This band name is just begging to get made fun of. You could go the Venom route if you’re one of those rare, true fans who has Calm Before the Storm and can randomly quote it. Or I personally think The Little Mermaid is the way to go as it’s funnier and meaner (I’ll let you figure that one on out your own). However, the band name is the only thing you’ll be chuckling about here, because these sour krauts fucking rule. Talk about a Black Metal band that can do it all. This is amazing stuff. Blasting that makes Dark Funeral seem slow, enveloped in pure depressive hatred. If ever there were a hymn penned for the goddess named Negativity, “Haunted” would most certainly be it. Take Immortal’s grim and frostbitten fury entwined with Emperor’s sense of majesty, and don’t forget to call on Dissection’s melodic genius at will. The song “Zenith” actually made it snow in my house. It was that bleak! The completely non-Billy Joel related “I Set the Fire” is another work of sheer brilliance. A waltz between despondent pagan melodies and the aforementioned Emperor at their most witching. These guys invoke the power of the elder gods with apparent ease, and even manage to give it their own miserable spin. Some moments even recall vintage Ulver, long before the fateful LSD trip that destroyed their songwriting ability. Unfortunately Under That Spell aren’t always as great as the sum of their parts. “Sinister Circle” and “I Complete” are a bit of a bore and the instrumental acoustic segue, “Redemption,” could be argued as filler. But the album ends on a glorious note with the suicidal melodies of “Sun” followed by a similarly poignant outro. This band may not be the most original zenith under the black sun, but you’d be hard pressed to find a more convincingly passionate Black Metal LP performed with such a high level of talent.

This is album number three from California’s Warbringer, yet another band that is trying to bring Thrash back. While I admire the sentiment - Thrash did play a huge role in my Metal upbringing as a San Francisco native - the actual album leaves me wanting. This whole album sounded like Dekapitator, the side project of Matt Harvey from Exhumed. When Dekapitator was doing it (starting back in 1996), it was fairly fresh and new because nobody else around here was proudly hoisting the banner of Thrash Metal like they were. Warbringer isn’t bringing anything new to the table, and this is three albums into their career. They could do note perfect covers of “Hell’s Metal” or “One Shot, One Kill” and nobody would be able to tell that Warbringer was doing Dekapitator covers because the two bands sound so similar. I like the band’s enthusiasm, which did translate fairly well into their music, but their lack of originality hampered their efforts. Worlds Torn Asunder doesn’t suck. If you’ve been around the Metal scene for as long as I have, though, you’ve definitely heard everything on this album before - probably more than once.

This is the first full-length in ten years for Germany’s Night in Gales. They’ve been unsigned for the entire time, producing only a “tenth anniversary” EP and two demo recordings between 2001 and 2011. I don’t remember much about this band other than that their music was melodic Death Metal. They were kind of lumped in with bands like At the Gates, In Flames and Eucharist, but they never achieved the level of fame that the others did. Musically, they have a lot of guitar harmonics and atmospheric riffs, which makes this album an interesting listen. The inclusion of classical instruments, such as a violin in “The Tides of November,” adds an extra layer of atmosphere, but their use is as an inconsistent garnish. The focus is on the guitars - and for a band like this, that is usually where the focus should be - but the extras distract from an otherwise solid harmonic attack. You kind of wonder why the extra instrument is there because it only shows up on occasion, not as the focus of the song. If I were using a “guest instrument,” I’d build the song around it and feature it prominently, otherwise there isn’t much point in including it. Another distraction was that the vocalist is a bit too loud. When you’re a guitar harmony based band, you want to make sure people can hear them. The vocalist occasionally drowns the guitars out and that could have easily been avoided. Other than that, this is a very solid album. It isn’t totally fucking awesome (The Somberlain and Storm of the Light’s Bane are still the albums to beat as far as I’m concerned), but if you like melodic Death Metal, you’re not going to be demanding your money back if you buy this.

Take Agalloch’s atmosphere and channel it through Alcest’s ethereal approach, now add a vocalist who could convincingly front any Indie or Alt Rock band worth mentioning, and you have the best description I can offer of this nearly-impossible-to-categorize beautiful music. Stylistically Scotland’s Falloch are all things and no things. The light and the dark. Fear not true life-haters, a blasting Black Metal beast does lurk within, and while it may only reveal itself sparsely, it adds yet another dimension that this duo can transport sorrow to and from. I am reminded of Novembre’s bravery and genius in the sense that Falloch also exquisitely blend a framework of Extreme Metal with total emotive sensibility. They throw genre, category, and stylistic trappings to the wind and play straight from the broken heart. Andy Marshall is a great singer, I don’t know if they would’ve pulled it off with a less capable vocalist. This simply must be heard, a review can’t really do it justice. The album’s only minor flaw, aside from two somewhat bland instrumentals, is that it never tops its own first track. “We Are Gathering Dust” might be the Song of the Year. What is the point of living and dying? Hardly a discredit to the band that they wrote one completely perfect song and just happened to place it in front of four nearly perfect ones. Bravo!

This band used to have two former Massacre/Death members in it (Kam Lee and Terry Butler) but Kam Lee has since left. In his place is a new vocalist, and boy does he ruin this album for me. Musically, Denial Fiend is old-school Death/Thrash in the Florida vein. Vocally, the new guy, Blaine Cook, is very different from Kam Lee’s brutal Death-growl. He sounds pretty demented but not in a good way. I couldn’t listen to this for more than one or two songs at a time because this guy’s voice makes you want to pop your eardrums. Yes, it is original and distinctive but I never want to listen to this LP again. It’s that fucking irritating. They could fire this guy and get Jerry Lewis to sing for them and it would make this album 100% more listenable. 2011 is apparently the year of shitty vocals. There seem to be a lot of bands that have vocalists with styles that are not merely inappropriate for their style of music, but actually make the album worse because they clash so badly. Denial Fiend is a classic example of this. With Kam Lee, this might have been a bit generic but I could at least listen to it. With Blaine Cook, this album is essentially unlistenable.

I’ve never been a big fan of Punk in any form. I will admit to having some albums, mostly from that era when I was trying to get my head around the whole Grindcore phenomenon (which, for the most part, was just a more chaotic and extreme form of British Hardcore). That being said, I’ve never had much exposure to Amebix, who were always filed in the Punk/Hardcore section. Add to this the fact that this band hasn’t released a full-length album since 1987 and you can see why I don’t have much history with them. I checked out some of their back catalog online (YouTube is a great way to listen to this kind of stuff without illegally downloading anything) and when you compare Sonic Mass to the older music by this band, it sounds completely different. The only thing that is comparable is their 2010 EP, Redux. The album starts off with a somber ballad called “Days” and this segues into the more hard-driving material. The hard-driving stuff still doesn’t compare to their old “angry Punk Rock” era work, though. This album has elements of Hard Rock, Heavy Metal and even Neo-Folk (in terms of lyrical content), all blended together. I’ve listened to this LP about a dozen times already and I’ve yet to get tired of it. Motorhead looms large as an influence here, far more so now than on their earlier releases. This is a well put together album that flows very well from one song to the next. You can tell that the band put a lot of work into putting this album together and by the time I hit “Knights of the Black Sun,” I was almost sad that this had to come to an end. Sonic Mass is getting a lot of play, and while I still like the new Chthonic album better, I’d still put this one in my top ten for the year.

I didn’t want to bring it up, but this EP makes it clearly undeniable. More evident than ever on this 27-minute song is the continuing deterioration of Aaron Stainthorpe’s voice. It’s sad, and not the kind of sad I’m in search of when it comes to these Doom legends. He starts off with his Death snarl. The same Death snarl seemingly not long ago I was so pleased to see return to the My Dying Bride aesthetic. Yet it’s not the same. Call me a contrarian, but please take it away again. It sounds pitiful. Almost as if he’s mocking himself! Unfortunately the warbly moan that greets us next is no better. Not sure what the desired effect is here. I don’t even know how to describe it. An elderly, senile, out-of-key Peter Gabriel? Probably not even that good. At about 11:15 it should be noted that his singing improves somewhat. That is to say he actually begins singing. Still, a listen to any of the classics in this band’s storied back catalog reveals a shell of a legend here. It should be dually noted at about 11:15 I’m already tired of listening to this wretched thing. There’s nothing wrong musically with this record. It’s traditional My Dying Bride, violins and all. A style so revered, so often copied. Traditional? Yes. Respectable? Indeed. Heavy as they’ve sounded in a while? Very much so. Memorable? Sadly not. The closest it comes to being memorable is a very “Cry of Mankind”-esque guitar melody that fades out before an intermission close to halfway through. Which begs the question, why not just make this a 2-song affair? But it’s no matter. At roughly 19:45 during the second act of this cruel play, Stainthorpe unveils yet another vocal style that is so obnoxiously horrid that I have to stop now. This simply isn’t my My Dying Bride. I never believed it possible that the prospect of a forthcoming full length from these guys would result in a mere shrug of the shoulders, but it’s true. 34.788% is sounding pretty damn good right about now.

According to Metal Archives, this band has been around since 1989 (yes, they formed twenty fucking years ago!) and this is their first full-length album. I’m not sure what took them two decades, but here it is. Do you want adventurous songwriting? You’re not going to find it here. Do you want an album full of songs that all sound different from each other? Try the new Hammers of Misfortune. Do you want an album that rips your head off from the get-go, blasts away like the drummer had a bomb strapped to his body that would explode if he went under 300 BPM, and has lyrics about Satan, black magic and more Satan? Then this is for you! Embalmed is from Mexico, but they may as well be from Ross Bay, Canada (home of the legendary Blasphemy). This is the absolute worship of Canadian War Metal in the vein of Blasphemy, Conqueror and Revenge. Exalt the Imperial Beast is brutal, primitive and absolutely bestial. This is both a good thing and a bad thing. Yes, it’s fucking brutal as all hell, but it’s also one-dimensional. It may as well be ten different versions of the same track. If all you want is straightforward mayhem and chaos, then that isn’t a problem. The biggest hurdle that Embalmed faces is the “you only need one of their albums because they all sound the same” trap. Their next album will be the one that determines whether this band has the skills to be able to expand on this or not. If they can’t, then Exalt the Imperial Beast will be the only Embalmed album you need to get to know everything about them. Hopefully, we won’t have to wait another 20 years to find out.

I discovered this band earlier this year when a friend told me I’d like them (come to find out he meant the other Hanging Garden, from Finland). After some Youtube investigation, I tracked down a copy of 2009’s How Will You Live Your Life Today? and I haven’t looked back since. It’s the embodiment of Suicidal Depressive Black Metal. The complete worship of Negativity and the soundtrack to love fading. I’ve listened to it every day since. It came to me at a very low point in my life, and since I’ve been listening to it, I’ve stopped going out to bars with friends, stopped going to shows, stopped fucking my ex, stopped partying, stopped doing nearly everything short of wanting to die. Is it the fault of that bleak album or a mere coincidence? I might never know, but I haven’t ruled out cutting myself just yet. Not only have I fully embraced this band, but in a relatively short time they’ve turned me on to many other similar artists. One of them being the equally life-hating Happy Days, whose 2009-2010 output is some of the genre’s finest. Why all this background info? Because on Goodbye Love… Hello Heartache…, A. Morbid of Happy Days went from being the drummer of Hanging Garden to doing everything but the drums. Who knows what has become of Creature, the original mastermind behind this project. I’m guessing suicide, but that’s purely based on listening experience. Musically there is no change. Beautiful melodies of pain. Pure depressive misery in all its glory. Morbid can turn the simplest guitar melodies into tears in your eyes and standing hairs on your neck. It’s also recorded better with fewer hiccups (fans of the first album will know exactly what I mean) and great use of samples (another one of Morbid’s traits). My only question is Morbid’s vocals here. He is using his high-pitched howl almost exclusively (fans of Happy Days will know exactly what I mean). It’s part hound-dog, part my-mom-crying and it’s going to take some serious getting used to. Imagine Varg’s vocals on “Ea, Lord of the Deep” but with no grime, just the falsetto. Creature’s vocals were more standard Black Metal, albeit sadder, and Morbid’s are normally similar. Why he chose such an unorthodox approach for this relatively orthodox style is beyond me. What’s more puzzling is he teases us with his standard Black Metal voice only once on the album, at the end of leadoff track “Where I Belong.” Why not mix it up? We know you can. I still love the record for its chilling suicidal radiance, and I’m hoping I’ll get used to the howling with repeated listens, but if I ever wanted to give something a 10, this was it. Compared to the first album it just isn’t quite as good, with only the vocals to blame.

Some people seem to absolutely love this “band” and defend its useless existence. By “some people,” in this instance, I mean “brain-damaged sheep, easily manipulated by marketing and other such propaganda.” The kind of people who have tattoos of flaccid penises on their foreheads. The kind of deluded oxygen-wasters who have convinced themselves that their own conformity is rebellion, somehow.
I’ve always avoided the ridiculously named Sunn O))) for many reasons, chiefly because my cerebral cortex is still mostly functional. But also because this isn’t actually music. It’s a droning, motionless, drum-less, unbelievably boring scam masquerading as art that the talentless hack Stephen O’Malley uses to separate fools from their money. In fact, everything that O’Malley does is worthless bullshit, and the fact that he claims to be a graphic designer is ridiculous. That anyone actually believes him is infuriating, but that’s how the world works.
Having never heard the original 2000 pressing of this testament to the stupidity of mankind, I was oddly looking forward to reviewing this reissue, if only to destroy it. I sat down and listened to as much of each of these four long tracks (about 15 minutes each) as I could stomach. There is so little going on here that I assume that the vinyl version of this album consists entirely of four locked grooves. I’m disgusted to think that I may have just given someone such an idea.
This review has already given too much space to the unworthy, and I kind of wish I’d just gone with my first thought: Sunn O)))? More like HIVV +)))!

I was kind of surprised to see Enslaved release an EP at this stage in their career. From what I’ve heard about this release, it was agreed to a long time ago but time and commitments prevented it from happening. Now, in 2011, they’ve finally gotten around to doing it. The Thorn EP consists of two completely new songs, “Disintigrator” and “Striker,” both of which are around five and a half minutes in length. Musically, this is keyboard-heavy Black/Viking Metal that stays pretty much in the mid-paced range. It’s kind of unadventurous, if you ask me, especially “Striker.” The snarling vocals are fairly restrained and the music is best described as sterile. Maybe it’s the production, but both tracks lack feeling. The vocals may snarl but there’s no musical bite here. The keyboards, which would have normally given the tracks a little atmosphere, are bland and lifeless. I would be a bit more forgiving if this had been a band’s first release, but how many albums has Enslaved done? How many years have they been around? This is a veteran band, not a bunch of 17 year-old kids putting out their first demo tape! Thorn might be one for the collectors, but if you’re looking for kick-ass Metal music, this isn’t it.

I’ve never seriously listened to Rwake prior to this release, but the stuff I’ve heard never impressed me. Now that I’ve sat through an entire album of their music, I’m still not a fan. In fact, once I’m done with this review, I’m deleting this from my computer and never listening to them again. They don’t suck, but listening to their music made me feel like I was wasting my time. The music meanders all over the place. On top of the meandering music is a singer that sounds like he should be fronting a Hardcore band. He’s got no melody. All he does is shout and that puts him at odds with the music. I can live with meandering music if they have a vocalist that sort of makes things interesting, but this felt like I was at a protest rally outside a Hippy jam festival. Somebody was yelling at me about something while loud music played in the background. Ultimately, I didn’t care about either enough to stick around.

Here’s what I know about Ghoul. Sean McGrath (Impaled, Engorged) and Ross Sewage (Impaled, ex-Exhumed) are the main culprits involved. Their 2002 debut full length, We Came for the Dead!!! was fucking awesome. It was Gore-Grind, it was Death Metal, it was Thrash, it fucking ruled. In fact, just now typing that I’ve come to the realization that it was essentially this year’s new Exhumed album nine years ahead of its time. I didn’t fully check out their 2003 or 2006 albums, because the small bits I did hear just weren’t quite as good. But nothing could have prepared me for how awful Transmission Zero is. It’s pretty much the same cast of characters, except for newer drummer Fermentor (aka: Dino Sommese) of ex-Asunder and ex-Dystopia fame, but the sound and feel of the record is totally different. And by totally different I mean totally happy. Sure, a pack of ski-masked, blood-covered, chainsaw-bearing freaks isn’t ever going to ensure total seriousness, but unlike 2002, this is a complete fucking joke. They’ve pretty much removed the heaviness and brutality from the fold (hopefully reserving them for a new Impaled album, should one ever surface) in favor of a much more lightweight Death/Thrash, sometimes bordering on Street Punk. The vocals are no longer brutal. Towards the end of the album, I want to say maybe the last song, there are vocals so terrible I had to turn it off. And I don’t mean like when I was nine years old and I had to turn off Slayer’s Hell Awaits because it scared me. I mean I was embarrassed to have this playing in my home stereo, and I was alone. The total joke lyrics might as well be about fishing with your dad, rainbows, running hand-in-hand with your gay lover on the beach, and flowers that smell pretty. It all invokes the sickening feeling of fun and happiness, laughter and joy. This album is for people who wake up and say, “Oh boy! Another wonderful day to live my happy life! Hooray for life! Hooray for fun and good times! Yay! Life is all fun! Happy!”

I should probably warn all readers right here in the first sentence, Boston’s Junius are not a Metal band of any kind. The title of the album and the record label it’s on are about as Metal as this gets. However, if that doesn’t matter to you, you may want to read further, because Reports from the Threshold of Death is actually an extremely good album. My curiosity was initially struck about this quartet by a handful of reviews I’d read. They all categorized the band as Post-whatever, but the descriptions of the music and the emotion it conveyed wouldn’t allow to me to simply write them off as another Neurosis/Mastodon abortion. Finally getting the chance to listen to the record, I have to wonder what the goal of some music critics is. A competition to be the most vague? Twenty seconds into the opening cut, “Betray the Grave,” and the correct comparison couldn’t be more evident. So I’m going to go ahead and spoil it for everybody, and hopefully in the process ship a few extra units for these guys. Junius sounds like the Deftones. See, there was nothing difficult about typing that arrangement of words at all. And it’s the honest truth. They aren’t an exact clone or a carbon copy, but the similarity is totally undeniable. Vocalist/guitarist Joseph Martinez is an amazing singer, that’s the album’s greatest strength, but if you don’t hear the Chino Moreno in his voice, well then you’ve never heard Chino Moreno sing. The music might be a touch darker and more straightforward, a bit less adventurous than your average Deftones record (i.e. Junius don’t get let laid as much), and the lyrics are certainly more philosophical. I don’t have a lyric sheet (speaking of far-out concepts) but from what I can gather, near death experiences and existence after death are the sole themes. There seems to be an obsession with theorist Immanuel Velikovsky, as I’m told this concept is a continuation from their previous record, 2009’s The Martyrdom of a Catastrophist, which was based on his writing. I wouldn’t care if they were singing about Strawberry Shortcake, the music and the voice are that good. It’s heavy, it’s emotional, it’s deep, the production is amazing, it’s cooler than the other side of the pillow you shoot yourself through. If you’re a fan of the Deftones, or Dark Rock like Khoma, or even the ultimate suicidal masters Katatonia, Junius will provide the same funereal yet ethereal feeling.

I’ve heard Sol Invictus and bands covering Sol Invictus off and on while exploring the Folk Metal phenomenon, but I’ve never been a big fan. Neo Folk isn’t really my cup of tea. I’ve heard many bands in the genre, and while some are fairly good (such as The Soil Bleeds Black), most of them are boring and dispassionate (such as This Empty Flow and even Blood Axis). Sol Invictus, being one of the older groups in the genre, is a bit more interesting than the average Neo Folk band. One of the first things that I noticed is that Sol Invictus doesn’t exactly write “songs” in as much as they participate in a cacophony of Renaissance and Medieval musical instruments that blend together in a mish-mash of sounds that sometimes works and other times just makes your head hurt. It’s like improvisational Jazz for the Ren-Faire set. The second thing that I noticed is that the vocals, while sort of melodic, are very flat. You can understand everything, but they generally fall into a tight range that drones on and on and on. I really couldn’t get into this album. Things were just too chaotic and unstructured where the music was concerned, and the vocals just bored me because they lacked dynamics. When I want to listen to Folk music, I have Lord Wind, Hagalaz Runedance, Perunwit and Wojnar, all of which are better at creating a Medieval atmosphere and also have more structured songs. Sol Invictus is an interesting listen for limited amounts of time but I couldn’t sit through an entire album of this.

San Diego’s As I Lay Dying have got to be the Metal scene’s most tolerated Jesus-fuckers. It’s no surprise why, they’re actually pretty damn good. Sure, I’d love to sit and watch the first segment of the Zeitgeist documentary with frontman Tim Lambesis (with all Christians for that matter) just to see what his anti-logic, anti-reason, brainwashed responses would be. And I’m not saying I wouldn’t enjoy an afternoon at the coliseum watching lions eat his flesh, but that doesn’t mean Frail Words Collapse isn’t a great album for the gym, or that An Ocean Between Us isn’t perfect for long drives. I enjoy their brand of good cop/bad cop Metalcore, as they simply know how to write a memorable song. Truth is they’re such lukewarm Christians that the message never really gets preachy anyway. Which means they’ll even be in Hell with us since, last time I checked, God spits the lukewarm (cum) out of his mouth. So, the fact that I like the band aside, Decas is a pretty unnecessary compilation of scrap material. There are three brand new songs (“Paralyzed,” “From Shapeless to Breakable,” and “Moving Forward”), none of which do anything for me. Very uncharacteristically unmemorable for them. Probably throwaway cuts from The Powerless Rise sessions. Then they toss some covers our way. Slayer’s “War Ensemble” is done well, but I’m pretty sure that the faggot Christ does not want his sexy ass children listening to Slayer, let alone covering them. Oh well, 666 Hail Marys, right? Hey, speaking of being brutally sodomized by an Irishman, next up is Judas Priest’s classic “Hellion/Electric Eye” duo. Again, a decent cover, but I don’t think decent covers are selling records in a recession or in the age of file-sharing and blogspots. The last cover is an odd choice. “Coffee Mug” by Descendents? Good for the sheer novelty of hearing a serious Metalcore band do a comical Punk song, I guess, but that novelty lasts all of 40 seconds. This is followed by a slew of completely worthless remixes of select As I Lay Dying songs. I don’t have time in my life for remixes. Mix it right the first time. I don’t need to hear Dubstep variations of Metal songs, unless I’m getting blown by some Techno whore during the process. Good band, useless stopgap compilation.

It pains me to say this, as I’ve been a huge fan of this band since the beginning, but Krisiun sound really tired on this album. With 2008’s Southern Storm, I believe I said something along the lines of the band hitting a “creative wall.” Well, on The Great Execution, the band sound like they’re sonically putting up drywall. A few tracks still serve to impress. You wouldn’t know the dullness you were in store for judging by the vicious opening cut, “The Will to Potency.” The title track and “The Extremist” also stand out as great songs, but the album as a whole suffers from a very workmanlike deja vu. You’ve more or less heard Krisiun do all of these songs before. They seem to be merely going through the motions here. Which it should be noted, in all fairness, that these Brazilian psychopaths’ motions are by no means commonplace. It would take mortal bands aeons of practice to learn how to go through these motions. But the bar is raised for Krisiun by their own doing. The Great Execution basically features their two styles of recent albums mixed together. By that I mean the rapid fire speed and the start-stop breakdown tactics. Somehow it just feels tedious. Songs all of a sudden feel too long, even though they’re standard length for these guys (most tracks are five minutes or longer). A lot of this record sounds like an intro or a pre-chorus that just never breaks through or explodes. It even feels like drummer extraordinaire Max Kolesne is playing nothing but Tool beats the entire record. An endless sea of tribal tom fills. Of course that’s not all he’s doing, but that’s all I take away from his performance. The energy seems gone for some reason. Whether that be a slight change in production, me hitting the nail on the head about going through the motions, or maybe just my ever decreasing will to live, I simply don’t get my Krisiun fix from this Krisiun record. If you happened to track down the “limited edition digipak version” (aka: Jew version) with the “limited edition digipak bonus track” (aka: Jew track), which is a re-recording of the legendary “Black Force Domain,” maybe you’ll understand what I mean. The original song from that eponymous album sounded like jackhammering through the crust of Hell. It turned my stereo into a winged demon that flew away to cause limitless property damage while taking several innocent lives by breathing fire. The re-recorded version sounds completely sterilized by comparison. Better sound quality, but a band showing their wear and age nonetheless. I didn’t even realize it was the same song until the chorus hit. Something obviously needs to re-light the fire. May I suggest fatal amounts of blow? First degree murder? A bottle of Absinthe and some razor blades? Virgin sacrifice? All of the above?

Ah, Cynic, we meet again. The band everyone inexplicably loves. I had Focus on cassette, I didn’t want to be left out. Plus, Tony Choy played bass on Pestilence’s legendary Testimony of the Ancients LP, so I had to see what all the fuss was about. I remember selling it several days later to the local used record store for $3. Yes, a tape sold for $3, which back in 1993 bought you two gallons of gas, a pack of smokes, a hooker, and a good meal. Times have certainly changed, but lifelovers still worship Cynic. I haven’t heard them since their reformation in 2008 because I don’t have time to waste on happy, positive music. Okay, fuck it, let’s see what all the fuss is about. Whoa! I remember disliking this band for being lightweight, anti-memorable, overly technical Death/Thrash. The first thing I hear on this EP is Bjork singing! This transitions into the next song which is Dream Theater’s take on a Winger ballad. What the fuck is this, Mike and the Mechanics? Next song please. Now, I’ve never seen Saudi Arabian gay porn, but I imagine “Bija!” is the proper background music. “Box Up My Bones” and “Elves Beam Out” might as well be Amy Grant covers. And I’m not talking about when she went total Satanic underground with “Baby Baby.” Alright, Cynic fans, explain your way out of this one. And don’t give me that “they’re good at their instruments” bullshit! You know who’s good at his instrument? That inbred kid from Deliverance. Doesn’t mean I need his albums nearby. This is completely pathetic unlistenable garbage. Carbon-Based Anatomy sounds like two men making passionate love to each other in outer space. Recommended if you like Yanni, Kenny G, or Enya (except nowhere near that feral). Please break up again, Cynic, you fucking suck. Would anyone like to buy my burn of this for $3?

While listening to this, I was struck by that “I’ve heard this somewhere before” feeling. You know, where you hear a riff, but you’re not sure just where else you heard it? Then, about midway through the first track, it hit me. This was Von’s Satanic Blood album at double the speed. The riffing is that simplistic and the main riff from “Emerging” is “Satanic Blood” only played faster. There are also several blatant Hellhammer moments on here where the vocalist attempts Tom Warrior’s trademark grunts. Simplicity does have some advantages, mostly because that tends to add to the track’s memorability. Unfortunately, this album just blows by in a haze of blast beats, simplistic, grinding riffs and caustic vocals. Several tracks, “World Cadaver” being the most blatant, sound like blast beat rap songs. There are guitars on there but you rarely hear them. All you hear is snare and vocals. The slower tracks are definitely better in that you actually hear the guitars properly and you can get a better idea of what the band is trying to do. Sadly, that tends not to be the norm. Defilement’s real strength seems to be in their slower tracks, but being a brutal Death Metal band apparently makes them want to dwell in the fast and furious realm. Another minor gripe, I don’t know if the song “The Axe” was meant to be a bonus track but if you have a song called “Closure,” you should probably stick it at the end.

A very promising debut EP from this California quartet. Imagine a crossbreed of Suffocation and Necrophagist and you’ll get a solid idea of what these miscreant lads set out to accomplish with this sensory mindfuck. Jabbing, brutal riffs permeate the frantic blasting and amphetamine-aided vocal patterns courtesy of the brothers Pisarczyk (Jason on sticks, Jesse on esophagus). But Vast Realms… isn’t all high-speed ear canal rape amidst a backdrop of nonstop machine gun fire. They know exactly when to inject a pit riff, or something dazzlingly technical, which coupled with the EP’s very short running time (a second shy of 17 minutes) saves the record from brutality banality. I would call it standard Sevared fare, but I think it’s actually a league or two above that. Musical talent and use of dynamics notwithstanding, this has a decent sounding production (could be a little beefier) and the cover art looks more Seagraven than autistic 6th grader. Obviously they aren’t reinventing Death Metal here. This isn’t anything a seasoned Death vet hasn’t heard before, but it is done extremely well and in a year lacking in quality Metal of Death output, you should lap this up like a dehydrated Boxer. Unfortunately no real standout tracks to single out and comment on, but the intelligent barbarian vibe of the EP, in addition to the aforementioned short length, makes this feel like one kick ass standout cut all its own.