Archives: Reviews

Since I got the demotape from this band (with a very interesting

painting by Salvador Dalì on cover) I thought this band

had some talent to show. Fact is they definitely lost their shine.

They just jumped on the bandwagon of IN FLAMES half hard rock’nroll

half melodic death metal scene that LUBRICANT and AT THE GATES

had started. Of course, these new bands have deviated to bring

out the most easy listening elements discarding the interesting

twisted, fierce parts. Sometimes bands like IN AETERNUM or WATAIN

got the right spirit, sometimes they do not. GANDALF has nothing

that could convince me to rate ’em as a good band. Too much classic

slamming rock for my ears. Ah the producer behind this waste is

Andy Laroque from KING DIAMOND. Ask me if I care.

1 - In portraits of shadowed life 2 - Frostmaiden's veil 3 - As I wither away 4 - Witches dance 5 - Reverie's night 6 - My beloved 7 - When stormclouds gather... 8 - Hamaran kutsu 9 - Nightshades 10 - Talven Tahdon jaavan 11 - Dark oceans calm 12 - With all my sorrows

Have you ever heard the perfect combination between raw pure black

metal and melody? Well I haven’t and after having heard FAERGHAIL

the situation remains the same. The bio salivates litres of good

words over the band although it doesn’t scathe me even fairly.

This band plays shit. The vocals are weak, definitely immature,

there are interminable hours of acoustic guitar and keyboards

to create soundscapes of boredom and so fucking banal you can

anticipate every whisper and malignant grin minute by minute.

When the music gets fast, it reaches the absolute worst which

fortunately is not too often. This is the kind of music I basically

find unattractive but when they have to throw those shrieking

shrills, I find it definitely unbearable. What the fuck but trend

demands for those vocals in this atmospheric music? Clean vocals

would have been OK at least, but this is absolute nothingness.

1 - Zareddo knives endows thy sight 2 - Devacamo possessed black 3 - Scolopendra arise 4 - Avail the autocrat of evil 5 - Witchboundator 6 - Whilst the trident spawn and spectre

It is a real pity that Norwegian are the worst

to play Black Metal to this day. Luckily FURZE is not the worst

release I have heard from Norway of late (would have been a hard

fight). I heartily hope they avoid any shade of clean vocals in

the future releases, tho. The music is not overly fast and sometimes

gets a bit thrash with some untypical arrangements when it gets

slow but again spinning to monotonous when it gets at tightest

pace, actually I realize they reach the best when they don’t accelerate.

The vocals are pretty varied all through shifting from the malignant

shrills to goblin like to clean and then drained into almost ambient

passages which last some seconds before getting fast again. To

say they’re typical Black would be unfair, and there are interesting

spots here and there but sometimes they really sound like a circus.

Hm. Not my tastes sorry.

1 - Daemonic Exordium ... 2 - Perverted Intention 3 - Exhumed Brutality 4 - 
                Evil Odium 5 - Grindgod 6 - Doomed Glorification of Blasphemy 
                7 - A Piece of Flesh 8 - Beautiful Enough to Kill 9 - Kazdy z 
                Nas ( Master's Hammer - Ritual ) 10 - Art of Horrification 11 
                - Death and Dying 12 - ... Final Desolation 13 - I Will Grind 
                Your Fingers 14 - Dismembered 15 - Eternal Suffer 16 - Positive 
                17 - Noise 18 - Intro 19 - Mental Dreams 20 - Faces of Decomposition 
                21 - Fleshless 22 - Land of Emptiness 23 - Sexual Carnage ( Remix 
                - Bonus )

One of the turn-over points of this release is the running

time, over one hour, including one bonus remix track and the full

demo (titled “Grinding”). Their contnuous abuse of the

word “grind”might be deceptive somewhat, as the band

has really little to do with this genre, instead FLESHLESS is

a ultra-brutal Death Metal act, backboned by an unrelenting drum

machine and blessed by carnal, full bodied downtuned vocals of

the gloomiest, darkest sort. Far from being unilaterally fast

and grinding (although that would not be a problem for me at all

ahr ahr), the songs are quite varied and count various semi-melodic

bridges and solos, all the while keeping a fairly fast pace even

when it turns more “hearable”. The band has obviously

kept a particular attention in giving every song its own definite

identity, so much that sometimes remind me of the CANNIBAL CORPSE

of “Butchered at Birth” (especially for the vocal tone/pattern)

yet with the aforementioned melodical interludes. Anyway just

like Buffalo’s gods, this band is capable of unrelenting, crunching,

sludgly guttural parts as well as kick-ass brutishness, I have

just to reckon that sometimes the riffs just get a bit too much

in the chugga chugga stopped style so much it almost sound like

some sort of jingle, which combined with their melodies gives

the Cd a few bad turns…. which in their demo tracks were not

present, so they must be some sort of “innovation” which

my close mindedness don’t really understand eheh… The cover

artwork still continues the really original concept of Disney

like comic-book characters involved in filthy scenes of gore,

with delicious pastel greens and violets in shape of dismemberments

and defleshed skulls. Whatever this artist Lhota is, he has quite

some talent… its style is quite different from the more classical

cheap 80’s comic book hand of countrymates PURULENT SPERMCANAL.

One last notes probably should go to the very good MASTER’S HAMMER

cover (don’t ask me to look on my keyboard for those weird characters,

but THAT was a band, ah… )

1 - Decrepit Crescendo 2 - Forged in Fire (Forged in Flame) 3 - 
                A Lesson in Pathology 4 - This Axe Was Made to Grind 5 - Carnal 
                Epitaph 6 - Dinnertine in the Morgue 7 - Fester Forever 8 - Deep 
                Red 9 - Infester 10 - Slave to the Casket 11 - Slaughtercult 12 
                - Funeral Fuck 13 - Vacant Grave

EXHUMED

is incredible. they have stirred a part of my conscience I wasn’t

aware to own, they can play it 100% Metal and still be one of

my favorite bands today. Of Metal they have everything, long nauseatingly

sweet solos, a highly scenical presence/approach to the music,

with leather studs and all, and still they’re unerringly savage,

sort of BESTIAL WARLUST of Death Metal. Now on the exact identification

of Metal, I have come to a conclusion that surprised even me…

when I heard their previous “Gore Metal” for the first

time, I thought the term was just a tribute to POSSESSED (remember

the cover track on the split CD with HEMDALE?),

but as the listen went on, I realized the term Gore

Metal fitted perfectly. While 100% Death Metal, I think they can

also be identified as the founders of another genre which can

be identified as Gore Metal, and nobody would raise a word I think.

While made up basically of nothing more than extremely flowing

Death Metal which eyes CARCASS as the ultimate influence (I am

sorry, but you can’t really escape this eheh), the way they apporach

the music is something which has nothing to do with Grindcore

or Goregrind, like the other side of CARCASS, the essence who

made the band Metal even if they were basically Gore Grind…

I know I have not been clear but what the fuck, things remain

this album is much straighter than Gore Metal, the songs are even

more to the point and absolutely essential, so much one could

even get bored at a first listen. As you put it four of five times,

you finally get sucked in, and the groove nobody else can give

in the Death (whooppps i meant Gore) Metal like they do becomes

addictive. The artwork maintains the integralist line they got

ever since the debut demos, buckets o’ entrails splattered against

broken glass shards, the back pics depicting the band drinking

and showering in blood poured from skulls… the songs have titles

which remind me of small tributes to AUTOPSY, IMPETIGO and CARCASS

but that might be only my depraved immagination…. “Decrepit

Crescendo” -> “Symphonies of Sickness”, “Forged

in Fire” -> “Burnt to a Crisp”, “Dinnertime

in the Morgue” -> “Breakfast at the Manchester Morgue”,

“Slave to the Casket” -> “Born in a Casket”,

“Funeral Fuck” -> “Mental Funeral”, “Vacant

Grave” -> “Service for a Vacant Coffin”

and so on… also in the production and recording department

i see there’s a Swedish Mietzko, which I suppose is the mongoloid

who answered the NASUM interview in the first Nuclear Abominations

issue. All in all, nobody guts and chop ike EXHUMED!