Anybody do any Death Metal reviews here yet? Grindcore? Metalcore? Deathcore?
Anybody do any Death Metal reviews here yet? Grindcore? Metalcore? Deathcore?
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dude, read. search. retard.
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Dude. Fuck. You. Fucktard.
hehe, i've been told.
Hahaa! see! All good in fun round here. Cheers!
wanker.
chip chip cheerios OLD BOY
Hello Marko.I am partial to a bit of death metal from time to time.Who you digging?.As far as i know there are no death metal reviews in here.Why not get get the ball rolling yourselfOriginally Posted by Marko Cain
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From the vaults: Heathen – Breaking The Silence (1987)
Heathen’s ‘Breaking The Silence’ easily demands a place on a list of ‘Greatest Metal Debut Records’. Part of the second or third wave of Bay Area Thrash (depending on your view), Heathen injected some progressive and more technical elements into the mould several years before Megadeth perfected in on ‘Rust In Peace’ and Annihilator ran it into the stratosphere. It’s heavy, it’s (very) fast, and it’ll rip your head off if you play it at maximum volume. Indeed opener ‘Death By Hanging’ is one of the truly great thrash songs and displays just how adept the guitar partnership of Lee Altus and Doug Piery was – a sort of Tipton/Downing of thrash, laying down some epic riffage and histrionic soloing which was far ahead of their peers.
Yet whilst perhaps making leaps musically, lyrically it was a different story. We have here songs about goblins, being buried alive, and nuclear warfare, all fairly standard fodder for ‘80s metal. Were it not for vocalist Dave Godfrey’s considerable talents – he sounds somewhere between Joey Belladona and Rob Halford – this might be more of a problem, but the juxtaposition with the musical ambition is noticeable, especially when combined with the typical thrash band problem of writing overlong choruses (hello, Exodus). But you can forgive the foibles in the face of the sheer bloody power of this record, a power enhanced by Ronnie Monstrose’s ropey production, which leaves the drums buried but adds to the sense of a band of hedonists coming to take your soul. The Maiden-esque title track is a monster of a song with a crusher of a chorus riff, whilst on ‘Pray For Death’ Heathen demonstrated an ability to trade punches (or rather open palm E riffs) with any of the Bay Area brats. It’s juggernaut crushing, rampaging stuff. You can even forgive them the cover of Sweet’s ‘Set Me Free’, which is the sonic equivalent of catching your dad in stockings and suspenders.
Heathen are an unheralded metal band, and ‘Breaking The Silence’ deserves to be celebrated in a manner similar to Testament’s early work, or that of Annihilator. To these ears, however, Heathen have gotten better as time has progressed – 2009s ‘The Evolution of Chaos’ was a career high, a record that continued the weld crushing heaviness to epic ambitions in a way which was hinted at here.
Bang the head that will not bang!!!
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There is a LOT of thrash metal reviewed here, and other brands of heavier. metal.
Off the top of my head, I remember reviewing Arch Enemy, Hate Eternal, Katatonia, Chthonic, Suicide Silence, At The Gates......search through.
There will be an Obiturary review coming in the near future - now I know someone will read Death Metal reviews I'll do some. If you have any request, I'm more than happy to oblige (providing I own the album in question.....)
I have two that i am guessing you will own.
Grave - Back From the Grave
Death - Scream Bloody Gore
Cheers.
You've just reminded me that there is a review of Death's 'The Sound of Persevernce' in this thread, too.
I'll add the requests to my list......
Great album yes.Do you have back from the grave?
I have something by Grave - I'll have to check if it's the right one.
Marko Cain, I should add that there are also reviews on In Solitude, Dark Tranquility, Darkest Hour, Skeletonwitch, and Black Breath in here, which might float your boat.
Ministry – Relapse
It’s always hard to hear once great bands getting old, those who were once innovators treading water. Ministry – alongside or (if we’re being honest) slightly before NIN – paved the way for industrial metal and, more importantly, delivered up some truly classic and EXCITING music in the late ‘80s and (most of) the ‘90s. ‘Relapse’ – the title is a beautifully sick joke on Al Jourgensen’s own past and recent promise that the band were no more – is the first Ministry record since 2007. It is, typically, a heavy record which paints anger in shades far more colourful than metal’s steel-grey: keyboards, samples, programming and other audio warfare complement the guitars, offsetting and unnerving throughout. But in many places it feel rushed and under-developed – strong riffs are not surrounded by the music to maximise their impact and, for all their anger, the lyrics don’t contain the wit, or the melodic prowess, to match Jourgensen’s best work. At their best Ministry were dark and poetic, harrowing but inspiring – ‘Relapse’ only shows us the tunnel, not the light.
But it is no disaster. The presence of Prong’s Tommy Victor ensures that the guitars a furious throughout, and the title track is the aural equivalent of sticking your head in a giant food blender. Elsewhere ‘Blackout’ – an industrial take on country rock – is an evil-grinning genius of a song, and ‘Kleptocracy’ and ’99 Percenters’ serve up anthems of FTW proportions. A particularly frantic cover of S.O.D’s ‘United Forces’ also adds plenty of bite but it – alongside ‘Ghouldiggers’ rant at the music industry – serve to make odd additions to what is a political album at heart.
Given Jourgensen’s near death experience in 2010 (due to a ruptured ulcer) any work we get from him is a bonus and should serve to remind fans of heavy music how damn lucky we have been to count him as one of us for 25 years – like Trent Reznor, like Motorhead, and like Killing Joke, Ministry will leave a void which no-one can fill when they finally are no more. ‘Relapse’ will not be a record for which they are remembered. But it contains moments of sonic terrorism which hint at former glories and remind us why this band ripped the world a new one in the first place.
katina (07-31-2012)
From the vaults: Aerosmith – Permanent Vacations (1987)
The ‘80s killed many a great ‘70s band. Those skinny-hipped, groupie destroyin’, cocaine bingin’ rock ‘n’ roll circuses of the post Summer of Love era became boufon sportin’, shoulder-pad flaunting, flaccid and flabby limp-dick parodies of their former selves in the decade of reverb. Aerosmith certainly fell victim to many of their peers crimes – the Toxic Twins cleaned up, got all philosophical (well, sorta) and realised that a band was a business. And businesses need hits, hits which Tyler and Perry could no longer deliver: enter a raft of outside songwriters to tease out the benjamins from the kids who loved the Sunset Strip sound (and their parents).
1987’s ‘Permanent Vacation’ was Aerosmith’s second attempt at an ‘80s comeback after the career low of 1985’s woeful ‘Done With Mirrors’. Re-recording ‘Walk This Way’ with Run DMC a year later certainly garnered them some momentum, and ‘Permanent….’ coupled the R’n’B goodtime of the band’s yesteryear to those shinny bought-in hooks. In truth, there’s nothing wrong with wanting your record to be a success – but what has always stuck in the craw of many Aerosmith fans is the fact that this second stage of the band’s career was so calculated that it robbed much of the music of feel and authenticity (how else do we explain the appearance of Bon Jovi’s production team – Bruce Fairburn and Bob Rock – to oversee the ageing band’s makeover for the poodle rock era?)
And to these ears, at least, it is the production which is the problem. Riffs are buried in the mix, there is an absence of soloing, and the overall guitar sound lacks the grit and gristle which made this band cool. Take uber-hit ‘Dude (Looks Like A lady)’ as an example – it’s more brass than sass. This, then, was a blues band in some shinny new clothes, and on the likes of ‘St. John’ and ‘Hangman’s Jury’, the pumped up nature of the production is overbearing and renders an art form at its best in an understated form chronically artificial. But having said that, if I’d been a 13 year old kid in 1987 I’d much have preferred to listen to this than Bon Jovi or Whitesnake – ‘cos ‘Smith had a couple of tricks left up their sleeves. The blues of ‘Rag Doll’ has a floating presence than none of the bozos on Sunset could have pulled off, and for all the poppier hooks ‘Heart’s Done Time’ really is the bluesy sort of funk that this band made its name on. You try to fight the hook in ‘Simoriah’, but it’ll get you nonetheless. Even ‘Angel’ – so soppy it sounds like it should soundtrack a montage of Tom Cruise films – is one of Aerosmith’s better power ballads.
Like it or not, for Aerosmith to survive something had to change. If ‘Girl Keeps Coming Apart’ was the best that Tyler/Perry could deliver, it’s no surprise that outside songwriters were suggested. But ‘Permanent….’ had its moments. The rejuvenation to pop-rock superstardom which had begun with ‘…Mirrors’ and would peak with ‘Pump’ had flounced its way to mediocrity six years later in the overbearingly flabby ‘Get A Grip’ (which, in ‘Angel’, ‘Crazy’ and ‘Cryin’ featured three versions of the same radio friendly unit shifter). They may have been sober, but they were still colourful – even if those colours were in more restrained hues than they had been in the band’s heyday. ‘Permanent….’ was an important part of hard rock in 1987. As important in its own way as ‘Hysteria’ or ‘1987’, it at least had a merit which those albums didn’t have – it was not the signature album of the band that made it.
From the vaults: Katatonia – Viva Emptiness (2003)
The evolution of Katatonia has been truly remarkable. Paving the way for the hybrid of Death & Doom metal at the turn of the ‘90s they – alongside Paradise Lost, Anathema and Paradise Lost – showed how extreme metal could be more than just heavy or shocking, but could connect with the most fragile of emotions and tackle the most extreme boundaries of the human condition. Making a series of albums which pushed metal into new territories and challenged even the most hardy of listeners to bear the weight of their despair, the end of the decade saw the band slowly change direction to something altogether more serene. ‘Viva Emptiness’ was in many ways the culmination of this process. Labels don’t really apply to innovators, but this record channelled prog, alternative rock, electronica and post metal into something darkly hewn and utterly, utterly beautiful. The aural equivalent of a sparse, winter barren Scandanavian landscape, Katantonia has quite a trick up their sleaves: songs. Great, great songs which were distinctive but well matched and impactful, playing to a common aesthetic, channeling dark, chiselled emotions through fragile melodies and creating an album which was far more than the sum of its parts. What the band eschewed in extremity they certainly made up for in power.
A track by track guide would only serve to demonstrate how quickly I would run out of superlatives. ‘Sleeper’ is metal’s granite spliced with The Cure, The Cult and Echo & The Bunnymen, whilst ‘Criminals’ is latter-era Soundgarden jamming with Jane’s Addiction. But this was not alt.rock trip. ‘Wealth’ and ‘Walking By A Wave’ demonstrated that Katatonia could still do heavy when the desire took them: on ‘One Year From Now’ – an ode to lover’s aching despair – they showed that they could do heavy in the other sense of the term, too. And yet it is never overbearing. This is a band devoid of histrionics and revelling in tone and atmospherics to create depth. Indeed, Jonas Ranske’s sparse, matter of fact vocal delivery bristles with emotion precisely because he is not overselling the sentiment of his crisp lyrics. Coupled to a band who can move from cold beauty to sonic warfare on the flip of a coin, looping swirl upon swirl of mood without ever losing the song and you have something very special indeed. It is almost cinematic in its scope.
Few bands can do epic in 4 minutes. Fewer still can push the boundaries of a genre. Katatonia have done so twice, and if a list of the most innovative metal bands of the past 20 years were to be compiled, their name would have to be near the top. Only a handful of bands are this moving.
From the vaults: Dokken – Tooth & Nail (1984)
Dokken clearly had something, but I’m fucked if I can work out what it was. Glancing at the band mugshots in the linear notes it clearly wasn’t looks. And within ten minutes of listening to ‘Tooth & Nail’ it is also apparent that it was not songs. Indeed, this was a band who had clearly borrowed WASP’s copy of Reader’s Digest’s ‘Book of How To Write Songs’ – indeed, the likes of ‘Heart’s Heartless’ cling so feebly to the rules of songwriting rather than pushing them you wonder how much they paid the A&R guy who signed them. Nor did Dokken have a charismatic/charming/funny in a ‘jack the lad’ kinda way singer – Don Dokken’s voice possessed all the spark of damp cardboard, and his clean vocals sounded odd in front of a rock band.
‘Ahhhh’ I here you say, ‘but Dokken has axe-wielding demi-God George Lynch, he was their X-Factor’. Mmmmmm. Only an idiot would deny that Mr Lynch was near the front of the line for shredding abilities, or that his speedy and colourful soloing and riffage added plenty of meat to these most skeletal of songs – witness the snarly riff to ‘Don’t Close Your Eyes’ or the sheer raucous power of the title track to hear what it was which set Dokken aside as a more metallic cousin to their Hair Band peers. But speed and technique are one thing. Melody and memorability another. Of the Sunset Strip trio who led the ‘80s guitar goddathon, Eddie Van Halen and Randy Rhodes played on classic, classic songs. Lynch didn’t. Unless you genuinely think that ‘When Heaven Comes Down’ is any approaching a classic.
And yet, despite all of this I love ‘Tooth & Nail’. Every unoriginal, ploddingly mid-paced, ‘lets take a tour of ground which had been over-ploughed’ second of it. Few records make me more likely to dance around a room like no-one’s watching than this one. Like I said, they had something……
From the vaults: Bruce Dickinson – Skunkworks (1996)
It was always going to be a brave move: one of the High Priests of metal going all arty rock on us. But that’s the problem with success, isn’t it? Artists face such resistance if they do anything which steps outside of the boundaries of what they became successful for. On its releases in 1996 ‘Skunkworks’ was roundly panned or abruptly ignored with the kind of intolerance which metal fans and press excel themselves at. But should it really have been that surprising? Much of Dickinson’s solo work up to that point was a significant departure from Maiden – ‘Balls To Picasso’ and ‘Accident at Birth’ are more rock than metal, no? ‘Skunkworks’ just felt like a man who had become restless with his own genre taking experimentation further.
And for the most part, it works. The trippy blues of ‘Meltdown’ has a real bite drive by Dickinson’s vocal; the loose and pulsating soft/heavy dynamic of ‘Octavia’ oozes groove; and the thudding presence of ‘Innerspace’ is remarkable and uplifting in a way which only really good rock – as opposed to metal – can be. At times spacey and proggy – witness ‘Back From The Edge’ and the pink Floyd pretensions of ‘Strange Death In Paradise’ – it still possess enough spike and edge to keep fans of the abrasive engaged. Whilst there are certainly weak moments – ‘I Will Not Accept The Truth’ is too teasingly Maiden to be satisfying – this is the work of an artist experimenting with a new line up and forging forwards into pastures new.
But there is a niggle. There is a sense that, for all the protestations of artistic integrity, this was the sound of a man jumping ship at a time when metal was in the commercial doldrums. At times this is so self-conscientiously un-metallic – right down to the guitar tones employed – that it feels somewhat contrived for the band wagon. The post-grunge of ‘Space Race’, for example, feels geared towards the Stone Temple Pilots/ Soundgarden audience. Whether there’s truth in that or not, it didn’t work, and even Dickinson wasn’t convinced with his new clothes. Two years later 1998’s ‘Chemical Wedding’ would be the heaviest thing he ever put his name too (including Maiden) – make of that what you will……
In truth, none of that matters. This is an underrated record full of rich and expansive songs which deserve to be enjoyed on their own merit. If only Iron Maiden would make room for these kind of sounds they might finally make that prog album they’ve been half-heartedly gearing up for since re-forming in 1999.
Bloodbath – The Fathomless Mastery (2008)
Album number 3 from Bloodbath – an extreme metal ‘supergroup’ featuring Mikael Akerfelt (Opeth) and Jonas Renske (Katatonia) – is Death Metal the way it used to be: gnarly, dirty, and not taking itself too seriously in an endless pursuit of complexity. ‘The Fathomless Mastery’ captures the sound of those early DM pioneers who picked up the gauntlet thrown down by thrash and just came out swinging with boulder-bollock sized riffs. It’s the musical equivalent of a classic horror flick, and it’ll make your kid sister shit herself. Which is what Death Metal should do. Oh, and it’s also rather good.
Opener ‘At The Behest of Their Death’ is a melee of power chords, blast beats, atmospherics and NWOBHM arrangements which announces that they’ll be no fretboard staring laser-guided complexity here – the heaviness comes in great slabs of granite chiselled guitars fit to send the initiated into fits of headbanging fury. ‘Process of Disillumination’ is twisted metal blasted into the ether, the sound of five geezers building a battleship in a shed. If your neck survives ‘Hades Rising’ – a monster of a song which gives way to a sort of pseudo form of prog – then that eternal teenager in you obviously upped and left. Big, fat juicy riffs are welded to perfect dynamics which never switch and turn so much as to lose the song and allows the band to make 3-4 minute songs sound epic.
Lyrically, its all ghoulish horror and faux-Satanism. But it fits the nightmarish aesthetic perfectly and is complemented by the art work – a serious of souls twisted in purgatory. You’ve heard it all before, but sometimes familiarity adds flavour – ‘The Fathomless Matery’ is – crucially – a DM album that is as fun as it is evil. And that makes it as much a rock ‘n’ roll record as a DM one.
Heart of A Coward – Hope & Hindrance
Well, well, this is a surprise. A big, shinny, all-my-birthdays-have-come-at-once kind of surprise. An extreme metal/ post rock band which realises that hooks, melodies and groove are important because they hold songs together and pull viewers through the madness of such an expansive aesthetic. There is some serious groove here, a rhythmic sort of hookiness which makes extreme metal’s torture more captivating. If this debut is anything to go by, HOAC may one day produce a classic.
Take ‘Killing Fields’ for example. Heavy and scarily aggressive, it is nonetheless washed over with electronica and melodies which render it at once desperate and beautiful. There is a perfect balance of beauty – the effervescent, delicate lament of ‘Light’ or the luscious guitar of ‘All Eyes To The Sky’ – and beast here – the hardcore fury of ‘We Stand As One’ or the jealousy-inducing-brilliance of ‘Around A Girl (In 80 Days)’. The root of the sound is Meshuggah and the slew of recent Djent bands – downtuned, bowel collapsing riffage which solders extreme metal to hardcore through songs that flip between time changes like a desperate fish suffocating out of water. It is a testament to this band’s songwriting capacities that that spasmodic aesthetic is so captivating.
So, the future is bright for Heart Of A Coward. You can’t help thinking that if they push the post-rock aspects of the sound over the metaliic brutality they will be at their most powerful and affecting – it is so refreshing to hear a heavy band who can push beyond aggression into the ethereal. I doubt they’ll be a better debut this year.
From the vaults: Ozzy Osbourne – No Rest For The Wicked (1988)
When it was first released in 1988 this record was clearly conceived as something of a creative rejuventation for the double OO. Hot new young guitar slinger Zakk Wylde (yes, it really was that long ago) promised to be a much needed shot in the arm, and combined with the rekindled presence of the songwriting talents of Bob Daisey, ‘No Rest….’ Was clearly intended to build on the commercial momentum of 1986’s ‘The Ultimate Sin’ by presenting Ozzy’s ever expanding audience with a platter of decent tunes dressed in the stylistic trappings of the middle of the decade. As such it was something of a mixed bag: a record which was not as distinctly ‘Ozzy’ as we might like, but was, nevertheless, crackling with energy and bite.
Wylde himself stepped into the very large shoes of Jake E Lee with gusto. He plays here like a man who’s been given the opportunity of a lifetime and knows it. Almost 25 years later we have become ‘accustomed’ (read: bored witless) with his busy style and pinch harmonics, but here he was at his most focussed. ‘Miracle Man’ is something of a lost Ozzy classic, and on it Wylde delivered both his best riff and best solo. Elsewhere he manages to provide the highlights to songs which are often fairly prosaic, soloing with a control he lost in subsequent years – listening to ‘Devil’s Daughter’, ‘Breaking All The Rules’ and ‘Fire In The Sky’ you realise why he put the hard rock world on notice. His playing – combined with evil little ditties like ‘Demon Alcohol’, ‘Crazy Babies’ (which still sounds HUGE), and ‘Breaking All The Rules’ – which is just a great ‘80s rock tune – makes for a record which features some incredibly underrated moments in Ozzy’s canon. You can’t help but wish that some of these tunes would get some live rotation.
But there are plenty of clunkers, too. Continuing a process begun on ‘The Ultimate Sin’, we get Ozzy the cartoon character on ‘Bloodbath In Paradise’ (a sort of ‘Mr Crowley’ for the shoulder pad age) and ‘Tattooed Dancer’, whilst the sprinkling of Sunset Strip’s popisms on ‘Devil’s Daughter’ is a lot more schlock than rock. But the biggest problem is the production. Lord knows what Keith Olden and Roy Thomas Baker were thinking, but ‘No Rest…’ feels stiff, rigid and cumbersome, a treble happy affair which robs these songs of much of their power by burying Randy Castilo and Bob Daisy so low in the mix and making the whole thing feel tinny – with a frontman as charismatic and warm as Ozzy, that’s a real crime.
Even the biggest Ozzy fan would have to admit that the post Randy years yielded records which were patchy (if loveable) at best. To these ears the Jake E Lee era Ozzy records were superior to the Zakk Wylde era ones. Although both ultimately suffer from the same problems – muddy production, a frontman who was more preoccupied with booze than melody, and a large dose of filler, there’s just more attitude, more bite on the material that Jake delivered. But for all of its flaws, at least ‘No Rest…’ is still a rock ‘n’ roll record, perhaps the last rock ‘n’ roll record Ozzy would deliver for almost a quarter of a century (until ‘Scream’). 1991’s ‘No More Tears’ certainly sounded better, but it was a slick, polished and clinical affair created cynically with an eye on the mainstream with a series of ‘hit making’ songwriters and big time ballads drafted in to boot. In those circumstances artists inevitably lose some of their bite. Treated as what it is – a good time record from a good time guy – ‘No Rest…’ still stands up all of these years later.
Seshmeister (07-23-2012),Terry (03-21-2013),vandeleur (07-23-2012)
Stlll Zakk's best work to this day.
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Excellent, I couldn't agree more.
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Cheers, guys.
I think alongside Megadeth Ozzy is the 'most reviewed' artist in this thread. Weird, because it was never intended that way.
In terms of guitar playing or the overall quality of the album? He probably solidified his sound on 'No More Tears', but I think the overall quality of material on that record is poor (especially in the secon half).
I'm not really qualified to split hairs on the guitar playing side of things, but in terms of 'best Zakk Wylde album' I'd opt for the first Black Label Society record 'Sonic Brew' (which I'll be reviewing soon, so I won't say much more). 'Pride & Glory' had some decent stuff on it (seem to remember that there is a monster guitar solo on the end of one tune, the name of which escapes me) but Zakk's voice wasn't quite strong enough to carry those Southern Rock tunes off. Shame (although I still enjoy it).
I honestly am not afmiliar enough with too many Black Label tunes...but for me anyway, I enjoy Zakk's playing on no Rest more than anything else I've ever heard from him.
Im not FAMILIAR either....dyslexic moment.
Don´t worry, I didn´t notice and I also make similar mistakes
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I always thought NRFTW had guest undercover backing vocals by Mike A. Anyone? Anyone?
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Is that true?
I think Flo and Eddie from Frank Zappa´s from the Mothers of Invention did the backing vocals, but someone called Michael Sadler also.
Could be this Michael ?? , not Mike. A.
I found this and I copied it, from an interview to Michael Sadler from SAGA
If someone wants I will post the link.
Michael: "I have always enjoyed singing on other things. They give me a chance to sing differently than I normally would. Here’s something left-field for you: I did all the backing vocals for Ozzy Osbourne’s No Rest For The Wicked."
CRR: Really? Wow. Why did he choose you?
Michael: "What happened was we were in the studio in LA next to the studio Keith Olsen was using (Olsen and Roy Thomas Baker co-produced Wicked). They were recording 'Wildest Dreams' and (Olsen) said, 'You have to help me.' I said, 'What’s wrong?' It turns out on the Ozzy record, he used two guys from THE TURTLES. He said it was too 'nice' for Ozzy. He recorded their vocals for two daysw, 12 tracks on each song."
CRR: What did you think when you heard the final product?
Michael: "It’s great. I just thought it was fun to sing lyrics to 'Devil’s Daughter' and 'Crazy Babies'.
binnie (07-24-2012),DLR Bridge (07-24-2012)
Black Tusk – Passage Through Purgatory
You look at the artwork and think: ‘it’s going to sound like Mastodon’. And in a sense it does – metal in a non-staccato way, devoid of histrionics and much-machismo, the sort of primal, elemental metal of the beast laid bare. But – like fellow Georgians Kylesa and Baroness – Black Tusk offer a far more sparse and spartan aesthetic than metal’s premier behemoths. Indeed, there are no prog leanings, complex arrangements or quantum mechanics time signatures here. This is a sludgey, punk infused take on stoner metal rooted in the dystopian noise rock of post punk, a sandblasted skin approach to music which leaves the sound stripped to its most barren. And it rules.
Fuck labels. Fuck everything. This is rock ‘n’ roll – HEAVY rock ‘n’ roll – at its most concentrated form, neat anarchy if you will, and devoid of artifice. The sheer savagery of the wall of sound which propels ‘Mind Moves Something’ is terrifying, and the range of influences channelled here is staggering. ‘Falling Down’ sounds like Karma To Burn would if they’d smoked crack instead of pot, whilst ‘Fixed In Ice’ is as indebted to the hardcore stylings of Minor Threat and Bad Brains as it is Neurosis, turning on a series of switchblade-to-the-face time changes into a shit kicking melee. With a raw production which captures the live in the studio sound with finesse, this is a band which those who love the fluidity that comes with playing in a three piece will relish. Oh, and there’s enough bottom end to rival a Kardashian.
There are so many vibrant and vital bands emerging from the underground in the modern metal scene – so much sonic and emotional depth – that you can’t help but think that we’re experiencing a golden age. Black Tusk are never going to change the world in a commercial sense. But they have made a significant contribution to a movement which is injecting considerable depth back into heavy music. Their three vocalist approach renders their sound somewhat unfocussed (and you can’t help but think that hiring one guy with a great voice would add another string to an already lethal bow), but this sludgey brew has a real kick to it.
That's what I love about this place. All of my guesses and curiosities are either confirmed or debunked in no time at all! It was Crazy Babies and Breaking All The Rules that I thought had a Mike Anthony register and tonal quality to the back ups. He too had said that he enjoyed doing guest vocal appearances here and there but uncredited. He did back ups on Autograph's album and I think he even may have been mentioned in the credits, so to me, the Ozzy assist seemed, possible. Until now.
katina (07-24-2012)
I found the original interview where Michael Sadler confirms he did the backing vocals on NRFTW (in the half of the interwiew) , it was posted in 2006, amazing. I will copy the link:
http://www.bravewords.com/news/48445#.UA6mSGHOUmU
DLR Bridge (07-24-2012)
From the vaults: Slayer – Diabolus In Musica (1998)
Slayer’s reputation as ‘the AC/DC of thrash’ is a recently earnt prize ,a paen to their seeming – or at least reputed – refusal to change (or ‘evolve’, depending on your opinion) their sound. In truth, however, it is a lie, or at least the appropriation of a failure into a success. For during the ‘90s Slayer learnt the hard way that both critics – and their fans – would not let them evolve: if 1990’s epic ‘Seasons In The Abyss’ was the culmination of a distinctive sound they had begun to hone 7 years earlier on ‘Show No Mercy’ the records that followed – 1994’s ‘Divine Intervention’ and 1998’s ‘Diabolus In Musica’ – showed a band treading water and grasping for a new sound, respectively. The fact that so few of the songs on those records make up the band’s recent setlists is an indication of how poorly they were received.
That waywardness was not unique to Slayer. In the post Cobain world most of metal’s stalwarts didn’t know the path to choose. Maiden were playing to smaller and smaller audiences as they pushed their trad metal sound into progressive territories, Sabbath had lost their legendary status to all but a few stoners before their reunion in 1997, and even the other members of thrash’s ‘Big 4’ were wavering creatively – Metallica and Megadeth tried to reinvent themselves as ‘rock’ rather than metal with ‘Load’ and ‘Cryptic Writings’, and Anthrax were a wounded beast, a half band releasing a grunged up ‘Stomp 442’ and ‘Volume 8’ to a public which wasn’t listening. The merits of those albums aside, the point remains that success had allowed the space to grow, and survival depended on it (or so it seemed). And so ‘Diabolus In Musica’ sported a new ‘Slayer’ logo, and saw the band complementing their sonic arsenal with more atmospheric sounds, slower tempos and nods to metal nu and industrial.
Ask a Slayer fan about this record now and they’ll wince. They’ll remember the band co-opting bouncy-bouncy riffs into their sound on the nu-metal clunker ‘Stain Of Mind’, or writing a song about rugby – ‘Scrum’ – which was presumably conjured up on an etch-a-sketch. They will also lament the lack of speed throughout the record, or remember that those songs which did resemble ‘THE SLAYER SOUND’ – ‘Screaming From The Sky’ – were oddly charmless. And all of this would be true. But approached with an open mind, there is a great deal of merit to this record. You want heavy? ‘In The Name Of God’ delivers in, but it is sllllllooooowww rather than fast. You want twisted? ‘Death’s Head’ – possibly the most underrated of all Slayer’s songs – is an eerie post-punk take on the mentality of a serial killer, an epic lyric wrapped around a rumbling riff – this is no comic book evil, but a mature exploration of humanity’s dark side. Equally disturbing is ‘Desire’, a tingling, tortuous tease of evil which demonstrated that even when they weren’t doing bludgeon, Slayer could do powerful. Best of all though is ‘Overt Enemy’, an effect laden vocal and sparse, jam like music delivering evil in another, almost formless way.
The problem is that these songs do not really gell with the more traditional Slayer blazers – closer ‘Point’, the unrelentingly heavy ‘Perversions Of Pain’ and frenzied ‘Bitter Peace’, which features a riff which could cut flesh from the bone – rendering ‘Diabolus In Musica’ an unbalanced affair. Those songs are all the torrential hellfire you’d expect from Slayer, hardcore infused thrash amped up by beefy production and Paul Bostaph’s remarkable drumming, the sort of piss your pants metal which Slayer made their name on. But sitting alongside those moments of experimentation they speak of a band not quite ready – or not quite brave enough – to push beyond their trademark. And if Slayer should not be any one thing, that thing is half arsed.
On 2001’s ‘God Hates Us All’ Slayer had put all of the experimentation behind them (a few nods to Slipknot aside) and gone back to their face-ripping heavy tradition. Even when Dave Lombardo returned for 2006’s ‘Christ Illusion’, however, there was a sense that the law of diminishing returns was setting in. For although those records were damn fine affairs, having a classic sound means that people only want to hear the classics, regardless of how good the new stuff is – Motorhead have made half a dozen records as strong as ‘Ace of Spades’, but no-one yearns for them. Slayer are now in the same situation. Masters of their craft, they are left to exist on yesterday’s glories – if only their fans would let them change. No one would put ‘Diablous In Musica’ at the top of their ‘favourite Slayer’ album lists – but it stands as a testament of a band would can do far, far more than they are credited with.
SLAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYEEEEEEEEEE EEEEEEEER!!!!!
More Slayer reviews to come.........
From the vaults: Anathema – The Silent Enigma (1995)
The evolution of Britain’s Anathema from gothic-doom pioneers to prog-metal masters has been as unique as it is fascinating. Starting off life in the ‘90s pushing extreme metal – alongside Katatonia – into more expansive, orchestral and cinematic soundscapes by welding the torturous doom riffage of Candlemass and St. Vitus to the gothic tinges of early Paradise Lost and My Dying Bride created a sound which was cavernous. It’s not a chirpy listen, but it is an uplifting one – a bitter sorbet to cleanse the soul through an exploration of sadness, solitude, bitterness, and anguish. Thematically, it treats the futility of human ambition in the face of the world, the desire to submit to quiet desperation in moments when the human condition seems unbearable in an antagonistic universe.
That is a bold musical ambition. But Anathema’s treatment of it is never overbearing. It is staggering to think that this was only Anathema’s second record and their first with Vincent Cavanagh on vocals. Few bands this young are this confident, or capable of balancing so much music into one coherent aesthetic, an aesthetic in which the hypnotic delicacy of ‘Cerulean Twilight’ sits alongside the sprawling – almost formless – beat of ‘Sunset of Age’ without contradiction. It’s the balance that stops it descending into self-parody. Witness ‘Restless Oblivion’. A Sabbath riff twisted by a prog arrangement creates a seamless grandeur – which never quite teeters over into melodrama – of metal’s beauty and beast together in an exploration of the darker side of human feeling. But for all the heaviness, for the Cavanagh brothers songs have always come first – whatever the urge to showcase, whatever the strength of the riffs, melodies take pride of place. How many other extreme metal bands would produce ‘…Alone’, a hauntingly simple, almost medieval choral (sung perfectly by guest vocalist Rebecca Wilson) which showcases that extremity doesn’t have to be needlessly clever to be affecting?
This was a long way from Anathema at their best – Vincent Cavanagh had not yet quite decided what vocal style he would opt for, rendering the sound somewhat disjoined, and the very top heavy mix robbed the sound of depth by prioritising guitar and vocals over the rhythm section – but even at this stage Anathema were as talented as they were unique. ‘The Silent Enigma’ was the sound of a band exploring its capabilities and for all purists lament their recent voyage aboard the odd ship prog, in retrospect it is clear that those leanings were present at their inception. The sound of heavy to come……
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