Considering I’ve listened to 1991’s seminal classic, Into the Grave, more times in my life than I’ve urinated, I really wanted to like this new Grave. I even considered pulling my punches a bit, out of respect to their hall-of-fame career, but that’d be unfair to anyone reading this, not to mention gay. This album is boring. And when I say boring, I mean episode-of-The Waltons-on-a-black-and-white-TV-with-no-sound boring. The mind begins to wander approximately ten minutes after you press play, and that’s a hypothesis I’ve proven as fact through experimentation. Thinking I might possibly be losing my mind, I played this LP for a few friends who also happen to be Death Metal lifers. After 10 minutes, I stopped play to no complaints. The only response being, “Yeah, I’d had about enough of that,” with absolutely no one able to remember a second of what they’d just heard. It seems ever since the triumphant comeback duo of Back from the Grave and Fiendish Regression, Ola has been stuck in a creative rut, releasing the same lifeless, going-through-the-motions album every couple years. It makes no sense to me, given the Swedeath all-star team he has backing him now —Mika Lagren (Facebreaker) on guitar, Ronnie Bergerstahl (ex-Centinex, ex-Demonical) on drums, and Tobias Cristiansson (ex-Dismember) on bass— that this album is as exciting as Amish porn, but that’s sadly the case. Endless procession of dead riffs is more like it. Or rather …and here I die… unsatisfied.

When you see a band with a name like Crystal Viper, the musical style that comes to mind immediately is Power Metal. This band classifies themselves as straight-out Heavy Metal and that’s probably more accurate. There are some similarities to Power Metal, but a lot of the genre stereotypes are missing. They don’t have the same pretentious air, virtuoso guitar playing and soaring vocals that are all hallmarks of Power Metal. Musically, this has more of an old-school Metal sound. It kind of reminds me of old Dio, or maybe Accept, but with some Thrash influences. The focus of the music is on delivering rocking riffs and memorable soloing and they mostly succeed at doing it. The vocalist, Marta Gabriel, has a raw, semi-melodic style delivery but she also hits the highs. Her technique somewhat reminds me of the US band Possession where the singer used lower-end vocals most of the time but he would occasionally belt out an ear-splitting banshee wail. It isn’t quite King Diamond (King’s falsetto was more dynamic), but it’s effective. I’d say that Marta’s highs are more in line with Nasty Ronnie (Nasty Savage), for those of us who remember him. I don’t know if this is a bonus track or not, but there is even a cover of a Vader song (“Tyrani Piekiel”), which is an odd choice. Both Crystal Viper and Vader are from Poland, but the similarities end there. Crystal Viper does a good job of giving the song their own twist, though. It doesn’t really fit in with the rest of the album, but it isn’t so different that you question its inclusion. If you’re a fan of old Metal, you’ll find plenty to like about Crimen Excepta. This isn’t the most original, groundbreaking, music you’ve ever heard but it does rock hard enough to make it a worthwhile listen.

The piteous, untimely demise of the Colorado Rockies’ 2012 season has left Metal Curse’s favorite author with a little extra free time. Hence his 412th book in the last few months. We’re honestly not complaining, though, because Sleep Has No Master just might be Psycho’s finest fictional work to date. Don’t let the title fool you, this book is so god damn funny it pisses me off that I didn’t write it. I don’t know how Jon is going to top this one. Following in the same vein as Fistful of Pizza and The Earworm Inception, the humor is relentless. The uniquely witty Kon throws off-the-wall, left field, side-splitting references at the reader harder than Pedro Martinez can throw Don Zimmer. I simply couldn’t put this down. I received my copy only days ago and have already finished it! Compare that to the 3 years of bowel movements it took me to trudge through Dawkins’ reaffirmation that Christians are, indeed, fucking stupid. Rather than take my word for it, check out this excerpt from Chapter Three (“Tesla Motors Doesn’t Have a Blowjob Referral Program”):

We spent two days driving to the brothel, with Fat Mike talking nonstop about how he’d totally cram it in every whore’s ass-vent without even saying hello first. When we arrived, a shift manager conned him into buying a $98 gold card membership, which offered absolutely no benefits other than getting stuck on their mailing list and infecting his computer with malware after he installed the poorly-coded Uncle Kenny’s Sex Dungeon plugin for the Firefox browser. All of the women in the dungeon looked horrible, with meth face, congenital birth defects, missing teeth from crack cocaine abuse, amputated limbs, horrific body funk, and genetic disorders from centuries of inbreeding. The most attractive woman had a conjoined twin attached to her face, a ZZ Top beard, and wouldn’t stop talking about the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. I immediately projectile vomited like that kid from The Exorcist and ran for my life. On the entire 38-hour car trip home, it somehow became my fault that Fat Mike didn’t get to fuck any hot chicks. That’s how those things usually went down.

You know you want to keep reading. Konrath is equal parts genius, comedian, and stark raving lunatic. If you don’t track this book down, you’re gay.

This is Anguish’s debut full-length album (following the Dawn of Doom demo, released in 2010, and 2011’s split 7-inch with Black Oath). The press release that accompanied this stated that their influences are Candlemass, Pentagram and Black Sabbath. That’s all likely true, but it’s also a roundabout way of saying that Through the Archdemon’s Head sounds like what you would get if you played a Celtic Frost/Triptykon album at a lower RPM on your turntable. The vocalist, J. Dee, even does a fair impression of Tom G. Warrior’s delivery, down to the “Uh” on a few tracks. What’s missing that makes Celtic Frost and Triptykon so great is the atmospheric stuff. Anguish has a dark atmosphere but they’re really not exploring the possibilities where it comes to adding eerie effects or elements into their music. I can understand wanting to keep things within the realm of playability - if you can’t recreate a song live, you won’t be able to play it at a concert without backing tracks. Still, there are little things that you can do with your guitars and singing that can certainly add that feeling, from zoned-out clean vocals to acoustic guitar. It also helps to break up the monotony that you get when you have a standard formulation for your songs. This brings me to the second weakness on this album, the monotony aspect. One of the biggest hurdles a band has to face is having songs that stand on their own. Most Metal bands, be they Death Metal, Black Metal, Thrash or any other kind, die by this sword. I couldn’t tell you how many albums I’ve owned that had ten different versions of the same song on them. Anguish has some good songs but a number of them, mostly located on the first half of the album, are similarly structured and also use the same basic chords, and if you weren’t paying attention, you’d think that it was one long track. The second half of the album is definitely better, but you still have to sit through half an hour of music before you get there. The standout cuts have to be “The Veil,” “Lair of the Gods” and “Morbid Castle.” Those are the ones that have the most atmosphere and also more distinctive sounds. If this is the direction the band’s going, I’m definitely going to be looking forward to their next album.

You want to have a real good time? Pick up this Raped by Pigs, drive over to the local Wal-Mart or town megastore, park near the entrance, crank this shit up, now laugh your ass off watching the elderly, the obese, white trash, the handicapped, soccer moms… just about any faction of people look funny going about their business to this album. That’s just one of several possibilities. You could throw on headphones and do a mall-walk, visit a nursing home, go to a funeral, etc. The point being life’s banality is a lot more humorous with Gushing Orgasms 2 as the score. That’s because this Peruvian Death squad specialize in ridiculously guttural slam. Slam so over-the-top it’s borderline comical. Inhumanly brutal pig grunts escort a brute bevy of snapneck breakdowns —yes, I said breakdowns, faggot— and full-speed blast. This isn’t for the intellectual hipster type with a blog about yogurt cultures. This is for the guy who scratches his ass, then immediately sniffs his fingers… and fucking loves the stench! Every song is so rhythmically bombastic, so dementedly dynamic, so barbarically unapologetic, and so insanely heavy that I’m not sure how any male with a functional ballbag could resist some type of bodily movement upon hearing it. Even if all he knows is the Pick Up Change. Oink, motherfucker, oink! I don’t know what more you could possibly ask for from music that isn’t depressing. Get off your high horses and hit the dancefloor, squares. Go guttural or go home.

In this age of piracy, you’ve got to feel for a tiny label like Ohio’s Ars Magenta. When the bigger labels with well known acts are struggling to break even, you have to wonder how this obscure outlet for even more obscure artists manages to keep the lights on. While I’d like to help out in my small way —heap a little praise, generate a little word of mouth— releasing pure shit like this completely pointless split isn’t going to put you on the map anytime soon. There isn’t anything on offer here I could even pretend to like. One-man Czech Black Metal hobbyist Trist opens with his half of the split. A 20-minute, mid-paced song with two fucking arrangements. Yes… 20 minutes, one tempo, two riffs. I don’t care if those two riffs were co-written by Blakkheim and Chuck Schuldiner’s ghost, you need to bring a little bit more to the table than that. Especially if your “vocals” are nothing more than faint, distant, Blackened queefs that are barely audible. For instructions on how to write 20-minute BM songs that don’t suck balls, Trist should either study both Make a Change…Kill Yourself albums or take their advice.
As boring, lifeless, and vapid as the first half is, it might actually be better than what Lonesummer are trying to do. It sounds like they heard Alcest’s Tristesse Hivernale once, while stoned, and then tried to emulate it with about one-tenth the talent level. The vocalist sounds like an 8-year old girl attempting to imitate a seagull. Even when they do manage to wing it through a decent melody, as on “Ghost Stories” and “No More Bonfires,” the vocals completely ruin it. One of the more fetid attempts at Post-Black Metal I’ve heard in recent memory.

This album was a hard one for me to get through. Full disclosure: I’m not a fan of Sludge/Drone Doom. After you get past Stoner Doom, you kind of lose me and I find the music boring. Black Shape of Nexus doesn’t help their cause by having an album that is within a few seconds of being eighty minutes long. Just sitting through the six-minute intro track, “Illinois,” which had little to do with Doom, nearly drove me insane. It’s Ambient in the same semi-unlistenable vein as old Abruptum, but without the evilness and It Sarkka screaming. “Illinois” may have only been a half-dozen minutes long, but it seemed like an eternity of inextricable droning and shrill feedback. The rest of the album is far more structured, but no less boring. The songs are all epic length, with the shortest being six minutes and the longest almost twenty-three. If you can imagine a band beating a riff into the floor for ten to twenty minutes, that’s pretty much what this sounds like. Yes, the bass-heavy production is punishing, but you can only go so long before you become numb to that. Negative Black might appeal to people who like Drone/Sludge, but for me it became background noise fairly quickly. In order to review this, I had to take things one song at a time over a period of several days because I literally couldn’t sit through more than one song -even the short ones- at a time. If you like watching paint dry, you’ve got the perfect soundtrack for it in Negative Black.

We desecrate, we violate
We burn the book of lies
We feed our hate, eternal fate, soon He will arise
We gather in the night to sacrifice and feast
We shall call the dead, we shall hail the Beast

We possess the powers to slay the son of god
We possess the powers to make him choke on blood
We’re the infernal legion that gorge upon Hellish lust
We chant the words of Satan
We’ll turn your god to dust

We open wide the gates, we unleash powers of Hell
We unlock the doors to where evil spirits dwell
We dance in rings of fire to bring eternal war
We’ll rape the infant Jesus, molest that fucking whore

We summon up, in blasphemy, the true nocturnal Lord
In His name we’ll raise our swords and join His battle horde
Our mission is to desecrate and forever chime Death’s bell
We have gained immortality through our cult in Hell

My exposure to them has been brief, but Polish Grindcore unit Antigama have never done much for me. I’ve heard a few compilation tracks, even had friends throw them on a mix, the nicest words I could ever muster being, “Good drummer.” Not a bad band, just an uninteresting one, granted I’ve never seem them in the live setting. I’m sure, given the right circumstances, their rapid-fire, ultra-tech insanity could be life-changing in that environment. Like a small child seeing a whore get sodomized by a donkey for the first time. Magical. But this 6-song EP —five songs if you’d prefer to omit the minimalist noise outro— marks a turning point in the band’s career. Guitarist Sebastian Rokicki has completely cleaned house, revamping the entire lineup, even booting the aforementioned blastbeat psycho Kryzsztof Bentkowski! A frightening proposition for longtime Antigama devotees I’d assume, although for me it means a world of new possibilities. Perhaps this overhaul is the fresh start that will result in a band ready to start making music as opposed to blasting out endurance-test noise? It is called Stop the Chaos isn’t it? Tough to say since I don’t remember much about them, but this EP isn’t bad. 90-second opener “E Conspectu” is a fast rager lifted straight out of Napalm Death’s more recent catalog. “The Law” and “Intricate Trap” are essentially more of the same, but feature some nifty start/stop maneuvers and endings right up Brutal Truth’s alley. Some oddball Voivod-isms seep their way into the title track and “Find the Function,” turning otherwise serviceable Grind assaults into instant filler. Never mistake wacky and weird for brilliant and genius, people. I can say I find this far more instantly likable than past efforts, though that could just be the small sample size. It’s still nowhere near dark or meaningful enough to spin more than a handful of times.