Necrospective: Terrorizer

I decided once more to hurt myself by continuing the all-personal all-unbiased analyses of the discographies of the giants of death/black/grind/noise and related genres. There will be moments of great discouragement in the future, maybe a few names that some people don’t remember at all, and certainly many releases that I had managed to avoid for years without knowing how low a historical band can dig but had to discover the hard way. Let’s start here, with a band that donated the world a timeless classic and a forgettable comeback. And had to stop right there.

But remember, god can, when you ironize about the metalheads who complain “it was only good on the first album and the demos” because that’s exactly what happens here and so many other times. Though the situation here might not be as tragic as in other cases, going from being fathers of a genre to releasing average grind records that play in the background while eating Churby’s falafel at Obscene Extreme is a completely different situation.

World Downfall, 1989

I really can’t add anything about this album that hasn’t already been said, it is an absolute milestone in the grindcore genre, able to distill those particles of primal rage recessed in Death Metal to refine the most violent breed of punk and noise into something never seen or heard before. THe FLOW here is beyond description. The bass lines have such a fleshripping force that just a handful of thrash metal classics like Illusions or Pleasure to Kill could compare. Terrorizer here created a familiar yet new generation of violent groove, a compact and breathless album that once reached the limit goes one step further with Oscar Garcia’s perfect vocals reinforced by a Vincent at his peak. And then he, the drummer par excellence. What can be said, really, about the greatest grindcore record to come out of the USA?

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Darker Days Ahead, 2006

I recently closed by shop when I heard of a new Terrorizer album and given the state of extreme music at the time, the premises were quite bleak. Here, as predictable, Terrorizer loses everything despite the nerve of Jesse Pintado, who on a guitar level could honestly hold the fort with an even darker sound compared to the 1989 classic, a grim sound typical of some early British industrial-breed grindcore. What does not work, or rather is completely eclipsed by the debut, is everything else. The drum sound is criminal, the vocals too static and with those fucking machocore choruses this is a shadow of something vaguely reminiscent of “World Downfall” but lost between hopefully forgettable releases like Nailbomb and Asesinos, which to me personally represent the lowest moment of this music during the ”90s.

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Hordes of Zombies, 2012

Six years ahead and another stab comes with this album that should not be. The cover art as well as the layout are those of a third grade band on some obscure east european label, no. If the cover is ugly, the logo miserably modified with subtle yet unnecessary photoshop maneuvering, and let’s not talk about the chouce ot font for the title, on the turntable the record is even worse. This sad Karina can’t hold the reins of Pintado and any grind element despite Sandoval cranking, is gone. Rezhawk as always is grounded on a single note, plus the terrible modulations on the riffs are just hammering nails on the casket of the debut.

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Caustic Attack, 2018

The sadness of the previous album’s boiled Vincent and the lack of Pintado left no glimmer of hope open for this umpteenth and final stab in the back of World Downfall’s green Christ, not least because this Molina guy doesn’t sound much better than Rezhawk. Fortunately, the riffs have awakened a tiny bit and Sandoval really goes for the throat here. It’s still average fast Death Metal far from the grindcore of the first great record, but it is not indecent stuff like Hordes of Zombies. I would buy it? no. Would I listen to it again? No. I mean guys, you could have ended it with 1989, eh.

Screening inside my mental schemes with honesty this one, as well as the second album, would not be ratable as 5s, except that there is the shadow of a perfect album looming over everything. Could they do anything that could stand the test of their classic debut? I don’t think so. Nostalgia is not always a good thing.

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Goatkraft’s compilation on Bestial Invasion

Norway may NOT be my favorite location for Black Metal but there are illustrious exceptions like these GOATKRAFT who came out with a full-length for Iron Bonehead three years ago. Bestial Invasion has just released a collection of unreleased tracks and a few covers in CD format. The tracks were already available since last year digitally but here they are, packaged in a collector’s box of paper and plastic.

Cover of the CD version of the collection

In case you didn’t know the band here’s a quick listen to their full-length album.

The missing Seraphic Decay singles

I still haven’t got the chance to see the Seraphic Decay book that was recently released despite it’s supposed to hold an interview w/me on the SCAM-033 Absurter Cryst EP that I (re)released last year, so what you read here might be redundant or plain wrong but I thought it might have been interesting to read what kind of thinking I did when looking for a code for this EP.

You might have seen this shirt before. Sic. Only 5 made… And I am not one of the owners. Look at that first Mortician LOGO!

The Absurter Cryst EP has been just a metropolitan tale for several years, but my guess is it could fill the blank in the numbering for SCAM-033. How did it get to SCAM-033? Well, 31 was missing so it could have been any between Nunslaughter, Rotting Christ, or Grave (edit – a friend told me these were supposed to be early releases). We have the SCAM-32 code for Suppuration so the choice was between 31 and 33. Being 33 is also the age of Christ… It was an easy choice. Plus, SCAM-031 was released as a bootleg 2CD compilation from Mexico which took the idea from an interview with O’Bannon, it was quite obvious that 33 was the perfect fit.

Left to right: ltd. Nuclear Abominations, regular Nuclear Abominations, unreleased Seraphic Decay. The ultra-limited edition is a tribute to the Mortician single with a different cover you can see below.

Yosuke is a fucking lucky guy and I am so incredibly envious of this stash he got, I could not sleep for a week boiling with envy when I saw this picture on his Instagram. Unluckily, any attempt to get some extra data on these test pressings has failed, we all crave additional information, in particular if they contain some unreleased EPs?

So where did Nunslaughter, Grave and Rotting Christ end up in the catalog numbering? Unsurprisingly, Nunslaughter ended up as a Hell’s Headbangers single (of course, this information I found in an interview with Don). And my guess is Grave was probably the Tremendous Pain EP. As for Rotting Christ things are more indistinct. Maybe the split with Monumentum? I’d go with “Dawn of the Iconoclast”. My three likely candidates below.

GRAVE “Tremendous Pain” Century Media, 1991

NUN SLAUGHTER “Ritual Of Darkness” Hell’s Headbangers, 2004

Here it’s worth noting that Hell’s Headbangers was anticipated by The Black Vomit which apparently already bootlegged the demo in 1993, WAY before the label was an idea. The cover below looks MUCH better than the HHR version in my opinion.

Another thing that should be noted is that in 2004 Hell’s Headbangers also reissued “The Rotting Christ” and “Impale the Soul” demos on 7″. They would not have been the first time O’Bannon reissued demos on vinyl. However, the year falls within the range so who knows.

ROTTING CHRIST “Dawn of the Iconoclas” Decapitated, 1992

Even though we are a couple of years ahead I get the impression that for Rotting Christ this could have been the idea for an EP on Seraphic Decay. The year before came out a split with Monumentum so maybe they just unpacked The tracks on various items. I have no idea.

Whatever the reality is I will get back on the issue after I finally get my copies of the book which I PREORDERED too when the first press was made but was never contacted. Hmph. Let me have a read and I’ll be back with a follow-up.

Recent mauling of parcels

I wonder what on earth is happening to the package delivery system in the last few years. I’ve been shipping records for a good 30 years now, and never have I had so many problems with deliveries arriving in pieces, kicked and crushed violently. Until the early 2000s even, I used to ship LPs in pizza boxes and even with just a ribbon of bubble wrap the records always arrived in decent condition. In recent years, despite using professional mailers with open cardboard flaps that are supposed to protect the corners, the latest shipments outside Europe have arrived in unthinkable conditions. And the longer the route, the worse the condition of the disks. Currently, I have had to double the mailers, sandwich them with some padding, and tape the edges with cardboard shims to protect the corners. A bit of the problem, maybe, could be directed to the insane collecting pathologies of the Mint fanatics, after all nowadays music is no longer listened to on physical media, we labels sell merchandise or luxury items as they can be called. There is no question, though, that there has been an intensification of courier delivery issues because it is not possible to see such an amount of split, damp, and torn packages. Not that I want to create a community, but have you also experienced this continued deterioration of postal and courier service in recent years?

VomitmantiK/Hellcrash/Goat Vomit Noise/Slaughter Messiah @ Freakout club

I’ve probably never seen as many concerts in a row as I did the last couple of months (at least after 2004), which is especially strange because I’ve also begun to appreciate them again whereas for years the titanic battle between couch and pain in the ass in the car had always ended in favor of the former. To be fair, all the last few concerts I saw had a percentage of interesting bands above 50 percent, and at least something to see on stage in terms of set design and presence. The night of Saturday was among them, with an interesting surprise as well. Usual urban location with a handful of scattered headbangers, a low turnout but unfortunately it was to be expected.

VomitmantiK

I will not spend many words on the wild and ferocious horde that is VOMITMANTIK because they recently released the CD on the label (allow me an invitation to buy a copy though), except that it was the first time I had seen them live outside of a rehearsal room. The keyword definition here is crude barbarity. VomitmantiK is a rough embryo that draws its strength from being primitive, from that atavistic, primal ferocity that embodies the instincts of the woods, the totemic bloodlust of ferocious beasts that feed on carcasses and entrails. Hammer and nails: simple tools for channeling instinct into massive, direct songs. Powerful and raw, as the genre must be.

Hellcrash

Here is where the evening took an unpredictable direction. I was imagining yet another Australian-like nostalgia product that might end up on the endless roster of photocopy bands on Iron Bonehead or Unspeakable Axe, but on the contrary, things went in a totally different direction. I had heard a few of their songs on the fly online in the past and was not particularly impressed, even after a quick review in the last few days to see if anything had changed.

Seeing HELLCRASH live, however, has been an entirely different matter. This group rocked the stage to fucking splinters. Even if my infatuation with thrash/speed metal wore off fast around 1992 when the genre had lost that raw polish that made albums by bands like Whiplash, Razor or Rigor Mortis timeless classics that still give me the sudden rush of twenty energy drinks, and honestly never came back despite various more or less pathetic revivals (don’t get me started on Earache bands). Yet, evidently, the magic in the genre is not gone forever because Hellcrash’s set was devastating. The arena that somewhat encapsulates all the obvious influences is Possessed and Venom but within the continuous shredding coexisted instances of Blood Feast, Exciter, Sadus, early Whiplash etc. It’s interesting to witness how simple things always work, at the end of the day you never get tired of eating bread after all. Square and precise, textbook stage presence, studs and leather, a drummer who crashed the skins like a poacher clubbing a baby seal, Becerra/Cronos-esque throaty vocals, spread-legged headbanging, and everything else that could serve the cause. If they pass through your area, don’t miss their show.

Goat Vomit Noise

GOAT VOMIT NOISE, on the other hand, is a very strange beast. If the first two bands took you into the comfort zone, here we are talking about somebody that manages to put together a unique compositional style even if clearly inspired in spurts by this or that other sound, a bit like what happened in the days of NEFAS, when you knew exactly the language, but could not recognize the words. The concert was airless the whole time, there is not a moment of melody or breathing in the whole set. It’s a bit like walking through some post-apocalyptic, gray, lifeless urban scenery, gasping for some air or fresh water. I had listened to some interesting things online before, but let me say that after witnessing this set I now believe that speaking of Black Metal this is one of the ten most interesting bands we have in this country right now. Having a look at the performance on stage, once again, allowed me to box the view into a whole different perspective. Goat Vomit Noise’s world has no color or hope. It is a finite, bleak black granite wasteland where the only life left is armored and covered with fangs. It is indeed an experience to follow the monolithic, inescapable flow through GVN’s circles of lifeless hell. Excellent.

Slaughter Messiah

I took no pictures of Slaughter Messiah because I left the room halfway through the first song. Uninspired, boring, and derivative second-grade black/thrash with riffs so overcooked and overdone you could grate parmesan on them and cook everything in the oven the day after an hangover. This is the kind of band I was mentioning above, that adds nothing to the music world. Which was doubly weird since they were headliners too. All form, no meat. Nice packaging and merch, but apart from that, there was nothing substantial to sink your teeth into.