SKULL530

DEJA VU, Decibel Disease  (2008, Karthago)

The skull:
Apparently this is what happens to a skull when it’s blasted with high decibel heavy metal: it grows tentacles under its jaw, spider-like legs on its head, and some kind of crank or nutcracker on one side of the noggin. That, and the bone is overtaken by a Michael Whelan-esque series of veins and eyeballs. The red glow emanating from eye and nasal holes lets us know that the decibel disease is peaking and continuing to spread. This is not good news for the skull. Probably should have worn earplugs, dude.

The music:
Great band name, considering you’ve totally heard this before. The music of Germany’s Deja Vu can be summed up easily: Painkiller-era Judas Priest with a healthy dose of the post-Painkiller sort of thing Halford did in his solo band (Halford, not Two). This includes some pretty impressive high-pitched screeching from guitarist Werner Kerscher, who probably would have been a better choice for Priest than Ripper. Unfortunately, there’s more “Metal Meltdown”-level dumbness here than “A Touch of Evil”-esque majesty. If they found their own sound, Deja Vu might be something really special, but too many times they just rip off songs from the Priest/Halford catalog, and so many of them are almost exact analogs of the originals — “Children of the Eighties” is a lot like Halford’s “Made in Hell.” And then “Die for the Tyrant” is indeed sort of like Judas Priest’s “Tyrant,” with its unpredictable twists and regal atmosphere but shot straight into the Painkiller-era, amped up, modernized and musclebound.”You Know My Name” puts Deja Vu on the right track, a powerful slice of dynamic power metal punctuated with some exciting rhythmic accents and punches. And then we get into knuckleheaded crud like “Metalhead” once again that isn’t so much Priest as it is Helix or Jackyl. Deja Vu was going pretty strong there for a few years, releasing a debut in 2006 and this one in 2008, so it’s been awhile and I wouldn’t hold out much hope that they’ll shed their weaknesses and work on their strengths. Or maybe it’s taking them that long to improve. Or maybe they’re working on their own version of Nostradamus, a triple album called The Greek about the predictions of NFL football commentator Jimmy the Greek.
— Friar Wagner

SKULL521

WILD ZOMBIE BLAST GUIDE, Wild Zombie Blast Guide (2012, self-released)

The skull:
This is some serious Rob Zombie meets HP Lovecraft shit right here. We’ve seen a lot of skulls wrapped up in the coils of snakes, but I’m not sure if we’ve seen any tentacled skulls before, and this quality of this illustration is quite high to boot. Of course, on a self-titled album by a band called Wild Zombie Blast Guide (which is a band full of dudes actually made up to look like zombies) you’d expect a cover that was at least vaguely zombie-like, and at the very least you’d expect to see a shotgun blast hole in the forehead, but if this is how the zombie band sells out its core principle, with a gloriously goofy big dumb skull, then who am I to complain?

The music:
Wild Zombie Blast Guide don’t appear in Metal Archives, which is usually a sign of a crappy metalcore band, but there’s really very little to distinguish this band from Soilwork, and I’m not even talking about late-period Soilwork, but their more vibrant early work. Certainly, this album isn’t on par with The Chainheart Machine or even Steelbath Suicide, but it’s of a piece with the better clones that arrived in the wake of those first two or three awesome albums by Helsinborg’s second-finest (Darkane still rules the roost!) It’s true, Wild Zombie Blast Guide suffers from generic vocals and lacks a distinct identity, but they do this sort of upbeat melodic death metal quite well, and while their lyrics are surely stupid, they’re not unavoidably intelligible, so it’s all good on that front. I really expected nothing but misery from this release but I’ll be damned if this ridiculous joke band isn’t secretly alright.
— Friar Johnsen

SKULL518

CORROSION OF CONFORMITY, Corrosion of Conformity  (2012, Candlelight)

The skull:
You know a band is scrambling when they bring back a logo or mascot previously left behind in the name of forward evolution. So many bands eventually wander roads less traveled, dropping iconic imagery and the familiar musical style that gained them legendary status, only to return at some future points with more recognizable sounds and symbols. The return to safer environs rarely results in music that measures up to the good old days — it’s usually a case of too little, too late. The return of the classic Megadeth logo and mascot; the return of the classic My Dying Bride logo; the return of the classic Slayer logo; the return of the Destruction logo and skull; the return of the classic Anthrax logo; the return of the classic Celtic Frost logo (I’m not amongst the majority who think Monotheist is good); on and on. So often it just feels like a seductive sham, a pandering to gullible fans after some hurt feelings. What are we to think when Corrosion of Conformity bring back their horned skull? After many dormant years, this highly recognizable bad boy returns, but this time they have added more spikes, tentacle-ish things, an eye of Horus, a sword-like thing under the chin, and a curious and adorable chinchilla-looking creature for its forehead. It’s a great design, except for the chinchilla, and a reasonably acceptable update of the classic skull made famous by zillions of t-shirt wearing fans, bands and quite a few people who don’t even know what COC is but thought the shirt looked totally bad-ass.

The music:
According to this Friar, COC’s Blind is one of the best metal albums released in the ’90s. They were just getting good at a time when most of their older fan base were demanding a name change. And Blind is way better than good. While Animosity and Deliverance have their moments, nothing the band has released before or since has been worthy of Blind‘s majesty. Part of the the problem is this issue of perpetual stylistic crisis. COC never stay in one musical place for very long, yet they continue to try and zero in on what it is that they do exactly. It’s been an interesting run, even if they seem wayward most the time. If the return of the spiky skull symbol wasn’t enough, the band decided to self-title this one, so apparently it’s gonna be the defining COC album. Finally! But with so many stylistic shifts, what should definitive COC sound like? Apparently it sounds like this — an often uncomfortably ambling and sometimes impressively focused mesh of hardcore, Southern rock, sludge, doom, punk, stoner rock, noise rock and thrash. Where “Psychic Vampire” is wholly unappealing in its muddied, muddled thrash-meets-sludge slop, something like “Your Tomorrow” is appealing because it hones in on one direction — that being a Trouble/Black Sabbath-esque slab of smart, emotive doom. Many of the songs here feature impressive riffs or inventive vocal melodies, but also a few too many dead-end riffs and sequences. Reed Mullin is excellent throughout. He remains one of the most underrated and tastiest drummer in the genre(s) — one listen to “The Doom” confirms this. So, Corrosion of Conformity is a likable but hardly lovable hodgepodge, and probably the first one since Deliverance that’s worth more than a cursory glance.
— Friar Wagner

SKULL393

ROTTREVORE, Disembodied  (2005, Necroharmonic)

The skull:
This is an appealing piece of skull art, rendered in a semi-Seagrave kind of style, as if the acid Dan took that day was weaker than his usual dose. This isn’t Seagrave at all, as far as I know, but there are some stylistic similarities. Not so much in the skull, but certainly those horn-like, tentacle-ish, large intestine-esque things have a Seagrave sort of flair to them. They’re so cool and trippy that I lose all focus on the skull, who sits there amidst all this stuff going “Hey, what about me???” And he is worth a look, especially those teeth. Might wanna slap a gold grill on those choppers.

The music:
I have always loved Rottrevore at a distance. Their commitment to being the heaviest of the heaviest death metal is appreciated, and I like them a song at a time, but they get dull rather quickly. You have to marvel at the obscene guitar/bass sounds, which combine to resemble a big-ass tractor engine. “Actions for Loss” is a prime example of their approach (and a highly unusual song title for an English-speaking death metal band), as is the entirety of their Copulation of the Virtuous and Vicious 7″. Those songs and more are all here on Disembodied, a collection of demo, EP and compilation tracks from the good old days (early 1990s). I applaud how ridiculously heavy these guys are, and I probably should have picked up this compilation when it was released, because it’s nowhere to be found these days. That way I could live with my decision to sell my Copulation 7″ years ago. I kind of regret that now, because Disembodied is sounding really good at the moment. Oh, wait, I just got bored with them again.
— Friar Wagner

SKULL235

VIOLENT HISTORY, Blackstone Valley Thrash (2010, Muerte)

The skull:
You could say that there’s an octopus sneaking up on this plain Jane skull, but I prefer to imagine that the tentacles are just a crazy Lovecraftian mullet, sprouting majestically from the skull’s backside. Blackstone Valley sounds like the kind of place where a skull might think a tentaskullet is cool. But then, it turns out Blackstone Valley is in Rhode Island, and suddenly the parental warning sticker makes sense. Oldschool northeastern maternalistic neoliberalism strikes again!

The music:
Sloppy thrash with some grind and black metal influences, Violent History are almost good, but really need to spend more time rehearsing. The drummer has some great beats, but he struggles to get them across. Some of the riffing is intricate and twisted, while too much of it sounds like any third tier speed metal band. And then the vocals are the kind of uninspired hardcore yell that make everything worse. While the band obviously labels their music thrash, it’s only thrash by derivation. They aren’t trying to recapture the 80s sound and as such don’t bear much resemblance to your typical new thrash band, and I certainly appreciate that. There are only two songs on this EP, and they both have their share of bright moments, but there’s also enough garbage in each to make the listen an unpleasant experience on balance. A little more time in the garage and they could go somewhere, for sure.
— Friar Johnsen

SKULL185

D.S.M., D.S.M. (2013, self-released)

The skull:
I’m not sure what’s going on here. The skull’s skin is peeling away, maybe? And some tentacles are involved? Or maybe it’s some kind of cape or cowl with its own little skull motif? It’s all very confusing, but the overall effect is not unpleasing: the batshit weirdness works in this cover’s favor. Supposedly D.S.M. stands for Double Size Metal, but I think that probably DSM is just how you write BDS in Cyrillic.

The music:
There are many musical ideas presented here, but none of them good. There’s some almost nu-sounding low groove, traces of Darkseed-style goth metal, and even some decidedly Nirvanaesque whining in the first song, “The Way Home”. This three song demo run the gamut of all the low-talent metal styles that no one really wanted to hear in 2000, and this is a brand new release. “Balls of Steel” even features the gratuitous abuse of a whammy pedal. Heavy metal in Putin’s Russia is a grim thing.
— Friar Johnsen

SKULL28

FREQUENCY, Compassion Denied (2008, Scarlet)

The skull:
Time was, if you wanted a big dumb skull on your album, you’d have to photograph one, or hire an artist to paint one (or draw one in study hall). For as dubious an aesthetic choice as it was, it was at least a conscious and aforethought decision. Nowadays, you can just email some guy on deviantART and ask for something evil, and he’ll photoshop a bunch of tentacles and tubes to some skull he found on the internet and call it a cover. It’s a shameless state of affairs which The Council has embraced only out of a relentless passion for big dumb skulls, and what is more dumb than mismatched and only barely anti-aliased Photoshop layers?

The music:
Workmanlike modern power metal not unlike Nocturnal Rites’ last few releases. Good singer, hummable hooks, lazy-but-acceptable riffing. Journeyman vocalist Rick Altzi (At Vance, Thunderstone, Masterplan) is the appeal here: a modern Dio disciple in the Russel Allen vein. As with most European power metal, when the singer is doing his thing, the guitarists are coasting on whole notes or undistinguished chugging, but when the singing stops, there are occasional moments of interest from the six (or, more likely, seven) stringers. The production is of the icepick-in-the-eardrums modern variety, all sharp edges and hard limiting, which makes it difficult to listen to the whole album at a go, but it’s probably best enjoyed piecemeal anyway, since all the songs start to sound the same by the end, even if they’re enjoyable on their own.
— Friar Johnsen