SKULL601

THE YEAR OF OUR LORD, The Year Of Our Lord (2002, Willowtip)

The skull:
This looks like the homemade invitation to someone’s Halloween party. Someone who takes Halloween entirely too seriously, but is also not very good at it. You know the type. Like, sure, winged skulls can be pretty scary, but this winged skull is not, and while I’m sure the card-making program made it easy to wrap the whole thing in those borders, were they really a good idea? And what the fuck does any of this have to do with The Year Of Our Lord? Unless your lord is Charlie, nothing.

The music:
With a cover like this, I fully expected some kind of biker doom, but The Year Of Our Lord are a pretty decent melodic death metal band. It was only after I started listening to them that I noticed they were on Willowtip, a label that is very unlikely to have ever signed a sludge band or whatever. Anyway, this is specifically that kind of melodic death metal where you’d expect to hear a violin (or a synthesized simulation thereof) and the lyrics are about windswept moors and other other mopey, romantic shit. Romantic like Lord Byron, not Jackie Collins. Now, I love a clubfooted playboy as much as the next guy, but that’s not really my scene. If you like your MDM brooding and gothic, however, this band is WAY better than their art would suggest, and you’d probably enjoy them.
— Friar Johnsen

SKULL581

OBÚS, Pega con Fuerza (1985, Chapa)

The skull:
Ladies and gentlemen, this is how they did it before Photoshop: with scissors and glue. Why isn’t the skull chromed like the pipes? Because that’s not the skull they had to work with. This looks a bit like an art project from a grade-school kid, albeit a kid with odd aesthetic sensibilities, and I bet it still probably cost some Spanish record label over a million pesetas. But, as a big dumb skull, it’s awesome. Pega con Fuerza translates to “Hits hard” (more or less), and that only makes literal sense with this image if it’s a car grill or something, but whatever. Its figurative impact is great. This can’t be denied.

The music:
You’ve probably never heard of Obús, but they’ve been around since the dawn of time and have released nine full-length albums. They just don’t sing in English. Had they sung in English, they’d be at least as well known as Cannon or Underdog. Imagine an even lighter take on early 80s Priest, (or Def Leppard, even), but sung in Spanish, and you’re imagining Obús. Which is to say: they’re not that bad! The music can be pretty corny, but it’s catchy and very well-sung, and I’m sure the lyrics are fucking terrible, but unless you’re fluent in Español, who cares? Not being able to understand the lyrics is basically the primary upside of listening to foreign-language metal. Anyway, I’m not about to suggest that Obús are some kind of hidden gem; they’re still fairly cheesy, and finding their stuff is probably more trouble than it’s worth (if you demand more than a YouTube video, at least), but if you can’t get enough of vaguely poppy mid 80s metal, and you thought you already had it all, then maybe you need some Obús in your collection.
— Friar Johnsen

SKULL490

RAM, Death  (2012, Metal Blade)

The skull:
Friends of the (horned) skull, Ram, return with another album cover featuring a human skull with curly ram horns affixed to it. The look is deliberate ’80s kitsch, and it’s an ugly mess. I think they’re trying to impress us here at BDS, utilizing every single popular feature of your typical skull cover: horns, crosses, ruined city, blood, an ominous winged figure. You can imagine this as a video game. The background is static, except for the upward-moving blood streaks, which pulse with each hit of the player’s fire button. That button allows the player to shoot crosses into the eye sockets of the skull, which moves erratically, gaining speed and intensity as the player progresses to each new level. Once you shoot 1000 crosses into the skull’s eyes, you’re at the 10th level. The skull disappears as the winged figure at the back becomes animated, growing slowly in an attempt to overtake the player. The shooter needs to shoot 100 crosses each into the figures wings or lose the game in defeat. Naturally, Ram music plays in the background. It’s a whole lot better than that Journey video game, right?

The music:
How much you like this depends on how much you like Iron Maiden and don’t mind other bands sounding a lot like Iron Maiden. Since Maiden themselves hardly sound like this anymore, Ram is a sufficient analog for the galloping, energetic, double-guitar attack that the English legends patented and turned into a very profitable industry. Ram is a good band, with good riffs and an earnest approach that’s hard to dislike, but how much you like them will depend on how adventurous a listener you are. Do you go to a restaurant that offers a menu loaded with choices and order the same dish every time? Do you go to the exact same place every single year for vacation? Do you go to Baskin Robbins and order a double scoop of vanilla? Ram isn’t all Iron Maiden worship though. Sometimes you hear traces of Judas Priest.
— Friar Wagner

SKULL471

MUSTASCH, Sounds Like Hell, Looks Like Heaven (2012, Gain Music Entertainment)

The skull:
This guy is a lot closer to a Victoria’s Secret angel than to Charlie, the uber winged skull (übergeflügeltotenkopf?) of heavy metal. It would have helped if the minimum-wage Photoshopist had made an effort to align the wings and skull in something resembling a plane; as it is it looks like one wing sprouts from behind the skull’s left “ear” and the other tangentially from the back of his head. Makes no sense. Plus, everyone knows that if you’re gonna outfit a skull with wings, they had best be bat wings, or failing that, at least something that looks eagle-like. These recall the poofy appendages of a cockatiel. Unacceptable!

The music:
I first became aware of Mustasch when they were subbed in for Volbeat at a festival, and I have to admit, the swap was apt. Both bands traffic in self-conscious “rock,” the kind that must announce at all times and in the most ironic tones just how hard it indeed “rocks.” Mustasch don’t do the Elvis/Danzig worship thing that more or less defines Volbeat’s gimmick, instead sounding like a cross between Monster Magnet and mid 90s Swedish death rock, enhanced with up to 8% by weight of a solution of The Cult, played with the impeccable polish and sheen you’d expect from Swedes who aren’t going out of their way to sound unpolished. It’s even catchy in places. It’s also infuriatingly needy, the work of a band trying very hard to sound like real ass-kickers, so oh please won’t you consent to an ass-kicking please? Lord knows, I don’t require danger in my heavy metal (I love Arwen, after all), but I do thoroughly detest artfully-composed faux danger, and that’s all you’ll get from Mustasch, cowbells and all. Sounds like posers, looks like hipsters.
— Friar Johnsen

SKULL460

RAZORMAZE, Miseries  (2010, self-released)

The skull:
At first glance this cover looks absolutely KILLER. Look a little closer and you may find those five heads annoying, you might judge that the third eye doesn’t like quite right when it’s vertical (and apparently cut out of a J.C. Penney catalog), and you may feel that the wings on each side of the skull’s maxilla are incredibly stupid. I don’t feel any of those things. I already got this bitch tattooed on my back. Nah, I kid. I’m sorta bummed, being seduced at first by the orange color, which looks like the skull is sporting Janis Joplin-esque locks, which complements the sea-blue color of the orb behind him. It looked like a skull cover I could actually get behind and yes, even tattooed on my back, but now, no…I cannot look at this thing any longer.

The music:
Musically you’re gonna get a few great riffs here amidst some not-so-hot ones on this three-song EP. There’s a decent amount of melody here, and lots of energy too. These Boston kids play with commendable earnestness…possibly too much, as “Karma In/Karma Out” rocks out so hard that it sounds as much cock-rock as it does thrash metal. Yet…yet…the solo work in the middle is absolutely superb. The element I find annoying, and ruinous to an otherwise not-bad band, are the snottily-delivered vocals. They can be described as a cross between Joey Belladonna, Act III-era Mark Osegueda and Kurt Brecht, but much worse than that sounds. The gang vocals are lame too. But, from an objective standpoint, this is high-energy, capably-delivered, brightly-colored thrash befitting of the album cover. Mostly for those who don’t care a thing about innovation or originality, but they do have genuine elements of promise, especially guitarist Alex Citrone.
— Friar Wagner

SKULL439

ILLIDIANCE, Deformity (2013, self-released)

The skull:
The deep blue palette and the fine, soft brushwork on display here (even if it was done, as it likely was, entirely digitally) make me think of Necrolord, but there’s no way he’d ever create something as garishly stupid as this. Skull, brass knuckles, grenade, banner, sawblade, wings, outline stars, stencil AND script lettering: this cover has everything you need for like five douchey tattoos, with enough left over for two or three Affliction shirts. This is the pure, concentrated distillation of Hot Topic, in album art form.

The music:
Thuggish Soilwork style stuff, leavened by a shitpile of bloopy techno keyboards and bass drops, plus plenty of the djenty chugs that the kidz are so into these days. This is really shameless dreck, like a shittier version of Mnemic (if you can even imagine). Really, people: there is nothing more to be gained from mixing death metal howls and schmaltzy emo clean vocals. There’s no surprise in the contrast anymore, and no one will ever believe that your band is either tough OR sensitive. They will, however, immediately understand that you’re trendchasing whores without vision or talent. Read Illidiance’s Metal Archives page and you’ll be hammered over the head by this Russian band’s feckless opportunism: “Genre: Symphonic Black Metal (early), Electronic/Metal (later)…. The band now describes themselves as ‘cyber metal’.” Ugh. They even used to wear corpsepaint and are now all about full-sleeve tattoos and wraparound shades. Amazing. I guess I could give them points for making a good sounding EP, but actually, I won’t. Fuck this stupid band.
— Friar Johnsen

SKULL412

MOSFET, Deathlike Thrash ‘N’ Roll  (2012, Refused)

The skull:
Uh oh. This one snuck past the Council’s normally very strict standards. We can clearly see there is more than one skull here. Perhaps the four in the corners were considered so much a decorative part of the border that they were dismissed as mere accoutrement. I don’t know. Somebody’s slipping over there, but I’m not one to criticize the Council so I shall refrain any further comment before they demote me from Friar to Janitor. The skull here, the main one, he’s a shit-kickin’ dust-dog! Smokin’, grinnin’, squintin’, replete with cowboy hat, wings, blood spatter and crossbones. Tattoo-ready! Too bad about the lame band name, but you can tell your tattoo artist to just skip that part. And you’ll save money too.

The music:
Seriously? Are you seriously a deathlike thrash ‘n’ roll band that called your second album Deathlike Thrash ‘n’ Roll??? Mosfet, thank you so much for saving me time! What a lucky break. Here I was, tired of handing out negative reviews to all these mediocre bands and thought “I’m gonna give this Mosfet a little gift and review their album in a totally objective manner, not telling how it is, but only what it is.” But they already did that. Time to kick my feet up and sip on a pina colada from a hollowed-out coconut and take a snooze in the ol’ hammock. Love ya, Mosfet! (Okay, I did listen to the album, couldn’t resist, and stylistically it bears a few similarities to mid-era Sodom, around Masquerade in Blood and Get What You Deserve, and they deliver it professionally enough. It is, indeed, deathlike thrash ‘n’ roll.)
— Friar Wagner

SKULL403

INSIDEAD, Chaos Elecdead  (2011, Massacre)

The skull:
The very definition of “passionless art.” A skull. With fangs. Steely gray. Symmetrical. Flanked by wings, bones and bird skulls. (The Council have ruled that this does not violate the “no skulls” rule, as only human skulls are under consideration for Big Dumb Skulls.) Zero style, zero meaning. It looks a lot like 45 other covers of albums also released on Massacre Records in the last 5 years.

The music:
If there’s one thing I hate more than crappy skull covers like this one, it’s the “name game” so many bands play. For instance, Skinlab album title reVoltingRoom, or The Gathering’s if_then_else. Insidead do this too and prefer that their name be written thusly: InsIDeaD. Apparently this is some sort of cleverness having to do with the id part of the brain. And if there’s something I hate more than the name game, it’s silly metal portmanteaus, such as “Elecdead” in this album title (ie. “elected”) or that already-forgotten Swedish band Construcdead (“constructed”) and their genius album title Violadead (“violated”). There are others, but these are some of the ones that use the word “dead.” And if there’s one thing I hate more than these silly metal portmanteaus it’s crappy modern metal that sounds like a mixture of latter-day Sepultura and any day Pantera with tons of breakdowns and the obligatory “motherfucker!” yelp. The band describes their music as “a mixture of heavy, thrash and death core elements with a modern touch.” No wonder. Just wait till you hear the ballad “Time,” which sounds like Nickelback covering Metallica’s “The Unforgiven” with a heavy Greek accent. The latter they cannot help, but everything else is a voluntary exercise in generic modern metal, and Chaos Elecdead (it hurts just to type it) is possibly the most uninteresting and pointless album I’ve had to listen to during these skull excavations thus far.
— Friar Wagner

SKULL390

MYSTIC PROPHECY, Ravenlord (2011, Massacre)

The skull:
If this dude is the Ravenlord, he might want to start looking for a successor. Bleeding from the head is never good, especially when all you’ve got left of your corporeal existence is a skull. You’re pretty much reaching the end at that point. The wings that sprout from behind his head are apparently attached to him, and perhaps these are acting as his deliverance to some unspecified afterlife-type location. Who the fuck knows. The ravens shown in mirror image above the wings: are these Polar Ravens? Because they look snowy. With all the occult-ish nonsense in the background, I’m starting to think this cover was supposed to look evil, but really I just want to be the good samaritan, get a big Band-Aid for the dude’s head and continue on my way.

The music:
This band are known largely as the place where modern-day guitar hero Gus G. got his start. They’ve been prolifically releasing albums since 2001, and this one is their seventh. I haven’t paid much attention to these guys over the years, and while I’m still not gonna be running out to complete my M.P. collection, Mystic Prophecy definitely have some worth. In general they resemble a heavier, darker Nocturnal Rites, with all the modernisms N.R. started introducing with the introduction of vocalist Jonny Lindqvist and the Afterlife album (in no way, shape or form am I saying they’re that good. Nobody will ever beat Afterlife at its own game. Every metal fan should own it). Should Nocturnal Rites ever part with Jonny, they can get this Roberto Dimitri Liapakis guy, because the two are very similar. Gruff yet with excellent melodic ability, delivered with a ton of passion and power. It’s not hard to fall under the spell of his melodies on something like “Eyes of the Devil.” He works some similarly mighty magic throughout, always coming across as a Jonny Lindqvist/Mats Leven sort of singer with a penchant for catchy, AOR-esque melodies. He’s the clear highlight here. While you’re guaranteed some galvanizing double-bass driven rhythms and colorful lead work with some nasty tones, their chug-chug-chug style of riffery is far too bland and gets old really quick. You can look at it as a platform for Liapakis to perform upon, but riffs in power metal bands shouldn’t be relegated to background scenery. It all gets a bit repetitive by fourth song “Damned Tonight,” but the vocalist keeps you listening intently all the way through final song “Back With the Storm,” although they almost lost me with penultimate track “Miracle Man” (yes, the Ozzy Osbourne song). Even though Mystic Prophecy is German, they’re an honorary Swedish band as far as I’m concerned, considering all the references to great Swedish melodic heavy metal bands in their music. On a final note: the band’s album-titling pattern is getting stale. Lots of cutely “dark” invented compound words: Fireangel, Ravenlord, Killhammer. My money’s on Thundertoaster for the next one.
— Friar Wagner

SKULL350

FARSCAPE, Doctrine Sickness (2001, demo)

The skull:
Are we really on skull #350 already? What a crazy world. But before we get to the skull itself, I’m a little confused about the demo title. Is it sickness from having read or followed too much doctrine to the point you’ve been made physically ill? Or is it, like, bad-ass doctrine, as in “Dude, that doctrine you’re spewing is SICK!” We may never know, and this skull doesn’t offer any helpful hints. All this skull does is look completely batshit crazy. Not sure what’s in his eyes, but it appears to be cosmic and glowing. He’s got some liquid junk coming out of his mouth, too. Since this is black and white, it’s probably supposed to be blood, but looks more like spittle. Either fluid would be appropriate. Then there’s that ridiculous-looking wisp of hair, which looks like a guy going bald desperately trying to hang onto his last several strands. Or maybe he’s a metal dude adopting a faux-Hare Krishna style, you know, the metalhead that’s always left of left-of-center, just to be all idiosyncratic and random and shit. And what the hell are those wing-like things? They’re full of goo and wrapped in what looks like barbed-wire. Like I said: batshit muhfuggin’ kuh-RAY-ZAY.

The music:
These Brazilians play vicious, biting, ultra-intense thrash that brings to mind early Sadus, early Kreator, Darkness Descends-era Dark Angel, and off-the-chain Brazilian brethren like Vulcano and Violator. There’s not much more to say, as what you read is exactly what you get. They’re very good at it, and if I’d never been exposed to the aforementioned, I’d be going apeshit over this. The riffs are good, the intensity is high, the delivery is spot-on, and the conviction is true. How much you need Farscape in your life will depend on how many layers you like to peel off the thrash-generations onion. It makes me cry after about two layers, usually.
— Friar Wagner