Back in the day, I used to have more patience for bands like Antropofagus. These days, listening to a band with a drummer that double-basses constantly and rides the snare like his life depends on it bores the fuck out of me. I swear that this guy is going 500 BPM and never slows down noticeably. Every one of the tracks on this album sounds the same, mostly owing to the fact that the drums drown out the guitars. The vocals are audible over the drums, but everything else is just background noise. There’s some technical Death Metal guitar work in here somewhere, but half the time you can’t hear it under the blasting drums and the gurgling vocals. Honestly, if I wanted to listen to drums and vocals, I’d listen to Rap. Musically, this sounds like it could be similar in style to Nile or Deeds of Flesh, but that’s only based on what little I could make out of the riffing. I don’t think Architecture of Lust is as technical as Necrophagist, though. This might have actually been a good album if not for the way it was produced. I don’t know who started this trend but they really need to stop this shit now. It is almost as bad as that whole “Necro” movement in Black Metal. If you’re playing brutal, technical, Death Metal, make the fucking guitars loud enough so that we can hear what you’re doing! You can have the most awesome riffs in the world but if nobody can hear them, they may as well not be there at all. A competent studio engineer could have saved this, but as it stands, Architecture of Lust isn’t worth tracking down as far as I’m concerned.

“We are the Hoffman brothers / Don’t get along with others.”
That’s right, the Hoffman brothers of longtime Deicide fame are back in action, sans Steve Asheim and Glen Benton, and have laid claim to pre-Deicide moniker Amon. It appears they’ve hijacked the Success Will Write Apocalypse Across the Sky tour bus to round out the lineup, as Mike Petrak handles drum duty while Jechael —also the vocalist for Diabolic at one point— mans the microphone. So, they have the name, they have a more-than-capable, Grindcore-tested lineup, and we all know they have the talent… what will they do with it all? If you answered, “create a serviceable yet ultimately forgettable Death Metal album,” give yourself 666 points. It’s true, about a minute into album opener “Among Us,” you know exactly what’s in store for the next 35 minutes. Brutality, speed, kamikaze guitar solos, and crazed low growls. The vibe is distinctly early ’90s Floridian —no real surprise there— but with beefed up intensity, aggression, and the technical maturity that a couple decades in the game tends to bring. It’s like the original Amon, only on those horse steroids Barry Bonds was using. Thankfully the band opted for an Old School production, as the lack of huge, over-polished modernization adds to the antiquated feel. These nine cuts hack, slash, and blast at a frantic pace. The pedal only comes unglued from the metal for the occasional hook or slower solo. It’s ironic, and perhaps a bit unfair, how much these songs remind me of bands primarily influenced by Deicide. If you blindfolded me and told me this was Centurian’s Of Purest Fire debut from 1997, I’d probably believe you. You also hear a bit of Diabolic (for obvious reasons) and even hints of Benton-fronted Vital Remains. Of course, these bands would either not exist or sound much different if not for the Hoffmans’ existence. For all its rampant fury and lyrical wrath, Liar in Wait is a solid listen beginning to end, but in no way whatsoever is it memorable. You’d have an easier time remembering random C-Span 3 dialogue you heard drunk at 4am a week ago. A worthwhile “debut,” but let’s hope for material that can match the strength of the sound next time.

This is the third full-length album from Bolivia’s Bestial Holocaust. I’m not too familiar with their back catalog (which is quite extensive if you count the EPs and splits, by the way…), so I’m unsure if they started out as a straight-forward Black Metal band or if they’ve always had a Thrash Metal guitar style. The riffs on Into the Goat Vulva are definitely Thrash influenced. The rest of the music is Black Metal in the South American style. The vibe I’m getting is similar to other bands in the region, mostly Sarcofago, Goat Penis or old Sepultura (Morbid Visions or Schizophrenia-era), but with better sound. One of the things that gave old South American Death/Black Metal such a distinctive atmosphere was the raw and filthy sound. Bestial Holocaust has a cleaner production, but musically it is able to capture a lot of that atmosphere. One of this band’s flaws -and one that is shared by countless other bands- is that a lot of their songs have the same structure and drumming. That leads to many of their songs sounding similar. I think this might have been less of a problem if the drumming had been more in the background. When the drummer rides the snare, he buries the guitars. He doesn’t cover them up entirely, but there is enough intrusion so that you don’t hear the riffing clearly. This happens enough to give the songs the illusion of “sameness.” You hear that familiar “ride the snare” sound and it tricks your brain into lumping all of their songs together. If they can get around that next time, they’ll have cleared a major hurdle.

You wouldn’t think a one-man band with such a homely name like Putrid Pile would be responsible for some of the highest quality Death/Grind the last decade has had to offer, but that most certainly is the case. Shaun LaCanne’s fourth full-length presents eleven more tracks of punishing proof. It seems he has finally found a very fitting, ultra-brutal home with Sevared Records, who not only put out 2009’s House of Dementia, but also reissued 2005’s The Pleasure in Suffering with a mega fuck-ton of live and demo tracks last year. Gore-obsessed Death Grinders already familiar with Putrid Pile’s pummeling power punch will need no preface, but if you’ve passed on the Pile in the past (poser), the present is as perfect a period as any to redeem yourself (penitent). Perhaps you might think any band with a song called “Bowel Batter” is a joke, a waste of your time. I can assure all filth connoisseurs that musically this is no laughing fecal matter. Blood Fetish wastes no time annihilating the listener with its merciless attack. Rapid-fire blasting, stomach-turning pit riffs, staccato breakdowns, tremolo-picked debauchery, Cannibal Corpse hammer-ons, and this is all just the opening title track! LaCanne simply does everything right. There isn’t a single weakness in his one-man arsenal. He’s a bona fide riff master who can also bust out an all-pro solo at will (see “Necroneat-o”), his vokills are pure guttural delight, he handles the bass just fine, and if there’s a better drum programmer with a more realistic sound out there, I’d sure as shit like to hear it. So what if his lyrics are standard gore fare? With lungs this eminently brutal, he could be writing about puppy dogs and candy bars for all I care. This is guttural brutality at its finest, and furthermore proof that band members are for pussies.

I don’t normally like doing reviews of EPs, but in the case of Cripple Bastards, there’s more than enough material to figure out what they’re up to and where they’re going. Grind, as a genre, is better suited to the 7-inch EP format than any other. Grind is meant to be short, brutal and to-the-point. Epic length for Grind is three minutes long. As you can imagine, Cripple Bastards don’t have a song that lasts over two minutes and twelve seconds, and this entire EP clocks in under nine. Even with tracks that are that concise, Cripple Bastards still mostly comes off as straight-forward Death Metal with no frills. Only on the last two songs do they go up to speeds that I normally consider Grind. The longer cuts (which isn’t saying much because two minutes is still pretty brief) are still tight and focused. Senza Impronte is, in a way, a very optimized release. It isn’t long enough to become monotonous and it doesn’t fly by in a blur of pounding drums and noisy guitars. You don’t get a whole lot, but what you do get is well produced and brutalizing. If you’re looking for a quick burst of brutal music, this will satisfy you, if only for a fleeting moment. If Altars of Madness is a full meal, Senza Impronte is the musical equivalent of a Snickers bar.

It dawned on me watching this year’s MLB Home Run Derby in Kansas City, as it does every year, how quickly the sight of 420-foot blasts becomes unremarkable. I’m usually asleep halfway through the second round. While homers are one of the most exciting things in a real game, especially a close one, there’s just something inherently dull about watching these monsters slug them out of the park one after another for three hours. Why’s this goofball talking about the Home Run Derby? The thought occurred to me spinning this new slab of brutal Death Metal punishment from Dying Fetus, that their albums are a lot like home run derbies. I mean that, first and foremost, as a compliment. Every song on Reign Supreme is a homer, a Ruthian clout at that. Any one of these tracks could light up a mixtape with its barbarity and technical prowess. Every blast and fill, every gut-wrenching pit riff, every harmonic sweep that sounds like Mario or Luigi when they would take mushrooms and expand in size, and every deep, guttural emanation from John Gallagher’s windpipe is the equivalent to a majestic moon shot crushed off the sweet spot of the bat. But it gets a little boring after awhile. It only takes about 10-15 minutes before songs become indiscernible and the mind begins to wander (i.e. I’m usually asleep halfway through the second round). Not to take the sheer power and brute force of the Dying Fetus attack for granted —in small doses there is no band more lethal— but for me, Killing on Adrenaline was this band’s Reign in Blood, and all of their albums released in its mighty wake have been Divine Interventions at best. Still worth owning.

Not long after the release of this album, Candlemass got rid of Robert Lowe, who had taken over vocal duties with 2007’s excellent King of the Grey Islands. I’m sorry to see him go, but if this means the return of his old/other band, Solitude Aeturnus, then maybe it’s for the best. Unfortunately, Candlemass’s most well-known and beloved singer, Messiah Marcolin, is not (as of this moment) back. (Mats Leven is filling in on vox live.) Although even Messiah could not make goofy lyrics like, “Dancing in the temple of the mad queen bee / Deep in the cinnamon forest,” sound cool. The cinnamon forest? The cinnamon forest?! Holy hell, unless that’s secret code for “Queen B” Beyonce’s vag, it’s fucking stupid. No, wait, it’s stupid no matter what. Other irritants include Lowe mispronouncing “Neanderthal” as “NeanDRAthal,” possibly because he’s from Texas. It doesn’t completely ruin the song “The Killing of the Sun,” just almost, and makes Lowe seem a little hydrocephalic. There is also a minute-and-a-half of narration before the final song, “Black As Time” (I thought for sure it was called “Time Is Black” until I double-checked), which sounds a bit like Eric Idle (sadly, it’s not) and was fine the first few listens (maybe even interesting once or twice), but eventually a sermon about how time is “the sword of destruction” becomes infuriating because it is true and listening to it is killing me for those 90 seconds I have to wait before that last song starts (I’d hate it less as a separate track, so I could do as Odin intended and hit the “next” button). Some versions of this CD also come with a bonus DVD. No need to bother paying extra for that, though, as it’s essentially useless. Only the most die-hard fans could ever sit through all its “behind the scenes with Candlemass” goofiness even once. Why not a live show? Oh wait - Lowe was supposedly canned because he wasn’t doing so well performing live… 2007’s 20 Year Anniversary Party live album/DVD had quite a few other singers, so perhaps Lowe was only really up to snuff in the studio from the very beginning. I remember that he was not exactly flawless in his execution on the 2010 live album Ashes to Ashes, either. Well, shit, that seems like a lot of negative things to say about an LP I actually really like. Musically this is, as always, the instantly memorable blend of Thrash and Doomy parts that the band made famous, with some really heavy hitting moments, like the monstrous album-opening riff and the ending of the title track, and many others. Honestly, beyond the imperfections I’ve mentioned and a very few more minor lyrical and vocal missteps (Lowe making the title of “Waterwitch” sound like “What a Witch,” for example), there is damn little not to like. Candlemass has said that this will be their last studio album, but Psalms for the Dead is neither impeccable enough to be this legendary band’s final work, nor flawed enough for me to not want to hear more.

I saw this band at Tidal Wave 2012 in San Francisco and I knew that no matter how good this album was, it wasn’t going to top their live performance that day. They fucking killed it. Watching Jill Janus wail away like a banshee was quite a sight. It kind of reminded me of the first time I saw King Diamond live. The lyrics aren’t exactly Dante’s Inferno, but when you see Huntress live, stupid lyrics or not, Jill believes it and her performance makes you a convert. Given that, listening to Spell Eater was a challenge. The music is very Thrash oriented, mostly in the speedier range. It kind of reminded me of the US band Thrust (Fist Held High-era) or maybe a Thrash version of Zed Yago. What commands the most attention, though, are the vocals. Jill Janus may look like a whole lot of cheesecake but she’s got a dynamic voice. It’s all over the place, going from lower-end growly stuff to high pitched banshee wails, from snarling delivery to melodic, operatic highs. It takes you a couple listens to get into this but once you get used to it, it works. I’ve seen this album panned in a few places, and I think that based on how the promo material looks, these people were expecting Folk Metal and didn’t get it. They wanted happy Renaissance Faire music with electric guitars, but got Thrash Metal instead. I admit that the advertising is misleading. When I first saw the ads for this album, I was expecting Folk Metal too. One trip to YouTube and a quick viewing of “Eight of Swords” would’ve given you a good indication that this wasn’t going to be your average Folk Metal band. There are some flaws here, though. Some of the songs don’t flow as well as they should and there are times when the vocal delivery is a bit disjointed, but for the most part, Spell Eater is a pretty rocking album. My main gripe isn’t that the songs aren’t good, but that they don’t sound anywhere near as good as their live show. Maybe their next recording will capture that raw, “live” feeling, but the music lacks the same energy. If Huntress can capture that “live show” sound on their next album, it will fucking kill.

What a rollercoaster career ride it has been for Fear Factory. Great albums, criminally overrated albums, decent albums, mediocre albums, downright horrible albums, great albums again, this guy’s in the band, that guy’s out of the band, those two guys are gone, these two come back, those two take a hike… Geez! Given this track record, I guess we shouldn’t be all that surprised that this follow-up to Mechanize —2010’s remarkably solid return to form— would be different in some way. Unfortunately that difference is a slight return to mediocrity, as The Industrialist has a much less fearsome bark and significantly less powerful bite than its predecessor. I don’t think this has anything to do with bandmate quarrel or gossip column drama this time around. I think it probably went something like this…
Burton C. Bell: Hey, Dino. Sup bra? BCB here. Hey bra, new album’s due soon. You got any riffs ready?
Dino Cazares: Dino hungry!!
Bell: Umm… ‘kay. Maybe you should get some grub, dude. Although it sounds like you’re already… chewing… never mind. We really gotta hustle on this record, bra. Seriously, what have you got?
Cazares: Dino hungry!!
Bell: Ya, you… mentioned that. Well, we have those three solid songs. We should probably put those first. Umm… we could just kinda wing the rest. I’m sure there’s some scraps from the last record we could polish up. I’ll throw some totally rad clean vocal choruses over that shit, bang out some lyrics real quick. If it looks like we’re running short we can slap, like, 10 minutes of minimalist ambient noise at the end. Y’know, machines and junk. People will dig it, right?
Cazares: Dino love The Police and U2!!
Bell: I love you, too, buddy. Thanks a mil. See you at the studio. We’ll have this shit done in no time. Peace, bra!