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Sadistic Metal Reviews 3-26-2016

by Staff on March 26, 2016

Here I go again on my own, down the only road I’ve known. Like a drifter I was born to walk alone. And I’ve made up my mind; I ain’t wasting no more time. – Whitesnake feels appropriate to quote now after listening to this trash.

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Tombstalker – Black Crusades (2015)
Using an HM-2 pedal and inserting bluesy leads into your crappy kang punk doesn’t make you Dismember; you’re still shitty d-beat punk. I’d rather truly d-beat the skin off my dick with a potato peeler than listen to you graveyard dwelling junkies. Did you know Three Dog Night had his penis pop from too much sex? How would they repair that? Would they need to make a new fake one or just do a penis transplant? Would Three Dog Night need one of those robotic implants that bend up like Larry Flynt?

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Gluttony / Sordid Flesh split (2016)
Entombed metalcore that borrows from every period of Entombed including the hated Wolverine Blues. Unleashed’s fat, vested ginger corpse is raped too. If you can think of a dumb, bouncy punk riff from 1987, it’s on this split. These guys really need to overdose on fentanyl cut with powdered laundry detergent like crusties usually do. The needle needs to be jabbed directly into their eye; all the other Swedeath veins are necrotic.

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Phazm – Scornful of Icons (2016)
Blackened Surgical Steel with metalcore breakdowns and without Bill Steer’s guitar virtuosity. Surgical Steel sounds like the Symphonies of Sickness compared to this deathcore ‘n’ roll. There’s no Holy Wars on this. When’s my punishment due? Do I have to listen to Reinkhaos again?

Graves at Sea – The Curse That Is (2016)
Flannel and gauges sludgy stoner rock for untermenschen who quit heroin in 1998 and now sell classic rock LPs mastered from CDs to fat hipster scum. The CD booklet states that all the band members have hepatitis C and thank the other regulars of their methadone clinic for watching their cats while they shoot up.

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Burning Hatred – Carnage (2016)
No. Stop naming albums after the band whose CDs you love so much you fisted them into yourself like James Woods in Videodrome. There is little riff variety here. Why are there deathcore songs in the middle of the Swedish Crustcore? Why is the deathcore the only material that stands out on your album?
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Ice War – Dream Spirit (2016)
My head just hit the desk. Why did someone press this idiot’s demo? I’m too drunk to lift my head off the desk. I must do so. I need to pull my head off the desk. What’s with these standard chord progressions? I must pull my head up. Too much Asbach Uralt. I need to kill this fucker. Why is he so tone deaf? He deserves to die. Another retro metal cash-in, cuckold autist who wants to tie grandmothers up with rusty chains and guitar cables to rape them like the Boston Strangler.
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Ides – Sun of the Serpents Tongue (2016)
Idiot deathdoom of the smoke weed and bash chromatic power cords together at slow tempos variety. The band is too lacking in musicianship to strum them fast enough as needed to play psychedelic rock disguised as Sabbath-worshiping doom metal.

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Abyssic – A Winter’s Tale (2016)
Symphonic sludge core rejected X-Files themes. Gillian Anderson is still attractive somehow. Abyssic never was; they are Tori Spelling “metal”.

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Prisoner of War – Rot (2016)
Morbid Angel covered by Kiwis with distortion pedals. Sometimes songs are jammed together as they were too blacked out and forgot which one they were playing.

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Gallower – The Witch Hunt is On (2015)
Possessed with zero talent, drunk, and Polish.

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Ithaqua – The Black Mass Sabbath Pulse (2016)
Varathron emasculated.

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Abhomine – Larval Offal Swine (2016)
Boring war metal from Pete Helmkamp of Revenge. This is Angelcorpse if Angelcorpse had mediocre guitarists instead of only mediocre songwriters. A repetitive, riff salad for Helmkamp to spout off his social Darwinist philosophy. Put on Order from Chaos instead of reminding yourself that Helmkamp lost his marbles just like that retarded guy from Steven Spielberg’s Hook.

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12 Comments

Tags: Abhomine, Abyssic, Burning Hatred, Gallower, Gluttony, Graves at Sea, hipster bullshit, Hook, Ice War, Ides, Ithaqua, James Woods, Phazm, Prisoner of War, sadistic metal reviews, Sordid Flesh, stinking shit, Tombstalker, videodrome, Whitesnake

Sacrificium Carmen – Ikuisen Tulen Kammiossa (2015)

by Staff on February 16, 2016

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Article by Corey M

Sacrificium Carmen have released some very generic black metal on this album, made up of moderate-to-fast-paced songs with lots of chunky speed metal riffs and admittedly impressive strained-sounding vocals. Overall, my impression of Ikuisen Tulen Kammiossa is negative for two main reasons: Lack of innovation (meaning that the band makes no effort to develop and express their own unique perspective using the black metal template) and a disregard for the necessities that make traditional black metal an engaging listen (hint: it’s more than just grindy distortion and screamed lyrics).

Regarding the album’s merits: Sacrificium Carmen do well by avoiding any “post-black metal” trappings (some examples being forced “prog” tendencies, ominous chanting, and corny sound effects), and they steer clear of any “ambient” influences, which means the music is fairly lean and efficient. Each song begins and ends purposefully, rather than diverging into some ambiguous territory surrounded by extramusical showboating, as many contemporary black metal bands are wont. For this, Sacrificium Carmen deserve credit; the musicians rely on themselves and their instruments only, eschewing digitally-generated sound textures, operatic vocals, “found sounds” and so forth, to achieve their vision. Each song is generally through-composed, and all melodies are readily found in the Official Dogmatic Compendium of Black Metal Minor Chord Sequences™. All of the instruments are played proficiently (and the vocals are exceptionally aggressive), but the level of musical complexity is low throughout the album, so this details neither adds to nor detracts from the album’s quality.

This “less-is-more” approach is usually a good one for bands to take when playing black metal, because the best black metal is minimalist in that it does not have any bits of ornamentation to distract from the purpose of the music, which is to evoke in the imagination visions of spiritual horror in a world dominated by chaotic violence. This is where Sacrificium Carmen’s music falls short – invoking imagination. There is just no darkness or danger to the melodies, only all-too-human frustration, which sounds emotively impotent and discouraging to listen to. Most of the riffs in Ikuisen Tulen Kammiossa would not be out of place on a contemporary punk album; just replace Sacrificium Carmen’s vocalist with some faux-gruff cigarette-smoke-choked burn out and have him sing with self-conscious irony about how stupid religious fundamentalists are, or how much he hates his landlord, and you’d have a product that would sell to clueless teenagers in the suburban Midwestern United States.

Melodies in Ikuisen Tulen Kammiossa never reach a high enough level of tension to evoke any visions; they are too direct and sound self-centered. By this, I mean that any song’s series of riffs are actually static, whirlpool-like revolutions around the song’s own rhythmic and melodic center. The riffs anticipate a return to whatever was the last-heard rhythmic hook, rather than communicate through melodic contrast with the riffs that precede and follow. Early (and successful) black metal bands achieved tension by chaining together riffs in such a way that each segment of melody would act to destruct the preceding segment and, simultaneously, enhance the following segment, not granting the listener a chance to dwell on any one particular pleasantly hooky riff, but impelling them to take the current melody at face value and embrace the ephemerality of that melody. Because of this constant dialogue taking place throughout a song, coherence could be maintained, even while the song’s tempo or scale shifts and dynamics may even fluctuate wildly. Meanwhile, every song on Ikuisen Tulen Kammiossa appears focused on a conclusion at all times, diminishing the immediate experience. Possibly as a result of this weakness, the dynamic range of any given song is quite narrow. This does not automatically make any songs bad, but given everything else that is going on (or not) in this album, it makes for a boring listen, unless you’ve always wanted to hear a punk band with a black metal vocalist.

In short, Ikuisen Tulen Kammiossa is not a record that classic black metal fans will want to spend much time with. When judged as rock music in general, the album does not commit any irredeemable sins, and may be a fun listen while pounding beers or taking a drive with your girlfriend who hates Darkthrone. But when judged as black metal and measured against those albums in the black metal canon, you may find that the album has more shortcomings than can be excused.

3 Comments

Tags: 2015, Black Metal, Finnish Black Metal, Ikuisen Tulen Kammiossa, lame metal, Sacrificium Carmen

Brutality – Sea Of Ignorance (2016)

by Gabe Kagan on January 22, 2016

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My experiences with Brutality prior to Sea of Ignorance‘s release lead me to believe that all of their works take a disproportionate acclimatization in order to properly comprehend, only surpassed in my experience by the wall of voodoo that is Incantation’s debut. This album has little to do with Incantation’s style, like most of their others, but it has only reinforced my hypothesis. Brutality’s take on “melodic” death metal consistently contains enough harmonic hooks in the riffs to draw a listener in, but odds are you’ll only find their music truly rewarding if you give it some time to sink in. That’s not exactly suited to the fast paced world of online music criticism (advertising thinly veiled as criticism), but odds are you’ll get more out of Brutality’s latest than your average death metal album even if you don’t give it a proper chance.

In general, Sea of Ignorance varies only subtly from its predecessors, and most of these changes play out on the surface. Brutality settled on their current approach early in their career, occupying the liminal space between their often sparser Florida contemporaries and the emphasis on structural and harmonic complexity of a band like At the Gates. The comparison to the latter has come up on occasion when DMU covers this band’s exploits, but Brutality synthesizes enough disparate influences that pulling any one out is difficult, although in my more comparative moments I might bring up Autopsy, since the band plays around with speed and atmosphere enough to significant enhance their formula. Sea of Ignorance follows from previous works in a fairly predictable way – more emphasis upon melody and simpler, more streamlined song structures than the past, but when they aren’t flat out covering Bathory (“Shores in Flames”), the lineage is obvious.

My opinion on this album is ultimately very similar to how I felt about Skull Grinder, although like most of the comparisons I’ve made in this review it’s a comparison of convenience as opposed to significant musical similarity. Sea of Ignorance is a stylistically appropriate if not particularly ambitious continuation of Brutality’s previous work; while it’s not particularly essential if you own any of those albums, it’s still a valuable purchase for those who want to study the strong points of this sort of death metal, and a good enough release to be worth financially supporting.

3 Comments

Tags: 2016, brutality, death metal, Florida Death Metal, Melodic Death Metal, sea of ignorance

Condemner – Omens of Perdition (2015)

by Staff on January 16, 2016

Condemner - Omens of Perdition - cover

Article by David Rosales

Published as an EP last year, Omens of Perdition is a minimalist death metal act that could easily draw comparisons with Desecresy. They share the spacious (and spacey-vortexy) approach to an Incantation like style through the sound of the Finns. When we go into particulars, however, the differences make it clear that resemblances are mostly a matter of general sound preferences, not methodology.

While Desecresy as most perfectly materialized in Stoic Death gives us a Finnish death metal that depends on high-note, short melodies as hooks with laid-back riffs for support, meat and almost harmonic accompaniment, Condemner goes through no such hoops, cutting to the chase, delivering an unrefined but naturally compelling train of dark thoughts. Riffs in Omens of Perdition are essentially melodies with few notes that constitute the bare-bone themes of the music, with nothing else but a bass unison and soft-punch, minimalist blast-beating drums.

These drums are played lightly but insistently, providing for emphasis on dynamics and accent in an application somewhat reminiscent of Paul Ledney’s style on Dethrone the Son of God by Havohej without the occasional flair. Rather than complement each other, the instrumentation in this music forms a total unison, even the percussion. Intensity varies evenly, changes affect all instruments towards the same side of the spectrum. When arriving at the slowest and vastest, the music may even exhibit silences on the drums, while huge guitar power chords roar as the drums only mark accents, reminding one of certain parts of Skepticism’s Stormcrowfleet.

Songs alternate thematic riffs that run over mirroring, enhancing drums, with scantly-clad doomy statements covered by a mantle of skeletal power chords. To the detriment of this otherwise quite satisfying music, what effaces the identity of individual songs (and of the release and band itself) is the complete lack of obvious climaxes. We can also take this as both the strength and willing limitation of Condemner, which presents a clear, solid monolithic picture. This steadiness may allow the author to draw an abstract parallel with J.S. Bach’s fugal writing for the keyboard or chorales.

While there doesn’t seem to be any particular goal in Condemner Omens of Perdition, the straight-forward treatment is accompanied by an inconspicuously dexterous development of themes. This in itself is more than could be wished as a saving grace. It becomes both a protection of higher music from the pop-hook addicts and a mystical gateway which opens up through direct intuitional experience to he who is listening.

9 Comments

Tags: 2015, condemner, death metal, omens of perdition, underground metal

Sadistic Metal Reviews – Loute Vire Edition (End of 2015 Series)

by Staff on January 3, 2016

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Popularity contests are good for one thing only: determining the degree of decadence the mentality of a certain group. Given the state of sedation and apathy of the general public, it is no surprise that this list shows the contemptible character and inability for self-criticism and assessment the average man is aflicted with. Also, like anything mainstream, very little here is actually metal, even in spirit. Loute Vire especializes in democracy, bringing the average stupidity back to the average person, feeding them their own filth.

1. Iron Maiden – The Book of Souls
Free us from Glam-rhythm Maiden. Character-wise, this nu mid-paced Iron Maiden is a combination of eighties hair metal, power-doom-epic metal in the vein of Candlemass but with the emphasis of catchy Murican posturing. Structurally, it manages to be both formulaic and pointless in its overextension, basically taking the worst from both worlds. Iron Maiden have become the kings of posturing, and even if butthurt fans complain, one must say that this downfall was evident ever since Somewhere in Time and was pretty evident with Seventh Son of the Seventh Son. Stick to 1985’s Live After Death as a synthesis of the band’s golden era and you’ll be fine. Stop feeding Steve Harris’ ego machine.

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2. Ghost – Meliora
Caricature music that disguises carnival thinking by providing a steady, unchanging background. Ghost know how to fool the enemy, the audience is hooked, distracted by fireworks to the right and to the left, without realizing they are paying for an empty but colorful cardboard box. Ghost, master deceivers, everything is so in your face, that the decadent masses love the fake but safe entertainment that ironic bullshit provides. Surely this would also be released in vinyl format, that’s what hipsters do. They need to keep piling up appearances and hip products. The best thing you can do with one of these is break it and use the shards to cut the throats of Ghost fans.

Tribulation

3. Tribulation – The Children of the Night
This hard rock-ish outfit is probably what Opeth would sound like if they focused on their weirdo rock side instead of jumping around genres without musical justifications or proper transitions, or if Ghost took itself seriously and had a little talent. Tribulation’s may be the best album on this list, as pop and hook-based as it is, it retains the basic decency of proper music in its continuity and coherence. The focus is completely on the guitar lines. Unfortunately, songs do lapse as they are overstretched for the false ‘complexity’ appearance that hipsters, high school nerds and college SJWs like. Worthy of from radio airtime, not more, no less.

(Editor’s note: You know a band is bad when it gets double-SMR‘ed.)

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4. Amorphis – Under the Red Cloud
I may not have been paying enough attention but, when did this originally Finnish death metal band turn into American high school rock balladers with queer Scandinavian leads? (Editor’s note: It began in 1994.) Amorphis seems to have abandoned all sense of pride for a couple of more greens. This is selling out clearly exemplified. Bands, this is what you should not do. Fans, you will only find plastic here.

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5. Enslaved – In Times
Progressive rock for those who lack the subtlety for progressive rock. Black metal for those too soft to brave the intellectual challenge of not being a sheep. This is long-winded pop and rock artificially styled to appear complex for insecure posers.

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6. Between the Buried and Me – Coma Ecliptic
Dream Theater meets Avenged Sevenfold with a strong Pink Floyd influence. How do these guys manage to sound exactly the same again yet be so vague in content? All semblance of continuity here, apart from tonality, is only maintained at some cerebral level in the imagination of the band or of the fans who will like any catchy & ‘complex’ turd that distracts them from their monotonous lives. The music itself is a disparaged parade of funny moments.

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7. High on Fire – Luminiferous
Speed metal on the outside, borish NWOBHM on the inside. This gets old quick and leaves no mark. Like many others, it tries to be an updated, more tough version of Motorhead, and use the old excuse of just “wanting to play good ole rock”. Forgettably redneckish.

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8. Queensrÿche – Condition Hüman
It is difficult not to laugh when listening to this macho-man bullshit for young, white posers. However bombastically pop and girly these songs are, they flow well. On the downside, the band never develops or resolves songs, meaning they are only good as groove and hook inducing. Radio garbage.

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9. Paradise Lost – The Plague Within
Boring as ever, or perhaps more than ever, Paradise Lost is still trying to make the album they almost achieve with their earliest music. Never rising above potential mediocrity, this band is a collection of dull moments peppered with pleasing leads. An unexpected heir to this hooky combination of candy and nutrition-less filler is Sylosis. Anyone looking for a casual hit may dig into some of the tracks here, otherwise, refer to classic underground so-called doom metal.

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10. Intronaut – The Direction of Last Things
Alternating angsty with pretty boy vocals, the mark of immaturity. Groove-based music without a clear thematic line, the mark of an empty mind. So, this is basically unthinking, puerile nonsense for people who want to “feel” metal but do not actually like metal. Destroy not only any copies of this but the factories and corporate buildings in charge of producing this mindless heap of catchy garbage.

10 Comments

Tags: 2015, amorphis, between the buried and me, Enslaved, ghost, high on fire, intronaut, iron maiden, lame metal, paradise lost, queensrÿche, sadistic metal reviews, tribulation

Sadistic Metal Reviews – Anxious Mediocre Gopher Edition (End of 2015 Series)

by Staff on December 31, 2015

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Leftist political science grounded on Marxism does not go well with metal. The first is a bunch of illusions and mental fiction for emotional weaklings to feel empowered. The latter is the art of the realist, the nihilist with an eye in the transcendental. Besides, only a self-styled hipster would pair up Immortal’s picturesque character with Leo’s most iconic work. The reader is encouraged to take any strong endorsement from this fiasco as a warning of superficiality or weak hipster appeal.

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1. Wilderun – Sleep at the Edge of the Earth
There is a reason why movie scores are not written by artistically illuminated composers, but by shrewd businessmen who know how to gauge the audience’s momentary craving in a modern society where every vice is promoted as a freedom and discipline is marked as obsession. Wilderun really does play like a popular soundtrack. It cannot stay on topic for more than thirty seconds and each of the sections is not only forgettable but the whole makes absolutely no sense. In an excellent work which draws influences from a wide variety of sources, the differences are mostly superficial and are used as different vocabs, but in here, these ultra-thin music without a true structural backbone merely places meaningless expressions one after another only to keep the most stupid of audience members hooked. Burn this insult to music composition.

2. Trials – This Ruined World
Ah, yes, riff worship in metal. The genre’s curse makes us subject to many a mediocre would-be songwriter who thinks he can embody Pantera 2.0. Of course, because the latter were the embodiment of groove-based glory according to the Homer Simpsons of metal. Trials write the sort of songs that are utterly devoid of distinction and clear train of thought. Any riff would go well in any part of any other song in the album. Not to mention that these riffs are little more than thickly produced fart streams. Go home, Anselmo.

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3. Barren Earth – On Lonely Towers
More darko-depressive, diva rock pretending to be metal. While definitely showing some potential in its paucity, the candy it hands out reveals that the reason for this is not a carefully controlled composition of deep taste, but the superficial sensuality to be found everywhere. However, Barren Earth do succeed in achieving some manner of quality, however distracted their slick transitions are, how whiny and long-drawn operatics are and how annoyingly bluesy their leads are. Listen to this if you derive a moment’s masturbatory pleasure from half-cooked, bland music.

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4. Beaten to Death – Unplugged
If you consider an album good because it makes you look good in front of the hip kids and because it appears to be offensive. Then you are little more than an overgrown teddy bear trying to wear spikes to resolve its puberty. In case Napalm Death was too much, you can have Beaten to Death for a softened but still “edgy” dose of some of the worst deathcore pretending to be grindcore made nicer by some gay rock clean guitar picked passages. Leave these to the IQ-85-or-less crowd of gluttonous dipshits who saw no mental development past the 11-year mark.

5. Crimson Swan – Unlit
Onto the false subgenre of “doom metal”. Although a very few albums do seem to venture into a style of its own that is more than just slow heavy metal, most bands like Crimson Swan, are just playing a much slower version of detuned and melodic-oriented heavy metal. Crimson Swan fails catastrophically in the same way that most music by Esoteric: it stagnates in its harmony, only deviating a little and quickly returning. Its thinly veiled worship of middle-period Skepticism (the worst of its periods, only superseded in vacuity by their latest installment) is laughable. When anyone the terms “melody and feel” to describe why an album is good and calls it a day, it goes a long way to say how little music as an art is understood.

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6. Steven Wilson – Hand. Cannot. Erase
The fact that Steven Wilson is eerily akin to a Marylin Manson without make up should give the listener a clue of what is coming. The music reflects the character of a harmless and sexless being completely lacking in any kind of self-assertion. Bombast ala Ghost, combined with some Pink Floyd-gone-80s-pop sensibilities and the most cliched 90s indie gayness, Wilson manages to make mindlessly boring music into an inadvertently comical series of forgettable pictures. Fodder for the mentally lazy who have the emotional need to be acknowledged for an intellect they lack.

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7. Gloryhammer – Space 1992: Rise of the Chaos Wizards
If there is something that hipsters love more than cuckold rock music by androgynous minds is metal nobody can take seriously. Why? Because it is not only inoffensive, but as it lacks any content of weight, it cannot in any way represent a challenge to the listener. Hipsters avoid challenge. But they love the illusion of challenge. They like to seem smart, but not actually stress their minds beyond the safety limits created by the society they claim to be at odds with. Cool-aid power metal for the mentally retarded.

8. The Gentle Storm – The Diary
More boob-flashing from the opera whore club for naive, high school and college virgin nerds. Not only does this lack the solidity of Mandylion but is an obvious attempt at pushing another plastic product in the vein of bombastic metal pop acts with Victorian bimbos for faces. No amount of alacrity can turn this into good music. Just ignore this release, please.

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9. Nechochwen – Heart of Akamon
(Editor’s note: Haven’t we already given this one the sadistic treatment? Guess it’s really that bad.)
More Alcest than Graveland, this candy-ass folk-themed headache full of terribly clumsy transitions and tired, boorish leads calls the attention of those incapable of paying close attention to worthwhile quality. More like a trailer of commonplace ideas without development, this album plays more like a disparaged sequence of TV ads.

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10. Angra – Secret Garden
No, Angra’s new album is not surprising in any context. Except if you mean, you could not imagine they could disgrace themselves in a more sellout manner, even bringing in mercenary Fabio all the way from Italy. What the common rabble calls “staying power” is merely the hip-moving hooks they get from everyday radio-listening. What pseudo connoisseurs of metal call good songwriting is merely streamlined mediocrity.

7 Comments

Tags: 2015, angra, barren earth, beaten to death, crimson swan, gloryhammer, lame metal, Nechochwen, sadistic metal reviews, steven wilson, the gentle storm, Trials, wilderun

Assault accusations dog Bestial Evil (USA) vocalist Shawn Wright

by Brett Stevens on December 17, 2015

Baltimore crust/metal band Bestial Evil, recently the subject of accusations of censorship and possible threats of violence, now face another challenge: allegations of violence against women by people active in the Baltimore metal scene.

Miranda Sewell, a longtime figure in the Baltimore scene, writes the following narrative:

Ok so I managed a smoke shop in Hampden for some years, last year Shawn started coming in to said smoke shop to buy stuff for vaping. He’s from Damascus MD, and knew my boyfriends bands lead singer, and I suppose he thought that would give him a friends and family discount because when I didn’t throw him the deal that he wanted he got pretty pissed off.

He started calling me and threatening me, saying shit like he was going to wait outside my work for me to leave and beat my head in with a baseball bat. He was all “I hope you don’t go to real metal shows in this city because I have a lot of friends, and if I don’t like you, they don’t like you. You’re going to get your ass beat every time you go out.”

Shawn Wright is a dumbass. He grew up in Damascus trying to be a rapper, and when that didn’t work he went to punk, and when that didn’t work he started doing what he calls metal. Have you heard his shit? It’s awful. I don’t know how he gets up everyday knowing the shite he’s trying to pass off as music. Point is this kid does not know what he’s doing, or who he even is.

He’s like a dark cloud over our metal community.

The band, who describe themselves as “lashing death metal,” consists of Shawn Wright on vocals, Kevin Rucker II on guitars, Nick Temoshok on guitars, Jacob Ripley on bass and Evan Phillips on rums. The band plans to release a full length entitled Infectious Cross in the near future, from which it has released one track, “See the Enemy,” which shows a hybrid of crustcore and later brutal death metal.

Another woman, who would not go on the record using her name, sent the following via Facebook:

At a show…wayyy back in the day, this guy threatened to beat the shit out of me because I didn’t want to date him after we hooked up one night. I was 16 and stupid and he thought beating up a woman would change my mind.

It was 2001/2002 at the New Market Grange Hall in New Market, MD. I can’t remember the bands playing, just some local kids I think. I do remember he had been drinking. All I can really remember about the incident was him coming outside during a break between bands and screaming a bunch of nasty shit at me for being a prude and denying that I slept with him (because I was ashamed of my actions). He started saying its fucked up he thought I was his girl, I’m a lying piece of shit, etc etc. At no point in our miserable hookup did we ever establish we were dating but he somehow translated sex as a relationship. Him and his friends were all surrounding me, and all I could do was laugh at him and that’s when he tried to throw a punch but someone (I have no idea who) held him back. He was drunk so he was putting up a fight so I left at that point. It was disgusting.

Him and his goon posse surrounded me outside while he screamed obscenities at me. He lunged and threw a punch but someone grabbed him and he went ape shit. So I left. Never saw that fucking maniac again. He’s got some real issues with anger, the dude is in denial and needs to just stop putting up a front.

It’s amusing to look back on now, that a guy who talks such a big game and acts like such a tough guy would be willing to assault a 16 year old girl because she didn’t want to be his girlfriend. We hung out for a few weeks prior to the incident and there were several instances of him completely losing his shit.

This was 14 years ago and it looks like he hasn’t changed a bit.

Wright, who has previously served as a Slutwalk organizer and runs a group named “No Room For Hate,” has said in the past that he opposes the use of violence. Stay tuned for more updates as we dig deeper. Unfortunately, Shawn Wright refused comment on any further articles.

14 Comments

Tags: baltimore, bestial evil (usa), metalgate, shawn wright, sjws

Buried treasures: Adversary – Forsaken (2001)

by Brett Stevens on December 7, 2015

Adversary came to us from the heartland of Indiana and released two solid old school death metal albums, the second of which, Forsaken, may deserve more attention. This one is misunderstood because its form is old school death metal, but its heart is in classic heavy metal with melody and groove, as well as some of the more atmospheric 1980s rock.

As a result, listening to it presents a dual experience. It sounds like Num Skull or Nunslaughter doing their version of a Possessed-Venom hybrid, but with more attention to melodic guitar hooks. Vocals take the form of barfed out gruff explosions, guiding the rough-hewn riffs like a second drum track, but the heart of each song is a 1970s heavy metal riff with a broad chord progression through which melodic lead-picked figures wind. Songs mostly follow the speed metal pattern of verse-chorus with interludes and transitions, but each song is wrapped around a presentation of dynamics to bring it to a dramatic close.

While other bands worked with this formula, none have done so with such old-school technique and so this album neatly slipped between its potential audiences. Compounding this fact was the trouble that Adversary’s first album, The Winter’s Harvest, used a drum machine and so was overlooked by many. But for those wanting the feeling of 1985 — that nexus of different influences and unresolved potentials — this album deserves a second look.

4 Comments

Tags: adversary, Heavy Metal, Old School Death Metal

Black Flames of Blasphemy VI review

by Guest Contributor on November 22, 2015

Review by “Blackcat”

A swirling miasma of ethanol greeted us upon the last Black Flames of Blasphemy, a festival held this past November in the picture perfect setting of Helsinki. The night before the scheduled Warmup event, I flew into town and made a beeline for Bar PRKL, a space named for the Finnish profanity likely exposed to most readers of this site from the comedy album released by the quirky Impaled Nazarene.

Those of us who live in less utopian societies than Finland often wonder why the idyllic nations in this area are able to produce such incredible music. “Finnish people can’t admit that they have goodness,” chuckled ApeX lead guitarist Arttu, an incredibly young thrash band who were in the process of violating the few revelers in attendance at PRKL that night. Indeed, as such documentaries as Until the Light Takes Us strove to illustrate, perfection has cast a pall on everything in much of the remaining non-disintegrating portions of the globe. It is almost as if the human condition is predisposed to strife, and that ostensibly perfect societies lead the average citizen to turn to perversion to bring balance into life – thus possibly explaining why places like Germany and Japan end up with penchants for coprophilia and bestiality.

Also present at PRKL were two members of Sammath, who descended upon Helsinki specifically for a dose of damage to tympanic membranes and liver. Hundreds of euros worth of alcohol consumed before the festival even started explains the reduced quality of the writing herein. Any complaints may be directed towards those two for rendering me quasi-unable to write let alone think. The fact that the screed was written on a tortured local keyboard and the reviewer is used to a U.S. issued one didn’t help a whit either.

We older, more cynical types were delighted to find youth as enthusiastic about all things metal as ApeX, and though 17 year olds themselves were unusual in their devotion, Helsinki was remarkable for having metal and punk culture literally everywhere one went. Taxis, restaurants, public toilets, airport shuttles and hotels all had a notably worthwhile theme of fine harder music. This trend did display its cellulitic underbelly in billboards featuring nerdwank outfit, Nightwish, hawking air-brushed, wet-dream-inducing Caucasian female thighs and an exorbitantly expensive line of bling suitable for teenagers in wealthy northern countries with too much pocket money for their age.

But I digress. Our focus should be on the festival, and that was one thing that the festival organizers seemed to have done quite well over the years. Black Flames of Blasphemy has been a fairly well attended sub-underground festival, running on and off for the last six years. The early years were vomited forth in a now rededicated cathedral in central Helsinki, and whilst the festival has moved on to less atmospheric surrounds, the organizers’ devotion to only the most rabidly necrotic bands is no small feat. Originally launched by Kold Reso Kult, the festival seems to have taken on a raison d’etre of its own over the years and drawn numerous acts known for playing a very limited number of shows such as Antaeus and Blasphemy. The scarcity of many of the acts led to a non-trite sense of novelty that led to a triangulated feeling somewhere between reverence, arrogance and pride for having been one of the few to have seen such veritable narwhals of the musical world.

This year was allegedly the last, and whilst threats of this sort are often made in the world of underground metal (only 120 copies to be made in hymen blood, and then no more ever again NO CORE, NO TRENDS, . . . until we release it in vinyl again in a few months on an even more ridiculously limited run), there seemed to be little threat that the crowd did not lend it a credence as evidenced by the flagrant hedonism on display at virtually every level of the setting. Nosturi, as the venue was called, must have some connection to vile ‘rhoidrock band HIM, as their logo appears in the lighting-rig and several other locations in the building; but detestable associations aside, the venue was actually quite accommodating.

This tattoo is not completely and utterly unrelated to the HIM logo.

The staff at Nosturi were kind and courteous, putting up with the sort of reprehensible behavior that one would expect from a down syndrome five-year-old on amphetamines. Indeed, this seemed to be true for most Helsinkians, who were never seen to act heavy-handedly despite the questionable behavior of many of our associates. The drinks were of course ridiculously expensive, as are all things in Finland, (3 euro for the coatroom, 1 euro to retrieve said coat!?!?) but that did not stop the cohort from literally drinking the place into oblivion every single bloody evening.

Black Flames of Blasphemy VI should be noted to have featured the most solid lineup in the history of the festival. Indeed, more than a few have been solidly praised on this site amongst others for their solid contributions to the overall gestalt of extreme metal achievement in the prime years of the scene. Still, it was uneven. As has been reiterated time and again on this site, 99% of metal is absolute shit, and bands like Blackwinged embodied the nadir of human endeavor. The silver lining to this is that more time was made for sightseeing / mind abusing opportunities.

On then to the reviews as they were penned by this reviewer in the classic manner: via sweat, ink and beer soaked notebook clutched between pumping fists, and the contributions of the stalwart brood of iniquitous, abusive pundits who wandered in and out of the fuzzy borders of the violence ringing in his ears.

DAY 1: WARMUP – Grunt / Bizarre Uproar / Ride for Revenge / Obscure Burial / Deströyer 666

Grunt in concert

Grunt: Said to be a side project of Clandestine Blaze / Northern Heritage sociopath, Mikko Aspa, Grunt kicked off the “Warmup” to the festival by doing quite the opposite. Monotonous, repetitive pulses punctuated by amateur feedback made me wonder why people are still drawn to artrock. Images of highly disturbing matter lent the show a more tolerable air, but pudgy white guys in bondage masks barking at random made me conscious of guarding my asshole too much to enjoy the show. Over all, Grunt in concert were a bit like listening to your fey roommate having an orgy whilst listening to Godflesh on a broken turntable next door. The playing of the belt sander on the thunder machine was an interesting flare, but with all due respect, Mr. Aspa should keep his day job.

Bizarre Uproar

Bizarre Uproar: Seems like Grunt just changed into their street clothes and got fatter. A Dutchman near me noted that this band gave him earAIDS. This drove us back to the bar as it wasn’t nearly so interesting as twenty well executed shots of salmiakki licorice alcohol. Cirrhosis is always preferable to aural loss. Look not for the successors to the great Throbbing Gristle here.

Ride for Revenge

Ride For Revenge: Repetitive, sludgy, and coming off like Goatlord, but not quite as inspired, RfR still brought the focus of the show more firmly in a metal direction. The band’s stage presence was directionless, and at times reminiscent of one of those hunting dioramas at a second rate sporting goods store.

Obscure Burial: The writing in my notebook point is smeared by unknown fluids for this act. What is legible bleeds through as follows: “A triple barbed fishhook – much more focused than any other band thus far. An Australian nearby wrote this:

“We walked up to the upstairs area and there were cocks everywhere. It was gay as shit! It was like listening to Kreator in 99! Fuck that shit.”

Another picture of Ride for Revenge, if you're into that sort of thing.

Another picture of Ride for Revenge, in case you’re into that sort of thing.

This was followed by multiple images of genitalia with wings.

Deströyer 666

Deströyer 666: Maligned in some quadrants for playing in a thrashy, hook-flaying style that may have contributed to the formation of “war metal,” and in others for K.K. Warslut’s obnoxious attitude, Deströyer 666 were a true joy to behold. Filled out by an entirely new band, K.K. and the boys managed to finally shake the torpid audience out of their inertia. Tracks such as the shocking “Raped” gave the listener the same queasy pleasure that one derives from listening to the Fearless Iranians from Hell’s “Blow up the Embassy.” “I am the Wargod,” and “Black City,” were played with more chin-jutted pride and beauty than on the vinyl, whilst the ethereal “Trialed by Fire” raised the hair on necks and the spirits of the dejected. Deströyer even launched a kerosene-soaked rendition of Motörhead’s “Iron Fist,” tipping their chrome-studded hats to Phil “Philthy” Taylor’s passing earlier in the day. All in all, Deströyer 666 certainly made showing up to the festival a night early well worth it, purging our ears of much of the fluff which preceded them.

Day 2: FRIDAY 13th – Blackwinged / Vampire / Hell Militia / Xibalba / Mayhemic Truth / Midnight / Blasphemy

Blackwinged: Guest reviewer – Vlad, Russian virus and vodka enthusiast, and general psychopath: “Blackwinged? FUCK THEM ALL! Suck my fucking wrinkled dick.” It may be said that they weren’t a favorite amongst the crowd.

Vampire

Vampire: Concho belted, pretty boy Aerosmith antics of the lead vocalist Command aside, it has to be said that Vampire were one of the big surprises of the show. With an approach akin to Kreator’s “Extreme Aggression,” Vampire managed to transcend the Italian horror-film shtick of their stage set, album art and, yes, band name to actually convey the attraction of mortification. Although I was unfamiliar with the tracks, the music whelmed in a not untasteful rock format that seared themes presumably of the undead into the conscious. Channeling Riccardo Freda in the best ways possible, Vampire delivered an entertaining show that was only slightly marred by the less-cocksure presence of the string section.

Hell Militia: 666 – no report – 666

Xibalba (Editor’s note: It’s a toss-up as to whether “Sac Ibteelob Cab” or “Sign of Eastern War” is the better song. One of the more trivial debates in this world, though.)

Xibalba: Undeniably shitty drum solos and crude corpse-paint aside, Xibalba stood as one of the zeniths of the festival. These heroes of the second wave of black metal came on with a garage band sincerity that outshone the more highly polished acts throughout the rest of the evening. Thank Satan for this eager aural feast! Tracks like “Sign of Eastern War” and “Sac Ibteeloob Cab” were executed with a grim clarity that were occasionally missed on the original disc. Young new band members injected an off-kilter virility into the music that is essential for such an ambitious project.

Mayhemic Truth: Best known for changing monikers as often as John “Cougar” Mellancamp, and for many of the same shitty dishonest reasons, Morrigan were cut from the same overrated Kraut-tripe, kvlt-as-fvck cheesecloth as their vacuous countrymen Moonblood. In the 90s before MP3s made the obscure-kvlt fad obsolete, I was of the brood vainly attempting to find releases by this act . . . only to be astonished by how over-hyped they were when I finally heard them. Jeffemic Truthship did not fail to disappoint by disappointing with hackneyed black metal cliché after hackneyed black metal cliché. Stay obscure, White Stripes of kvltmetal, so that the rest of us don’t have to hear your sorry excuse for music.

Midnight: This reviewer was looking forward to some sort of decent blackened speed akin to Sodom, and was bouncing off the walls for some old school headbanging. Unfortunately, I wasn’t much impressed, so gave the job of review again to the ruthless peanut gallery around me: “nice thrash. ßit’s not, so fk off! Cheap ass trash. Fucking bollocks!!! Boring. It’s not even midnight assholes. They started at 11:45 – midnight my arse!! Midshite!!”

Blasphemy performs?

Blasphemy: Blasphemy’s terrifying Cro-Magnon antics delineated why the genre of black metal flourished for one brief, outstanding moment back at the fall of the Soviet Empire. The Canadian masters of knuckle-dragging avant-garde horror imprecisely dissected the audience as a claw hammer muddles and pulverizes the veiny membranes of a victim’s genitals. While the Ross Bay maniacs may never have quite reached the spacey brilliance of their Finnish protégés, Beherit, the “organized chaos” of their technique was matched that night only by the gunfire lighting up stadiums in Paris 2,000 kms away. Tracks such as “Goddess of Perversity” were executed with an intensity reminiscent of some of the more hyperactive Discharge tracks, and intros were faithfully inserted without a hint of humor. Photos attempted at short range during this show mostly consisted of purple blurs and the back of brutarian ham-hock elbows. The show also illustrated again why Blasphemy have only ever put out two real efforts (yes, I know that there are technically three, but come on – they’re basically fifteen minute punk affairs). The band made their contracted dynamo statement of grunted, jack-booted hate in a blood-clot of chains, crudely applied paint and beer-gutted belches. After forty insanely punishing minutes, the Helsinki authorities carted them off to their respective cells in solitary confinement where they belong.

Blasphemy performing, this time with a more competent photo.

DAY 3: Satanic Warmaster / Infernal War / Irkallian Oracle / Funeral Winds / Goat Semen / Varathron / Mysticum

Satanic Warmaster: Written by a drunk Finn: HAISTA VITTU VITUN HUORA KUSIPĀĀ, IME MUNAA JA KUOLE! SAATANA LLINEN SOTA HERRA NY LOPPU SAHTI. PRIEKĀ, NO LATVIHAE. LAI TEV LABA DZIVE PRIEKS TEVI SATIKT. Actually, those last couple of phrases might be in Latvian.

Infernal War: 666 – No report – 666

Ikrallian Oracle. Check out the tambourine.

Irkallian Oracle: I really wanted to hate this band. They are so phenomenally over the top. A bunch of ring-wraiths holding sparkly tambourines and bells. Faces masked by silver sheets. The kind of accouterments and flashy hocus-pocus that one would expect from a second-rate Ed Wood movie. And yet, the band was enigmatic. Themes held together throughout the whole concept of a track, cycling back from start to finish to start again, alpha and omega encompassing a solid core. The mystery behind the act was far more compelling than with more gimmicky acts that have been abused on these pages. This band is what GHOST wishes it was. I will be interested to pick up the album to see whether the whole disc sounds as good as it did live.

Funeral Winds: See: Mayhemic Truth. Or just about any Xerox copy black metal.

Goat Semen: Came off as a kind of second rate bully boy Blasphemy. Sure, they have cleaner riffs from time to time, but do they convey the same core of absolute spinning disgust and pummeling loathing? Perhaps it’s just that Blasphemy are so much more familiar from having been played time and again . . . or that they developed this genre, and that anything else emulating it is just that: a plastic reproduction, no matter how faithfully copied.

More Blasphemy. This time, their crumpled set list.

Varathron: For almost three decades these innovative masters of crawling necrotic horror have forged timeless odes to their Hellenic ancestors. Rivaled in their excellence and originality in Greece perhaps only by the great Necromantia, Varathron have been criminally overlooked by basement-dwelling pseudonymed fanboys more interested in the likes of obscure releases by Moëvöt than incredibly well developed music that perfectly emotes the Dionysian strophe and anti-strophe of ancient cultic form. Varathron took the stage with more presence than could have been imagined from some of the cheesier rock mantras that they fell prey to in the early 2000s, and launched into a barrage of tracks from across their storied career. Recent(ish) drummer Haris is an amazing addition to the band, and one that this reviewer wishes had been present on classics such as “His Majesty at the Swamp,” which suffered from drummachineitis. Guitarist Achilleas decimated the audience much like his warrior-hero namesake, along with twin slayer in savagery Sotiris and recently added bassist, Stratos. Varathron reached their climax with the amazing “Kabalistic Invocation of Solomon,” where band high priest Necroabyssius read from Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie, in a huge tome edition, green lights all ablaze, magnificence all ablaze. Incidentally, the entire band are really nice blokes too.

Toxicology report: Mysticum: *Journalist’s disclaimer – order of events may have played out slightly differently than reported – notes were not taken during the actual performance, but recalled from cottony memory* Twin streams of quicksilver lashed the crowd as the techno triumvirate of Cerastes, Prime Evil, and Dr. Best took to the stage. Nineteen years elapsed since this dystopian nightmare last synthesized an audience into freebased crystallized human waste. I had grave doubts about whether this band would be anything interesting live. Idols are often deflating in situ, and although their demos and first album were good, the production levels often made the backtrack sound like bubble paper being stomped on by Japanese girls in platforms. All fears were allayed as the thumping horror of “Black Magic Mushrooms” battered the audience and surreal monochromatic strobewar of lights blistered our retinas. The light show and visuals were truly unique throughout a performance interestingly heavy on tracks from the new “Planet Satan” release, including “Lucifer in the Sky with Demons,” “All Must End,” and my personal favorite, “The Ether.” On the screen, forms morphed from chemical compounds of LSD and other intoxicants, to Nazi soldiers, to skulls and swirling maelstroms of insanity. A paralyzing early intermezzo left the crowd confused and disoriented, after which “Crypt of Fear’s” ominous intro shook them into hysteria. Mysticum left no room for error: they are back to stay, and dominate. 100% pure satanic peyote!

Epilogue: Starting at a flat line

The shuttle bus at the airport is rooted to the ground. Won’t move anywhere. The heater is up way too high. I’m roasting in morkkis, a Finnish term for a kind of hideous hangover defined by creeping dread and a sense of, well, mortification. One poor soul we interviewed might best sum up the atmosphere of the entire festival. He was hobbling around on crutches. When asked what transpired, he confided that early on in the show, he and some colleagues had taken a few doses of LSD. Having come down into a troubled, drug addled sleep he was jolted awake by a fellow reveler, who had hallucinated that the police were raiding their dwelling. His immediate reaction was to jump from the upper story window down to a painful and humiliating full stop below. Morkkis. The human condition is low indeed. Yet I am buoyed by the knowledge that even if most of what moved this reporter was music penned two decades ago, it was a zenith of human achievement, and which could have only been commemorated by the bacchanalian Black Flames of Blasphemy.

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Tags: black flames of blasphemy, Black Metal, blasphemy, death metal, debauchery, guest author, live shows, mysticum, varathron

Gama Bomb – Untouchable Glory (2015)

by Staff on November 22, 2015

Review by Corey M

Having never heard of Gama Bomb before this album, after the first few moments of music I was afraid that I had gotten ahold of some sort of the modern-faux-thrash-revival that is somehow cool to people who don’t listen to thrash bands. But I was wrong; Untouchable Glory is not a forced revival or a rip-off; it’s just dumb music. This not to say that the guys in the band are dumb, because they clearly have practiced their musicianship and are attentive to the dynamics and compositional symmetry in their songs. But the result of what they do is still dumb, and apparently they want it that way.

The basis of Gama Bomb’s style is made up of high-speed two- or three-chord minor riffs over which a vocalist rants and chants cleverly cadenced lyrics with just enough emphasis that his voice never becomes a full-on yell but keeps up (barely) enough energy to avoid sounding bored. A typical Untouchable Glory song starts up at full-speed right out of the gate and rushes through a verse, then hits you with slightly bouncier, chunkier variation of the same riff you just heard (but transposed a few steps up or down) as the drums switch from dense d-beats to a sort of swaggering rock rhythm. After that comes the chorus, which is usually not made up of a more interesting riff but does have some very catchy vocal pattern that, coupled with the rapid-fire lyrics, creates a hook powerful enough to snag a whale. Some songs have guitar leads and these are mostly made of 16th-note blather with no discernible direction other than back and forth because that’s the extent of the movement of the chords. There are a couple of times where the chords underneath the lead shift unexpectedly and the lead follows (which undermines the purpose of a lead! Maybe I shouldn’t be calling the guitar antics “leads”…) and resolves the progression in a viscerally satisfying way. However this satisfying resolution is all too rare and the guitar leads rather serve as marks of distinction among the generally formulaic songs.

So far, I’ve only pointed out common failings of metal albums – probably more than 95% of all metal commits the transgressions that I’ve detailed above. So what makes Untouchable Glory worse than a mediocre album is the purpose mentioned in the first paragraph? Gama Bomb is made up of competent musicians, but they have no ambition. Every song sticks to the same method of structure and dynamic manipulation. Every lead begins and ends in the same way. The band must rely on their vocalist and his method of delivery, which does a great job to augment the repetitious rhythm of the guitars, but this only exposes the weakness in the guitar and drum composition, because the vocals never let up or give the music a chance to expand beyond its immediate template. Typically I’d refer to chord progressions when describing song structure but the chord patterns that make up the songs on Untouchable Glory don’t progress, they just recycle. This tendency in the composition reflects the band’s attitude toward metal (and presumably music) as a whole.

The ultimate failure of this album is not in its compositional shortcomings but in its intentional stupidity. Song subjects cover kitsch and cliche topics such as getting high, getting drunk, hating authority, burning witches, being a ninja, and being undead. That these topics are dealt with is not enough to warrant criticism, but the self-consciously ironic attitude that Gama Bomb takes towards the topics is what separates them from quality acts that they are aping. Metal and punk bands have been covering these topics for decades but they didn’t have their tongues in their cheeks while doing so. Since those topics were taboo, metal bands explored new methods of song construction to fit with such uncomfortable or repulsive themes and great music was created as a result (and I always refer the uninitiated to Iron Maiden’s “The Number of the Beast” or Black Sabbath’s “War Pigs” for an example of how musicality and lyrics support one another to establish and expand on a theme). Meanwhile, Gama Bomb have nothing new to say about any of these topics and so it would logically follow that they needn’t invent any new music to support their take on the topics. Thus all we get to hear is basically a parody of speed metal and thrash. If you think that type of music deserves to be joked about, then Gama Bomb might be right for you. If, however, you appreciate and honor the innovators who brought extreme subjects into popular music and brainstormed methods of expressing them musically and lyrically, then you’d best move along, because Untouchable Glory is an affront to honesty.

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Tags: 2015, crossover thrash, funderground, gama bomb, Speed Metal, untouchable glory

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