QUICK HITS: Succumb - Succumb

God help me I need disinfectant

Jesus.  For years, years, I've maintained that the filthiest death metal album of all time is Mental Funeral by Autopsy.  There are other albums that exceed it in weirdness or darkness or insanity (Nespithe, Onward to Golgotha, To the Depths, in Degradation, etc), but nothing could ever really touch just how grimy it was.  Well, I think that 25 year streak of dominance may have been broken with San Francisco's Succumb and their self titled debut.  Mental Funeral still sounds a bit more like a sewer than Succumb, but where the newcomers pull ahead is simply in unremitting dirt and agony.  You might be familiar with the manga author Junji Ito, who is most famous in the west for bizarre tales like Uzumaki and The Enigma of Amigara Fault.  He's not really a great storyteller but he is an amazing artist, and he has a short story by the name of simply Mold.  It's about a young man who rents his house out to a weird science teacher with an obsession with fungus, and upon returning from a business trip he finds the house abandoned and covered in mold that always grows back no matter how much he cleans, eventually unearthing the horrid truth behind the anomaly.  Succumb sounds like how Mold looks.  It's a dilapidated crackhouse, the walls literally alive with crawling filth, humidity only amplifying the creeping decay.  What makes it unique to me is how it manages to sound both hopeless and frantic at the same time, like a doomed man desperately clawing his way out of a drainage ditch while the flesh rots off of his body.  The vocals are very distant and slathered in reverb, rarely chaining more than two words together at a time, nearly always presented in an agonizing, ghoulish howl.  The riffs are dissonant and uncomfortable, and the drumming of the rising star Harry Cantwell (best known for Bosse-de-Nage and Slough Feg's kinda crappy post-2007 era) is a tumbling cacophony that never gives the listener room to breathe.  Not like anybody would want to breathe anyway, what with being in a heroin-drenched toilet bowl and all.  This is just grody, with a thick layer of goop somehow visible when listening.  There aren't many specific highlights to mention, as the album is just one long drawn out overdose, but it doesn't really matter when it sounds like literal death.  Again, refer to the final panel of Mold.  Succumb is the sound of your atrophying semi-corpse fusing with its surroundings while you deliriously peel the flesh off from your own bones.


RATING - 91%

 

QUICK HITS: Condor - Unstoppable Power

Crispy Zu Skewers

Thrash's not dead??  Nah, it's still more or less a creative dead end in terms of innovation potential, but that just means that the great bands stand out purely for being really fucking good at thrashing.  Condor definitely shows themselves worthy of hype in the Dead Riff Era, because Unstoppable Power is a venom fueled blast of blackened thrash insanity.  I still seem to prefer Power Trip at this juncture, but Condor is ridiculously fucking close behind.  It's especially cool because, like I said, there's nothing inherently mega-creative about the band, it's just Aura Noir styled hyperthrash with smatterings of black metal misanthropy and grit.  It's the exact kind of thing that Witchaven was all about nearly a decade ago that I couldn't stop masturbating over.  The album tends to fluctuate between the balls out black metal-infused tremolo salvos and more traditional bay area thrashing cranked up to 11.  Compare the bestial hunger in "Embraced By the Evil" to the more focused riff assault of "You Can't Stop the Fire".  The stylistic differences between the tracks on Unstoppable Power are almost imperceptibly subtle, but they're there, and it's good to note that the band is quite skilled at handling all of them.  I think the main reason this stands out so much to me despite thrash as a whole being so fucking dull and played out nowadays is because of something very simple that a lot of bands had mastered in the 80s and most of the copycats completely screwed up in the 00s, and that's the balance between intensity and hooks.  Calling Condor "melodic" in any sense of the word is misleading, because this is all about furious blasting helldeath from the get-go, but there's a very 80s sense of riff writing here, because like the earliest outings of Exodus and Sodom, there is a marvelous sense of infectiousness intertwined with nuts-first freneticism in the riffage.  Check out something like "Chained Victims" or "83 Days of Radiation" for an audible example of what I'm talking about, it's excellent stuff.  When Nocturnal Breed crawled out of their hole a few years ago and finally followed up the excellent Fields of Rot, this is the album I was hoping to hear instead of the thoroughly forgettable Napalm Nights.  Norway may be known for black metal, but Condor definitely shows that those frozen buttcicles know how to thrash just as well.  Like Ripper was the underground foil to the mainstream darling Vektor in 2016, Condor is to Power Trip in 2017.


RATING: 88%

QUICK HITS: Dying Fetus - Wrong One to Fuck With

Grammar Wizard is disappointed

I have a bit of a weird relationship with Dying Fetus, since I consider them to be a praiseworthy death metal institution, but at the same time I really only think they have two bona fide classics (Destroy the Opposition and Reign Supreme) and don't really listen to them all that often.  They've always been plagued with production and inconsistency issues and those two albums are the only two where everything really came together properly and created absolute fucking monoliths of technical slamming death metal supremacy (though keep in mind I haven't heard Descend into Depravity so maybe there's three).  Regardless, after an agonizingly long five year wait, they're back with their old, slimy logo and ridiculously gory cover art gracing their newest opus, Wrong One to Fuck With.  Despite ending with a preposition and driving me absolutely nuts in the process, Wrong One with Which to Fuck is another phenomenal trek into the particular niche that Dying Fetus fills so well.  That sublime way they straddle the lines between brain dead slam, hyperviolent grindcore, and needlessly wanky tech death is showcased in full force here.  While there aren't many moments as instantly attention grabbing as the breakdown on "Praise the Lord" or the first riff on "Revisionist Past" (though "Fallacy" obviously tried to recapture that magic), there is a lot to like here.  It's hard to write about Dying Fetus (hence why this is just a Quick Hit) because they've basically stuck to their guns and reused a similar template for all of their albums, despite the fresh and energetic way they tend to assemble the parts within the template.  You know what it's gonna be.  Slams and sweeps and blasts and tremolo alternating with each other twelve times per minute while they just overload your senses with brutality.  I can say I like the oddly distant lead that opens "Weaken the Structure", the breakdowns are killer on every track but stand out a bit more on the title track and "Panic Amongst the Herd", but pointing out examples is rather pointless because every song more or less sounds the same.  This isn't really a problem though since Dying Fetus just fucking kills at this style so it comes off more like a plateau of endless brutality.  I'll say it's not quite as good as Reign Supreme just because the songs are a bit longer and makes the album a little bit more of an endurance test, but the music contained within is just as good.  Don't sleep on this, they're absolutely back.


RATING: 90%

QUICK HITS: Rebel Souls - The Forces of Darkness

Cuero rebeldeeeee!

In the interest of transparency, I should inform you all that I'm reviewing this on request.  I almost never do that simply because I'm the most unreliable idiot on the planet, but I'm making an exception here entirely because the email that asked me to also mentioned that Obscura is a fucking terrible album.  Hell yes I'll review this album you fellow connoisseur of death metal that doesn't sound like the most irritating shit on the planet on purpose.  High fucking five.

Rebel Souls hail from the area where even insane evil scientists like to relax, southern Spain, and according to their little promotional blurb on Bandcamp, aim to create a sound in the vein of Vader, Vomitory, and Krisiun.  Longtime readers of mine should recognize that I absolutely fucking adore all three of those bands, and lucky for me, the band isn't just talking out of their collective ass this time.  Vocally, there is a huge Vomitory influence, and the rampant tremolo riffs that rip by with painfully sharp gusto only bolster the connection.  While the Swedish legends do indeed make up most of the influence, Vader is most definitely represented well also.  Their signature high speed chugging riffs rear their heads several times throughout The Forces of Darkness, and it adds some extra crunch and propulsiveness to the already high octane blasting insanity on display.  "The Elementar" is a great example of this, and probably stands as the best track on display as a result.  Really though you can't go wrong with any of these monsters.  There's an edge of roughness around everything, giving off pure attitude and rawness without being so mechanically precise that you lose the inherent brutality but without becoming a sloppy mess.  Overall there's not much to say other than this rules.  It looks like this band has been around more or less forever before finally getting this debut full length out, so let's hope they can keep up this momentum and kill us again soon!


RATING: 85%

QUICK HITS: Incredulous - The Weight of Time

I'm not sure I trust it...

Incredulous is yet another thrash act out of California, merely thirtyish years late to the party, but I'll cut them some slack since I'm pretty sure the members are all young enough to be my children.  My thoughts during the first track were that this is mega lo-fi, but it sorta has a charm to it in that old school DIY way.  It's instrumental, so it's definitely a showcase for the instrumentalists of the band, and they're all competent enough.  The riffs are nice enough, sharp and melodic despite sounding like it was recorded on an answering machine, drumming is good and energetic if a little bit stock, nothing to outwardly dislike really but nothing jumps out of the speakers to grab my ears and force me to headbang like a maniac.  While this is playing I think I'll look up some information on the members to see if my joke about them all being super young was accurate or not.  Wait a minute... what's that I see in the picture of the vocalist?  Is that an Embryonic Devourment shirt??  Oh no, he's gonna suck isn't he?  The next three tracks confirm that yes, he's not very good.  His bark at least has some effort behind it, so he can't be called lazy or just in the band for the sake of it, but his voice sounds like a blend of the lows and highs from Skeletonwitch, and that should theoretically rule, but with his voice pushed so far in the forefront it's really distracting and his mediocre skill is all the more apparent.  I mean, not everybody needs to be Mads Haarlov, I get that, and it's neat to see a more extreme style of vocal in an ostensibly pure thrash band that takes on a deeper register instead of imitating Mille Petrozza for the fifty billionth time, but something about him just strikes me as really unrefined and way out of his league.  In all honesty, the whole demo just smacks of a band that isn't ready yet.  Granted, that's what demos are for so I'm not gonna trash them for it yet, but there's really nothing at all here to stand out.  It's just thrash riffs and low barking.  Almost any metalhead has heard that a thousand times before.  It's very much a utilitarian release that shows up, does what it needs to do with very little consequence, and ends.


RATING: 38%

QUICK HITS CLASSICS: Infester - To the Depths, in Degradation

Time to test the depths...

Confession time: even as a long time death metal fan, I've never actually bothered listening to Infester's sole full length, To the Depths, in Degradation.  I don't know why, it has a long standing reputation as one of the few legitimate cult classics of the genre but for some reason I just never took the time to sit down and give it a listen.  I decided to change that today, mostly because I read some old reviews for it from two of my personal favorite reviewing peers, droneriot and lord_ghengis.  The former says what most people say (it's horrifyingly ugly and monstrous and inhuman) while the latter says the opposite (it's propulsive and riffy and varied and fresh), but they both agreed it is one of the all time greatest releases in the genre.  This intrigued me, I wondered how I would feel about it since I'm prone to being contrarian at times.  Time to finally give this dark beast a spin:

I'm immediately struck by the droneriot school of thought.  This is disgustingly brutal, almost inhuman in its approach to the tropes of the genre.  It's bizarre to think how ahead of its time the album was.  It may not have predated some of the earliest examples of supreme filth in death metal like Mental Funeral or Onward to Golgotha, but it's definitely one of the earlier examples of death metal eschewing everything in favor of unremitting brutality.  Everything about this just sounds... I dunno, malevolent, like some form of audial curse is being put on you for listening.  Seriously, I frequently champion Suffocation as one of the heaviest bands of the 90s but they wish they could have sounded this bleak.  It's dark and earnestly hateful, with a focused intent to harm.  The frequent shifts from bone-rattling, harrowing doom-slathered dirges to almost illogical blasts of frenzied chaos just sound unnatural and utterly fucknuts wrong.  This is hurting me, it's so great but it seems like it was crafted in some sort of alternate Shadow Dimension where human rules don't apply.  Did the fucking Dunwich Horror write this?  Is this what Wilbur Whateley was reading to his brother?  Listen to those vocals!  Is he roaring?  Groaning?  Dying??  I'm listening to this on Spotify because piracy is wrong, kids, and the occasional breaks for ads for Axe Body Spray and KFC are doing nothing to snap be back to reality.  I'm only a few songs in as a write this, something just compelled me to start writing by the time "Chamber of Reunion" started.  It's just so unrelenting and harrowing, there is nothing human or relatable about this, it's some utterly alien incantation ritual I'm sure is meant to kill me.  Is this like The Ring?  Am I gonna die in a week??

And now, and this is 100% true, near the end of "Epicurean Entrails", I started to feel lightheaded and my stomach started tying itself in knots.  I dizzily stumbled to my bathroom and proceeded to take the most forceful and jet black liquid shit of my life.  WHAT KIND OF USOG DEMONRY IS THIS??  I CAVE, I'M DONE MAN, LICK MY FOREHEAD AND CLEANSE ME YOU FIENDS.

So I'm convinced, To the Depths, in Degradation is cursed and I'm never listening to it again because I would like to live a full life.


RATING: 100% PLEASE DON'T HURT ME ANYMORE 

QUICK HITS: Dying Spirit - Bad Reputation

Sir, this is a Home Depot...

I love Polish metal.  I don't know what it is, but they seem to nail extreme metal with alarming consistency.  Vader's newest may be mediocre but they've got like seven other classics preceding it, Mgla is on top of the black metal underground right now, Behemoth is Behemoth, Cultes des Ghoules, Lost Soul, Furia, Plaga... the list goes on seemingly forever.  So coming across Dying Spirit here filled me with excitement, purely based on the promise of more ass kicking tech death from a European hotspot.  And after a few listens... well, it's okay.  I can give the band some serious props for the vocals being as beefy and menacing as they are, and the tone is very chunky and thick, and I love that, but overall this is lacking some serious bite.  Really, "technical death metal" is a bit of a misnomer, since this is really much closer to the groovy side of death metal.  Not like, say, Six Feet Under or something where they write three riffs and repeat them for 45 minutes.  No, this is more like Godhate or a lesser Vader album like Necropolis or The Empire.  There are a lot of rapid fire chugging patterns that work quite well when it comes to punching the listener in the face, but everything blurs together and makes the album pretty faceless by the time it's done.  It's forty minutes of death metal mosh riffs, with some of them standing out superbly (like "Changes" or "The Game is Never Over").  And frankly, that's pretty cool, but the execution leaves a lot to be desired.  As excellent as these riffs are, there are too many that are too similar.  The album really loses its luster after the first few tracks and it peters out without much consequence as a result.  There's a great album in here in the vein of something like Vader with Pantera riffs, but the songwriting is still in the growing stages it seems.  I'll be keeping my eye out for future releases but they'll really need to step their game up with the next one.


RATING - 69%

QUICK HITS: King Woman - Created in the Image of Suffering

*groaning*

I'm not gonna call this Pallbearer style of "doomgaze" or whatever a plague on metal or a Trojan horse for lame hipsters who don't give a damn about the genre or anything, because if I don't like something it's pretty easy to simply not listen to it and I don't really care if people like things that I don't, but I will say with authority that this Pitchfork-approved go-nowhere nonsense is almost invariably terrible, and King Woman does nothing to dispel that prejudice.  I got this admittedly entirely on a whim because the cover art was super cool, but that's really all the band has going for it.  None of these riffs are compelling, the whole thing just drags and plods along with no sense of urgency, wonder, malice, mystery, or anything that doom needs to work.  This is all just... there.  There's apparently an interesting tale about how this band came about, with the vocalist leaving a shoegaze band and starting this metal band to lash back at the religious institutions of her youth, but if there's any true lingering hatred and frustration behind the band it is wholly drowned out by plodding riffs that elicit precisely zero emotion and some of the most lethargic, tranquilized vocals I've ever heard.  You know that (beautiful) meme where people find all the most absurd and surreal ways to remix "All Star" by Smash Mouth?  Well one of the best ones is where somebody remixes every note to be C.  Every vocal line, every chord, every bassline, it's all just this one continuous streak of the same monotone shit and it sounds like the audial representation of an anxiety attack.  That's what Created in the Image of Suffering reminds me of.  Kristina Esfandiari is just a flat out terrible vocalist.  She sounds like she's trying to record vocals in her bedroom without waking up her parents.  This kind of dreamy monotone can work for something more apocalyptic and creepy like Chelsea Wolfe, but this isn't that.  It just sounds like a really lame practice session for a bunch of kids, none of whom are any good at their instruments, and the person doing vocals doesn't actually have any real singing talent so she just drowns herself in reverb and hopes that covers it all up.  If you forced me to say something nice, I'd say "Utopia" has a pretty cool riff hidden under what I think is supposed to be the chorus, but it's insanely overshadowed by the insultingly bad vocals and multitude of weak ass riffs with pointless shoegazey clean guitars layered over them.  I'm willing to bet anything that this has a great rating on Pitchfork.

*checks*

*8.2/10*

HA! I'm good at this game.


RATING - 17%

QUICK HITS: Dreaming Dead - Funeral Twilight

It's like an unbuilt rollercoaster

Man I really want to like Dreaming Dead, but something about them just never seems to mesh correctly with me.  That's a partially unfair statement because prior to this album I was only familiar with their debut, but it was a total in-one-ear-and-out-the-other album and their long awaited return in 2017 with Funeral Twilight doesn't do much to convince me that I was unfair about them early on.  All of the elements for a badass record are here but nothing seems to coalesce into something genuinely riveting.  There are a lot of high octane melodic death/thrash riffs absolutely boiling over with venom, but nothing sticks.  It's sad because I don't really know what else to say about them.  It's certainly not for a lack of talent, since the band has a great ear for subtle melody and can make hyperspeed Kreator-style thrash riffs sound completely effortless to play, and Schall's rasp is one of the better Symbolic-era Schuldiner impressions out there, but it's all a blast of sound and fury that ultimately signifies nothing.  This is the problem with a lot of death/thrash in general, honestly.  You'll get behemoth exceptions like Deathchain and The Crown in their primes, but in general Funeral Twilight is indicative of the overwhelming serviceable mediocrity that plagues the genre.  There's nothing inherently wrong with these blistering riffs and frantic pace, but it's wholly lacking a sense of real danger to give it that extra oomph.  The hooks are few and far between, there's a startling dearth of memorable lines, and after several spins I still can't remember much of anything that happens.  "Beyond the Black Moon" has some cool bass tricks going on in the background and "Remnants of a Time Long Forgotten" is a neat change of pace with it's doomy instrumentals, but otherwise there isn't much else to point out.  Despite all the flash and frenzy, there just isn't anything exciting here.


RATING - 48%

QUICK HITS: Striker - Striker

The 12 month plan

Longtime readers of mine may remember that Striker actually released the very first album to win my official Album of the Year award back in 2010 (with Eyes in the Night, which still holds up and absolutely fucking rules), but my relationship with them has been sorta weird ever since then.  I always compare them to Enforcer since they came out around roughly the same time and helped spearhead this trad metal revival in the late 00s/early 10s, but Enforcer has been slugging home run after home run whereas Striker only managed one more total classic (City of Gold) and two other decent albums that didn't stick with me (Armed to the Teeth and Stand in the Fire).  Barely a year after the latter album, they're back already with a shorter, more streamlined self titled album, and I've gotta say they're keeping with the "good album - meh album" flip flopping, because this one is awesome.  Excluding the bonus track and the short interlude, there are only eight tracks here compared to the previous album's eleven, and it works to their advantage because they've always been a shallow band of surface flash (which obviously doesn't bother me, there's a reason I listen to fifty generic speed metal bands for every one complex prog band) so it doesn't overstay its welcome.  At just a little over a half hour long, this is a great blast of energy, blazing leads, and some of the heaviest riffing they've ever managed.  Seriously, tracks like "Over the Top", "Curse of the Dead", and "Pass Me By" just utterly decimate any of their previous songs in terms of ferocity.  There are some more traditional rockers like "Rock the Night" but those quick and heavy cookers are the true standouts of the album.  Special mention has to be made for "Born to Lose" as well for being one of their best tracks yet.  It's not as speedy and vicious as something like "Pass Me By" but it's certainly one of the catchiest tracks they've penned yet.  It's not their strongest album, and I'd say it's probably right smack in the middle of their five albums, but that has more to do with how phenomenal the good albums are and how sharp the dropoff is for their more mediocre ones.  Give it a go, it certainly rocks more than it has any right to.

RATING - 81%

QUICK HITS: Hammerfall - Built to Last

I was really hoping for a Sick of It All cover

We all know my opinion on Hammerfall, mostly because it's the same opinion 95% of metalheads share.  They're the safest band in the universe, nearly every album sounds the same, loaded to the gills with effortless "Hail Metal!" filler that feels like it took as much time to write as it does to listen to.  They've always had a good song or two per album but that's it.  Nearly twenty years and ten albums since their debut, and they've finally scraped together enough material to make one truly great album, and that should be unforgivable for a band with such status and longevity.  Their career seemed to be taking an interesting turn, with Infected trying a whole bunch of new things, so of course fans revolted since their favorite comfort food decided to change the recipe.  The deceptively titled Revolution was the sound of the band conceding and returning to their old formula, and yet somehow they sounded rejuvenated and put out their best album since Crimson Thunder (shut up, I like that one).  And now two years later here we are with Built to Last, and it's... well, the same bland, formulaic filler crap they've loaded nearly every album with since their inception.  The only reason it's "Built to Last" is because they've spent the last two decades proving without a shadow of a doubt that you can do nothing different and not lose any fans, so this is just another album pumped out of a production line with the sole purpose of touring again.  They're sort of like Overkill in that sense, only lacking a legendary early era that makes it at least fun to catch them whenever they come through your town.  Like usual, there are a few good tracks here, particularly the more speedy and energetic ones like "Dethrone and Defy" and "Stormbreaker" (the latter of which is genuinely great and especially frustrating because it shows that the band damn well knows how to rock), but when stacked up against eight more rehashes of "Renegade" and "Hearts on Fire", it just doesn't do enough to overcome the safe and unchallenging formula they've made their bread and butter over the years.   I just feel like the band has no charisma, which is baffling considering their reputation, but it's true.  Built to Last is merely "Another Hammerfall Album", and it's sure to be nobody's favorite.


RATING - 41%

QUICK HITS: Parius - Let There Be Light

No witty title for this one, get over it

Fresh out of kindergarten, the kids in Philadelphia's Parius have bestowed upon us a new EP, Let There Be Light.  The very first things I noticed were that the release featured two guest solos by Ryan Knight (formerly of The Black Dahlia Murder) and Michael Keene (of The Faceless).  Naturally, this told me I'd be in for a blast of high tempo and progressive, yet very modern technical/melodic death metal.  For the most part that's true (though it's not exactly progressive), and both of those bands are very obviously a huge influence on the band.  It should be a mixed bag in that regard, since TBDM is fucking awesome and The Faceless bores me to tears, but the more noodly and melodic elements borrowed from that band just work better here than on something like Autotheism.  The final track, "Another Kind of Reckoning" showcases this with aplomb, being loaded to the gills with flashy bass solos, and the title track incorporates some epic, spacey clean vocals that work well enough but feel a bit less natural than the pummeling melodeath of the rest of the song/record.  Really there's nothing to complain about, this is a very utilitarian melodeath release on par with some of TBDM's lesser albums (though that's not really a knock on Parius, those Michigan slackers just run at such a ridiculously high quality that even their worst album is still pretty good).  The vocals are typical but serviceable, the bass is quite prominent and noodles with the best of them, Angelo Sasso turns in a good performance, and even the occasional strings and such come off as good instead of forced.  They're not exactly blazing any paths but fans of this style shouldn't have anything to complain about.  If there are any problems it's just that this is very short, with only three real "songs" plus one short interlude, so it doesn't really give you a whole lot to chew on but that's a really nitpicky and unfair complaint.  It's a very professional meat-and-potatoes release and I can't realistically ask for much more.


RATING - 79%

QUICK HITS: Enceladus - Journey to Enlightenment

Their full potential is SO FAR AWAAAAYY

It's easy to forget, but pre-Myspace, pre-Guitar Hero, pre-Inhuman Rampage, Dragonforce enjoyed what seemed like universal adoration.  I miss that era because Valley of the Damned and Sonic Firestorm are absolutely fantastic albums, 100% worthy of all the praise heaped upon them up until 2006ish.  They were ludicrously over the top departures from the sometimes subdued melody and relative simplicity that power metal thrived on, and instead of eschewing the singalong choruses and sugary keyboard lines, they simply added forty tons of unapologetic bombast and non stop shredding on top, and it worked.  Upon first listen to Enceladus' debut, Journey to Enlightenment, seemed to be a throwback to exactly that idea.  The opening title track throws caution to the wind and just throws melody after solo after solo after hyperspeed solo at you, slowing down for nothing and making its presence known as a force to be reckoned with in terms of technicality.  I was instantly hooked, and couldn't wait for the rest of the album.  Unfortunately, the biggest flaw is... well, the rest of the album.  See, the title track is instrumental, and is essentially just a stripped down showcase of the individual instrumentalists' immense talent.  The rest of the album however, is more standard in the sense that yes, the do actually have a vocalist.  The problem is that he's, to put it lightly, very not good.  His tenor is just all over the place and it seems like he has no control over what he's trying to sing, and it just sounds off somehow, like he's just a teeny bit out of pitch at all times and I just can't seem to pinpoint it.  He occasionally showcases a stratospheric falsetto, but it's thin and weak and really detracts from the pyrotechnics of the rest of the band.  The fact that he album is 13 tracks and nearly an hour long exacerbate the problem, because as great as it is musically, it's fairly one-note, and the poor vocals only make it harder to listen to.  Overall it's a solid album in a style I really like, but the vocals are a huge elephant in the room that I'd like to see addressed somehow, because they easily knocked a good 20 or so points off the final score.

RATING - 61%

QUICK HITS CLASSICS: Descendents - Everything Sucks

I generally stick to new metal albums, but occasionally I'm going to want to return to my roots and gab on about older albums, so please enjoy this slightly rebranded but functionally identical Quick Hit. 

GOT UP ON THE WRONG SIDE OF LIFE THIS MORNING

Hey look, I'm not reviewing metal!  My listening has been split nearly 60/40 with punk ever since I realized Bad Religion was the greatest band in rock history (next to Queen of course), I just never talk about it because that's not why anybody reads my shit.  Today I got a bug up my ass and I want to talk about Descendents, in particular their fifth album, Everything Sucks.  I posit to you all that Everything Sucks is actually Descendents' best album, above even the seminal early American classic that is Milo Goes to College.  You see, early Descendents really tapped into teenage fear and angst in a way that hits home with most lonely high schoolers.  Tales of unrequited love and fear of growing up are interspersed between energetic blasts of goofy nonsense, sexual fantasies, and toilet humor.  That was their big appeal for me, they fearlessly explored every facet of adolescence, with all of the incongruity and tonal shifts that that would imply.  The band suffered two hiatuses early on brought on by lead vocalist and frequent cover art model, Milo Auckermann, leaving to pursue his studies and career in biochemistry.  After nine years, he got the itch and helped Descendents get back together (though they never truly left and the band always soldiered on as All without him) for their first album in nine years.  The reason this one is special to me is because the band actually grew in a way without abandoning one iota of what made them so iconic on the early albums.  Milo Goes to College and I Don't Want to Grow Up were based on the balking of adulthood and wanting to remain in the halcyon years of youth forever, and then Everything Sucks shows up and gives it all a new perspective.  They are adults now, and everything is exactly as shitty as they'd always feared.  Songs like "When I Get Old" are presented with a bit of wistful nostalgia, while "Everything Sux" and "This Place" confronts the bullshittery of adulthood with that passionate rebelliousness of adolescence that they never lost in the meantime.  That's what's so great, the music itself didn't "mature".  They didn't start adding new elements to the songs, they didn't mellow out, they didn't slow down and write more accessible radio friendly songs, the songs are almost all entirely the fast paced melodic poppy punk it's always been, with the sub-minute energetic blasts of "Coffee Mug" and "Eunuch Boy" being odes to spazzing out after drinking too much coffee and how much it would suck to not have a dick, respectively.  The goofiness is still there, and now the Nice Guy songs are presented in a slightly more pathetic light, and "Sick-O-Me" details how a long term relationship falls about due to boredom and complacency.  They're basically the weird uncle of punk rock, the guy who drinks a few too many beers and tries out his nephew's new pogo stick at Christmas with predictably disastrous results.  They're still ineffectual dorks, but they're more experienced about it now, but still wholly unwilling to let go of that youth they cherish so much, and it's a very sincere look at the whole situation.  And that's why it's their best album, it's the perfect snapshot in time between the stages of youthful rebellion and desperately trying to recapture it.  Everybody should love this.


RATING - 95%

QUICK HITS: Beheaded - Beast Incarnate

The Maltese Falchion

Apparently I've got a theme going, because yet again, I sit here with another Unique Leader styled brutal tech death album that found itself on the internet in the opening weeks of 2017.  This time, I find myself getting my eardrums ravaged by the veteran Maltese maniacs, Beheaded.  This is actually sorta different because for once this is actually a Unique Leader veteran, and I've gotta say that Beast Incarnate is one of the more immediately grabbing albums from the roster I've heard in quite a few years.  The only previous Beheaded album I'm familiar with is Ominous Bloodline from the surprisingly distant year of 2005, and all I really recall from that one is that the production was so obnoxiously bass heavy that it severely hindered my enjoyment of what was otherwise a solid BDM album.  Luckily, they take on a more "normal" sound for this one, similar to that impossibly beefy and steely tinge of later Nile and Krisiun, and it's a major boon to the album's potential longevity.  The subtle melodies that make themselves known through the solos and just generally badass riffage (check out a track like "Punishment of the Grave") are a great touch, since this style tends to focus on blistering technicality more than the more inherent simplicity of strong songwriting.  Beast Incarnate instead strikes that venerable nexus of muscle bound strength and quick fingered shredding that bands like Hour of Penance and Neuraxis have made their bread and butter over the years.  There are a surprising amount of catchy moments as well, like the title track and the more midpaced epic of "The Black Death", which call to mind some of the better moments of Abnormality's debut.  Special shoutout goes to the vocals as well, since Frank Calleja's roar is one of the rare in the style that has some strong charisma instead of merely being a secondary percussive force.  This isn't the same vocalist as Ominous Bloodline and I think that may be another one of the reasons this stands so much taller over that one.  In short, Beheaded got their shit together when I wasn't looking and delivered and early surprise for 2017, and I'm stoked to keep track of the band from here on out.


RATING - 84%

QUICK HITS: Maze of Sothoth - Soul Demise

IA! IA!

So it looks like 2017 is going to start off with a slew of brutality, as here I sit with another early release that revels in bone crunching devastation; Soul Demise by Maze of Sothoth.  I feel like tech death has really fallen out of favor with most metalheads, with special exceptions reserved for the old guard like Origin and Wormed, so hearing a new(ish) band unapologetically shred and riff my ears off like this is a nice surprise.  Maybe it's the Italian connection, but I'm hearing a lot of Hour of Penance and early Fleshgod Apocalypse (before they decided to be Death Metal Rhapsody of Fire) in this, and if you've been following me for a while it should come as no surprise that I love it.  Soul Demise is much less about just showing off their instrumental skill and more about cramming as many badass hyperspeed riffs into each second as possible.  Of course, this naturally comes off as something of a riff salad as a result, lacking in overall cohesion across the board.  Honestly, that doesn't bother me when it comes to this type of style, since that's basically the norm, and albums like Hour of Penance's Sedition are glorious exceptions.  Oddly enough, I actually thought this was an instrumental band initially, as I didn't even notice vocals until the third track.  Once I did though, he seemed to take the Origin approach and just never shut the hell up.  So all told, it's pretty standard for the modern tech death game, with sprinklings of Immolation and Morbid Angel in the more spastic and squealy riffs found in songs like "Blind", but it's a really solid offering for fans of the style, and I'd recommend it to anybody who thought death metal was thriving from 08-11, because this is a welcome throwback to an era that only recently left us.  Certainly better than Archspire, if nothing else.


RATING - 78%

QUICK HITS: Brain Dead - Disaster Ahead

Thrash is known nowadays as an artistic dead end and I continue to refute that notion.  However, bands like Brain Dead make it really hard for me to make that case.  This is another one of those books you can very accurately judge by its cover, with the cartoon style, plethora of tropes and cliches that add nothing more than a juvenile "wink wink nudge nudge" to the band's image and attitude, and a mascot that is, surprise!, a long haired zombie thrasher with high tops and and upturned flat billed cap.  Oddly enough, that sentence actually describes the band's music pretty well too, if that makes sense.  If there was some semblance of tongue in cheek self awareness, this kind of thing can work.  Smash Potater makes it work, Brain Dead does not.  This is played completely straight and it's the exact kind of brainless idiocy that's neither fun nor satisfying to listen to.  I love Municipal Waste a whole ton, I can get behind this sort of thing, but Disaster Ahead completely lacks the songwriting ability of those Virginian party animals.  The production does nothing to help the stale riffs and cliche yelping vocals, since everything sounds very distant and separate from one another.  It just feels hastily slapped together without a whole lot of real thought put into it.  For every good idea there are five bad ones.  Like some of the riffs are pretty good (like the chugging part in "Last Obsession"), but even the best are creatively bankrupt.  It's pretty neat that they felt inspired enough to write an ode to the fallen Scumdog, Oderus Urungus, with "Flight of Oderus", but every other song is the exact toxic waste and thrashing all night and war is hell crap that has been beaten to death for 30 years now.  The sample of the "I'm mad as hell" speech from Network is pretty overdone at this point but it does set the stage well as an opening sample, but the rest of the song lets it down with the tired yelping and lame riffage, and the samples that carry out the title track of people telling the band members to get jobs and even a god damned terrible Mickey Mouse impression is just the most obnoxious sequence ever.  Listen to those people.  Get jobs.  This is going nowhere for you guys.


RATING - 20%

QUICK HITS: Ekpyrosis - Asphyxiating Devotion

Profound Decency

This is some old school to-the-bone death metal, and it works for what it tries to accomplish.  Unfortunately, the biggest problem with Italy's Ekpyrosis is that it doesn't even attempt to tread new ground.  Not that that is a death sentence in itself, but it's disappointing to hear a band that clearly has chops and songwriting talent bog themselves down in the mire of worship.  Basically any second of this album can be attributed to early Death or Dismember, with a few hints of New York stalwarts Immolation and Suffocation.  Really, all that needs to be listened to is the opening salvo, "Profound Death".  This track fucking nails it.  It's over seven minutes long and is chock full of enough ideas to extend it to a theoretical double digit runtime.  There's a punishing segment in the breakdown that calls to mind the aforementioned NYDM legends, and it's very clearly the high point of the album.  "Obsessive Christendom" has a similarly savage middle section that shows where the band's strength lies, but unfortunately the rest of the album is unimaginative (if solid) OSDM worship.  All of the slower, more midpaced crushing segments stand out with aplomb, but the rest of it is just kinda there.  Asphyxiating Devotion is another album to be thrown on the pile of solid death metal that's been flooding the scene since 2011ish, but it's not going to rise up and take the scene by storm like Horrendous have in the past.  Bands like Portal and Ulcerate, while I'm not the biggest fans of them, at least work to move the genre forward in some tangible way, whereas this is content to sit in its comfort zone.  It's certainly good at it, but not great.


RATING - 72%

QUICK HITS: Eternal Champion - The Armor of Ire

AH! AH! Ah! ah! ah. ah...

In my eyes, Eternal Champion's The Armor of Ire is 2016's answer to Visigoth's The Revenant King from last year.  Most of the similarities are obvious, from the Texan origin to the massive Manilla Road influence, and that's honestly not a bad thing at all.  I fucking adored The Revenant King, and this is pretty much more of the same and that's a-ok to me.  The band shares a handful of members with Sumerlands as well, another new heavy metal band that made waves last year, including Arthur Rizk, who also produced both bands' debuts, and it shows.  What we have here is just straight up fucking muscle bound heavy metal with no pretension.  From the first legit riff at 1:50 in "I am the Hammer", the band makes its presence known with sheer, unmitigated power.  There are two noticeable flaws to me though, one of which is the vocals.  We all know my opinion on Manilla Road, and Jason Tarpey clearly takes roughly 95% of his vocal technique from Mark Shelton.  I don't care for the Road's vocals and I don't care for Eternal Champion's in kind.  That really nasally type of thing works well enough but I feel like a band like Visigoth showed us all how beneficial an undeniably powerful voice can be in a band like this.  As a result, the strength that defines the riffage is let down a bit by the vocals that carry so much of the melody.  Secondly, they're not afraid to pick up the pace, which is usually a huge plus to me, but here I feel like their strength is very clearly in the more pounding mid paced numbers.  There is such a crushing, powerful stomp in songs like "I am the Hammer", "Invoker", and "Sing a Last Song of Valdise" that I feel is missing in the title track and "The Last King of Pictdom".  However, I feel like the best song apart from the opener is "The Cold Sword" and the coolest moment is the high octane riff in the bridge of "Sing a Last Song of Valdise", so really what the hell do I know?  Regardless, this is a great album and any fans of skull crushing old school metal and high fantasy barbarism should give it a listen.  At less than thirty five minutes, it's certainly not a time commitment you'll end up regretting.


RATING - 84%

QUICK HITS: Gotsu Totsu Kotsu - Where Warriors Once Dreamed a Dream

Tries to please everybody and succeeds to a point

I'm not entirely sure how I feel about this. It seems to be a midpoint between Legend of Shadow and Retributive Justice. Theoretically that should rule since I fucking adore both of those albums, but it's actually kind of disappointing since one of the reasons RJ hit so hard was because it was such a headstrong progression from LoS. Where LoS was really long and organic (which ruled), RJ was really tight and ferocious (which ruled). I was sorta hoping for them to keep refining themselves in that direction, which the first teaser track showed they would be doing. The rest of the album isn't quite as streamlined and brutal as "Sôran no Shichi E", instead reaching back into the bag of tricks they utilized on Legend of Shadow, with generally longer songs that feature an organic flow, as a result the album is ten minutes longer than its predecessor. Keep in mind this approach is awesome, but it's not as tight and fierce as Retributive Justice in this regard, so it does feel like a step back of sorts. With that said, there are some great moments and interesting new twists. "Bumei" is probably the most RJ-esque track on display apart from the opener, in that they're both fucking furious death metal with those thunderous roars I love so much. The title track has a fucking monstrous groove, but it also features an extended section where each instrument gets a solo, and it just feels weird and out of place for a band that finds so much of its strength in remaining consistently energetic. "Kiga no Kyofu" also stands out a bit for being significantly more technical and melodic than the band usually is. On one hand that's awesome to see them spreading their wings like that, on the other hand it sounds like they're getting a bit more "normal" in a sense, and it lacks a tinge of that signature character they've carved out for themselves. Then there's "Chinurareta Tabiji", which sounds like a lost Legend of Shadow track and it completely owns that album's sound, with the high tempo grooves, lack of blasts, and twisting narrative told using almost exclusively fucking badass riffs.  It's still great, which is to be expected from GTK, but it's sort of a blend of the last two albums, which will definitely be a problem for people who thought Legend of Shadow was too bloated and Retributive Justice did a good job of streamlining everything while also amping up the intensity. I loved both albums so I love this too, but it's not as good as either of them I think. Sorta just feels like it came out too fast and the band didn't have enough time to really grow or evolve in any capacity.


RATING - 85%