Tag Archives: trepanation

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TREPANATION, Hideous Black Abyss (2013, demo)

The skull:
What we’d really like to see is one of these bands that glorifies trepanation actually be practicing, uh, treppaners, performing live with their holes showing. They could stick stuff in their holes every now and then — a mic stand, a guitar headstock, a drum stick, that sort of thing. If a few bands arise around the same time taking it to the next level like this, perhaps we’ll see a Trepanation Nation tour package. Sky’s the limit! But until then, a bunch of skulls will have to do the dirty work for these bands, and this has resulted in a small, elite subset of the Big Dumb Skull. This guy did his trepanning in a most unorthodox way, taking the route of going up underneath his head and busting out on top. Curiouser yet is the five-pronged stick with which he did this. Come to think of it, the way the eye sockets convey a weary, wild, unwilling, overly-tired look, you wonder if this guy was trepanned against his will. Shit, this ain’t nothin’ but an impaling! Lame. We want our money back.

The music:
The members of this New Zealand trio dress themselves in a manner that recalls Revenge-meets-Sarcofago. Their music never quite gets there though. It’s definitely fucked up and extreme and noisy and all that, but the lack of imagination, or the lack of unhinged, screw-loose realness, never gets off the ground to take flight. As nasty as it’s trying to be, and with all the accouterments one would need to follow in the wake of Revenge and Sarcofago and the like, Trepanation really never convinces on any meaningful level. They sound very much like students that will never rise to the level of the masters. I checked out a live video of the band after listening to this demo, and their shtick comes off better in that realm. It’s still a few significant rungs lower than their masters, and doesn’t captivate quite like it should, but their live performance is very good, so I think the demo turned out way, way too clean for the “hideous black abyss” they were promising. Maybe they’ll get it right next time.
— Friar Wagner

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MAKE, Trephine (2011, self-released)

The skull:
Fun fact of the day: a trephine is the saw used to cut a hole in a skull for surgery. This skull looks like the sort of thing that turns up in a museum as an example of prehistoric brain surgery, probably accomplished with a sharpened piece of volcanic glass. Which is to say: no trephine was involved (probably). Still, it’s a nice skull, and an impressive skull-hole, and the white-on-white design is one we rarely encounter here at Skull HQ, so I’ll award points for the cleanliness of the composition. The skull could be bigger though. Just sayin’.

The music:
Spacey, atmospheric stoner doom, you might call this. I’m reminded in places of the more ambient passages from Mastodon’s Crack the Skye, but I’m sure Make also spends a lot of time listening to the droning sounds of early 00s post-metal. They’re just not as abrasive as Neurosis or Isis or their ilk. The mood of the album is somewhat undone by the generic, rasping vocal delivery, and the clean vocals are hardly an improvement. (The bassist and guitarist are both credited with vocals, but it sounds like one guy is more like the hype man than a proper co-singer.) The reverb-drenched tremolo sections, which would fit on a Deafheaven album, are overdone, but when the band sticks to big riffs and classic Sabbath-inspired doom, they do occasionally get something of a groove going (“Surrounded by Silent Lies” stands out on this count). This is well done stuff, but it’s way too much of the same thing over and over again. The album is an hour long, but it feels longer. Post-doom is not my thing, and for all I know, it’s not a “thing” at all, but these days, pretty much everything has been “post”ed, and I don’t see why doom should be left out. If posty things are to your liking, and you like your metal slow, smoldering, and echoey, then Make might do you right.
— Friar Johnsen

SKULL476

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CARCARIASS, Killing Process (2002, Adipocere)

The skull:
Here is a clear case of a band having a vision for their album cover firmly in mind before they found the actual illustration. “We’ll call it Killing Process and put up some computery fonts and shit and it’ll be like Killing Technology and the Terminator all wrapped up in one, mes amis,” someone in the band probably said (in a haughty French accent, but not in French, for some reason), and everyone agreed that was an awesome idea, but then their artist friend showed up at the rehearsal space with a canvas, saying, “Here it is! Here is your cover!” and presented an admittedly badass skull. And then they were torn, because they all loved the futuristic dystopia angle, but they also thought the skull was totally manly and awesome, and heated discussions were had until the bassist suggested that they just merge the two concepts. “Like, maybe the computer robot guy shot a laser at this dude and fried off all his flesh and left a big hole in his head? We could have some numbers or something from the Terminator’s heads-up display on the side, like this is just some program he runs all the time, like his killing program,” and everyone stopped fighting and broke open a bottle of wine and rejoiced at the brilliance of this plan, which saved the skull AND the band.

The music:
This is one of the very, VERY few albums in the Skullection (particularly this deep) that this friar owns, but while I have long appreciated this standout slab of French melodic death metal, The Council prefers its Frankish metal to be the work of a lone, bearded, black metal loser in his bedroom, and as such must have overlooked this excellent release. How else can we explain its late position in the Skullection? Perhaps The Council’s thoughts on the matter were influenced by the rather low quality of Carcariass’s other releases, which are uniformly less good than this standout album. Killing Process is a mix of light melodic death metal (think Arch Enemy at the turn of the millennium), latter-day Death, and more complex fare, although it never rises to the level of, say, Theory In Practice for technical content. Compared to the particular strain of tech death that has arisen since the release of Necrophagist’s Epitaph, Killing Process might seem tame, but where it lacks in balls-to-the-wall displays of instrumental proficiency ( or for that matter, labored brutality), it compensates with generally memorable riff- and song-writing. The production is tight and clean, and although I’m fairly certain the drums are programmed (this despite a credit for a human drummer), the work is sufficiently well-done that I’m not bothered in the main by the artificiality of the percussion. The entire affair is undergird with that uniquely French weirdness that animates pretty much everything on labels like Adipocere and Holy. This is a no-brainer purchase for anyone with a predilection for left-of-center death metal.
— Friar Johnsen

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CARICATURE, Emptiness (1991, demo)

The skull:
Friar Wagner has a special affinity for trepanated skulls, for reasons I think are best left unsaid, and usually when The Council assigns holey skulls to him, but today I’m treated with a lovely French specimen. I’m hardly an expert in these areas, but the hole seems to be a fair bit larger than is needed to relive pressure. Perhaps this skull belonged to a autotrepanation addict, who just kept making the hole bigger and bigger to sate his weird peccadillo. He wouldn’t be the first guy to get carried away with his hobbies, though, and lord knows I’ve gone down the rabbit hole a few times myself, so I should be thankful, I suppose, that my vices don’t involve power drills.

The music:
It’s probably unfair to compare all Finnish death metal bands to Sentenced, just as it’s unfair to compare all Swedish death metal bands to Entombed. Really, it might be that early Sentenced sounds like Caricature, who were maybe the kings of Helsinki, but I just don’t know enough about the chronology and cross-pollination of that scene at its onset to say who was the leader and who the follower. But there’s no denying the strong national character that defined the sounds coming out of those Scandinavian nations in the late 80s and early 90s, and neverminding the chicken and egg problem, I know what Sentenced sounded like at the beginning, and Caricature sounds like that. The best comparison I can muster otherwise is Consuming Impulse-era Pestilence, but not nearly as good, or as piercingly bleak. This is fine stuff, if a bit raw, and while it’s hardly groundbreaking, if you like northern death metal from the dawn of the 90s, then you’ll probably like Caricature.
— Friar Johnsen

SKULL368

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TREPANADOR, Trepanador  (1994, demo)

The skull:
This artwork metal enough for ya? Holy crap. His flesh may be gone, but he’s still got eyes, fangs and tongue. This guy’s night of mischevious hella-fun is just gettin’ started! So, technically, yes, this is a form of trepanation, a drill with a humongous bit slammed into the uppermost part of the skullcap. Perhaps not one of the most subtle ways to achieve the pressure relief or increased blood brain flow that the procedure’s adherents are looking for, but it’s not the most subtle of surgical interventions in the first place. Then, plug that shit into a Marshall amp with the cord provided and you have the sound of METAAAAALLLLL!!!!

The music:
If you couldn’t have guessed from the cover art, this is a thrash metal demo. These Argentinians entered the game pretty late, so it’s not surprising that theirs is a completely redundant form of thrash metal. The vocalist’s guttural bark is a complete turn-off, too. To be fair, he mixes things up by employing a hysterical high-pitched wail that sounds appropriately panicky, if also lacking any real control. Musically it’s very fast and aggressive, not unlike Schizophrenia-era Sepultura, but not so like it that you should seek it out. It’s all quite dull, unfortunately. A variety of tempos are mixed up nicely, and the ability is here, it’s just that Trepanador lack the ability to compose anything approaching a memorable song.
— Friar Wagner

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PAGANOS, Infierno Real  (2007, Pacheco Records)

The skull:
This cover might have never been added to the Skullection due to the “No Skulls” rule had the Council of the Elders of the Skull not determined that the skull image to the left of the main skull was a mere reflection of the front and center skull. A reflection in a watery sort of mist or fog, perhaps, but it’s not totally clear. The owner of the skull appears to have suffered a dire fate, drilled straight through the noggin by a thick drill bit or whittled tree limb, branded on the forehead like any old cow’s rump and left to drift in a smoky psychedelic yellow purgatory. Man, what these skulls have to go through sometimes.

The music:
This is Argentinian metal that uses Bay Area style thrash as its base, some Sepultura references, a tiny dash of German thrash, and also gets into a kind of American ’90s power metal pocket. The latter is heard in a few passages of melodic vocal, which seem to worship James Rivera and Bobby Lucas on a song like “La Unica Razon” but don’t have the control or power of those dudes. It also recalls early Blind Guardian in its mixture of thrash intensity and traditional heavy metal tropes. There are two guys doing vocals, apparently, one more frantic and less melodic than the other…sometimes the “heavier” vocal recalls Mille Petrozza in the Renewal era, which is weird, but that’s what I’m hearing. Although Infierno Real has its moments, it’s frustratingly inconsistent and entirely scattered as to the direction it aims for. Sometimes Paganos shows a proper amount of dexterity to pull off semi-technical riffs, yet other times they stumble over themselves in an embarrassing show of clumsiness (“Quemando el Tiempo” features sloppy guitar playing and drumming…and super-shitty vocals too). I love how the guitar intro to “La Unica Razon” brings to mind one of Joey DeMaio’s ridiculously frenzied piccolo bass compositions. I guess when things start feeling dull, the mind wanders and looks for any old reference to stay alert. The music on this 12-song, entirely-too-long 55-minute album tries hard to achieve something impressive (the eight-minute “Muerte Justa” even roundly qualifies as “progressive”), but too often pulls itself down in blaze after blaze of unoriginality, or incompetence, or both. So why bother? Because there’s a good degree of potential in spots. They put another album out in 2010, one I’m almost tempted to check out.

When we opened up this site, one of our main questions was and remains whether skull album cover artwork revealed “laziness in both musical and artistic execution?” A waltz through the first 100 album covers shows that the answer is “Yes” about 75% of the time. And onward we go…so many amazing covers yet to be revealed.  As for musical quality, we make no promises…
— Friar Wagner