Candiria - Process of Self Development
This is the first time I’ve heard this band and I’m disappointed. Candiria is too eclectic for their own good. An album like this makes me appreciate the individual elements in straight form that put together here like a crooked house. I’d rather listen to Thelonius Monk if I want to hear Jazz; All Out War for Hardcore/Metal; and Cypress Hill for Rap. All these elements are raised together to build an album of pure excrement. My advice to the band: “Quit drinking your bong water.”
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Butcher Shoppe - Meat
Bipolar Grind Gore from Colorado. Heavy and brutally fast at times. Downright goofy and mistaken others. They straddle a dichotomy that isn’t often palatable. Upped for the Ren and Stimpy sample (get the idea?).
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Burzum - Hlidskjalf
Compared to the last album [Daudi Baldrs -Editor], this seems to be somewhat darker and more ominous. For kind of ambient background music, this is great. It’s relaxing. I don’t really mean that in the way it might sound, though. I do enjoy this disc, but it makes me want to lie down and take a nap.
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Burning Inside - The Eve of the Entities
Featuring Death drummer Richard Christy, this Florida Death Metal band covers all the bases, being technical, brutal and to a certain extent, even memorable. Truly this is an amazing release as far as the musicianship is concerned, and clearly in the traditional Florida Death style, but that works both for and against it. The only real disappointment is the packaging of the domestic version, on Pavement, which partially in b&w and missing half the booklet of the initial, completely full-color, release on Still Dead. I’d understand if the smaller label (Still Dead) didn’t have the money for a huge booklet, with all color pages, but they did! So why didn’t a bigger label like Pavement? Track down the import.
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Buried Alive - The Death of Your Perfect World
Once again, at 26 minutes, this isn’t exactly a long album even by Hardcore standards, but damn do these guys cram this with intensity from first second to last. That and their thick, heavy sound, as well as the raw vocals have earned them repeated spins in my CD player.
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Buio Omega - Thy Dark Conquest
This is a side project band of Gorgoroth, the singer of Baltak and I’m not sure but I believe it also has members of Mortifier in the band as well. The intro blatantly rips off Nargaroth (though I think Nargaroth did it better - Kanwolf may want to consider talking to a lawyer to see if these guys owe him any royalties) and then breaks into an all-out speedfest that made me think, “Oh no, not another band who’d rape their dead grandparents to be Dark Funeral all over again!” Luckily, Buio Omega slows things down and gets atmospheric once in a while, tempering their all-out speed assault with bits of slower material and some variations in the vocal styles. This isn’t Hammerheart by a long shot, but there are elements of later era Bathory mixed in with their sound. The production was pretty good though the guitars still were a bit on the thin side and could have definitely used a little more lower-end in them. On the whole, however, this wasn’t a bad release at all. I’ll definitely rank them above average on all major fronts (the lyrics were a bit dodgy here and there but hey, if English isn’t your first language, you’re forgiven as far as I’m concerned). I’d say that I was looking forward to hearing what they do next, but I don’t know if this is a one-off deal or not.
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The Bronx Casket Co. - The Bronx Casket Co.
I guess that D.D. and Tim figured that their main band, Overkill, was just too intense, and so they formed this one with some other guys the press release wants me to care about. The sound here is reasonably thick, I guess, but hopefully this is the last gasp of latter-Soundgarden-styled “Alternative” filtered through a ’70s “Hard Rock” aesthetic. It is well done, I’ll give them that, but I have no interest in hearing it. And their limp-wristed, sappy version of “Jump in the Fire” really drives home my point, although it’s at least good for a laugh.
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Breaker - Accept
As you might have guessed, this starts out with a cover of Accept’s “Breaker.” And then we’ve got five of their own, all pretty un-heavy, but they occasionally do sort of up the intensity a little. I’d have to be in the right mood to listen to this, and if that mood struck, I’d probably listen to a lot of stuff before I thought of Breaker.
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Bolt Thrower - Who Dares Wins
This collection of rare tracks sports the same cover art as the band’s Spearhead EP, which I consider to be a little strange. It is a cool image, but couldn’t Earache afford new cover art? Anyway, you get all the cuts from the now impossible to find Cenotaph and Spearhead EPs, plus two extra songs taken from a compilation called Rareache.
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