Tag Archives: tattoo

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THE NEW BLACK, III: Cut Loose (2013, AFM)

The skull:
Sure, this was pulled straight out of the big design folder at a local tattoo shop, the page stained with drool and tobacco smoke, but if nothing else, this is the first BDS to prominently feature hummingbirds, so, congratulations are in order, I guess, to The New Black, who also hereby make their second appearance in the Skullection. Truth be told, their first album is also fronted by a big dumb skull, but I think we’re about sick of this stupid band, so the morbidly curious will have to Google that shit for themselves if they want to fully trace the origins and development of The New Black Big Dumb Skull.

The music:
The New Black are the sort of totally boring band who could be national stars if they were from Finland. They’re unfortunately from Germany, so it’s unlikely they’re huge in their home country, but I guess you never know. They have the glossy, shitty sound of a band trying to rope in a mainstream audience with something nominally “metal” but still totally safe, as if mixing Volbeat and Papa Roach were a viable creative strategy, or if the problem with Black Sabbath is that they sound insufficiently like The Foo Fighters. TNB (as I’m sure they’d like me to call them) are total pros, of course, but they’re also completely soulless. I’d rather listen to nazi black metal from France (not really, but please allow me the hyperbole) because at least those idiots believe in something and are making music for reasons that are not transparently commercial. You can imagine a songwriter in The New Black thinking, “Man, this riff would totally KILL in a video game or an energy drink commercial! The opportunities for cross-market synergy are just off the charts here!” If your main source for new music recommendations is VH1, then maybe The New Black could totally be your jam, but if you’re a metalhead with (some) dignity and self-respect, you won’t listen to this pap.
— Friar Johnsen

SKULL497

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KICKHUNTER, Hearts & Bones

The skull:
It’s possible that this cover was constructed in Photoshop, but I’ll be damned if this doesn’t look like a photo of a real tattoo, and what a doozy it is. I desperately hope that the guitarist got this tattoo explicitly for his album cover. That would be some real dedication. It’s not quite as good as three guys getting the Exhorder logo tattooed on their arms, but it’s still pretty serious. I especially hope that he did this to surprise his bandmates. He shows up one day at rehearsal, a couple weeks before the band is scheduled to hit the studio, and he dramatically pulls off his leather jacket to reveal his new ink. “Behold! The cover of our debut album!” “But, dude, the album is gonna be called Hearts & Bones. Like, more than one heart,” the singer immediately notes. “God damn it, you’re such a fucking dick. I did this for you fucking guys! Can’t you for once be happy?” “No, man, it’s not like that! It’s cool! But like, don’t you think it would be cooler if you added like another couple hearts or something? There’s still room…” “GOD DAMN IT JIMMY! I’M NOT ADDING MORE HEARTS!” “Jeez, dude, calm down, I’m just saying. I mean, no one asked you to get a fucking tattoo for the band! Like, maybe I was already planning on getting my denim jacket airbrushed with the cover art? Did you ever think of that?” And so on. But, happy ending: they worked it out and made like three or four totally shitty albums together.

The music:
Is there anything worse than new hair metal? At least in the 80s, when such crap was popular, you could imagine some percentage of the assholes engaged in this sort of behavior were doing it cynically to get laid, or were just going with the flow, having no sense of good or bad. But in the 00s? You’d have to fucking love hair metal to make an album sounding like this, which is tantamount to getting a tattoo on your forehead that proclaims, “I have shitty taste in music!” I mean, the skull tattoo already implies as much, but I’m talking about making it explicit. Anyway, I’m not going to be able to make much in the way of concrete comparisons to describe this awful band, because I hate this shit with the energy of a thousand suns, but in broad strokes, Kickhunter falls on the bluesier, less glammy side of the hair metal spectrum. More like Tora Tora than Sleez Beez. Or maybe like Kingdom Come with a much crappier singer. Fuck, I hate myself for even knowing these bands exist, but Kickhunter, they’re trying to SOUND like them. I’m ashamed for them, and sad for the world.
— Friar Johnsen