Archives: Reviews

1 - Siamese Screams 2 - Translucence 3 - The Cloning 4 - Reunited 5 - High on Formaldehyde 6 - A Window to Hell 7 - Skin is In 8 - Auction of the Dead 9 - He Was Raped 10 - I Am God 11 - Deadly Embrace

Broken Hope‘s “Loathing” spots one of the most effective if abstract covers by that great artist that is Wes Benscoter. If you ask me, while I acknowledge the skill of relatively recent artists like Zig or Tony Kohel, this guy is on another world entirely. If the layout is clean and sharp, the music follows strictly these guidelines: the textures are way less oppressive than those of modern day Brutal Death bands like Artery Eruption or Gutrot, but the songs are each clearly identifiable, and the vocals of Joe Ptacek on this album are really those of a fucking ogre in barbarian rage. Today we probably have no less than one hundred thousand bands with vocalists that range deep and low as a boar, but there are few singers which have such a intestinal, profound timbre. Things have gotten a bit cleaner than “Repulsive Conception”, following the path started right after “The Bowels of Repugnance”, but the inspiration and creativity is still strong here, despite an amazing production, really surprisingly balanced and clear, and it shows on the music and the lyrics, this time the most repulsive they have ever written: venereal diseases, necrophilia, necrophagia, inborn deformities, psychic deviations and even blasphemy (the song “He Was Raped” talks about how the Romans fucked Jesus in the ass and came in his throat right before the crucifixion) are explored with precision and a disturbingly elegant style. This is an album that still resides among my favorites from 1997, becouse you can just never get tired of this shit. Brian’s obsession for power riffs is at his highest here, but they are not as bare as those in the following album (a delusion on many levels); you got a hundred ultra-powerful chugs and grunts, the most blatant example surely the song “Skin is In”, a good ancestor for Skinless-like grooves, if maybe a bit “easy” in relation to the others. My favorite must be “Reunited”, not just the lyrics are terribly sick, but the song has an impressive variety in itself as well. If “The Bowels of Repugnance” remains their masterpiece, this one should be an excellent buy for those used to a cleaner, more ordered sound. And two thumbs up to Joe’s vocals here! Big guitar personality and a bunch of elegant solos as well.

1 - Frozen in Time 2 - Mystical Plane of Evil 3 - Shrine of Life 4 - The Orb of Uncreation

In 1993 I received a package from Nuclear Blast containing a few things I bought through their mailorder: it also contained also a slipcase promo sampler of all of their upcoming releases. Apart from some frighteningly horrendous tracks from band such as Afflicted (at their power metal days), Gorefest tracks taken from “Erase”, Pyogenesis tracks from “Sweet X-Rated Nothings” and a couple of more atrocious listenings, there was one track that left me in shock and it was this band Kataklysm which I never heard before then. It was “The Orb of Uncreation”. Listening to this track again today still gives me shivers. I still cannot think of another singer as uncontrolled, as insane, as Sylvian Houde was on this Ep. I got the Cd containing the demo tape and this extra song in a blink of an eye. The cover artwork looks like taken from a D&D module, and the lyrics are about some fantasy magic that deals with dimension travels and cosmic energies; original to some extent but it’s hardly honest to say “never heard before” (even Hawkwind didn’t stray too far from these topics). But what was obsessively good in these twenty minutes was surely the fucking music herein contained. It doesn’t follow ANY schemes. The vocals are totally independent of the music base, barking and growling at full speed, disgorging words with a frequency deign of the best John Kennedy with a Canadian raising problem. It’s like hearing Terrance and Phillip singing at the Ed Sullivan show, with deathvomit vocals. Definitely crazy. And the whole music reeks insanity as well, in a really unpredictable way. I was blown at the time and well, I still am when I hear this album, the drums hyperblast, stop and twitch, and the guitar riffs contort aimlessly in a mass of swirling riffs and disconnected tempos. You got terrific fast blastbeats one second, a hyperfast drum solo, arpeggios and a shovinm crunchy riff right after. While I love these vocals, which become a bit higher and clearer with the extra track at the end, I admit the whole band here deserves a handshake for the incredible chemistry it displays, this is order from chaos in its most clear cut form, a single serpent of sound made of several different tiles, but with a single flowing pattern. Too sad this is one of the best album that Nuclear Blast ever released, becouse it was also one of the last ones. After 1994, very few items have been memorable from the label. The production is a bit dirty and bass heavy, but I like it this way. Killer, killer Ep. If some bands have been able to somewhat match or imitate Cryptopsy so far, none seems to have produces anything similar to this infernal choir of cataclysmic rage. Amazing. It took me one year to get the 7″ Ep on Boundless and finally understand that the band logo was the round thing glowing on the cover. Ahah.

1 - Thoughts 2 - A Level Higher 3 - Totality 4 - Lines 5 - The Greys 6 - Omnipotence 7 - Return to the Gates of Rebrth 8 - Epitaph

Wicked Innocence came from the ultra conservative state of Utah, and after a rather crusty, slightly dull (yet greatly down tuned and guttural) debut named “Anthropological Infestation” they released this little diamond speckled with greenish hues of leafy emerald called “Omnipotence” (guess where the green comes from). Well this album is weird, but generally speaking, we walk into way more familiar environments. Despite some frantic, jagged riffs and a couple of solos that breathe some air of southern Rock between the lines, this album is generally a monolith of crushing, brutish Death Metal. The most distinct thing in here must be the vocals, becouse they’re really gruff and they have the sound of iron grating against stone. This man is a fucking unhuman bull-frog (well, the vocals sound as if recorded very high anyway, so he must be almost whispering, that makes it easier eh). The way I see it, the progressive infusions were still elegantly placed and not too intrusive as they become with “Worship” and this is what makes this album so special. Powerful, crude riffing with some twists embedded in the very sound instead of boing haphazardly mixed. I just can’t digest when experimentation cripples the brutality of a band, if the prog elements just fragment a song aimlessly, it just doesn’t work to me. Add varietly, but the brutality has to stay, cunts! So we have here a chain of hammering solid tracks with the guitar sound of mid era Napalm Death and some Cannibal Corpse-like harmonics, fucked up vocals that gurgle and mutate hideously from a Fleshgrind-like timbre upwards to the whole spectrum, including some spoken), good rhytmic slam oriented riffs, and a nicely hectic drumming. There are no real fusion tricks here, but some arrangements are definitely strange and original (hear the songs “Lines”, “Omnipotence” and “Return to the Gates of Rebirth”). More purely Brutal Death than the other bands that recorded at Time Capsule that I reviewed recently, but quite ahead of its time. No disharmonic licks here, just strange arrangements and a metallic, protagonist bass guitar. The cover art is also real interesting, three streams of souls converging in the middle of a vortex. The lyrics also distinguish neatly the band since they talk about nature and spirituality in a interesting, creative way. They seemed a bit pissed off at living in a mormon country eh eh. There is the same old stupid bollocks about smoking drugs in here, but I just try to ignore it or it will grind my nerves and I would end detracting 4 points from my rating just for it.

1 - Epidermal Decor 2 - Necro Thievery 3 - Bone Saw 4 - The Accursed

It’s still Colorado, the studio is still Time Capsule and the Mixer/Engineer is still Kirby Orrick, and judging by the “Ganja God” mentioned in the thanklist, things are still a bit high on toxic substances, eh, and the music shows! Gore-green they should call it. See I just invented another label! Ah ah. Anyway this is not Skeleton of God as you might have concluded but the Englewood/Denver based band Undertaker (ex-Maledict but I don’t want congrats for this trivia, I just read it in their bio two minutes ago eh), made up of four young musicians and kicking some dust with this interesting “Necro Thievery” demo-Cd. I have the compact disc edition but I remember it was also released on tape. The lyrics are not as flowing and well written as Skeleton of God’s, dealing basically with hidden corpses, violating cadavers and witnessing the apocalypse. but the music surely follow their sick minded steps. A bulging, powerful sound, low guttural fucking vocals and a shitload of nasty riffs with grating harmonics and a generous dose of accelerations. If anything, this band sounds even more compact and somewhat faster, while maintaining a distinct, let’s call it trademark American neat style. The sound here is not the best as it becomes a bit confused when the music become more complex, the kick drums a bit too high, and the strings maybe a bit too lose, but I generally love this mini on the overall. We’re discussing about a genre which was still in embryo as what was to become Brutal American Death Metal, not to mention these unconventional dissonant harmonies in the mix which just emerged many years later, hell there are even excellent solos in here. The whole spectrum of speeds is explored here, from slow, crunching bridges to grindcore blasts, while keeping the sound full and compact. Great thing how these Creepo/Napalm bands combined heaviness with hints of progressive intelligence. The packaging is very simple but cool in its simplicity, but the cover artwork, while surely visionary and “gore” coould really be drawn better, the proprtions and anatomies were definitely unripe for publication but in the end, the concept holds. It was surprising to read there is still a webpage about this band, maintained by the then guitarist/backing screamer Matt Rinehart (I heard the tracks of his new band and well… I don’t like it, period… you know, I am still a retarded teenage Death Metal fan despite the years passing ehe, just can’t evolve!). I am enclosing here one track but the whole demo is freely downloadable from the band’s website!!!

1 - Urine Garden 2 - Ten Seconds Infinity 3 - Spiritual Schizophilia 4 - Withered Humans 5 - Smog (Gacy Remix)

Wicked, massive, insane. A powerhouse on drugs. By merely looking at the cover art, one realizes something had gone out of place among the drug-dull brain cells of these four musicians from Colorado. Right after the recording on the Hideous Corpse Ep, the band returned to the scene with a truly insane masterpiece of feverishly original Brutal Art. Call it Hydro Grind (as one notorious chick once defined) or post-Brutal Death Metal, Skeleton of God has created an incredibly dense concoction of sturdy brutality a la Suffocation mixed with leaks of dissonance and riffs that can only come from the green weed leaves depcited on the cover. Even if I HATE when bands deal with this marijuana shit (to me, that’s stuff you should overgrow after getting 11 years old), the whole concept is so convincing and charming in this MCd that it broadly summarizes all the Cephalic Carnage albums in just 18 minutes of music. The recording is as heavy as a rolling boulder, with a full, bovine guitar distortion, guttural vocals and a rather elastic drumming. I only complain a bit about the sound of the kick drums which really sound a bit too “wet” for my tastes, but the strings and vocals tonalities are just perfect to me. It is amazing how this band managed to keep all the heaviness of these early Brutal Death sonorities, with all these heavily muscled, powerful riffs and at the same time being able to wrap it in an hypnotic cocoon of metallic fringes and wondrous experimentations. The deformed, bloated body on the cover with multiple dicks, the sickly green blackground on the band pic, the use of black, green and greys for the layout and the insane lyrics (the “Smog” song has among the most nonsensical lytrics ever, I wonder how many magic mushrooms these guys ate before writing this stuff) just all collaborate to create something ahead its time (BTW ultra cool Pigface shirt, that’s the first time I saw a metalhead wearing one). I am somewhat happy this band quitted shirtly thereafter, becouse they just burned out (any excuse was good to inhale some fucking smoke eh, dorks!) in a nimbus of flickerings and sparkles of genius… and their name has so remained somehow hidden to the masses. The story of how I got this Cd is unbelievable also, I just brought a flyer at the local record shop, which basically just sold Thin Lizzy and White Lion records, and showed it to the owner as a joke. He said to me: ” hey I just got that one Cd “, and I was like “sure…” and well, he just picked it out of a drawer! How an underground Cd released by an independent label (I think I remember that Creepo was just Skeleton of God‘s members, need to dig that interview) landed among AOR and Heavy Metal records is still a mystery. Maybe it just hopped through a mirror and landed up there. It still smells of hallucinogenic fungi. With Skeleton of God, you could never know.

1 - Gallery of Gore 2 - Baptized in Pus

Okay, I tried to rip the vinyl track by myself but the result came out real shitty and depleted by crackling noises. Try to have a listen at the sample below but be prepared for a lot of fucking noise, I don’t know, it’s probably my sound card (and Audigy), becouse I think I configured well the software to avoid soundwave distortions. Whatever: Hideous Corpse was an extremely brutal Death Metal band from Nederland, Colorado which just recorded a demo and a seven inch (this one) both at the Morrisound studios. Considering the time it was recorded, it was quite above the the average in sheer brutality, even considering the American scene already produced some small jewels of brutish disgorgement (Imprecation, Banished, Baphomet etc.). I really felt the urge to post this becouse it’s an Ep which shows up for quite cheap (if you find it), but hurry becouse who knows, it might become cult in a week or two ah ah (man, this Internet thing is getting intolerable). The opening riff might seems just a big tribute to old Deicide, but things evolve a little bit soon by including long passages of grinding heaviness, yet always kept massive and with powerful, cavernous vocals and crunchy chuggish guitars. The riffs are not extremely advanced in complexity, as we still remain on the classic even riffs plus choir pattern, but you hear some very faint guitar trick in the backrgound which are destined bloom completely in the madness that was Skeleton of God. There is even a footnote in the back of this seven inch, that states the band was going to change name for a new album (which never came out, since as far as I know, they only recorded two Eps, and I never ever seen the second one save on the Deathgasm retrospective). Quite weird, since the guitarist is not the same (?) there! Even if the new band was the real shit, these two songs had to be exhumed, eh. At 6-score minutes one, 4-score minutes the other, both contains a fair share of crushing riffs, vocal brutality, and a couple of heavy palm-muting breakdowns. This Ep was recorded on Colombian label SOD, which must have paid the band’s royalties with cocaine considering how wicked was destined to be “Urine Garden”… There is some reverb which just add to the brutal, oppressive sound. Good shit.