When I heard that Allen West (ex-Obituary) was in this band, it came as no surprise that Southwicked has an old-school Florida Death Metal sound. In fact, most of the riffs here could easily have fit in with an early Obituary album (circa Slowly We Rot or Cause of Death). The only thing missing was John Tardy’s “I’m vomiting up my lungs” vocal delivery. Stylistically, this is very straight-forward mid-paced Death Metal that worships at the altar of Celtic Frost/Hellhammer. The downside of that style is that while each song is solid on its own, the album as a whole tends to sound a bit monotonous. Every track sits in the same speed range, never breaking out of the narrow groove that they’ve carved out for themselves. The pacing never really changes, so even though the riffing does, it still feels like you’re listening to what could be one really long song. If I’m not mistaken, this was an issue that plagued Obituary as well. What made Cause of Death a classic was a combination of John Tardy’s dynamic vocals and James Murphy’s insane soloing. Those broke up the general monotony of Obituary’s basic song structures. In the case of Southwicked, they don’t have the dynamic vocals (opting instead for a basic Death growl, provided by Sven Poets) and they don’t have the kind of explosive soloing that they need to break things up. If they can manage to inject some more diversity in their song structures, the follow-up to Death’s Crown is going to be fucking awesome.

[Editor’s Note: Jack may have taken bath salts before writing this review. He had to do something to survive an Enslaved album with what’s left of his sanity intact, the poor bastard.]
Enslaved have unreal penises placed upon them. It’s a thankless task to even begin to transcribe all of the gayness, semen, and torn sphincters that accompany the coming of a new Enslaved album. In a career spanning two decades, Enslaved have been raping the assholes of many lepers within Extreme Metal, but their output within the past ten years has been truly homosexual, earning them four Shiny Shaft awards for Gayest Metal Album in the process. After inking a worldwide deal with Nuclear Blast earlier this year, the transvestite cum addicts are back with their 12th studio album, RIITIIR (a Nordic deconstruction of “steamers of Cleveland”), which sees them step out even further into the AIDS. Enslaved’s 12th opens with a cavalcade of cum-bubbles, smegma, and mangina. “While My Guitarist Violently Eats” isn’t all felching assmilk, though. When Bjornson and Arve Isdal’s same sex relationship smashes through at the 40-second mark, it’s gay. The pubic hairs of “Grutle Looks Adopted” sit above RuPaul’s lunch in a perfect marriage of Bruce and Jeffrey, venturing through the inner depths of the human feces. The groove continues on “Nice Edward James Almos Face” which has a vintage Pet Shop Boys-like gaiety, replete with dudes fucking dudes. “The Spoils of Viking Anus” sounds like Huey Lewis and the News before the ’80s, whereas “Five Guys, One Cup” queefs and then plateaus into a protracted rectum. Each song almost warrants its own review, such is the bump and grind of testicles — no better illustrated than on the Christian track “Pretty Hair Like Girls” with its queer opening, driven onward by poser vocals before Larsen again takes Viagra with his beautiful slave boy. RIITIIR is an album that will donkey-punch even the most hermaphroditic of fans in its impacted urethra, and stand tall as their weakest moment yet.

If you judge an album by the cover art, you would expect this to be some French Necro Black Metal (possibly affiliated with the Black Legions). Let’s just say that outside of playing Black Metal, this isn’t even close. Ash Borer hails from California and has been associated with the “Cascadian” Black Metal scene (they’re from Northern California, though the Cascadian scene is primarily in the Pacific Northwest area - mostly Washington and Oregon). This is their second full-length album and their debut for Profound Lore. Their previous LP (their self-titled debut) was released on Psychic Violence Records in 2011, and there are also two demos and a split EP with Fell Voices in their back catalog, so there is no shortage of material by this band. Their sound and style kind of reminds me of Wolves in the Throne Room, but Ash Borer has more of a droning, semi-Ambient quality to their music. They are both lovers of the epic length song, though. Every track on this album is over ten minutes, with the longest just a hair over eighteen. The riffing is very dark most of the time, and the slower, more Doom influenced stuff in particular has that brooding, morose feeling prevalent. Their main weakness is in the fast parts. When they build up the dark and depressive feelings, these guys will sometimes speed things up, wrecking the atmosphere. Their main strength is in the slower, Doom style of Black Metal. When they play to that strength, Ash Borer is fucking deadly. When they don’t, they end up sounding generic. Maybe what this band needs to do is take more time in writing their albums. Most of their material was released within the last two years, so they may be rushing things. I don’t know if their contract demands an album a year, but I’d recommend slowing things down a bit and concentrating on writing songs that focus more on the Doom elements rather than the faster, more generic sounding stuff.

Perhaps the toughest rating assigned in 2012, this third album from North Carolina’s Doom duo has me split right down the middle. Not since I ate an entire box of Jose Ole’s frozen tacquitos in 8 minutes has this reviewer been so torn. On one hand we have the musical mastery of multi-instrumentalist Chad Davis. His cocktail of Sabbath-inspired Doom, anthemic NWOBHM elements, and flourishes of Classic Rock balladry will intoxicate any hesher within earshot into euphoric fist-pumping stupor. It’s like St. Vitus and Angel Witch took soma and played a few rounds of Obstacle Golf. When he isn’t crunching out in-league-with-Iommi riffage, he’s dangling Maiden harmonies over our heads like keys in front of a baby. But it’s those jangly melodic hooks that really tie these 7 lengthy jams together perfectly. Davis knows when to be tight and when to be loose. (I’m sure there’s a joke about upper-echelon Vegas whores in there somewhere, but I’ll defer to Psycho on that one.) Then on the other hand there are Phil Swanson’s vocals. Where do I begin? He has his poor-man’s-Dio moments, and that’s about as good as it gets. Too often he sounds like David St. Hubbins spoofing Dave Chandler. Fortunately these aren’t “Bitch School” lyrics, as Swanson delivers occult and anti-Christian themes with conviction (see “Deny the Cross,” “The Burning,” and “Rite of Samhain”). However, it’s the inconsistency of his minimal-range nasal croon that ultimately holds 333 back. There are times when the singer hits his stride, but for every verse or chorus nailed there’s a host that are stumbled through. Repeatedly within the same song I went from cringing to singing along then back to cringing again. It begs the pervading question: what is the worth of flawless music when the vocals are only tolerable one-third of the time? When I think of what someone like Patrick Walker or Brett Campbell could have brought to these tunes I cum a little. Alas, that is not the case.

Canada’s Striker are back again with their second album, and like their debut, this is quite a rocking affair. I’ve always liked bands that were unabashedly Heavy Fucking Metal. Striker is just that. They’re Heavy Fucking Metal and they’re proud of it. The fact that they have an undead dinosaur wielding two machine guns and a rocket launcher on their album cover just makes this cooler. Listening to Armed to the Teeth is like going back in time to the early-to-mid-’80s in terms of style. The music, as you can imagine, is straight-out melodic Heavy Metal that has some elements of Thrash and Speed Metal. While groups like Hammerfall or Primal Fear may go for a more Iron Maiden -influenced sound, Striker isn’t stylistically that different from bands like Queensryche, Grim Reaper or even W.A.S.P. for the most part. The Queensryche influence is especially apparent in the vocals, particularly on “All the Way.” Parts of that track seem like they were lifted right off of Empire, from some of the guitar parts to Dan Cleary’s banshee wailing vocals. This isn’t a bad thing. Queensryche was one of my favorite bands back in the ’80s, and anyone that can come close to Geoff Tate circa Operation: Mindcrime is a deadly vocalist in my book. Add to this some seriously hook-laden riffing and a bunch of blazing guitar solos, and you’ve got the makings of a kick-ass record. If you’re looking for a rocking good time, you’ll definitely get it from Armed to the Teeth.

This is the New Jersey Open Grave, not to be confused with any of the other groups out there sporting the same name. This band is primarily composed of current and former members of Helcaraxe, some of whom have also played with Krieg (live only) and Kult ov Azazel. For a Black Metal band, this album has a surprisingly Death Metal sound. The guitars are nice and thick and heavy. The riffing is also surprisingly Death Metal. It isn’t technical, but there are some solid head banging riffs with catchy melodies throughout Fear’s ten tracks. I was expecting this to be fairly Necro (read: no bass in the guitars) but happily, I was proven wrong. When I saw the names Krieg and Kult ov Azazel associated with this band, I assumed that they would share some of the same characteristics. That was not the case, and I’m glad Open Grave doesn’t have the same sound. This is some dark, brutal stuff. The inclusion of atmospheric, though somewhat minimalistic, keyboards and sparse piano bits only adds to the darkness. Hell, there’s even audible bass guitar on this album. My only gripe about Fear is the fact that it’s kind of short. That isn’t even much of a complaint, though. The songs never went overly long. I was just disappointed that it ended so quickly.

As big a fan as I am of Maurizio Iacono-fronted Kataklysm, something gave me a bad feeling about this side project of his. Maybe it was the way I had seen Ex Deo repeatedly described. I’m a proud Italian, but even I know the term “epic Roman Metal” is some kind of code for hardcore dude-on-dude ass annihilation. Or perhaps it was those ridiculous promo shots of Iacono in full breastplate and kilt gear. I’m a grown-ass man, Maury. I don’t fantasize about periods of history anymore. I think that stopped around the age of 9. My fantasies these days are much more practical (Audrey Hollander’s colon), morbid (microwaving that fucking Geico lizard), or downright sexy (a chick blowing two guys while having an abortion). Either way, I successfully dodged the debut album, but got stuck having to review this sophomore outing — a concept piece on the story of Caligula’s empire. It truly is a chore to sit through, but nowhere near as awful as I had feared. If you could somehow extract the pretentious, overbearing theatrical elements, you’d easily be able to salvage an EP’s worth of solid riff-hearty Melodeath, or conversely, a separate EP of respectable symphonic Gothic Metal. But you simply can’t escape the historical reenactment vibe. Iacono’s painfully understandable Spartan-warrior yell and Gladiator soundtrack-obsessed keyboards are always there to remind us it’s playtime. With a more consistently brutal voice —for instance, the one we know Maurizio is capable of— this would have been considerably more enjoyable. Nowhere is there greater evidence of this fact than on the powerful guest vocal spot from Spiros of Septic Flesh (“Pollice Verso” — by far the most listenable track). If Caligvla serves any purpose, it’s making me want to dig out those old copies of Mystic Places of Dawn and Esoptron for a long overdue spin. I should probably also listen to some Kataklysm while I’m at it.

I guess it’s a given that every country on this planet that has a Black Metal scene has at least one Cradle of Filth clone. Some places have multiple versions of Cradle of Filth, all with their own twist on the whole Gothic/Symphonic Black Metal thing. Sinister Frost is Russia’s version. I have to admit that my initial reaction was negative because the comparison to Cradle of Filth is just too easy to make. You can tell right away where this band gets their main influence. I had to listen to this record multiple times to get around the obvious comparisons. Though this is their first album, Sinister Frost is a pretty talented group. Even though Cryotorment sounds like a copy of Cradle of Filth, that isn’t exactly the easiest band to duplicate. It takes a lot of skill to pull off the arrangements and orchestration that goes along with the Gothic/Symphonic Black Metal style. What sets Sinister Frost apart from most of the other bands in this genre is their incorporation of Death Metal into their music. The vocals are very guttural, though still fairly understandable. The production is also stronger and the guitars aren’t buried underneath a colossal wall of keyboards the way so many other bands have theirs. This is a fairly solid debut with the only major flaw being the obvious influences. This doesn’t go anywhere that Cradle of Filth or Dimmu Borgir didn’t already go ten years ago. I’m fairly forgiving when it comes to debut albums these days, and while this isn’t the most groundbreaking thing ever released, it is well executed and the songs are solid. Sinister Frost is off to a good start. Their next release will be the one that will determine whether they can come out from under the long and dark shadow of Cradle of Filth. If they can find their own style and sound, they’ll be contenders for the throne. If they stay on the well trodden path that was blazed by Cradle of Filth and Dimmu Borgir, they’ll be just another clone band in a sea of clone bands.

The last thing I want to do is come off as anti-Martin van Drunen in any way, shape or form. Consuming Impulse, The Rack, Last One on Earth, and even Converging Conspiracies are all stranded-on-an-island selections for yours truly, and no one was more excited than myself to hear that trademark, inimitable scream return to the Death Metal fold in 2008 with Hail of Bullets, and with Asphyx a year later. …of Frost and War — flawless. Death…the Brutal Way — a masterpiece. The Warsaw Rising EP — awesome. On Divine Winds — titties. The split with Hooded Menace — ice cream. But it seems the quality of the man’s output has hit somewhat of a wall in 2012. Deathhammer was such a bland, unremarkable effort that not one but two of the biggest Asphyx fans on the planet couldn’t even review it, and now we have the debut album from Grand Supreme Blood Court — essentially Asphyx with a much lamer moniker. The only member of the Court not currently or formerly of Asphyx is bassist Theo van Eekelen, who happens to be in Hail of Bullets… close enough. This project does reunite van Drunen with longtime Asphyx guitarist Eric Daniels for the first time since 1992, but that doesn’t save Bow Down Before the Blood Court from being a tedious dragger. It starts out okay. “All Rise!” is a surefire Death/Doom crowd-pleaser with verses that get the feet tapping and a chorus that provokes a nice slow-motion clockwise headbang, while the title track is sure to get a circle pit going with its chorus. But by the fifth or sixth track, you’ll be thinking about your shitty day at work. And if somehow you’re not asleep by the end, vapid 10-minute closer “And Thus the Billions Shall Burn” will take care of that. I love Old School simplicity as much as the next ogre, but these riffs are just lifeless. A void of technicality and an absence of dynamics so dreadful it’s hypnotic. An exercise in mind-wandering to say the least. Van Drunen’s vocals are phoned in. Period. Clearly he’s overworked to the point of battle fatigue. Take a break, Martin. I understand the desire to make up for lost time, but not if the material suffers from it. This isn’t a bad record, just a boring and forgettable one. Two adjectives that don’t belong in any sentence regarding this legendary vokillist.