One look at the album cover tells you that Good Mourning is going to be influenced by Goth music. Whether that is good or bad depends on whether the band is influenced by whiny Emo Goth, or the dark, atmospheric Goth music that is heavy on the ambience and eschews the eyeliner and the frilly clothes. Thankfully, these guys have kept their music free of the whiny shit. Suffer the Silence is definitely heavy on the bleak and somber atmosphere. If Katatonia was a Death Metal band instead of a Black Metal band at their inception, they would have probably sounded a lot like this at some point during their transition. Suffer the Silence may have started out as a Death Metal band, but the only remaining Death Metal element that they’ve retained in their sound is the vocals. Otherwise, this wasn’t brutal or aggressive at all. In fact, it is very passive in the same way that the post-Thergothon entity, This Empty Flow, was. The main failing that Good Mourning has is that it isn’t heavy enough. The atmosphere is there, but what this album really needed was a stronger Doom element. If a band is going to be playing in the speed range for Doom, the music really should be heavy. This wasn’t and it was glaringly obvious what was missing. I kept waiting for this album to get crushingly heavy a-la Asunder or My Dying Bride, but it never happened. Suffer the Silence has the atmospheric part down pretty well. You definitely get the emotional aspect, but what’s lacking is some real heaviness. If this band can get heavier, their next album will kick ass.

Horny virgin bitch
Deflowered by the holy ghost
Screwed by his holy prick
Bastard son was born
Swindled stupid father
Concealed sexual fraud
Breed him like his son
The big lie has begun

Holy book based on
The history of the life
Of a bastard son

Oppressive religion
Depraved inquisition
Justifying holy wars
Criminal fanaticism
Repressive commandments
That’s all what we’ve got
By the grace of god
And from a “virgin” whore

Deny this god
Crucify his son
Burn the holy book
Defile the temples

As I often ponder the gayness of the universe, namely our planet’s obtusely inane inhabitants, it eludes me how a Death Metal band of Drawn and Quartered’s caliber toils in relative obscurity. I could fill this whole space with bands a tenth as talented and intense as this Pacific Northwestern horde who seem unanimously revered. Meanwhile, this trio continues to drop solid record after solid record on deaf ears. If the meanest thing you can say is, “Boy, these guys sure do sound a lot like Immolation,” then it begs the question once asked by a grease-addicted fast food hag in the ’80s: “where’s the beef?” It’s perfectly acceptable to endorse 736 cunting Neurosis clones, but for fuck’s sake, we only need one Immolation! I can’t follow that logic at all. Especially when Feeding Hell’s Furnace is easily the group’s deadliest output since the unhallowed tandem of Extermination Revelry (2003) and Return of the Black Death (2004). Every song sizzles with demonic effervescence and blood-curdling heaviness, as diabolical melodies and abysmal riffs twist, hammer, stab and slither their way directly into the listener’s Christ-hating pleasure center. Factor in Herb’s bottomless, Craig-Pillard-meets-Ross-Dolan-in-Hell growl oozing blasphemies like, “When holy texts are ashes / Where holy soil is drowned in blood / When every word of worship is torn from every tongue… / Cum-soaked remains / Bestowal of consecration / Execrations of the holy virgin cunt,” and you have the perfect soundtrack to a church in flames at sunset. Without question, the best Death Metal album no one will be talking about in 2012.

This EP is a two-song vinyl 12-inch (though to be accurate, this actually sounds like four songs but they aren’t separated and there are only two song titles) that is released in 1,000 copies with the first 100 being on marble vinyl. That should tell you that this is a release entirely for collectors who absolutely must own everything. Celebrate the Dead covers all of the various phases of Beherit, starting with the weird droning Ambient stuff and gradually making its way over to the Black Metal sound that most fans associate with the band. The first track, “Demon Advance,” is divided into two segments. The first half is a droning, somewhat Industrial sounding piece with whispered vocals, repetitive guitars and mechanical drumming. It could easily pass as a guitar-based cover of one of their old Electronic songs. The second half of “Demon Advance” is the part where the keyboards come out and the guitars go away. This section of the track is still droning and repetitive, but this time the music is best described as Dark Ambient. The vocals on this section are very strange. It sounds like they were done in a way that was intentionally zoned out and off key. Of the four distinct parts of this EP, this one is the hardest to get into. The second side, “Celebrate the Dead,” is more in line with what we expect from Beherit. It’s dark. It’s evil-sounding. Most of all, it’s Black fucking Metal. The first half of “Celebrate the Dead” sounded strangely familiar and I think it was because the drumming and guitar parts were essentially the same as the first part of “Demon Advance.” The addition of growled vocals and keyboards made this part far more listenable than the first part of “Demon Advance,” though. The second half of “Celebrate the Dead” is the best part. This section of the song is more complex and interesting. The addition of acoustic guitars to the droning guitar and eerie keyboards makes the music sound much darker. If Celebrate the Dead had been a 7-inch EP with the title track split into two separate songs, this would have been a fucking ten in my book. The second half of this EP is, for a longtime fan of Beherit, worth it. I couldn’t say the same for the first half. “Demon Advance” doesn’t totally suck, but it’s far too weird for most folks. The first half of this EP (particularly the part with the zoned out vocals) takes a lot of getting used to. Even now, after I’ve listened to the whole thing about a dozen times, I don’t think it is nearly as good as “Celebrate the Dead” in terms of musical quality. If you can find “Celebrate the Dead” on iTunes or some other MP3 site, I’d buy just that song.

Germany’s Kissin’ Dynamite started off as a Power/Traditional Metal band, even having the legendary Udo Dirkschneider from Accept/U.D.O. do a guest appearance on their second album. That was all in the past. At some point, these guys somehow took a wrong turn and ended up driving down Poser Lane and checking into the Butt Rock Motel. Money, Sex & Power has more in common with Guns and Roses, Motley Crue and Poison than Accept or Scorpions. This is Sunset Strip sleaze in all of its spandex-covered glory (if you can call it that). If there’s one redeeming quality that Money, Sex & Power has, it’s that it is fucking hilarious. This album was probably intended to be serious, but this shit outdoes Bad News and Spinal Tap in terms of comedy value. There are plenty of laugh out loud moments on this record. Just listening to “Dinosaurs Are Still Alive” and “Sex Is War” made me laugh so hard I practically coughed up blood. And don’t get me started on the press release that accompanied this album. Seriously, you couldn’t create a parody band this funny or stupid. As good as Pants Noizee was at goofing on ’80s Butt Rock, Kissin’ Dynamite somehow managed to do it better. I gave this one way more points than it deserved because I needed a good laugh and they gave it to me.

All you damn kids out there hearing this band for the first time, this is not your father’s Malignancy. No one was more stoked than myself to learn of these New York semi-legends’ Willowtip signing and subsequent first new output in what seemed like a gazillion years. This ultra-brutal Death/Grind unit began as a Mortician side project before the creation of time, but would end up garnering a cult underground following all their own by way of incorporating more complex songwriting and hella chops into the inherent, over-the-top brutality of their main band. But after hearing Eugenics, the concept of a minute-long sample + 45 seconds of aimless guttural blasting sounds absolutely fucking brilliant. I don’t know what this is, but it’s not Malignancy. I’m guessing there has been significant lineup changes. Like maybe one-to-zero-original-members overhaul. But I’m way too bummed to do any requisite review research right now. Here, you check for me… metal-archives.com …Was I right? Mostly all new people? I don’t want to know. And I guess it doesn’t really matter. Any way you slice it, this album is a schizophrenic noise clusterfuck. Technical to the point of batshit insane, listening to this record is like watching a skateboarder do highly advanced tricks for a half-hour. Nowhere inside this twisted sound mesh is anything even remotely resembling a song. Now I know how a pinball feels. It’s like trying to put together a 200,000-piece puzzle of a diarrheic shit, except none of the pieces fit. Occasionally something human will surface —an actual riff, the acoustic guitar arrangement, an actual drumbeat— but it’s soon swept away into a chaotic, Acid Jazz maze. For all I know, these eleven songs 3-minute-random-noise-experiments were improvised. Not like anyone could tell. I saw a Tech-Death band when I was a kid, but now they’re everywhere. The scene went and got itself in a big damn hurry. If you feel like hearing patternless growls and screams atop some kind of Martian fretboard algebra while an octopus on meth hits drums at random, here’s one for your year-end list. If you’re an old crook like me, Eugenics will only make you feel old, confused, angry, bitter, and alone. I want this album off my lawn.

To say that England’s Paradise Lost has been around the block a few times would be a vast understatement. This is their thirteenth album. They’ve come along way, starting out as a Doom/Death Metal band and morphing into countless different forms over the years. They dabbled in Electronica and Goth Metal, but gradually made their way back to the realms of extreme Metal. Tragic Idol is the first Paradise Lost album that I’ve heard in totality since 1995’s Draconian Times. I’ve listened to bits and pieces of their other albums after that one, but they never compared to their early material. I used to worship at the altar of Gothic and Shades of God. Somewhere along the line, I stopped caring about Paradise Lost because they’d gone a musical direction that I had no interest in. Now, listening to Tragic Idol blasting Gothic-tinged British Doom Metal at me like I haven’t heard from Paradise Lost in almost two decades, I believe in redemption. This is the Paradise Lost that I wanted to hear. It’s full of dark atmosphere. It’s heavy. It’s Metal. More than anything else, it fucking kicks my ass like I owed the band money and they want it all with interest. Tragic Idol is one monster of an album. I hold this band to a very high standard, mostly because they were one of my favorite bands back in the day. Even by my (probably unreasonably) high standards, I was impressed. It isn’t absolute perfection, but it’s damn close.

If there’s a central theme to be taken away from this write-up, it’s that “Putrevore plays dark, putrid and brutal Old School Death Metal exclusively.” The band’s words, not my own, but you can’t sum it up any more perfectly. Considering this project is the result of the unholiest alliance since Tango & Cash, what else would you expect? Originally formed under the moniker Deadbreath (changed obviously to not be confused with Nicke Andersson’s Death Breath), the OSDM wet dream team-up of Dave Rotten (Avulsed, Christ Denied) on vokills and Rogga Johansson (Ribsreader, Paganizer) on guitar and bass does not disappoint on album number two. Rounded out nicely by Brynjar Helgetun (also of Ribspreader) on drums, Macabre Kingdom storms out of the gate ferociously with the blast-happy “The Mysteries of the Worm (Part I).” Rotten’s lower-than-low guttural roar sounds as filthy and torturous as being boiled alive in raw sewage and toxic waste, yet as smooth as ever. Meanwhile, Rogga is still the riffmaster general. You’d think playing in 666 active bands would run the creativity well dry at some point, but the human riff furnace continues to burn brightly. Just listen to those monstrous chug-and-bend hooks on “The Mysteries of the Worm (Part II),” “Beyond Human Comprehension,” and “Awaiting Awakening Again.” On “Universal Devourer,” he runs the gamut from barbaric Grindcore simplicity to face-smashed hammering a la Cannibal Corpse to Doomy dirge. Combined with Rotten’s demonic esophageal emanations, there simply is no stopping this match made in Hell. My one complaint is minor and entirely selfish. Here we have two of the most brutal vocalists in Death Metal, yet only one of them gets to use the mic. I realize there are multiple factors involved. Their voices are somewhat similar, Dave Rotten definitely doesn’t need any help (I certainly don’t want to be the guy who has to growl toe-to-toe with him), and with Rogga in Sweden and Rotten in Spain, this project is pieced together across the globe. Still, how fucking cool would it be to hear these two trade verses once in a while? Maybe next time.

Carved Into Stone is Prong’s long awaited return album, following a lengthy hiatus where Tommy Victor spent time playing with Danzig and Ministry. This is also their debut for Long Branch Records/SPV. I remember listening to this band quite a bit back in the day and I was never a huge fan of their music. I had a copy of Beg to Differ, but even after repeated listens, I just wasn’t really into it. After having not heard from the band for so long, listening to a new album from them was something that I approached with mixed feelings. The first thing I noticed was that while I remember Prong being more Hardcore/Nu-Metal in sound and style (stop-start riffing, breakdowns, etc), this new stuff sounds like if you took all of the effects off of Peter Tagtgren’s Pain. One listen to tracks like “Keep on Living in Pain” and you can’t help but make that comparison, especially when Tommy Victor uses effects on his vocals. Personally, I prefer this incarnation of Prong to the version that released Beg to Differ. The songs are more accessible and they also flow better this time around. The one thing that I didn’t like about this album was the marked lack of aggression in the music. The songs are pretty rocking, but I wouldn’t call this album hostile or aggressive compared to their old material, regardless of what their press materials say. These guys are trying to balance accessibility, heaviness and aggression, and by retaining heaviness and gaining accessibility, they’ve sacrificed aggression. Even with the lack of aggression, this is still a solid album that holds up well even after repeated listens.