Author Archives: Friar Wagner

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DISPATCHED, Terrorizer  (2004, Khaosmaster)

The skull:
Stock skull (we’re sure we’ve seen this exact one at least 22 times in the last 236 skulls) with cyber-hair and weird twisty cyber-tentacles. Looks like it took about five minutes to create, with even less time and thought going into the band logo. I’m not even gonna get into how bad the music is. (Oh wait, the Council is telling me I have to, per the rules as a lowly Big Dumb Skulls friar. Okay then…)

The music:
Achieving a small degree of notice during their long 12-year slog, poor Dispatched would be occupying bargain bins everywhere if bargain bins still existed. Terrorizer is poorly
recorded, and remarkably so, which doesn’t help their cause. This production is thin, frail and brittle sounding, which might work if you’re a one-man bedroom black metal demo band, but they’re not. They are, however, bad metal, despite trying for something bigger and better. Dispatched attempts to achieve a melodic death metal sort of sound, one that doesn’t mind adding in a flute or lead keyboard role here and there. It’s maybe akin to In Flames right around the time In Flames started getting junky. But whether the songwriting is good or not (it’s not), you need a production with some degree of power to convince. Dispatched’s other problem is ambition, but not because they’re lacking it. In fact, they throw out a ton of ideas, sometimes within the same song, but most of them aren’t very interesting to begin with. If they are, they fly by too briefly before some dippy keyboard-driven gothic sort of melody line flies in. And then they’ll deliver another stock riff out of the Unused Dark Tranquillity Riffs box. I’ll usually give some credit to any band who tries to, you know, “mix it up” a little bit, but in Dispatched’s case it’s unlistenable and annoying. And I realize my criticism is very surface and probably unfair, but why try any harder if they themselves can’t be bothered to write better lyrics than this…from “I Am thy Lord”:

“The world is mine
I grab it with my soul
Identify
Me as your lord
The world is mine
I grab it with my soul
Realize
I am thy lord”

But hey, if faintly “cyber” melodic death metal with cheesy keyboard sounds and a terrible
production appeals to you, go for it. You might even enjoy living in hopes that some label
comes along and releases their numerous demos and EPs in a four-LP box. For me, I hope this band stays buried. Please do not exhume!
— Friar Wagner

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SHAH, P.S.I.H.O.  (1994, Moroz Records)

The skull:
Shah is one of the most celebrated Russian thrash bands ever (not that there are that many noteworthy ones to begin with), and they sure love heads and skulls. All four of their albums feature just that, and this, their fourth and final album, sports a cover we were more than happy to add to the Skullection. We look at skulls a lot here at BDS but never really wonder how the skull came to be. We’re always so in-the-moment. Shah’s skull shows the transition to skulliness in all its gory motion: the flesh, including a nose and an eyeball, are being blown clean off the bone by what we’ll assume is a very, very strong wind. But this reveals that all is not bone! The skull is apparently made of steel or some kind of other metallic material. And its left eyeball refuses to leave home. Glorious!

The music:
I have not had the pleasure of hearing Shah’s three albums prior to this one. But I’ve heard they’re a little more straight-forward and aggressive than P.S.I.H.O., which is like a poor man’s Countdown to Extinction; it has a similarly razor-sharp riffing approach, its smooth complexity resembles that album’s refined posture, and the vocalist emits Mustaine-esque whines ‘n’ snarls. It’s more ramshackle than Countdown…, however. P.S.I.H.O. has some genuinely great moments (the cool riffs and harmony vocals within “Turn of the Changes”; the hypnotic pace and acoustic guitar layered throughout “Open”), but just ask yourself: “Do I love early/mid ’90s Megadeth enough to seek out a Russian analog of the same?” Having been released in the waning years of thrash metal’s finest era, this could probably be called “semi-thrash” or “post-thrash” while escaping any alignment to the likes of Machine Head or Pantera. I’m also reminded of forgotten midwestern semi-thrashers Coup De Grace, Heathen’s most melodic moments, and shades of Metal Church.
— Friar Wagner

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ARBITRATER, Darkened Reality  (1993, Cyclone)

The skull:
Looks like North America is suffering an impossibly gigantic pimple of bone; a hellish, ugly growth that North America does not want its neighbors in Europe and Africa to see. It better wear a baseball cap when it goes out. Added bonus is the reflection of the upper teeth in the water.

The music:
Thrash metal from the UK was a dicey proposition even in the genre’s heyday of 1987/1988, so the prospect of listening to some obscure UK thrash band’s second album from 1993 is a grim one. Surprisingly, this is not half bad. Which means it’s about half good. And only half good. The guitar tone is appropriately fried, and there are moments that compare favorably to early Xentrix or Dyoxen (although “compare favorably to Xentrix” is not necessarily a compliment in my world). The vocals are incredibly average, but this being UK thrash, you expect that. There’s not a lot of super-fast stuff here either — Arbitrater take their time with their thrashing. But listen long enough and you’ll find a scattering of semi-potent riffs that a Bay Area band like Defiance would surely have liked to co-opt (“Deadline,” “No Second Chance”). Unfortunately, songs like “Suicide Commercially” (huh?) and “Guilty of No Crime” offer nothing of use. And I’m referencing bands like Xentrix, Dyoxen and Defiance, so you see that this is decent at best — hardly mandatory thrash. You also see where this sits in the thrash hierarchy — decide for yourself if you need to track it down or not.
— Friar Wagner

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DAWN OF DEMISE, Hate Takes Its Form  (2007, Deepsend)

The skull:
Skull with industrial haute couture mohawk: a mane of hooks, knives and various rusty
implements that look like parts of an old farm tractor, all arranged elaborately atop the bony noggin. The skull is mounted on a kind of large industrial drill bit looking thing. This is a pretty fancy skull as metal skull go, even if adorned with all this dangerous-looking machinery. The way the skull’s head is tilted, it looks as if he’s having real trouble carrying all the weight that sits on top of his cranium.

The music:
Even amongst the zillions of brutal death metal bands and albums that come and go, this
Danish band received an unusual amount of hype and praise when this album was released. That might have had something to do with the presence of ex-Infernal Torment vocalist Scott Jensen, his prior band infamous for their ridiculously depraved lyrics that made Cannibal Corpse stanzas read like a Bon Jovi hit. Basically, Dawn Of Demise has lineage that goes back to influential bands and albums in that whole gore/porn/ultra-“broodal” universe. Thus, Hate Takes It Form is mono-maniacal one-dimensional modern brutal death metal with pig grunt “bree bree shredded wheeeeat!!!” vox. Which means, as well-played and professionally-delivered as this album is, I couldn’t care less.
— Friar Wagner

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BURDEN OF GRIEF, Haunting Requiems  (2000, Point Music)

The skull:
Dirty, wretched, aged skull hangs eerily in the fog, leering and sneering. It’s the eyes that deliver the creeps: where the pupils would have been there are instead threads of blue electric energy. “Electric eye…in the sky…feel my stare…always there.” What could have been a dull and dumb cover is actually rendered well enough to convey the dread it’s supposed to. Gaze upon its countenance and shudder. Well done.

The music:
For those who lament that “melodic death metal” now means “anemic weak metalcore” versus what the originators of the form intended (early In Flames, early Dark Tranquillity, Eucharist, etc.), Burden Of Grief are here to fly the flag. More Sacramentum than Soilwork, these Germans sound Swedish as hell. The vocals throughout Haunting Requiems recall the scathing tones of early Mikael Stanne (Dark Tranquillity) and the music goes there too, along with a healthy shot of every-era At The Gates. This is like the missing link between early At The Gates and the refinement they underwent on Terminal Spirit Disease — all shimmering, haunting, minor key riffs and melodies, screaming vocals, and a triumphant, Maiden-esque sort of vibe, arranged more consisely than early At The Gates yet not quite as stripped down and ferocious as AtG would become. There’s even a cover of Iron Maiden’s “Prowler” here. The comparisons to better and better-known bands tells you Burden Of Grief are second-tier (“Smashed to Pieces” is so close to early Dark Tranquillity that it can be called a rip-off), but it’s certainly some of the better second-tier melodic death metal you’ll come across. Worth checking out if your hunger for the sound of real melodic death metal takes you out of Sweden and out of the ’90s.
— Friar Wagner

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SPIDER KICKERS, Recognize the Corpse  (2001, self-released)

The skull:
Now how are we supposed to recognize the corpse when there’s nothing but a partial skull and petrified French fries strewn about? That’s nothing to go on — everybody eats French fries! It doesn’t help that this is viewed through some kind of infra-red lens or something. Nope, not gonna be any corpse-recognizing happening here today. Whaddya think we are, CSI or some shit?

The music:
What an incredibly stupid band name. Taken literally, these guys must be jerks if they go around kicking spiders. I’d like to see them kick something a bit less defenseless and puny, like a scorpion, or a badger. They’re from Greece, so maybe something’s getting lost in translation here. These guys wallowed in demo/self-release purgatory until the Sleaszy Rider label came calling in 2007, although even that doesn’t seem to have raised their profile much. It’s probably because their music skirts that crowded line where hundreds of others sit, thrashing away furiously, shouting about alcohol, sodomy and death. Speaking of death, the Kickers play thrash metal that sits on the death metal side, comprising a true death/thrash synthesis, for whatever that’s worth to you. Now and again a sneaky, snaky, cool thematic lead line will emerge out of these songs, and I like the conviction with which the vocals are spit out, and they’re pretty tight and ferocious…but in the final analysis, it’s competent yet nothing-special sort of stuff. Investigate further only if you must…you gullible metalhead, you. — Friar Wagner

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BENEDICTION, Subconscious Terror  (1990, Nuclear Blast)

The skull:
This one rules. The skull is big enough to qualify its inclusion into the BDS Skullection, but its placement is subtle compared to everything else going on. First are the upraised arms, clearly not part of the skull, but a suggestion of murder-by-big-ass-knife. These arms threaten to plunge the knife into the middle of the island at the bottom of the image — the island just happening to have the profile of a human face. Floating in the ocean. Looking like a face. About to get stabbed. We’re not sure what’s happening here, but we like it. And then they fly the awful/awesome Benediction logo in red and yellow above all this. Voila! A pleasing if cluttered eyesore. Personally, I love their logo: primitive crayon-yellow lettering dripping blood, flanked on the left by a nun and on the right by an, err, evil nun. Don’t forget about the skull, which sits grimly in the back, a detached witness to something seriously demented. A subtle skull, yes, but it lords over this scene of terror with enough ghostly authority that we wholly approve!

The music:
Here’s a rare album where the intro piece is a highlight of the whole album: on “Portal To Your Phobias,” Barney Greenway (pre-Napalm Death, yessir) narrates in a totally demented fashion while nightmarish sounds whirl and howl underneath (Barney’s narration reminds of Von’s “Lamb,” if that means anything to you). On the proper songs, Barney sounds like Kam Lee of Massacre, and early Massacre is pretty much where Benediction’s first album is coming from. I’ve always had a soft spot for Subconscious Terror, and it’s one of few Benediction recordings I’d call “mandatory” while also recognizing that it’s no classic. It’s just mandatory in my world. You can do what you want. After their Dark is the Season EP, they started to decline, ending up at full-on brown metal by the mid ’90s, but this thing undeniably reeks of ancient death metal primitiveness. As said, it sounds a lot like early Massacre, and that’s terrific to these ears. The production is raw and clangy and not at all pretty. Its basement-death metal vibe gives the music a certain aesthetic, sounding, if not like death, then like hell. Hell in a garage. The rhythm guitars sound like vacuum cleaners and the guitar leads are slightly more structured/melodic than your typical Rick Rozz ridiculousness/awesomeness. Tempos shift often enough to keep you guessing, but there’s no real complexity here. Doesn’t need to be either. The whole thing sounds like it’s rattling around in a big old steel bucket, dark, hollow and helpless (thank you Mr. Mick Harris, who produced this loveable ugliness). If I could change one thing it would be a remix that brings down the drums in volume — sizzly cymbals and paint buckets both — which dominate the album way too much. But I’ll take Subconscious Terror “as is.”
— Friar Wagner

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WORMROT / I ABHOR, split (2010, Scrotum Jus)

The skull:
This image appears to have been ripped from some old ’40s crime magazine or pulp fiction paperback. The skull hovers above a woman seemingly in distress. He leers with a perverted grin and is enormous in size compared to the woman. While the hand in the lower left corner suggests a skeleton — breaking BDS’s ‘No Skeletons’ rule — we’ll overlook it and move on. The woman is unidentified thanks to the black bar over her eyes. On second thought, maybe she’s expressing pleasure, a hussy who only enjoys sex with humongous skulls. Oh, the lascivious thrill…

The music:
Bonus points immediately given for the intro to this split. I Abhor’s “Downfall” starts with Sesame Street classic “12” (remember the funky song and pinball animation?). Things get remarkably less exciting after that brief sample. I Abhor rages and blasts in a way that puts the “core” in grindcore, and they’re good, even excellent at what they do, but this stuff always bores me shitless after the first song or two. The noisier, muddier, bleaker Wormrot is slightly more interesting, but it still gets dull quickly. I appreciate them more than I Abhor (the tempo variation helps) and I can understand why grind connoisseurs hold them in high regard. Two bands, 13 songs, 11 minutes. Inconsequential stuff in my world. Almost invisible.
— Friar Wagner

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ATANAB, Black Magic  (2010, Mighty Hordes Productions)

The skull:
Originally released by some other label in 2006 with a non-skull cover, Mighty Hordes put
that wrong to right and reissued this album with a skull cover. It’s a pretty okay one too, a
fairly crude drawing that is nonetheless effective. The skull is hooded, and the skull
is in rough shape: a vertical crack from forehead to nose, and a lower right eye
that shows the bone deteriorating in a kind of unzipping sort of pattern. There’s even a fuzzy-looking root or strand of fungus hanging off his left jaw. This skull has either been the victim of some pretty rad black magic, or he’s in bad need of some ASAP.

The music:
This Colombian band plays black metal that sounds like Marduk doing covers of ’80s era
speed/black/thrash metal bands. So yeah, it’s fast, the vocals are exclusively vicious, and
there are some riffs here, but there’s nothing remarkable about it. Perhaps I’m showing my
age when almost none of these newer skull-loving black/death/thrash metal bands sound impressive to these ears. Hardly any of them bring any sort of unique personality to their music — just retreads of recycled ideas of things that have been done many times before. Nothing stands out on Black Magic, but I guess when you’re calling your album Black Magic and slapping a skull on the cover, originality is not the idea.
— Friar Wagner

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CELTIC FROST, The Collector’s Celtic Frost  (1987, Noise)

The skull:
Celtic Frost’s “screaming skull” happens to be one of the coolest and most recognizable skull designs in metal. (Remember that Frost’s heptagram design also featured a skull.) The cover of this single is simplicity incarnate, but also entirely effective. There’s no need for anything else — it works just like it is. The skull still possesses one gushy orb of an eyeball in his left eye socket, and his elongated maw screams in horror as strings of what I’ll say is mucus stick to his upper and lower teeth. Weird, cool and tailor-made for t-shirts and tattoos.

The music:
Tom G. Warrior had a talent for spotting quirk, darkness and eccentricity in various non-metal songs, taking them into the world of Celtic Frost and molesting them into nearly unrecognizable new versions. He’s done it with Bryan Ferry, David Bowie and Wall of Voodoo, and this 1962 Dean Martin song, “In the Chapel in the Moonlight” (the sole song on this 1987 12″ single). I’m not any kind of lounge/crooner fan or anything, but the original has an undeniable appeal. The Frost version is a total perversion of the original, naturally: it brings in a militaristic cadence that changes the song considerably, especially the snare work of Reed St. Mark in the chorus section, and a conviction in delivery that turns this strange idea into a tiny little success. The female backing vocals are appropriately ghostly, as well. Tom’s vocals are fiery and fucked up. This was recorded during the Into the Pandemonium era, which was the first and last time his voice had this particular quality (it was much gruffer before this, and a lackluster bark afterward). Yet another cool nugget of nuttiness from Celtic Frost.
— Friar Wagner