Diamond Plate releases teaster track for debut album

Check it here!!

Diamond Plate has released a track from their upcoming Album of the Year contender, Generation Why?  Check it out, rerecorded version of my personal favorite, "At the Mountains of Madness".  Whaddaya all think?  Still best thrash band of the decade?  Bitter disappointment?  Lukewarm?  Regardless, spread the word, this band is gonna take over the thrash world.

ONCE AGAIN, THE TRACK IS HERE, QUIT FUCKING AROUND AND LISTEN TO IT

BITE SIZED: All that Remains - ...For We Are Many

YOU ARE NOT STRUNG OUT, ALL THAT REMAINS.  STOP TRYING TO BE STRUNG OUT.  Really, this is a step up from the (to quote Shaq) horrawful Overcome, but they're still fucking up everything they are good at.  The ripping solos, the occasionally hardedged riff, catchy choruses, there are plenty of things All that Remains does just fine.  The problem lies in their unabashed blandness and formulaic songwriting.  Those particular problems still have yet to be addressed, and why should they?  They keep making money, they retain popularity, there's no reason for them to innovate.  As a music fan, that pisses me off, but that's business.  "Dead Wrong" is surprisingly very heavy and one of the better songs they've ever done, "Hold On" is a really light Strung Out ripoff but it's at least catchy and somewhat listenable, and the title track also kicks a surprising amount of ass reminiscent of "This Calling" from The Fall of Ideals.  The formulaic verse/chorus structure and vocal cliches have yet to leave but they're at least moving in the right direction.  Despite that, two good songs and one okay one out of twelve is pretty shitty.  This band could be so much more, but for now I'll stick with Blackhawks Over Los Angeles, and you might as well as well since All That Remains has been continually ripping off Strung Out while just adding harsh vocals and hoping nobody would notice for years now.

TOAD - Rotten Tide

Actually puts me at a loss for description

Rotten Tide makes me want to take a shower.  I don't mean that in the sense that "Well now that I'm covered in shit", but more "Holy hell that was dirty".  I'm not sure if it's the rough production or the rock influence, but both aspects only enhance the quality of the music to be found here.  This is an instance like Tiran where the dirt is also the main draw, although TOAD play something far detached from sleazy Motorhead worship.

Even though two of the tracks on Rotten Tide are pretty forgettable ("Pale Nimbus" and "Morning Disgust"), all five tracks are undeniably interesting in composition.  For example, the opening track, "Midnight Hunger", starts off with a slow and haunting lead line that gives the impression that we're in store for some old school mid paced black metal (the heavily distorted screams help my assumption).  It keeps along that same idea for about a minute and a half before smoothly shifting into a much more heavy metal influenced riff akin to Slough Feg's first album.  Around two minutes into the track, we're greeted with a straight up USPM riff in the vein of Jag Panzer or Omen.  All of this is smooth as well, it never once feels like a disjointed mishmash of styles.  Each song flows extremely well, and it really helps add cohesiveness to the strangeness of the music.  If I have any other complaint, it's that the percussion is fairly bland and the vocals are really monotonous in relation to how unique the music underneath them is.  It isn't all bad, they certainly fit well with everything and even have a few standout moments (The "Let chaos reign!" chant in "Necrophatic Vatican" for example), so I suppose there's no real reason for them to change.  There's also a distorted organ ala Deep Purple hidden somewhere in here but it's actually very hard to find.  The simplicity of some aspects coupled with the creativity of others works fairly well and actually adds to the rock n' roll aspect.

Overall TOAD and Rotten Tide surely earn my recommendation.  There are metallic aspects here in the aforementioned occasional riff and atmosphere, but the attitude of the band is actually a lot more rock n' roll than anything.  "Embody the Ghost" is my main example for that, but it's hard for me to actually put into words.  Just take a listen for yourself.  Very interesting black/heavy/rock mixture.

RATING - 80%

Swashbuckle - Crewed by the Damned

"Shut up your fucking bird"

Fergus Buttpump: "Hey BastardHead, I just found this awesome band you'll probably like."

BastardHead: "Sweet, what makes you think it's my thing?"

FB: "Well, what's your favorite band?"

BH: "Running Wild, everybody knows that"

FB: "Excellent, what's Running Wild sing about?"

BH: "Apart from the Masquerade through Victory albums when they had a loose concept series going, they tend to sing about stuff like literature and history, they have a strong interest in American history as well as evidenced by "White Buffalo" and "Little Big Horn" among others. They've touched on great historical figures like Napoleon, Lawrence of Arabia, and William Ki-"

FB: "THAT'S RIGHT! PIRATES!! RUNNING WILD SINGS ABOUT PIRATES AND SO DOES SWASHBUCKLE SO HERE TRY THEM OUT!"

People like Fergus should be caned and bands like Alestorm and the focus of this review, Swashbuckle, should stop being compared to a band that sounds nothing like them. We can all agree that pirates are awesome and really not all that horribly different in spirit from another one of metal's favorite lyrical subjects, Vikings, so there is nothing wrong with exploring this theme. It's a brutal, rough, nasty era of history well worth the metal treatment. What I don't understand is why so many metal bands can take other historical concepts like Vikings and the Crusades and create fantastic art to go along with it, while virtually nobody can handle pirates without delving into stupid Disney style "Yo ho ho!" gimmickry. I'm not going to let my annoyance with the constant misrepresentation sway my opinion negatively here, but I certainly will let the over reliance on a cheap gimmick, unmemorable songs, and Nightfall in Middle-Earth syndrome sway me.

The sad thing is that there is plenty of potential to be found on Crewed by the Damned, the Jersey boys here are actually really competent thrashers, specializing in a heavier-than-the-norm style of east coast thrash with lots of gang shouts and a penchant for melody akin to an angrier Anthrax with a monotonous quasi-death/thrash screamer as opposed to a melodic singer. Unfortunately, for all their natural skill, they suck horribly at writing anything worth remembering. Apart from the early Slayer inspired riff at :28 in "Upon the Spanish Main", the awesomely catchy chorus in "Drink Up" and the general feel of "Dead Men Tell No Tales", there isn't much to grab your attention. Basically every song goes in one ear and out the other, and this includes the interlude tracks scattered between damn near every song. Really, I complained about there being too many on Nightfall, but it's absolutely absurd here. Of the 18 tracks, only 8 of them contain any sort of metal song within them (the unspeakably stupid cover of the Spongebob Squarepants theme song doesn't count). That's roughly only 20 minutes of of metal on a 42 minute metal album. Literally over half of Crewed by the Damned is made up of folksy pirate melodies and stupid jokes. There's a two minute track dedicated to people yelling "YARR!", it would literally be amazing if I was joking right now (yes I know I used that line in my last review, it's more fitting here, sue me).

That's not to say that all of these folksy interludes are bad, but they just clutter up too much space. "Paradise Defined" carries a very nice melody and moves along quick enough, but "What a Ship Is" and "A Fool's Errand" just never fucking leave. I honestly wonder what they're doing here, they don't set any particular mood seeing as to how they clash so blatantly with the fast and aggressive thrash metal that constitutes the actual metal songs. Did the band just enjoy screwing around with acoustic instruments on the side and figured they could shoehorn a couple of their more nautical sounding ditties onto the album just so it wouldn't seem so short? Apart from padding the album length, the interludes serve no purpose whatsoever. Adding forgettable acoustic folk interludes to an album consisting of forgettable thrash tracks just makes the album forgettable in two different styles. Bottom line, Crewed by the Damned is stupid and forgettable. There are a few moments here and there that are okay and one track that actually manages to blend the thrash with the pirate sound instead of the two ideas taking separate spaces ("Drink Up"), but the rest is an unsalvageable mess of blandness that's as dry as toast and about as appetizing.

RATING - 33%

BITE SIZED: Morbid Angel - Illud Divinum Insanus

Occasionally, I won't have the ambition nor the material for a full review, and with this blog I now have the liberty to post BS reviews.  No no, not bullshit, but what I call "bite sized reviews".  Just quick little one offs on shit that I can't squeeze a full sized review out of.  But honestly, for the inaugural BS, it might as well stand for bullshit, as the quick shot I'm taking is at Morbid Angel.


A lot has been said on the internet about this turd.  Basically, all you need to know is that Vincent sounds like shit, the industrial elements are god awfully amateurish ("Too Extreme" features a drum track that may as well be a fucking metronome) and the real death metal tracks are bland and uninspired.  This is a huge letdown no matter how you look at it.  "Blades for Baal" is probably the least retarded track here, but that isn't saying much.  "Existo Vulgore" and "Nevermore" use the exact same riff, "10 More Dead" and "Beauty Meets Beast" go in one ear an out the other, "Profundis, Mea Culpa" is a boring industrial track that Strapping Young Lad ditched back during the recording of their first album, "I am Morbid" is hilarious for the attempt at a cock rock singalong chorus.  The main offenders here are "Destructos Vs. The Earth", which belongs on Duke Lion Fights the Terror and "Radikult" which is... just... fucking "Radikult".  I can't explain the horror that is "Radikult", it's like Marilyn Manson, straight up.  I was baffled when Cryptopsy released "Bemoan the Martyr", but this is something else entirely.  Check it out just for the sheer insanity of it all.

Their next album should be titled Just Kidding

Torture Squad - Pandemonium

 Fishing with MURDER

It is currently 3:30 in the morning, I'm sitting in bed in my underwear with my laptop, stricken with the most unenviable insomnia man has ever known. It was at this particular moment, no more than five minutes ago, that I decided that I have listened to Torture Squad's Pandemonium roughly four hundred zillion times in my lifetime, and everybody should do the same. Chances are that if you've ever heard of Torture Squad, it's because of this album. Need proof? Absolutely every single review for the band on the Metal Archives mentions this album, most referencing how awesome it is. It would literally be amazing if I was kidding.

Wanna know why everybody compares everything the band has ever done (both before and after this album) against this album? It's because it indisputably set the bar for what the band was capable of in terms of riff writing, songwriting, and intensity. The only time the band takes their foot off the gas is during "Requiem for the Headless Rider", the instrumental interlude that precedes the thrash-death-murder-killing-mania of the closer, "The Curse of Sleepy Hollow". I fully believe it's there out of necessity, the band probably wrote another modern thrash classic but the label refused to release it with so much insanity on one disc. They let Sadus get away with it once and the government really cracked down on thrashers since then. Almost every track featured has at least one standout segment that helps it plant itself firmly in your memory (the main riffs in "World of Misery" and "Pandemonium", the chorus of "Out of Control", the entirety of "Horror and Torture"). I believe that the album's main credit to its impressive longevity (in the era of the short-minded internet listeners) is its masterful blend of accessibility with brutality. Let's face it kids, this shit is catchy, and that's one of the reasons you can remember it so well.

Pandemonioum's sound is also perfectly fitting for its content. It has an old school death/thrash metal sound without seeming like it's trying to emulate its heroes. Instead of saying "Hey, this needs to sound like Beneath the Remains", they said "Hey, this needs to sound awesome", and thus they ended up with this overwhelming crunch that accents the punctuated riffing. The low end is a bit lacking in presence but it's hardly noticeable when the guitars are so thick themselves. Vocally the band is fairly predictable in the sense of which style (high growls or low growls) he's going to use at any given moment of a song, but the formula that Torture Squad sticks to just fucking works, and there's no need to fiddle around with something that completely slays as is. And when it comes to the formula, Pandemonium has managed what I once thought was impossible: to make an album that is really basic and formulaic down at its core, but creative and passionate enough to make every last song stand out on their own. It also helps that there are only 7 real full songs on the album so it never overstays its welcome, nor has time to run out of ideas.

This kicks ass, plain and simple. If solid, basic thrash is considered to be "meat and potatoes", then I declare Pandemonium to be "steak and fries". When you really try to analyze it, this isn't any groundbreaking innovation, it's just four dudes who decided to thrash their asses off and take the names of any posers in their wake. Fortunately for the listener, Torture Squad is smart and creative enough to really give each slab its own identity. There are no unmemorable blurs on this album, just straight through non-stop headbanging and moshing. Brutal death/thrash at its absolute finest. This didn't get popular on accident.


RATING - 95%

P.S. - The delay in posting this here was due to Blogspot getting all goofy and making my top bar disappear for a week.

Shadow of the Colossus - Shadow of the Colossus

HOW CAN YOU NOT SEE THROUGH DORMIN'S PLOY YOU FUCKTARD?

Not sure why, but I feel like I always have to defend myself when expressing the fact that I enjoy this album.  This strange xenophobia in metal fandom has been perplexing me for a while now.  I rode the deathcore bashing train at first but not just because everybody was doing it, but more because by dumb luck I'd only heard bad deathcore bands first.  It was kind of equatable to somebody listening to several bedroom bm artists and coming to the conclusion that black metal must suck.  Yeah, Emmure and Suffokate and Suicide Silence and whatnot are garbage but Burning the Masses and The Browning exist and they rock just fine.  Still, the fact that these Californian dudes in Shadow of the Colossus carry that patented overdone production job and sport a few breakdowns here and there means that they get lumped in as an abomination upon metal along with other bands who don't deserve the dubious honor amongst the equal amount who actually are.

So yes, the deathcore cliches are here, but they aren't as overdone or grating as the genre's worst.  For example, there's that production job I mentioned.  It seems like every deathcore band gets the same fucking producer because despite peeling away enough layers of the genre to find the true gems and beacons of creativity within it, I'm still hard pressed to find too many albums that don't carry the same general sound and tone.  It's a bit hard for me to describe, but the drums are pushed way up to the front and are prone to the cymbals clipping, the guitars have a beastly bottom end and an overwhelming amount of crunch, and the vocals are heavily prominent at the same time.  Basically, dynamics go out the window and every member fights for the spotlight.  It can get to be a bit much during the blasting sections at times but I feel it really helps add to the frantic pace at the same time.  The vocalist is pretty standard, switching between high growls and low roars, double layering the two styles a good amount of the time.

One of the reasons Shadow of the Colossus stands out (apart from being named after one of the best video games ever made (seriously, put down Call of Duty and go pick it up, like right the fuck now)) is because of how varied it is.  I'm a huge proponent of "find something you're good at and don't fuck around with it", but if you're good at quite a few different ideas, then by all means mix it up.  Shadow of the Colossus is good at a few different things, and each track really hammers that home.  There are blasty speedfest numbers in "Constructing Ultimate Destruction" and "Serve the Death Sentence", slower, grinding, breakdown heavy tracks like "Labor, the Enslaver" and "The Grove", and an overt and powerful melody that permeates through "Instrumental" and "Losing Sensation of Dimensions".  That melody is actually fairly prominent throughout most of the album, emulating a less technically proficient Decrepit Birth in lead style.  Unfortunately, no tracks really stand out as the best but the album doesn't really feel like one greater piece of work as a whole either.  The songwriting is certainly good, but I feel like they haven't truly broken out into their own style yet, and as such are stuck with the title of "Best Generic Band".  The talent is there, the ear for melody is there, but it's still missing something.

Despite my generally lukewarm sentiments, I do really like Shadow of the Colossus and would recommend them to both fans of deathcore and people like me who are just trying to explore this supposed bastard genre.  Everything is solid enough to be enjoyable but just a little bit under the threshold of being totally awesome.  I dunno, if you read this, try it out, and don't like it, at least play the game the band is named after.  My email is in my profile, I'm sure you'll want to thank me.

RATING - 78%

Znowhite - Act of God

Oh come on, baba don't you wanna go?

I'm gonna come clean with y'all here, this is the only release from the Chicagoan thrash quartet I've ever heard, and one of the only reasons being because of their hometown.  Being a part of the Chicago scene myself, I always found it baffling that the third largest city in the US has left such a small footprint on the annals of metal history.  I think the biggest band we've ever spawned was Trouble, plus a few underground favorites like Usurper and Judas Iscariot (I know the latter is from DeKalb, it's close enough and with a scene this bizarrely tiny I feel it's forgivable to stretch a bit), but the Illinois in general pales vastly in comparison to what areas like New York, Florida, and California have given us.  So I was beaming with hometown pride when I heard that Cyclone Temple wasn't always a fairly mediocre "long thrash" band, and was previously known as Znowhite.  And lemme tell ya, the name and cover art do a damn good job of hiding what is easily one of the top 10 brutal thrash releases of all time.

First off, the band gets a lot of press for being female fronted, but that aspect takes a caboose to the sheer intensity's engine.  When I say "brutal thrash", I think of stuff like Sadus, Kreator, or Sodom, and Znowhite is surely not as intensely over-the-top as these bands, but it's by far one of the heaviest and most vitriolic thrash releases of the late 80s (and possibly ever).  The fake-out ending of "War Machine" and the opener, "To the Last Breath" are great examples, boasting some of the most high octane riffage the genre has ever seen.  In fact, the only time I find myself disappointed with the guitar work is on the overlong and heart crushingly anticlimactic closer, "Something Wicked This Way Comes".  The slower, more twisted atmosphere that song attempts to conjure just falls flat in comparison to the 8 slabs of beastly thrash that precede it.  The band's strength lies in never taking the foot off the gas and just letting the songwriting and aggression manifest themselves through fast paced and cutting guitar work.  Znowhite reminds me of a slightly less sharp but infinitely grittier Anthrax, as the punchiness and hard hitting rhythms of the New York legends is definitely present here, but they sound as if they were filtered through a sandpaper loofah.  Really, the tightness of the rhythm section is really accented by the bone breakingly crunchy guitar tone.  It's like Extreme Aggression with added low end and at least two extra sets of balls.

Despite the overall pant-shitting intensity of the music and generally monotonous shouts of Nicole Lee, the songwriting here actually manages to be very accessible and catchy at the same time.  The incredibly 80s gang shouts in "Thunderdome", every riff in "Soldier's Creed", and the chorus of (once again) "To the Last Breath" are prime examples of moments that are not only incredibly awesome but also infectious.  Yeah yeah, the singer is a chick and the guitarist is black and affirmative action and yabba dabba doo, but none of those superficial aspects should be the reason Znowhite and Act of God get noticed.  This really holds it's own against almost everything else released around the same time, and that includes rippers like the aforementioned Extreme Aggression, Agent Orange, and Eternal Nightmare.  The only thing I dislike is how the leads kind of go in one ear and out the other (which isn't a huge problem since the riffs make up so much of why this album is enjoyable), and the bafflingly poor closing track.  Everything else is sublime, razor sharp, punishing riff writing coupled with enraged shouting that so perfectly captures everything that made thrash metal great in its heyday.  This is a must listen for any self respecting thrasher.

RATING - 89%

APOLOGY FOR SLOW UPDATES

Hey folks

Just wanted to let y'all know that I'm well aware I've been slacking with the updates.  Real life has kind of gotten in the way lately and I haven't had much computer time.  Things have been getting slightly less hectic lately, so I'm getting at least a few hours of free time a day now, so I'll do my best to spend some of that time cranking out updates.  I'm notorious for abandoning projects after they've been running for a very short amount of time, but I'm determined to keep this one going.  So don't y'all worry.  I've a few reviews in the pipeline, but just so you know I haven't been doing nothing, I'll have y'all know that there are planned Decrepit Birth, Destruction, Overkill, Devin Townsend, and my very first non metal review on the way, plus an editorial piece.  So fret not, though my fingers haven't been proving it, my brain has definitely been working.

Stay tuned!

~BastardHead

Deathchain - Deathrash Assault

There's a track called "Napalm Satan", that's all you need to know

I imagine that my first encounter with this album is similar to most death/thrash fans' first encounter.  "Deathchain?  Well that's a fucking awesome name.  What's the name of the album?  Deathrash Assault?  Hmmm, reminds me of Deathrace King.  What's that?  The album cover is a simple black and grey affair like the Crown album I thought of?  Great, we've got a clone on our hands here".  And upon first listen, that's exactly what I thought.  Looks like The Crown, sounds like The Crown, it must be a duck.  So I shelved this as another entertaining but ultimately hollow recreation of a greater band.

Years passed, and a chain of events lead me to dust this off and give it another run.  I don't know why, but absence truly does seem to make the heart grow fonder, because this is not the imitation that I remember it being.  What were once stock riffs have become aggressive monsters, what were once forgettable vocals have become versatile and malicious, and what were once forgettable Crown rip offs have become intense Deathchain rippers.  Not sure why, this is the same album, but it just doesn't have the ability to grab a listener upon first listen.  It takes some resilience to keep coming back to it I suppose, but once this thing latches, it doesn't let go.  And yes, my initial criticism does still ring true, this sounds like the Swedish speed junkies I love so much, complete with their trademark addiction to insane tempos and over the top lyrics.  That said, this connection is far from a bad thing here, as it doesn't sound like they're stealing a great idea as much as they just happened to have another great idea that happens to be similar to one that was already proven to work.

As I mentioned in the title, Deathrash Assault was predestined to kick ass before it was even released.  The reason for this is simply for this; there is a track entitled "Napalm Satan".  Read that again, say it out loud.  "Napalm Satan".  I dare you, I fucking dare you to come up with a better song, album, or band name than that.  Napalm.  Satan.  I love that name more than my hypothetical first born midget kid.  I thought Fleshgod Apocalypse or "Blitzkrieg Witchcraft" were gonna be hard to beat, but this is an entirely different level of awesome, kids.  Just saying it out loud puts an extra strand of hair on your chest.  There is not a single combination of two words that are more manly, more metal, more brutal, more insane, more anything than Napalm Satan.  I'm calling it right now, I'm calling dibs on Napalm Satan for the name of my band.  I'm actually willing to go as far as to say that, based on their first two records, Deathchain is the undisputed champion of two word song titles.  "Graveyard Witchery", "Chaos Wartech", "Venom Preacher", "Deathrash Legions", "Panzer Holocaust", "Rabid Vultures", there is no way that any of these songs could suck.  Deathchain have nailed the badass aesthetics of metal that we all love so much absolutely perfectly, these guys fly over the top and don't even think about looking back.  This is honestly comparable to Rocky IV.  The aesthetics are so over the top in their silliness yet at the same time meant to be taken 100% seriously, yet it's done so damn convincingly that it's hard not to like it.  Bands like White Wizzard make you roll your eyes, bands like Deathchain make you fucking thrash.

Now I'm well aware that I just spent an entire paragraph rambling about how great the mere titles of the songs are, so one is probably wondering when I'll get to the point and explain whether or not the tracks behind the titles are equally awesome.  Honestly, these songs could be titled "Tea Party in Fairyland" or "Dirk Schlacter Sleepover" and they'd still absolutely fucking slay.  The only time the tempo goes below blistering is during "Panzer Holocaust" in favor of a bizarrely bouncy chugging pattern for the verses, complete with equally bouncy vocal patterns, and during the haunting bridge of "Valley of the Corpses".  Despite these sections deviating from the overall theme of speed, intensity, and speed (with a little bit of speed thrown in for good measure), they are actually welcome breathers as opposed to confusing flow breakers.  I believe the reasons these breaks are made aren't actually because the band wanted them to be there for songwriting purposes, but instead because no fans would survive to the end of the record without them.  Deathrash Assault never lets up, and this is the record's main strength since this shit is practically unstoppable when firing on all cylinders.  The first seven tracks are all absolute modern death/thrash classics as far as I'm concerned, and six out of those seven run at an average pace of 8675309 bpm.  I hate to keep comparing this band to The Crown, but I have to point out that they have not only managed to play a similar style with equal ferocity, but they were even able to replicate the ability to make their songs catchy as hell.  There are a lot of gang shouts utilized throughout the record, which is kind of strange with harsh vocals but it makes certain sections of the music stand out.  Check out the choruses to "Venom Preacher" or "Graveyard Witchery", or the bridge of "Deathrash Legions" and tell me that the thrash trope doesn't work better here than most pure thrash bands could ever hope to make it work.  This could also be due in part to Rotten's incredibly versatile vocals, ranging from deep death growls to the Schmier-esque rasp that he seems to favor.  He does occasionally tend to drift into a range that makes him sound a lot like Colony era Anders Friden, which typically isn't the best sound, but he manages to make it fit with the thrashing intensity that dominates the record.

Death/thrash fans who haven't heard this are definitely missing out.  From what I've been able to gather, the band has taken a turn for the more death metal side of things since Rotten left after this album, and it seems many fans aren't satisfied.  While I haven't heard anything post-2005, I can understand why fans could be disappointed, as the high octane thrash is definitely the band's forte if Deathrash Assault is anything to go by.  If there's anything wrong with this album, it's that "Morbid Mayhem" is a bit of a filler track and the album as a whole doesn't seem to click instantly, and therefore you may run the risk of not getting caught up initially.  Maybe I'm just a retard though, as everything his is as catchy as it is brutal, so who knows?  Either way, definitely check this out, and be sure to start every morning with a healthy dose of "Napalm Satan".


RATING - 92%