is itself glowing, for some reason, and nearly transparent, for some other reason. The (serene?) fire is terrible, and the crosses (also mysteriously transluscent) look like stone and shouldn’t be burning at all. And of course, the background and general palette are best described as “warm shades of brown.” When all these shitty digital collage covers were coming out in the mid aughts, I guarantee every band that used them thought they were so fucking badass, but I thought, “In ten years, these will all look completely ridiculous.” I was totally right.

The music:
There are some albums on the great list of big dumb skulls that completely intimidate me as they heave into view on the spreadsheet. It’s not because the albums are sure to be terrible; terrible albums are the most fun to review. And it’s not because the albums are so good that adequately capturing their excellence in a 200 word review is paralyzingly daunting; that basically never happens with skull albums. It’s because these discs, which are usually released by one of the bigger metal labels, are so middle of the road, so predictable, so completely as-expected that it’s nearly impossible to muster the energy to even listen to them, let along write about them. Serenity in Fire, it won’t surprise you to read, is a perfect example of this phenomenon. Modern Kataklysm (defined as post-Victims of This Fallen World) are not a terrible band by any stretch, but there’s absolutely nothing about them that appeals to me. They sound like pretty much every other legacy death metal band, somewhere in the middle of Morbid Angel, Deicide, and Immolation, with an occasional nod to European melodic death. All these bands have terrible triggered drums and singers trying entirely too hard to sound like evil men. They all abuse the privilege of pinch harmonics and blast for no good reason. But, they all more or less write “songs” in a traditional sense, and for this reason alone I should at least sort of appreciate them, when so many of today’s death metal bands dispense with arrangement altogether in favor of a formless sequence of interchangeable riffs. I don’t, though; I just can’t bring myself to give a shit about Kataklysm and their ilk. They bore me to death, ever and anon. And so, even though I forced myself to listen to this entire fucking album, I just can’t muster the energy to say anything specific about it. It came and it went, leaving nothing in its wake.
— Friar Johnsen