I see that the practice of hiring the mentally challenged to work in the music industry has once again brought us a new album to rip to shreds. I say that because And One is less Metal than the last Miley Cyrus CD. That’s right, folks. Miley Cyrus rocks harder than this gang of fairy princesses does. When your biggest selling point is that your album has songs that are “sometimes quite reminiscent of ‘80s ‘Tears for Fears’ harmonies,” we’re going to tear you a couple of new orifices that you probably didn’t want. When you send out promotional copies of your latest release to a site called Metal Curse, maybe you should check to see if the release is… well… Metal. That way, we don’t hurt the band’s fragile little feelings by comparing their music to what comes out of our asses on fajitas night at El Cucaracha’s. Maybe Synthetic Symphony should check to see if The Advocate has a music review section because that would probably be a better place for this kind of music. To be fair, I did listen to this the whole way through, which is about six songs from And One more than I ever wanted to hear. Technically, that’s four songs and two remixes, but the fact that two of the tracks are remixes doesn’t help the band’s cause here. Shouts of Joy is an oddball in that it’s essentially a New Wave album being released in an era where nobody listens to that shit and there’s no push to revive it. The New Wave movement of the ’80s was essentially a second wave of gay dudes trying to resurrect the rotting, violated, disease-ridden corpse of Disco. If there was one aspect of the ’80s that I wanted to forget, it was the fact that bands like Spandau Ballet ever got airplay outside of gay bath houses. New Wave is an abomination that deserves to rot in the same fetid septic system that the Twilight saga is destined to be cast into. There’s a reason that nobody listens to New Wave anymore. It sucked, and like every bad decision, we want to forget about it as quickly as possible. That’s why Butt Rock legends like Bret Michaels and Motley Crue can still go out on tour and sell out a small arena, but Tears for Fears can’t even get a one-off gig at the gay bar down the street. And One obviously never got the memo. Playing New Wave music in 2012 shows that you’re defective and can’t take a hint. If I had my way, I’d rate Shouts of Joy in negative numbers because not only do I want back the 25 minutes of my life that I wasted listening to this abortion, I’m also about ready to go to the World Court to see if I can get Synthetic Symphony and SPV put up on charges of crimes against humanity for releasing this crap in the first place. The best thing that And One can do as a follow-up to this release is to break up and never have anything to do with music again.

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.

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!

There certainly isn’t much subtlety involved when it comes to this band name, but I like it. Good record or bad record, I at least know I can relate on a personal level. Although, it is a bit of a bummer that I’m going to have to come up with a new name for my memoirs now. My ever-expanding gut tells me I’m in for Suicidal Depressive Black Metal, and if history’s taught me anything, that usually means either breathtakingly good or joke-bad. One thing you can say about my gut, aside from how morbidly grotesque it looks hanging in the missionary position, is that it’s usually right. And yes, My Useless Life definitely is SDBM, however, On the Edge is neither a flawless masterpiece nor a pathetic embarrassment. I guess the genre does have middle ground after all. The biggest hindrance here is the production. Obviously I don’t expect a huge, crystalline sound from bands like this, on the contrary I believe a little necro is in order for this ilk, but this is really bad. I’m talking I-hope-this-isn’t-destroying-my-speakers bad. I doubt this was even mixed, let alone mastered. Another grievance would be the vocal quality, or lack thereof. Scantly used and buried, I assume intentionally, the vocals are weak screams at best, with the occasional long-winded moan or groan not helping the cause whatsoever. More than any other kind, depressive music needs vocals —and they need to be good vocals— to properly illustrate the pain of the music’s inherent sadness. And if My Useless Life does one thing well, it’s crafting musical sadness. The poignant, tearjerking melodies found on “Suicidal Angels,” “Existence Without Purpose,” and “Road to Nowhere,” are pure cheerless genius. That melancholic mastery makes this impossible to write off, but the piss-poor recording and lack of a real singer creates a gaping void within the album that desperately needs to be filled, yet never is.