Often cited as one of the most horrifically evil, brutal, and extreme albums in all of death metal, Seattle's best fluke, Infester, unleashed this hellish monstrosity on the world in 1994. To the Depths, in Degradation is a tough cookie to crack, because it's so monstrous in its presentation that it's almost incomprehensible on first listen. I've used the word "alien" to describe a few albums on this countdown, but this is probably the album that most deserves it. More than the grimy depths of Incantation or the gloomy weirdness of the entire Finndeath scene (that's right, Demilich doesn't appear on this list, fight me), Infester feels the most like it wasn't truly created by humans. This dark, oppressive, and utterly alien atmosphere is something that I don't think was ever truly matched without sacrificing the brutality that these guys put forth. It's almost unbelievable how dank and arcane this is without sacrificing one single ounce of weight. Every riff is super deep and punishing, and the vocals alternate between indecipherable gurgles and bone chilling screeches. It actually sounds like some sort of esoteric spiritual torture, like the bowels of Hell themselves. Like Mental Funeral a few spaces back, this just sounds... wet. This sounds like the last choking gasps of a sinner drowning in a lake of coagulating blood. That's really the best I can do with this album. All I can do is make weird, arcane similes and just hope it makes sense to you. I can try to explain how the drumming is odd and torrential and how the riffs are deep and twisting, or I can just tell you to look at that sleep paralysis nightmare of an album cover and just say "yeah, that". I've mentioned this before, but the first time I ever listened to this, I was in good health and feeling perfectly fine, and then somewhere around "Epicurean Entrails" or "A Viscidy Slippery Secretion", my stomach gurgled painfully and I ran to the bathroom to have burning pitch-black diarrhea so powerfully I almost achieved liftoff. To the Depths, in Degradation is legitimately cursed and I'm terrified of listening to it now while typing this. Listen with caution, it very well could kill you.
Everything I said about Entombed applies here as well, as I've always seen them as sister bands to one another during this early Swedeath era. The Sunlight Studios sound is on full display here, as should be expected, but apart from the sound itself being brutally heavy and punishing, Dismember excels in sheer songwriting prowess like few others could ever dream of. Like an Everflowing Stream is, to me, the absolute pinnacle of Swedeath. Like, holy shit just listen to "Override of the Overture" to hear some of the most ear catching riffs the scene ever produced. The main riff and the bridge riff before the solo are two that are easy first ballot candidates in the Riff Hall of Fame, and it never really stops from there. One thing that I love about the Swedish style is how relentless and uncompromising it is, but these early classics never skimped on atmosphere either, and that may be why they stand ahead of the pack. Dismember here doesn't lose that epic occult atmosphere that somebody like Morbid Angel helped popularize, and they blended it with that straight ahead carnage that made the scene so noteworthy in the first place. The whole thing is super chaotic, with d-beats and riffs that are as sharp and heavy as dozens of guillotine blades all falling at once, with propulsive, downhill-running speedfests like "Skin Her Alive" and "And So is Life". And even with that, you have moments of heavy melody like "Dismember" or gloomy sluggishness like "In Death's Sleep", but even that one eventually careens headfirst into a thicket of claymores by the end. Just... dammit I wanted to cut down on short entries but Like an Everflowing Stream is just so fucking self evidently top tier that I don't know what to say about it. This hits so hard that I swear it should come packaged with a train horn just to warn anybody within earshot that they're about to be blasted with so much force that they'll just instagib like a sprite in Doom.
Type O's second appearance on this list is, frankly, a genre defining moment. Gothic metal nowadays has come to mean something entirely different, generally what I refer to with the pejorative "corsetcore", where pretty women with impossibly pale skin coo over non-riffs with the barest hint of metal behind overbearing symphonics. But at this time in history, Bloody Kisses completely reinvented Type O Negative and showcased one of the purest mixtures of doom metal and goth rock. When people talk about the current wave of gothic metal, heavy influence from Fields of the Nephilim and Sisters of Mercy isn't what I'm ever expecting, but lordy did the Bensonholst Lesbian Choir nail it here. While not as lush and pleasant as the far inferior October Rust, those swelling soundscapes that would help define the band as a 90s staple definitely began here, almost completely erasing the quasi-Carnivore leftovers on Slow, Deep, and Hard. You've got one holdover hardcore song with "Kill All the White People", which is an album highlight regardless, and "We Hate Everyone" is musically fast and punk as fuck but he utilizes his booming cleans much more than this mid-range rasp, but for the most part this is a stunningly gorgeous marriage of Sabbathian doom metal and gloomy 80s goth rock. The goth influence is probably most direct on tracks like "Blood and Fire" and "Set Me on Fire", but it permeates throughout the entire album regardless, with the moody synths remaining prominent at all times. I love the vulgar savagery of the debut, but this subdued, introspective, and bleak atmosphere works so much better with Peter Steele's crooning baritone, which is in top form here of course. The title track is an excellent representative of the sound they'd come to embody from this point onwards. Long, expansive, slow moving songs overflowing with emotion. Really though, the true highlights are the first two real songs, "Christian Woman" and "Black no. 1", the latter of which is genuinely one of my all time favorite songs across any genre. It was their hit single, their biggest and most recognizable song, instantly making them favorites among teenage mallgoth girls who blatantly missed the joke that the lyrics were sarcastic and squarely about them. Steele's sensual, vampyric croon was just too much to resist and as a result an entire generation of oblivious goobers missed that "Loving you was like loving the dead" was less of a darkly romantic couplet and more of an accusation that you're terrible at sex. Apparently "You can't go out because your roots are showing / Dye 'em black" and the brief moment where Josh Silver straight up plays the fucking Addam's Family theme song weren't obvious enough that the song's tongue was planted squarely in cheek. The album isn't perfect, it falls victim to their frequent habit of loading albums with way too much for one sitting, and it really didn't need four fucking interludes, but this is probably the album where it matters the least, because every single legit song is a knockout and it's definitely the recommended starting place if you've never heard the band before.
This is the one I feel like I need to defend, because popular opinion really seems to have turned on Death in recent years. If oldheads will begrudgingly give them the honor of releasing the first death metal album with Scream Bloody Gore (instead of flat out denying it and giving the title to Possessed's Seven Churches instead), most of them completely lose interest around the time of Human, leaving their later prog era to be adored exclusively by guitar nerds, "Evil Chuck" fanboys, and me. And hey, even then, most of their later era is a disjointed mess of unconnected ideas that I can't stand to listen to, but I still think Symbolic holds up extremely well. So well that it landed in the top 20 here. All of the pummeling morbidity of their early work has been wrung dry by this point, leaving only a vaguely deathy extreme prog metal album that's still somehow loaded with excellent riffage and more hooks than I know what to do with. This album is catchy as hell, which is surprising considering Chuck never learned how to sing and no matter which style he was using for any given album (he had a nasty habit of changing his vocals from album to album but never from song-to-song, even though we know damn well he's capable of it) remained harsh and monotone. It almost all comes from the melodic sense of the riffs themselves and the endless noodling. Unlike the other albums from this period, Symbolic seemed to have a real purpose and direction, with every song being laser focused despite the myriad of ideas on display. This hyperfocused songwriting manifests best on the more straight ahead rockers like "1000 Eyes", "Without Judgment", and the title track, but the highlight of the album is also one of the highlights of their career and one of their signature songs, "Crystal Mountain". As much as I love Gene Hoglan's manic double bass in "1000 Eyes" and "Symbolic", those explosive moments all pale in comparison to the sheer grandiosity of "Crystal Mountain". There's something otherworldly about this one, I don't know if it's the alternating heavy parts and subdued quiet parts, but this takes so many twists and turns and feels larger than it has any right to be. All in all, this is one of the only progressive metal albums I've ever truly loved, and even after all these years and my striking distaste for the albums surrounding it, Symbolic still stands as a late-career masterpiece that enthralls me with each listen. People will say that Death started sucking once Chuck started smiling and the lyrics shifted from blood and gore to philosophy and introspection, but fuck them, they had at least one home run during that period.
I promise this is the last Gargoyle album on this list. I know you all know I blow this band to an absurd degree, but they really were untouchable for a spell in the early 90s. Tsuki no Toge marked the end of the She-ja era, needing two guitarists to replace him, and both of them (Yotaro with the ridiculous hair, Kentaro with the slightly less ridiculous hair) are as good as he was alone. So yeah it's no surprise that the fretboard theatrics are off the fucking charts on this one, and the dead-eyed stares of the flamboyant band on the cover art should allude to the fact that this is surprisingly fucking brutally heavy for how melodic it also is. Their goofy funky influence hadn't gone by the wayside yet, so tracks like "Dokoka De Jimushi Ga Naiteita" and "Karappo" are just as fun and high energy as counterparts from previous albums like "Hito no Tame" and "Naidzukushi", the punk influence of "Hatena?" is impossible to overlook, and both ballads ("Kuroi Hana" and one of their signature live closers, "Yakusoku No Chi De") are great, but the real highlights are the heavy ones of course. There is a slight exception with their soaring power metal epic "Catharsis", but without a doubt they're at their best when they're thrashing their heads off. "Senzaiteki Genkyoukaku Musabetsu Kakusei Kin Kansenshea" starts off deceptively simple, signaling another one of their signature "Ruten-likes" before it explodes into a cataclsym of frantic riffage with a pace that would make Kreator blush. "Piichiku Paachiku" is another full-speed-ahead tumbling thrash assault that gets me harder than the hoverbike level of Battletoads, and it along with "Kanzen Na Doku Wo Youkyuu Suru" hammer home how fucking catchy they were able to make even the most menacing thrash songs they could manage. But really, anybody who has read my gargantuan review series knows the best track here. "Shouryakukeitachi Yo" is, without a doubt, the best song on the album and one of the best songs they'd ever write. Every single second is loaded with manic riffs and boundless energy, and the fast verse riff that kicks in at 41 seconds is one of the god damned best riffs ever written. It's Mercyful Fate-tier, dead fucking serious. Kiba unloads his lyrics with the speed and force of a firehose, to the point where even native Japanese speakers struggle to understand anything he's saying during this rapid fire expulsion of insanity. And it all culminates with one of the most sublime choruses of all time. I haven't really talked about Kiba's vocals here, but you should know by now that he has a very rattly voice that sounds like he's been chainsmoking since conception, but at this point in time he still held an enviable amount of melody in that rattle, and "Shouryakukeitachi Yo" is the absolute greatest marriage of grit and melody. He sounds like E. Honda is Hundred Hand Slapping him in the throat as he belts out this grandiose singalong melody with so much confidence that you're just in the palm of his hand, at his beck and call. I love it so much, I'll keep gushing for another thousand words if you let me.
One of the things that actually surprised me the most when writing this list was how long it took for me to actually get to a Cannibal Corpse album. It feels weird to have to constantly defend the most visible and successful death metal band of all time, but man I swear the underground has a lot of weird bad faith arguments against them that get trotted out fucking constantly. I won't bother with them here, but the point is that Cannibal didn't make it to the top of the heap by accident, from the beginning of their career all the way up to today, they've been some of the tightest and most consistent songwriters in the genre. I frequently cite 1999's Bloodthirst as their best album, but honestly, when the cards are on the table, they just don't have any one single album as heavily loaded with classics as Tomb of the Mutilated. This marked the end of one era, the beginning of the end of another, and also the stoic continuation of even yet one more. The era that ended was Bob Rusay's tenure with the band before his firing and subsequent departure from music entirely, also making this the last album with the original lineup. As one of the original guitarists, his style was integral to the band's identity, and he famously wrote the main riff for "Skull Full of Maggots", one of their most iconic tracks. Unfortunately, the band had continually gotten more and more technical as the years went on and his skill just never really improved at the same pace as the rest of the guys, so this became his last hurrah, likely being the absolute zenith of his technical ability (a level they'd surpass as a band roughly ten more times after this). The era that saw the beginning of its decline was that of original vocalist and lyricist, Chris Barnes. Barnes was the face of the band at the time, and his deep growls and utterly grotesque lyrics were part of the reason they ever even made the big time in the first place, but on this album they take a sharp turn downwards from where they were on Butchered at Birth. He still sounds fine here, but his high rasp was already pretty shit and his more frequent growls were sounding less vicious and more just... hoarse and lame. This would culminate on the following album but the seeds were definitely sown. Lyrically he was just as disgusting as ever, but man he really leans into the necrophilia on this one. Seven of the nine tracks here are either explicitly about or offhandedly throw in a reference to either raping a corpse or a corpse raping somebody, it's kinda nuts. I guess there's a reason the Parental Advisory warning is bigger than the band logo, eh? But most importantly, the third era this inhabits is the one that encompasses their entire career, and that's simply that it's extremely fucking good. The opening trio of "Hammer Smashed Face", "I Cum Blood", and "Addicted to Vaginal Skin" is arguably the strongest to open any of their albums to date. And even beyond those three most obvious tracks, nothing here falls short of extraordinary. "Beyond the Cemetery" has some of their nastiest riffs, "Necropedophile" never slows the fuck down, Paul absolutely loses his mind on "Split Wide Open" and delivers some of the most intense drumming of his career, "Entrails Ripped from a Virgin's Cunt" is every bit as classic as the opening three, it just never stops. Cannibal has always had a very strong sense of groove to complement their frantic energy, but here is truly does take a back seat to the explosive adrenaline that occupies pretty much every single track, and as a result it stands as one of their best even 25+ years later.
I don't know what it is, but this is a totally underrated album. Most people will at the very least stick up for the band up through The Rivalry, but like I mentioned previously, outright support seems to stop around Black Hand Inn, and I really don't understand why because Masquerade is an even better album. I think this could be because, while this is their ninth full length album, it's actually somehow the first one where every single member carried over from the previous album (which would also happen on the next album as well), and since every member of the band had always injected their own personality and strengths into each album they're featured on, this is probably the most similar album to its predecessor throughout their whole career. But even with that said, I find this to be superior precisely because it's a more focused and cohesive attack than Black Hand Inn. The songs all flow into one another very well, with no track really standing out as jarringly different than the ones surrounding it like "Genesis" or "Fight the Fire of Hate" did. Here, their disparate influences of speed metal and cock rock mesh together gorgeously, and I think the more KISS inspired tracks are still the most metal of their kind. "Rebel at Heart" is a Running Wild classic for this reason entirely, and "Metalhead" sounds like it could've brought down any stadium it was played in. That's not to say the ferocious speed metal is lesser here, no sir. "Lions of the Sea", "Masquerade", "Underworld", and "Soleil Royal" are among the best songs they'd ever pen, with some excellent riffs and incredible hooks to complement their unrelenting speed. I don't think I've adequately expressed just how fucking catchy Running Wild is, because god damn can these guys pen a grandiose hook. Holy shit every single track has the catchiest chorus ever, with "Soleil Royal" pretty easily being my favorite, though obviously none of them are slouches. Just god damn, if you like traditional metal in any sense, there is no reason whatsoever for you to not also adore every second of this indisputable classic. HEAT AND FIRE, BURNING PYRE, SMOKE AND FLAMES, A RAGING HELL
Vader was always good, this is no secret, but they were on another level with their sophomore release, De Profundis. I've only had the privilege of seeing Vader live one time, and you'd think I'd be disappointed when it became obvious that they were going to play this album in full, since they have so many classic tracks that it's basically a crime to leave them out of a set, but man this is so good that I didn't even care a little bit. They have so much character, with their particular brand of death metal being notoriously reliant on tremolo riffs and blast beats, but even though they ape two of the biggest songwriting tropes from the 2nd wave of black metal, there isn't an ounce of blackness to be found here, this is pure fucking death. Because of this there's an inherent simplicity to their craft, eschewing some of the more mind-melding technicality that most death metal this side of Obituary loves to fill their music with, and as a result Vader is also pretty solidly the catchiest death metal band in existence. I will go on record as saying that there are no death metal bands with more or better hooks, and yes that includes Bolt Thrower fucking fight me. From the opening seconds of "Silent Empire", Vader heralds their entrance with some of the most well crafted and ear catching riffs ever to be chained to insane blasting and unapologetic brutality. This never stops, with other highlights including "Sothis", "Incarnation", "Blood of Kingu", and "Reborn in Flames", though you really can't go wrong with anything here. One thing that I don't think gets enough credit is Piotr's voice, because he's incredibly unique with how clear his lyrics are. They're still deep and brutal, of course, but he doesn't really growl as much as he just roars, and as a result every word can be individually picked out and sung along with (extra fun considering how hilariously thick his accent is), and it only adds to the infectiuosness. There's also an incredibly prominent thrash influence that seems understated until you ask yourself "Could Slayer have written this riff?" And it's true, if Slayer had continued to get heavier and heavier after 1986, there's a real chance they could've spat out something similar to De Profundis. As far as I'm concerned, Vader is who truly put Poland on the map when it came to metal, and to this day the only Polish metal band with more listeners on last.fm is Behemoth. Even Decaptitated, who got to be pretty fucking massive in their own right, are a solid 100,000 listeners behind the orignals, and the fact that they're still putting out some of the best albums of their career in the current decade tells me that Vader was always destined to be one of the greatest death metal bands of all time, and as a fun but useless bit of trivia, they actually are the first death metal band I ever loved. Not Cannibal Corpse, not Morbid Angel, not Death, fuckin' Vader. Vader is responsible for like 80% of this list being populated with extreme metal. They're one of the best gateways there ever was.
I told you it was coming, and that time is finally here. Yup, BastardHead is ostensibly a reference to the fact that Lemmy initially wanted to name this band Bastard before his manager talked him out of it, but it also serves as a nice reference to their best album. You heard me correctly. As classic as Ace of Spades, Overkill, the self titled, Orgasmatron, and Another Perfect Day are, none of them actually surpass their twelfth album. Twelve albums and nearly twenty years into their career, that's the point where they truly hit their apex. It simply comes down to the fact that they have no albums as consistent as Bastards. And that's impressive since it's one of their more obviously varied albums of its face. The two best songs exemplify this perfectly, with "Burner" being a double bass filled speed metal scorcher and "Born to Raise Hell" being one of the all time great rock n roll party anthems, and actually my all time favorite Motorhead song. "Burner" also helps introduce listeners to Mikkey Dee, one of the tightest drummers in the game, who was introduced on this album and would stick around for nearly 30 years until Lemmy's death in late 2015. I feel like I read somewhere once that Lemmy cites Little Richard as either his greatest influence or favorite artist (or both), and man it's really noticeable on the sleazy rock n roll that populates this album. "Born to Raise Hell", "On Your Feet or On Your Knees", "Bad Woman", and "I'm Your Man" all sound exactly like what would happen if you took some good time 50's boogie rock n roll like Little Richard, Chuck Berry, or Sister Rosetta Tharpe and transported them forty years into the future and loaded them up on whiskey and speed. Special shoutout also has to go to their darkest and most depressing track ever, and the best Motorballad of all time, "Don't Let Daddy Kiss Me". That one is just... man it's heavy. That's a rough one to listen to, and it's extra brutal because it's told from the perspective of the victim and there's no happy ending. The World's Worst Crime just happens nightly and she can't tell anybody without destroying the only family unit she knows and God hasn't saved her yet. The end! No moral! And then it closes out with a terrifying "goodnight..." before seguing directly into "Bad Woman" one of the more raucous and fun party songs on the album. What the hell man? Why would you destroy me emotionally like that and then seamlessly transition right back into sexy partying?? You were something else, Lemmy. You were the mirror that showed lesser men that they were clowns, and the world is a lesser place without you. Motorhead was mad underrated in the 90s, and Bastards is proof that they shouldn't've been.
I'm sorry, I really am. I didn't expect Running Wild to dominate so completely and utterly when I first got the idea to do this feature. But it's true, four of the fifty best albums from this decade all came from one band. They truly were unstoppable during this period, and Blazon Stone stands as their best of the era. This really is the only album that ever could've followed up the heavy metal legend that is Death or Glory, because there isn't one single thing about this album that I don't adore to pieces. I don't know what I can really say about this one considering it's the fourth time I've tackled the band here, and the whole reason I did the huge review series on Gargoyle instead of Running Wild is because the Germans are just hard to talk about since each album is pretty similar to the ones surrounding it and only feels wildly different once you look three or four albums into the past. Their blend of trad and speed metal with sprinklings of arena rock is probably at its most potent here, with tracks like "Fire & Ice" and "Lonewolf" rocking harder than anything has ever rocked before while also dipping their toes into power metal with "Little Big Horn". This is probably their most "normal" album, in a sense, while still being arguably their most iconic behind the obvious trilogy from the 80s. They were always primarily a speed metal band above all else, but I'd argue that Blazon Stone is more of just a fast trad metal album with loads of melody, and it turns out that that is an incredible mixture (though that's not to say that "Straight to Hell" isn't pure fucking speed metal of the grandest kind). I've also mentioned before that one of the band's secret weapons was always their ability to let each individual member play to their strengths no matter what they were, and that's why the long, melodic bass passages left with Jens Becker (aka Mike's brother from Stranger Things if he got into metal instead of punk), but he was still here on this album, so we're treated to the stunning interlude of "Over the Rainbow", which definitely deserves mention. But really, I have to stop and tell you all to quit reading this and go listen to "White Masque", which is my absolute favorite Running Wild song, above even obvious contenders like "Riding the Storm" and "Conquistadores". That chorus is sublime. The oldest of the old school MA reviewers, UltraBoris, may not have been the best with words, but god damn if he wasn't right on the money when he compared that chorus to Blind Guardian in terms of catchiness and complexity and called it one of the most perfect choruses in the history of heavy metal. It's my favorite song by my favorite band, so that should tell you that I, uh... I really recommend it.
That's it! Only one more to go! There's a chance I manage to finish this whole spiel on the 30th like originally planned, but if I don't, tune back in on July 1st for the conclusion and the official BH Ranking for the Top 50 Metal Albums of the 90s!
Iron Savior's Unification for top ten let's gooooo
ReplyDeleteGreat blog I enjoyed rreading
ReplyDelete