SKULL540

Posted on June 24, 2014 by Friar Wagner

HOUR OF 13, 333 (2012, Earache)

The skull:
We know…this should have been SKULL333 in the Skullection. You smart ass, lot, you. But the skulldiggers in the employ of the Council hadn’t unearthed this gem in time. Once found, the prickly hair-on-end feeling that our archaeologists usually get upon uncovering a skull was only half as creepy as usual. And the skull was missing half its teeth. And the nine-pointed star that emanated from its being was only half as evil-seeming as some 18-pointed star that our head archaeologist saw once. Still, we take all comers, as long as its a skull with lineage to heavy metal. We had to wonder if the music it represented was going to be half as good as all the best doom metal bands? Our research was only half concluded (or half begun, if you’re an optimist).

The music:
In their short career (2006-2014), North Carolina’s Hour of 13 made some pretty sizable waves in the doom metal community. And weirdly enough, I hadn’t taken the time to listen to them until duty called here at Big Dumb Skulls. Opener “Deny the Cross” is not only not an Overkill song, it’s not half-bad. The rhythms, melodies, guitar tones and vocals are all appropriately macabre-sounding, akin to the more straightforward lurch of classic Candlemass and the lightly abstract surrealism of that same band’s Dactylis Glomerata. Phil Swanson’s vocals possess the kind of character you’d hope for, neither being too overtly close in style to Ozzy Osbourne or Messiah Marcolin, or any of the other vocalists that doom copyists favor (and, every now and then, he recalls Alan Averill in Primordial’s A Journey’s End era). I know some others have charged Swanson with being too Ozzy-like, but he’s no Dan Fondelius (Count Raven) in that category, and I suspect those “critics” have very narrow reference points when it comes to doom (like, Black Sabbath, Black Sabbath and Black Sabbath. And solo Ozzy). There are even quite a few killer riffs here. Ultimately I find most newer doom bands charged with the impossible task of impressing beyond the godfathers of the genre, who laid down an nearly impossible-to-match blueprint. But Hour of 13 does a pretty damn good job of it, and the fact that they’re relatively original for a band of this style speaks volumes for their integrity. One of their main strengths is their incorporation of true/dark/traditional heavy metal elements, so that fans of Dio, Slough Feg, Manilla Road and Judas Priest could get into this. Not bad at all, and recommended to discerning doom fans who haven’t yet checked it out.
— Friar Wagner

SKULL532

Posted on June 16, 2014 by Friar Johnsen

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

SKULL322

Posted on November 18, 2013 by Friar Wagner

HELSTAR, Rising From the Grave (2010, Metal Blade)

The skull:
This bad boy is pretty stock: a horned skull apparently taken from a 9th grader’s notebook cover, its horns wrapped around a five-pointed star. There isn’t much to say about it. Best thing about the cover is it invokes a bit of Texas metal history (“Texas Metal, Est. 1982”) and exalts the fact that Helstar have been at this forever. Which is why they deserve a better album cover than this. It’s not even a real Helstar album, it’s a boxed set, but considering it holds two of their all-time classics…can we get a better cover design for this one please? Dang it. Even as a patch or tshirt or tattoo, I wouldn’t stich it, wear it or have its ink shot into my flesh with a needle. I’m glad I own the two studio albums in question, that way I don’t have to have this low-rent box set artwork littering my racks. Enough of that already.

The music:
This is a box set collecting two Helstar studio albums and a live one: 1988’s A Distant Thunder, 1989’s Nosferatu, and later live album, the clumsily-titled ‘Twas the Night of a Helish X-mas, originally released in 2000 but recorded in the earlier Nosferatu era. Let’s work backwards. With ‘Twas the Night blah blah blah, you can clearly hear that Helstar was an amazing live band back then (as they are now), but you wouldn’t believe it if this was your only evidence. Great performance but a shitty recording and equally disadvantageous mix. It’s far less worthy of being in this box set than Multiples of Black would have been (talk about “rising from the grave”) or of being released as a stand-alone album, as it was in 2000. Ahh, wait…I think I just discovered how Metal Blade solved the problem of getting rid of the last couple thousand they had in their warehouse…clever, guys, very clever.

Nosferatu is an album people have mistaken as a speed/thrash album, and even as a tech/prog album. It doesn’t exactly sit perfectly in those classifications, but they did ramp up the intensity and technicality for Nosferatu, so it certainly touches on those areas. It’s really just a more hi-octane Helstar than what came before, but so fussily questing for perfection that it feels a bit stiff ‘n’ cold in certain moments. That said, some of the band’s most engaging material is here (“Baptized in Blood,” “Harker’s Tale”), and any fan of, you know, metal, should really check it out.

Finally, if you purchase this box set because you love that cover art so much, you better be prepared to spin A Distant Thunder at least 100 times. The first 10 will help you acclimate to it. And least, that’s what I needed, as I found it to have much less instant appeal than their easy-to-get-into first couple albums. It’s not overly complex, certainly not on the Nosferatu level, it’s just not overly direct. It might grab you right away, but it took me years to realize its greatness. Once it took hold, though, it had to share space with Burning Star when considering which Helstar album is best. Stuff like “The King is Dead,” “Abandon Ship” and “Winds of War” are stellar examples of primo Texas epic/power/heavy metal, with the distinctive James Rivera ripping it up on vocals. Unfortunately they chose the wrong song to cover from Scorpions’ Taken By Force. “He’s a Woman (She’s a Man)” is totally out of place on A Distant Thunder; the clear winner would have been “The Sails of Charon,” but they did ask me, did they?
— Friar Wagner