Category: Underground News

It might sounds as if it doesn’t make sense to buy a record you already have on both vinyl and Cd. But this special edition Relapse re-release of “Onward to Golgotha” was really impossible to miss. Things have been done in great style as with all these recent incredible exhumations of jewels such as the Disembowelment box and the Repulsion double Cd. Something just clicked in my damaged brain when I saw this on Relapse’s store website and well, I had to have it. Except for the HUGE typo in the booklet (“Profination” in big silver fonts??), the release is extremely accurate: the booklet is similar to the original one except for some Pantone silver colors, with added hi-res pictures and the jewel case holds this additional DVD disc. But hey, everything is absorbed by the spectacular cover by Miran Kim, a real fucking masterpiece of art. This painting really drags you in a vortex of madness. As said this 15 year anniversary edition of “Onward to Golgotha” (holy shit, already 15 years!) comes with a bonus DVD picturing three great shows with the McEntee/Deo/Roe/Pillard line up.

Being honest, so far I think the most perfect releases were made with Daniel Corchado on vokills, but Pillard’s muscle is uparalleled. The guy was/is just a fucking ogre from hell. And the music on this debut is so unrefined, but at the same so dismal and funereal, it embraces the term Death Metal with dark wings of blackness in its entirety. Incantation‘s debut features a couple of songs that already appeared on various previously released demos and Eps, revisited, darker and fitting one huge painting of hellish black and red tones. The riffs are just anything short of perfect, so dark, gnawed to the bone but brutal and massive, just like say Hellhammer, a monolith to the inverted god below. Pillard’s passion for slower, darkest atmospheres were perfect complement for McEntee’s undeniable genius for classic Death Metal riffs. I still believe he’s the biggest guitarist in Death Metal after Danny Coralles. I challenge anyone to say “Entrantment of Evil” is not one of the best songs of all time. Every single chord in this album cuts through the flesh of the liar of golgotha with unmerciful brutality. This is a black jewel, pure gold, real Death Metal.

|It might sounds as if it doesn’t make sense to buy a record you already have on both vinyl and Cd. But this special edition Relapse re-release of “Onward to Golgotha” was really impossible to miss. Things have been done in great style as with all these recent incredible exhumations of jewels such as the Disembowelment box and the Repulsion double Cd. Something just clicked in my damaged brain when I saw this on Relapse’s store website and well, I had to have it. Except for the HUGE typo in the booklet (“Profination” in big silver fonts??), the release is extremely accurate: the booklet is similar to the original one except for some Pantone silver colors, with added hi-res pictures and the jewel case holds this additional DVD disc. But hey, everything is absorbed by the spectacular cover by Miran Kim, a real fucking masterpiece of art. This painting really drags you in a vortex of madness. As said this 15 year anniversary edition of “Onward to Golgotha” (holy shit, already 15 years!) comes with a bonus DVD picturing three great shows with the McEntee/Deo/Roe/Pillard line up.

Here it is, the real Mexican gore massacre! I personally like Hol-A-Wit (which should roughly translate to “asshole” from what I understood) consistently much more than Semen. (2 members out of three, except for Luisa Bocanegra, come from  there so I guess Semen is a continuation of Hol-A-Wit or are similarly related). The band plays sublime third world gore grind with a ultra raw and garageish production, with clear porn gore influences.

The layout of the Cd is simple but the Alarma newspaper format is always nice to look at, one can recall Impetigo’s Faceless tape that used a similar scheme. No lyrics inside sadly, but I can guess they’re all about pathological gore and porn, that is what goregrind is supposed to be about.

I might probably consider the sound card of my laptop responsible for part of the noise that is caused from the band unrelenting distortion but I know there is a lot of pure filth already in this shit of an album (positively speaking). The riffs are simple, the drum blasts convincing, and the vocals low but in a humid, raspy way. I like the way the singer spits and gargles and bends his vocals to the whole range of unwholesome sonorities. One very good point is that there are no melodies in here, and that’s why I consider this one of the very few pure goregrind albums I have reviewed recently. This is really good stuff, if not as savagely powerful as Suppuration, it’s still noisy vomiting grind from a violent country, and it shows. These guys always have an extra punch compared to northern Europe or USA. Good honest porngore with a real drummer, extra distortion and gargling vocals. What else can one ask for?

|Here it is, the real Mexican gore massacre! I personally like Hol-A-Wit (which should roughly translate to “asshole” from what I understood) consistently much more than Semen. (2 members out of three, except for Luisa Bocanegra, come from  there so I guess Semen is a continuation of Hol-A-Wit or are similarly related). The band plays sublime third world gore grind with a ultra raw and garageish production, with clear porn gore influences.

I admit I was quite disappointed when I read that Edgar’s label released Karnarium‘s discography without even mentioning anything since I released that band’s first 7″. Not that I needed any royalties, but at least a free copy and an email of courtesy was the least he could do. Nonetheless, I will be objective when judging his band’s newest work.

The cover artwork is not my piece of cake. The computer 3D effects are really out of my schema, I really enjoyed the autopsy on the first album and the sculpture in the second one but starting from the third album, the vintage looks seemed to disappear and now we got this new work from Phlegeton which while full of gore, really looks too shiny and modern for an early Carcass inspired band. Rot and CGI don’t really go hand in hand, no matter how sick you make it. And there is not even a lyricsheet inside. Pff.

But coming to the music, the good shit is still crammed in like maggots on a rotting bowl of viscera. Edgar’s vocals are very sinilar in style to those of Antimo, same deep froglike gargles with occasional phlegmy leaks, which are still perfect for the onslaiught. Even the mix is excellent. The recording is maybe a little less compact than on “Goremassacre Perversity” but still way cleaner than the earliest works. But what’s good, the clearer sound does not really impact the sewage barabarity of their music. The drummer is still one of the heaviest weights in the biz, able to pummel the skins like few else. I noticed a few metallic extra dissonant melodies in the mix, which were really not needed, but it’s good to hear the black flame is alive.

Cannot tell much about the missing lyrics, but the song titles sound sick enough, while non exquiste pathological fantasy as in the beginning. They seem to follow the leads of the previous “Necroholocaust”. Overally speaking this is good shit, still extremely complex gore-death-grind if with some quite geeky keyboard exploites which do not fit the place at all. Surely at the same level as the third album, and we’re talking about big standards here. The closing song is a jewel, go for it if you should listen to one song only.

|I admit I was quite disappointed when I read that Edgar’s label released Karnarium‘s discography without even mentioning anything since I released that band’s first 7″. Not that I needed any royalties, but at least a free copy and an email of courtesy was the least he could do. Nonetheless, I will be objective when judging his band’s newest work.

I admit I don’t like extremely much of this demo except for the honesty of calling it an Ep despite the over 25 minute running time. The Cd itself is cheap silver disc but both layout and design are decent enough, save for some evident jpeg loss on the artwork, but for a demo, who can complain. The band comes from the Finnish western town of Kannus (population 5.000!), and it shows – eh – there is even a guy with a Kalevala shirt (which is like seein’ a Greek with an Odissey shirt or an Italian with an Aeneid one). Well I guess it’s some band’s maybe…

Incarnate describes itself as Death Thrash and I mostly agree. There is a thick groove in the heavily segmented riffs, and a couple of Exodus-like choruses appear also. What don’t appeal me much are those gremlin-like vocals. Starting with song two they tend to get more varied, but I really cannot manage to like them at all. Just lacking some punch. The songs are fast and thrashing though, and definitely mature, with multilayered riffs, arpeggios and the whole range of metal stuff – even some ripping solos. There is a strong slope of quality in the recording between the first three tracks and the rest (if it’s not my stereo), but one can hear everything quite clearly. This is mostly stuff made for heavy alcoholic mosh than straight Death Metal, which means I am sure someone (maybe someone into Bestial Mockery or other similar semi-retro band) is going to like this. Anyway, I remain of the idea that some real 80’s clean but raspy vocals would fit better the mix.

In short, not my stuff, but good for a night of mosh. Advanced enough without being inexcapably technical or lacking kick.