Right from the opening credits, Deicide's 7th album already seems like a jilted bore. Of course, I'm talking about the rather bland cover image, an area which has never been the band's forte (but at least the first two albums had cool symbols present). Unfortunately, the growing pains here run far deeper than just the bland image of Jesus above which an empty logo and title are imposed. You see, Scars of the Crucifix suffers from the same fate as its predecessor, the oft maligned In Torment In Hell: the songwriting sucks. Granted, this was a period of turmoil for the band. In fact, this is the final album to involve the Hoffman brothers, but from the sound of things I have to suspect that there was some unrest somewhere which turned into the acceptance of sub-par material being ushered forth.
The production is perhaps a notch up from In Torment in Hell, but this is yet another empty canteen of blasphemous sustenance in a desert of dried ideas. Deicide had in effect become a paragon of the very generic, faceless death metal they helped influence across a thousand other, aspiring bands. Pedestrian chugging rhythms intertwined with streams of half baked streams of blasting mutes that fail to generate even a handful of fingers worth of quality riffs. "Scars of the Crucifix", "When Heaven Burns", "The Pentecostal", and "From Darkness Come" are littered with truly lamentable snoozing palm mute mosh rhythms unfit to shine Pontius Pilate's knob. Deicide had never exactly scrawled out malevolent notation worthy of the standard of shock and brutality beneath which they marched, but these songs don't even feel remotely aggressive and muscular, traits that made Legion such a success.
Even the titles continued to feel lazy. "Fuck Your God", "Mad About God", "When Heaven Burns", its all the same shtick the band have been churning out for years, and while some might find this devout dreariness as 'refreshment', or a band unchanging in the face of an ever expanding genre, it simply isn't going to cut it. Scars of the Crucifix maintained the same slicing leads as the albums prior to it, but they also seemed indifferent and dialed in at the last moment, with zero appeal beyond their own writhing, sporadic and sudden existence. It was honestly no surprise when Benton announced that the Hoffman brothers were out of the band. Whatever personal issues existed, whoever was in the right or wrong, this lot were simply not making any music of note together, and had not been for years. Fresh blood was necessary, and fresh blood would Glen Benton find in some worthy scene veterans who were kicking about loosely.
Scars of the Crucifix is another of the cult heroes' darkest hours. It persists as an example of why one should break the bread before letting it grow stale.
Verdict: Fail [4/10] (live in wounds of recollection)
http://www.myspace.com/theofficialdeicidemyspacepage
After an eight year hiatus from the studio, I had every expectation that Obituary might have stood back, assessed their career and perhaps turned back the clock to the years in which they produced not only viable, but exceptional death metal. Forget the heedless, grooving overtures of the mid to late 90s, forget the slam dance only crowd, and return to the creeping, beloved abominations of the past! After seeing the artwork for Frozen in Time, I was so sure that my prayers were to be answered that I gushed out to purchase the CD as quickly as possible. Within the first few tracks, I had realized my error, realized the risk of 'early adoption' in its most treacherous form: for this is the worst fucking album Obituary has released in their entire career, and that includes some pretty poor choices (The End Complete, Darkest Days, need I continue?).
Frozen in Time does not, in fact, return to the band's earlier years, nor in fact does it produce anything new of note. Sure, the influence from Cause of Death remains, loosely, but this album is an effect a hybrid of the band's hokey groove core circa World Demise or Back from the Dead, only those efforts possessed a saving grace in several of their riffs, sodden but memorable. That is not the case here, because the band have churned out the most half assed compositions of their career! Most of the songs contain no more than 1-2 riffs with meager variation, and even when they get something tolerable going, they repeat it unto oblivion, until you've no other choice but to angrily press the TRACK FORWARD button! Point in case: the bridge riff in "Blindsided". This horrendous, two note groove is one of the most amateur spectacles I've experienced in metal music. So weak that a band of 6-year olds into Six Feet Under would probably turn their snotty little noses up at it rather than commit it to tape!
But it's not alone here, joined by a cacophony of tripe such as the brooding groove of "Mindset", "Slow Death" or "Lockjaw". Yes, they spent as much time on the song titles as the music (not that Obituary has ever been complex in this regard). Even when the band picks up the pace mildly, as in "Back Inside" or "On the Floor", the material feels like nothing more than weak paraphrasing of tunes from The End Complete or Cause of Death. Let me not get into "Redneck Stomp" (yes, "Redneck Stomp"), a pedestrian slammer so stupid that it should have written itself out of existence. Add to this the rather brute, boring production of the album, lack of anything hinging on a good lead, and a phoned in John Tardy performance which does little else than vapidly repeat patterns he has already well covered on previous albums, and you've got one of the biggest faux pas in all of Florida death metal! An aberration of a once frightening, relevant entity!
Frozen in Time sucks. There is simply no excuse for such a work as this, least of all from a band who have nearly 20 years of experience in their field. Even the lyrics suck. They could write an album of this merit six times in a single afternoon, it's so lackluster. You could dissect, cut and paste riffs from any of their past albums using audio editing software, almost at random, and come up with something better. There are actually people who enjoy this? I say to these: earwax. Time to clean it out, lest another decade of deafness pass by in ignorance.
Verdict: Fail [2.25/10]
http://www.obituary.cc/
If Decade in the Grave bears some passing similarity to the 2003 Cannibal Corpse boxed set 15-Year Killing Spree, then congratulations: you are one sane and rational human being. Yet, Chris Barnes and crew have actually attempted to one-up his alma mater with 5 discs rather than the four found in the Corpse-camp. Metal Blade have done a bang up job with the packaging, once more, and I actually found that the cover art to this compilation is the best of Six Feet Under's career, even if it's just some undead gravedigger standing in a pile of bones. Of course, Cannibal Corpse have traditionally written some damn fine music, while Six Feet Under are fans of sucking, so the actual value of the audio content is not nearly on par with that, but if you're one of those 6FU diehards or chuggalos who worship the mundane ground the quartet are trampling upon, then this is something of a substantial bone being tossed in your direction.
Of the five discs, the first two are a mere 'greatest hits' package, which translates to sheer and unrequited uselessness on a truly corporate scale. Since Barnes has maintained strong relations with Metal Blade, there were obviously no licensing issues, so you'll find quite a selection from the six full-lengths and the band have thankfully left off the covers from the Graveyard Classics series, or their earlier Alive & Dead EP. Considering that a large percentage of the band's music is immediately disposable, then this is very little cause for excitement. Reprinted drivel. And the selection here is questionable, with the band leaving off some of their better songs like "Human Target", "Bonesaw" and "Shortcut to Hell" completely in favor of more laughable selections at every turn. Also, I cannot understand why material has been included from 13...it had just come out some months prior to this. A little too soon to double dip?
Once you've gotten past these, then the material is something more along the lines of what fans would probably want out of the boxed set. Disc 3 contains the demos and sessions from the Haunted, Bringer of Blood, and True Carnage albums, all of which are less inspiring than the final studio versions, but at least are not direct reprints. There are a pair of songs here which have been included from the 13 sessions: "A Knife Fight to the Death" and "From Flesh to Bone", which are performed with that same post-Obituary, semi-thrashing appeal that dominates the album, and arguably would have been fit for the official release just as much as some of the cuts that made it. Lastly, Six Feet Under have chosen to include the entire live bonus disc from the Maximum Violence album, half-decent sounding and welcome for those fans who do not have the re-release that originally included it.
By far the best part of the compilation comes with disc 4, which contains both of the Leviathan demos (Legions of the Undead and the '87 rehearsal). This was Chris Barnes' band prior to joining Cannibal Corpse, and there were a few early Malevolent Creation folks in there. They played a brutal form of splatter speed/thrash metal which was quite good, a mix of the rampant aggression of Slayer, Kreator, Destruction, Possessed, and Dark Angel, with splatter sounding vocals redolent of crossover gods Cryptic Slaughter or The Accused, with a little spin of Mille Petrozza (Kreator). Barnes' vocals here were FAR better than the cheesy snarls he uses throughout the 6FU catalog, and frankly I would be glad to plunk down the cash just to attain these two demos on a single disc. Tunes like "Violent Slaughter" and "Lamentation of Death" kick some serious ass, and its a wonder that band didn't go a greater distance.
Finally, there is the DVD, which collects the band's official videos with a few live performances. The videos themselves are pretty weak. "Dead and Buried" and "Shadow of the Reaper" show the typical narcissism of the band rocking out, while a few of them have some narrative being interspersed amidst the headbanging through actors, and then some like "The Day the Dead Walked" have a bit of makeup and special effects. Cheesy shit, nothing to write home about and nothing interesting in any way. The live spots are taken from the Full Force festival in 2004 and a Berlin, Germany performance from 2005, and honestly these are not half bad. The band gets into the gig, Barnes even speaks a little German, and the songs don't sound wholly abominable in that setting, at least not on this disc.
Decade in the Grave feels pretty complete for a boxed set, due only to the wealth of material involved, but of course it could have been a lot better. Perhaps released without the rehashed compilation discs, but just demos, rarities, and the video content, it would be less weighted with 28 annoying reprints. Then again, most of the 'demo sessions' disc could also be scrapped. Most of the points I'm awarding this are for the Leviathan demos (which are great) and the DVD live performances, which are the only things here worth caring for. That said, the rarities and bonus tunes on the Cannibal Corpse set were are superior (like their Razor cover), and even though that's still choked with redundant crap, it's a better purchase than this.
Verdict: Fail [4.5/10]
http://www.sfu420.com/
I could accuse Six Feet Under of many things, but certainly a lack of productivity is not among them. The middle of the 'oughts saw the band at a pretty hectic nexus in their career. Riding high on the heels of their pathetic AC/DC Back in Black tribute Graveyard Classics 2, they were soon to return to the studio for their sixth original full length 13, while the band were prepping 'the big one', their Decade in the Grave collection due on Halloween of the same year. Now, 13 is not a sudden leap in quality above the recent drivel like Bringer of Blood (2o03) or True Carnage (2001), and the production in general is quite limp compared to Bringer, but there's an astute seriousness, a workmanlike ethic that Barnes and the boys have brought for this that involves far less fucking around than the past handful of releases.
That's not to say 13 is a mark of quality, in fact, quite the opposite, but the album is nowhere near as insulting and pathetic as its recent siblings had been. The guitar riffs still leave a lot to be desired, even if the band had largely returned to their Obituary-defined roots circa Haunted or Warpath. The quartet is all business as they break out "Decomposition of the Human Race" or "The Art of Headhunting", and there are quite a few straight thrashing/groove tunes here like "Somewhere in the Darkness" and "Shadow of the Reaper" that almost succeed in constructive passable guitar lines and fist fighting momentum. Alas, there is still much work to be done, because a number of the songs still suck pretty hard ("The Poison Hand", "Deathklaat") due to the minimal effort in their composition, and the lyrics range from total suck ("Somewhere in the Darkness") to tolerable horror film tributes (title track).
For the first time in a long time, though, I can at least rest knowing that I didn't enjoy a Six Feet Under record because it was merely weak, rather than actively odorous and offensive to the point of disbelief. 13 does not belong among the band's 'stronger' works, that is the records that aren't utter and total failures (Haunted, Maximum Violence, Death Rituals), but then I never wanted to hurl it against the nearest hard surface and break it. It doesn't necessarily belong in the refuse pile alongside Warpath or True Carnage. Hell, with a few tweaks, a little subtlety, and less lazy riff writing, Six Feet Under might damn well pursue the 'comeback trail', or better yet, write their first 'good' album. I'm sure no one is crossing their fingers, but wouldn't that be a surprise? After all, it had been over a decade since The Bleeding, Chris. Pony up time?
Verdict: Fail [4.25/10] (you have been left unburied)
http://www.sfu420.com/
It's a testament to a band's enormity when so many fans hinge upon each new release as if it were some kind of life changing or universe altering event, and such is the case for Morbid Angel. I've found the Florida vets to have one of the most inconsistent careers in all the death metal genre, peaking on their debut Altars of Madness and then bouncing back and forth between forgettable arrays of half cooked ideas and sudden storms of cohesive creativity and brilliance. I've never been a fan of Blessed are the Sick, Formulas Fatal to the Flesh, or Heretic, for example, but on the flip side I've a highly vested interest in Altars, Domination and Gateways to Annihilation, several of which are themselves divisive offerings.
So, when a leak of the band's latest Illud Divinum Insanus trickled out 'mysteriously' some time ago, it stands to reason that the masses would erupt in predictable poo flinging, metal monkeys on a crusade to protect their natural environment from outside influences (i.e. the deniers of the potential career holocaust that Morbid Angel just might have unleashed). There was quite a wealth of jabber from both the audience and the musicians involved about the 'experimental' nature of this, the band's long anticipated 'I' album, but unfortunately, aside from its stylistic dissemination, there is pitifully little of the innovation or 'avant garde' about what Trey and his ever shifting lunatic parade have conjured forth this time. Illud Divinum Insanus is instead split pretty evenly between monotonous, electronically imbued chargers and then some rather paltry death metal filler that wouldn't have even been worthy of the band's previous disappointments.
So, yes. This time, the clouds of nebulous, negative chatter that acted as vanguard to this album's release seem to have been acute in their shocked and awed reactions, but at the same time, this is hardly the biggest misstep I've heard in the metal genre. It's bad, but not unshakable enough to lose sleep over. Much of the staggering propaganda seems to revolve around expectations that the David Vincent comeback album would somehow be something of magnificence, after his long stint with the Genitorturers. Or that Pete Sandoval would be unable to record the album, and so was replaced with Tim Yeung for the sessions. Or that it was the studio debut for newcomer Destructhor, who had previously impressed some audiences through Myrkskog and Zyklon. I can say with great confidence that none of these musical chairs have anything to do with the lack of quality upon Illud Divinum Insanus. Instead, it's the poor songwriting, poorly chosen pace of the record and stagnant ideas that will drag it into the latrine of infamy.
For starters, the first 9 minutes of this album are incredibly erroneous and weak. "Omni Potens" is a ritual intro piece delivered through boring synthesizer/horn lines and broken chanting, just as vapid as any of the interlude pieces from Formulas. Then there is "Too Extreme!" Do not adjust your screen. That's really the name of this brainless techno banger. Apparently the idea of 'innovation' here is to incorporate pathetic gabber beats that wouldn't have been impressive for a garage DJ in 1987 into a ringing and annoying cacophony of useless riffs that could find no other home, while Vincent rambles out crappy lyrics and a chorus in Spanish?! Once this nightmare has subsided, we get a streak of straight, familiar death metal through "Existo Vulgoré " and "Blades of Baal"; the same, pummeling blend of blasts and chugging that the band had perfected through albums like Domination to Gateways to Annihilation, only rendered wholly uninspiring due to the lack of memorable guitar patterns. Empty fists, beating the bored listless. The latter has a few spikes of excitement through the bridge, just not enough to save the song.
"I Am Morbid" feels like a vainglorious and cheesy march designed for the Morbid Angel faithful, but again it cedes into some pretty generic chugging/groove metal, while the next piece, "10 More Dead" might actually have pulled itself off without the lyrical flow that gives it a near gangsta rap approximation. What a waste of rhythm! Then we've got another of the band's awful techno pieces "Destructos vs. the Earth/Attack". Truly lamentable. In fact, how did this make it onto the album? How did it make muster? "Nevermore" is more of the pseudo-psycho groove driven ballast that many fans were probably hoping for. Perhaps the safest track on the album, so it's no wonder they used it as the advance single, but it's just nonetheless too easily fleeting from the memory chamber, a wax on/wax off of self-derivation. "Beauty and the Beast" is also familiar and forgettable, but still in the vein of Gateways/Heretic; while "Radikult" has some curious, bleeding melodies through it. Despite its 7 and a half minute bloat, I'd have to say it was the best track here. Just when you think the album might find some salvation, though, the generic gabber returns for the indistinct "Profundis - Mea Culpa", its sliding and schizoid guitar lines the only things going for it...
Illud Divinum Insanus plays out like an ill-informed mash of hurried ideas that needed far more time in the cauldron to come to a boil, but even if we were to trim away the needless techno fat, the meat itself is gamey malnourishment. Should we reduce this record to perhaps four tracks: "Radikult", "Nevermore", "Blades of Baal" and "Beauty and the Beast", then you'd have an EP of material possibly on the level of Heretic. The mix is functional, with the same punctuation and percussive tones the band have been using for years, and admittedly more solid than Heretic. Of course, functional is just not good enough, and neither are these songs. Eight years and nothing to show for it. A St. Anger. A victim of its own swollen expectations, sucking at the 'out of touch' trough, its only success riding on brand name alone. Surely Morbid Angel could do a lot better by their fans than this, but more importantly: they could do a lot better by themselves.
Verdict: Fail [3.5/10] (false idols blown away)
http://www.morbidangel.com/
For a band that had initially manifest in such a storm of darkness, sparks and wonder as The Key, Nocturnus has sure gone limp throughout the remainder of their career, which at this point has borne the semblance of a shuddering light bulb suspended from the ceiling of some damp and forgotten basement. Their subsequent albums Thresholds and Eternal Tomb were decent, but really failed to expand the vision and momentum of that timeless debut, as if they were simply churning out the same repeated ideas like a taffy maker. Too many trips back to the well before the rain of inspiration, and the supply becomes rank and unpleasant to the taste.
Not too much of a surprise then, that in its death throes, the cult classic metal act is celebrated by a re-issue of demos, or previously unreleased fare that can turn someone a buck where said band's lack of productivity and creative shelf life are not sufficing. Enter The Nocturnus Demos, a repressing of the band's s/t Nocturnus demo (1987) and The Science of Horror (1988) which unfortunately doesn't have a hell of a lot to offer anyone familiar with The Key. Well, to be fair, the '87 demo has a handful of tracks that were abandoned to the past, but "B.C./A.D.", "Standing in Blood", "Undead Journey" and "Neolithic" are all meager representations of what they'd become on the superior, full-length journey, and "B.C./A.D." is presented here in two versions. Perhaps the most impressive aspect of this fan package is hearing just how brutal the band was for the late 80s period, and in this was I was reminded of Deicide's collection Amon: Feasting the Beast. Otherwise, expect crude tape productions and Browning vocals that feel disheveled and shouted compared to the brute professionalism he displayed on The Key.
As for the stuff you hadn't heard, there's the messy namesake "Nocturnus" which filters a few half-decent riffs through a garbage song structure; the brooding slog of "Unholy Fury" which bears some similarity to Hellhammer with speed breaks; or the blackish, brackish waters of "The Entity", with some wildly woven leads and sadly forgettable rhythm riffs. All of these hail from the band's '87 demo, granted, so less polish is to be expected, but as the sole 'attraction' to this compilation that cannot be experienced outside of The Key, they come up very short. Had The Nocturnus Demos featured superior production (which I must admit, Amon: Feasting the Beast did in places), or some later odds & ends like the s/t EP from 1993, then its value would be greater, but really there's just no point to listening to this outside of base curiosity. A pity when there were (and remain) so many outer and inner spaces that this band had yet to explore.
Verdict: Fail [4/10]
http://www.myspace.com/nocturnusofficial
Amazing, the life that Peter Tägtgren's Pain has taken on for itself. I would have thought this dead in the ditch at maybe 2 or 3 albums, yet the project has arguably surpassed Hypocrisy in terms of its popularity in Europe. Not all that much of a shock when taking into account the style here: bubblegum techno metal with lyrics and titles that read like endless streams of pop cliches. But it's confounding to me that Tägtgren is so into this. A meal ticket? I can't say, since one would think that Hypocrisy and his production work/Abyss studio earn him a comfortable living. Either way, Pain is now seven albums deep, and You Only Live Twice is not about to rock the boat. The Tim Burton/9-esque cover image might be distinct compared to the backlog, but the music itself is generally the same its been since the sophomore Rebirth in 1999.
By that I mean a lot of keyboards and pianos serving up the central melodies in the compositions, while supported by chunky, processed groove metal guitars. Occasionally the riffs will bust out something more thrashing, or something redolent of Hypocrisy's more mainstream albums like Virus or Hypocrisy. Sometimes, the lines even blur as to which of the bands I'm listening to (as in the opener "Let Me Out"), but in general, Pain is known for the predominantly clean vocals. I think it's a bit hasty to call this 'industrial metal', since there are very few such elements outside of the synthesizers, which are more in line with the general idea of 'techno'. When Tägtgren is at his best here, he's able to create these driving, atmospheric moods through all too simple chord selections and the electronic graze of the keys, culminating in a somewhat catchy chorus ("You Only Live Twice" or the Sonic Syndicate cover "Leave Me Alone"), but even these rarely prove to possess much lasting depth upon repeated listens. Yes, a Sonic Syndicate cover...!?
There are a few breaches of protocol here which hardly go sunny side up, like the rocking of "Dirty Woman" which feels like Monster Magnet for a few minutes, or the even more Goth than usual creeping of "Feed the Demons". However, the rest are pretty straight driving Pain tunes with all the pageantry of your more commercial Gothic metal or pop acts (Theater of Tragedy after the turn of the century, a little Marilyn Manson, NIN, and so forth). Peter's vocals are all over the place. The guy can sing, but there are also grunts and snarls here which often cast a limp glow akin to those used in, say metalcore. I might not mind the music so much if the lyrics and song titles showed any predilection for thoughtful imagery or even the slightest fraction of intellectual stimulation, but apparently the intention is towards sugary, frivolous abandon with no real value outside of a half dozen bi-winning melodies. Not that the last few albums were all that great, but You Only Live Twice feels puerile even for Pain.
Verdict: Fail [4.75/10] (I need to break away from me)
http://www.painworldwide.com/
It seems somewhat suspect that Monstrosity would release a live album so soon after their Enslaving the Masses compilation (2001). Was there really a huge demand for such material? Disc 2 of that collection left something to be desired (rather unfairly mixed), but it at least gave a general impression of how the band were experienced on stage. Having seen them, I can attest that they're decent, thus a better sounding live offering might not be unwelcome, but that, my friends, is not Live Extreme Brazilian Tour 2002, not by a long shot. This was released through a small label known as Mutilation, and features a pretty piss poor recording of a handful of Monstrosity tracks that the band were performing in South America.
Seriously, one has to strain to attain any subtleties in the performance. Lee Harrison's drums are strong enough, or at least, mechanical sounding and precise, but the guitar chugging, and that's all you will hear: the chugging, is quite weak. I've heard jam room recordings stronger than this, recorded to single track tape machines. The vocals sound fairly generic, and the bass exists only as a pumping subtext to the monotony of the guitars. The one guitar thing doesn't work out quite so well when the rhythm has to drop for the leads (they've often had two though). Now, it's quite likely that this was in fact a great, exciting set being performed, but that the capture simply wasn't very good. The set here is rather short, about a half hour and eight tracks, two of which are Slayer covers ("Angel of Death" and "Raining Blood", about as generic as you could get, though Monstrosity do decent renditions on principle).
As for their original offerings, you get three from the Corpsegrinder fronted albums Imperial Doom (the title track, "Final Cremation") and Millenium ("Fatal Millenium"); the rest are all from their most recent, In Dark Purity ("Destroying Divinity", "Dust to Dust", and "The Angel Venom"). Not a terrible selection for so brief a set, but nevertheless underwhelming if you were to compare it to any of the more substantial alternatives you could purchase. Perhaps if they'd placed a few separate, complete sets here across 2-3 discs, with some variation in the track lists, then it would be a better bargain, but if the sound were this mediocre in general then that would become even more of a drag. Even if Live Extreme Brazilian Tour 2002 is not an official bootleg, it should be treated as such, because that's what it sounds like, and the limited pressing of this is really no impetus to check it out unless you're the most financially liberal collectors.
Verdict: Fail [3.25/10]
http://www.monstrosity.us/
Perhaps I've just been looking at Six Feet Under in the wrong light. Maybe this band was actually birthed as a comedy troupe, a more subversive and brutal alternative to a Tenacious D or Weird Al Yankowic. Maybe Chris Barnes and crew are laughing all the way to their next paycheck, each time they release one of these stolid and mentally handicapped emissions unto the world. A googly eyed skull stares in separate directions while its head is adorned with goathorns and other floppy things that make it look like an undead jester. The 'Play' button reveals nothing more than awkwardly conceived vocals between blunt and snarled poles. Bad death metal grooves that were frankly not fit for most of the half-assed groove and nu-metal bands in the mid to late 90s. Pedestrian lyrics that exhibit not even the most frivolous trace of effort. Welcome once more to Six Feet Under. This is all a joke, right?
Perhaps the most criminal irony about Bringer of Blood is that the mix of the album sounds so much fresher and bloodier than all of its predecessors. They were truly able to extract a gut wrenching power from the guitars this time around, and Barnes' deeper vocals are better pronounced and less like a sad gorilla that had its zoo toys taken away from it. But the songs themselves are largely more of the same, pathetic and embarrassing fare that would not take the canny musician even a brief instant to compose. For example, "Sick in the Head" is naught more than generic grooves and chugging rhythms that for some reason have not put Steve Swanson to sleep, slathered in annoying grunts and rasps and a chorus break that sounds like Barnes is channeling Mr. Ed into his gutturals! And then then next song is dubbed "Amerika the Brutal" and sounds like a mix of GWAR! and The Offspring, with 6FU vox. I am not making this up. How the hell do I persist and not turn this slop off?
You'd think it could not get any worse, but then in the very NEXT song ("My Hatred") Barnes starts grunting 'Hell yeah, hell yeah, what the fuck you gonna do' in what might be the lamest and weakest indictment of Christianity ever penned in extreme metal. A few of the middle pieces like "Murdered in the Basement" and "When Skin Turns Blue" take a turn for the better, but really they're nothing more than the same puerile post-Obituary grooving mosh anthems that this band had been releasing for years already. Ditto for "Escape from the Grave". In the end, I wish I could send a sympathy card to whoever wasted his time making such drivel sound so coiled and powerful, but I won't, since Chris Barnes produced it and even had a hand in the mix. Bringer of Blood is just another miserable toilet splash in the sad, sodden output of Six Feet Under.
Verdict: Fail [3/10] (something's rotten in the cellar)
http://www.sfu420.com/
For five albums and about ten years, Six Feet Under had gradually evolved into what must, for all intensive purposes, be the lowest common denominator of US death metal. Pedestrian compositional ability which at best rivals the career lows of a fellow Floridian band (Obituary); failure to even remotely hinge upon the brutality that Chris Barnes made a name for himself with via Cannibal Corpse; the exploitation of cheap 90s ploys like having a rapper guest star (and having that suck) or trendy songs about smoking weed as some sort of promotional element; too fair a share of cover songs choking up the discography; lack of compelling musicianship or quality production values. Essentially this band was the ghetto of death metal's potential.
Still, the band maintained a positive relationship with their label Metal Blade Records, and there were people buying this tripe. Now, there were people buying Insane Clown Posse. Juggalos. People bought Alicia Keys albums. Avril Lavigne. Good Charlotte. I should not be surprised that enough faith was still placed in Chris Barnes to support his vapid bong-addled haze of dull rock aesthetics and death metal fundamentals, despite a career beginning with mediocrity (in Haunted) and then descending into the muck of disbelief. But what the fuck do I know? There was obviously enough interest for him to release a live album/DVD combo pack, to which he would affix some tattoo-like art: enter the Double Dead Redux, 16 apathetic anthems spanning the underwhelming back catalog of 6FU, and about as agonizing as one might expect.
The audio CD and DVD components of this package are culled from two separate performances, with mildly different track lists. The CD itself, recorded in San Francisco in '02, sounds the better of the pair, but that's not really saying much, because it's nearly as ineffective as the band's studio efforts. Basal, 'my first death metal riff 101' material chugged and grooved along with all the splendor of the 90s' most easily forgotten groove metal, spliced with vibrant but forgettable leads which seem to cohesively lack direction. Barnes' blunt throttling throat is bad enough, but when he's alternating with the snarled vocals (as in the first track "The Day the Dead Walked" it becomes downright awkward), and soon enough ("The Murderers") you get an idea of just how cheap and lacking in creativity this band's fare truly is ('it's all fucked up! it's all fucked up!'). I feel like I'm listening to the ravings of a gangsta rap-riddled middle school drop-out after a serious pipe packing as he ruminates over the troubles in the world...
And that's just not what I want to hear. Now, granted, Barnes seems like a nice guy who does indeed appreciate his audience, as he curses constantly to emphasize. He shows this not only in his banter between songs, but also in his balanced selection for the set. There is a measured selection from each of the four studio original full-lengths. From Haunted (their best) comes "The Enemy Inside", "Silent Violence" and "Torn to the Bone", and no surprise that they're the most entertaining of the lot. Warpath is represented by "Manipulation", "4:20" (lulz), "Revenge of the Zombie" and "A Journey Into Darkness". Maximum Violence gets a larger cut: "Feasting on the Blood of the Insane", "Bonesaw", "No Warning Shot", "Hacked to Pieces", and "Victim of the Paranoid"; and True Carnage gets "Impulse to Disembowel", "The Day the Dead Walked", "The Murderers" and "Waiting for Decay". The DVD set is slightly shorter, with "Torture Killer" in place of "Hacked to Pieces", and shot in Minnesota that same year.
Obviously I favor the earlier material here, because it's the only stuff that doesn't completely suck, but the doomy "Feasting on the Blood of Insane" is also one of the better sounding tracks (if you forget the lyrics). It's a fair play length (54 minutes on the audio CD) without growing too bloated or boring, but that assumes you're an actual fan of Six Feet Under, in which case there is a team of anthropologists standing by to monitor your diet, drug use, migratory and mating habits. As far as a fan package, it's not so dire as the Graveyard Classics compilations, and to be fair, Barnes doesn't stink up the set with other peoples' buds (no covers), just his own green and reeking vapors of banal bludgeoning. The sound isn't so hot for a live mix, but the instruments are good and even, including the base, and I've certainly heard worse. I wish I could say the same for most of the songs.
Verdict: Fail [3/10]
http://www.sfu420.com/
The rational minded among us might suppose that, a single year after one of your flagship death metal acts released their most mediocre effort to date, you'd want them to take to their time when next they enter the studio. If the members of Deicide are to be believed, this was not the case for In Torment In Hell, a purported rush job at the bequest of Roadrunner. Why am I not surprised? This is the same label, after all, which rose (or fell) from genuine greatness in the 80s to one of the trendiest cash whores in all the extreme music industry. The label that, two years hence, would release the worthless 'Best of' Deicide compilation to squeeze a few more bucks beyond this heap of negligible returns...
As it turns out, though, the production and the album art (which isn't frankly all that bad, merely a re-integration of past cover symbols) are not the only impediments to this wretched low. The songwriting is equally to blame, a collection of mundane and uninteresting riffs that offer nothing the band hadn't already delivered in exponentially greater quality on their formative releases Deicide (1990) and Legion (1992). In fact, the music here is so mediocre that it makes the vapid, ridiculous leads sound positively angelic by comparison, as wild and meaningless as they tend to be. In Torment In Hell is perhaps closer to the band's roots than as Insiniteratehymn, but where that album still had the capacity to bust out a half-decent guitar pattern, these are treacherously forgotten within seconds of their passing. Your typical mix of grooving chugs over double bass and explosive old school speed picking that in no way comes off effectively malevolent or even muscular (arguably the band's one strength on their better works).
The vocals might occasionally resonate along with Benton's finer performances, but their meter comes off wholly generic and derivative of the band's back catalog. I'm seriously hard pressed to think of even one riff I appreciated on the album. Even the tighter tracks like the mosh intensive "Let It Be Done" and "Imminent Doom", or the thrashing closer "Lurking Among Us" fall flat on their inverted crosses. Don't even get me started on the title track, which is perhaps the worst on the album, a poor choice for an opener. As the band would agree, the mix sounds like shit. Pick any random demo from a brutal death metal band around the turn of the century and you're likely to find better. I like the zip of the leads, but only because their frivolous tone makes them stand pitchfork and horns above the rest of this lazy, lamentable lattice. Deicide have released other disappointments through their career, but this might have given Jesus the last laugh if they hadn't decided to survive through it.
Verdict: Fail [3.75/10] (no more empowered)
http://www.myspace.com/theofficialdeicidemyspacepage
Chris Barnes' Six Feet Under is like a diseased cur that refuses to be put down. Its bark and bite are equally weak, but for some sanity defying reason, Metal Blade records would continue to support this stray mutt's crusade to rain distaste down among the distasteful. At best, the quartet have the ability to create mediocre, tired tropes of groove-laden death metal, and at worst, they are an abomination so heinous that only the veterinarians at the pound dare examine them closely. True Carnage is the band's fourth original studio album, and the worst today, making its predecessor Maximum Violence seem like a glittering jewel by comparison. Fuck, even the first Graveyard Classics collection gives it a run for its money...
The most that could be said for the first 3-4 tracks is that they are simply pedestrian, with zero value whatsoever when held against nearly anything else in the field of death metal. "Impulse to Disembowel", which opens the album, is a treacherously boring groove/slog with a generic fast break and a taste of Barnes most awkward contrast in grunting and snarling to date. "The Day the Dead Walked" at least tries to create a proper old school death atmosphere, with a nice fast pace joined to its thick bass, but the riffs are flat and uninspired, and would never have made the cut for The Bleeding. We're only getting started though, because the depths of this album take a turn south from even this material! "One Bullet Left" is a gangsta death metal song with Ice T guesting on vocals, and fucking pathetic. What's hilarious is that the Original Gangsta takes a punch at critics in his flow, as if this were going to somehow shield this sad band from their due in negative reaction. Ice T can do much better than this, hell even Body Count was better than this, and once Barnes rejoins the proceeding with his grunts it becomes more than awkward...
For some reason you motherfuckers think this is some kind of motherfuckin game
You ain't gonna realize until I got some fucking steel pointed at your faggot-ass face
And blow your motherfuckin dome off your goddamn shoulders
You motherfuckin critic-ass bitch motherfuckers, catch you comin out your motherfuckin house
Bleed!
But hell, I could just wallow in the irony and be amused. I might say the same for "Snakes", in which Barnes grunts the title over a bouncy groove metal chugging sequence numerous times. It's goddamn ridiculous, but almost comic in a base way, at least when you take a step back and stop using your brain to process thoughts. Unfortunately the music in this song sucks, like a slam pit hymn from Disturbed with bouncy, jump da fuc up rhythms. "Knife, Gun, Axe" is another hideous bouncer with a few Prong-like rhythms circa Beg to Differ. Barnes' primary gutturals here get good and low, almost like a Will Rahmer (Mortician), but then he ruins them with these machine gun snarls that sound like a bad joke, like Salacious Crumb providing commentary while Jabba the Hut is being strangled by his captive Princess Leia. Then we've got "Sick and Twisted", on which another guest appearance is manifest through Karyn Crisis. Now, I've seen her main band a number of times, and she's a pretty eclectic personality, but hearing her wig out alongside Barnes' bludgeoning voice is a headache I do not wish to repeat.
The only 'carnage' this album produces is in the removal of its listeners' gray matter, leaving the mush to soak in a toilet bowl. Was Chris just getting stoned and trying to fill out a contract? To remain productive without any semblance of a good idea? Surely the guy has written better in the past, but this is easily one of the worst offerings from Six Feet Under, and one of the worst Florida death metal exports in history. Its production is muffled and uninspired, it has an anomalous ability to produce not even one good guitar riff throughout 34+ minutes of material, and it seems almost entirely phoned in, as if the accumulation of 'guest spots' would somehow compensate for its myriad faults. There might be a giggle or two here for those who revel in the dumpster of death. Otherwise, avoid at all costs
Verdict: Fail [2.75/10] (reduce their heads with lead)
http://www.sfu420.com/
Imagine you were to go to your nearest Hearse dealer and take a shiny new funereal ride out for a test drive. Now, imagine going back to that same lot a year later after hours, blow-torching that same vehicle and then taking it out for a joyride...using only the reverse gear. Not one of my most overt analogies, but it pretty much sums up Upon the Throne of Apocalypse, an alternate recording of Incantation's crushing sophomore Mortal Throne of Nazarene which was released but a year after the first. Apparently the band and the label had some disagreement over the audio quality of the studio album, and went back to the well to create something more supposedly ominous and issue it through a limited edition.
Understandably, there are two camps regarding this record. The first believes in and justifies its existence, claiming they prefer the deeper, bass-heavier tone of the re-release, and that it better suits the band's cavernous aesthetic. The other had no problem with Mortal Throne of Nazarene as it was, and considers this a bit of a ripoff. To be fair, Relapse put out only like 1000 copies of this CD, so it wasn't meant to be some widespread scam, simply a means to make themselves happier, presumably the band and also a chunk of the fan base. Had this been the 21st century, Incantation might have released this themselves through a website for a few bucks, perhaps iTunes or a 'Pay As You Will' scenario for the fans. Or maybe released it with a remastered or re-issue of Mortal Throne of Nazarene, or as part of a fan package with a bunch of their demos and other materials. But this was 1995, and the timing of its manifestation was slightly suspect. After all, this was a pretty underground band even in its heyday, so who really cared? I guess a thousand or so people...
Now, I happen to love Mortal Throne of Nazarene for all its benefits and flaws, so I fall into the latter reaction. Not because of some implied, sinister machinations of the rough mix's presence, but because I rather appreciate the contrast in tones found on that incarnation. Upon the Throne is deeper and perhaps darker, but only in the most obvious stripping of the mix. I can understand why it would feel more streamlined to the dank and desolate, crushing weight of the band's material, and certainly the majority of the Incantation worship bands existing today go for this approach, but it lacks the dynamic disconnect between Craig Pillard's enormous guttural resonance and the higher pitched grinding tumult of the guitars, a subterranean approximation of Bolt Thrower's bludgeoning with a more versatile exploration of tempo. Thus, in exchange for making the music a bit 'darker', the overwhelming shock of the vocals (their most potent and distinct characteristic) is lost a little on the 1995 version, and some of the bright curvature of the guitar grooves is also dimmed.
There's also the notion I've heard that the Mortal Throne mix is too 'clean', but that's nonsense. It is not tidy in the slightest, but septic and pummeling in line with many of the more intense, extreme death and grind acts of the early through mid 90s. The track list is precisely the same on both releases, just presented in reverse, which was a lot bigger deal at the time than it is now with the age of mp3 players and barely anyone listening to albums in order (critics and purists being the exception). However, I must say that I preferred the album's initiation to tear my skin off with "Demonic Incarnate", rather than the trudging brute that is the 8+ minute "Abolishment of Immaculate Serenity" opening the ceremony. I felt that epic was better suited to the depths of the disc as a grand finale, so I simply do not see the advantage to having it the other way. I also preferred having the extra leads on the album.
Upon the Throne of Apocalypse is pretty much a waste of space, even if I can discern why some listeners would prefer this more earthen, dreary copulation of tones. It's more consistent, but at the same time less interesting because the striking disparity of its brazen brutality is muted. Being a limited edition, there is an obvious appeal for collectors, but I feel like the material itself was best presented through Mortal Throne of Nazarene, which joins the debut Onward to Golgotha as a timeless US classic of boundary forcing, grotesque obscenity. Even the cover art choice here is not so appealing. It wasn't broken, it didn't need fixing, and I can only imagine the turbulence that would ensue if Relapse had green lit the same treatment for a dozen other classics, but then, this is a label known for shaky relations with their artists. (John McEntee himself had friction with them for some years).
Verdict: Fail [3.5/10] (a salacious burden into utter paradise)
http://www.incantation.com/
Live in Eindhoven was released only a few weeks after Live in L.A. (Death & Raw), so presumably this was also used to generate some funds for Chuck's ongoing struggle with cancer. There is a DVD for this also (I believe one for its predecessor too), so I will immediately recommend that everyone interested just focus in on that and skip the audio only release, since there is just not much value to it coming so close after the other release. Still, if you were all for funneling the money to the ailing musical legend, it would be something purchased sight unseen strictly for the assistance it was providing. Hell, even if Nuclear Blast wasn't giving him a large share of the proceeds, he was at least getting the usual percentage and royalties, right?
The problem is that this Dynamo Open Air gig has the same lineup and same general track list as found on Live in L.A. (Death & Raw). The difference is that "Lack of Comprehension" and "Flattening of Emotions" have been included, and the following removed for the shorter set: "Zombie Ritual", "Scavenger of Human Sorrow", "Empty Words", and the title track from Symbolic. It's not much of a better set, though they fuck around with the finale "Pull the Plug" less than the other live album, and I felt that the sound quality here was evenly balanced, if still pretty raw and lacking. The vocals are a tad less grating, the guitars and drums better mixed, and I can hear the bass lines better even when the dual axes are sounding off. In all, I felt a fraction of more potent excitement than I did listening through the other, but I have to question its overall use when we'd just been bombarded with such a similar product.
What would have been excellent would have been if the band and labels had dug through the band's history and given us a CLASSIC live album from the Ultimate Revenge 2 years, or an earlier tour. Surely there were a wealth of bootlegs and soundboard recordings to cull from? Now that would have been something, offering the fans two choices: a modern lineup and an old school rendering. I would have plunked the money down on that instantaneously, and I'm sure others would have appreciated the same. In the end though, this is just another release you're going to snatch up to support the artist as opposed to expecting much throughput of the content, and in this case it's safer just to grab the DVD so you're getting the video component.
Verdict: Fail [4.75/10]
http://www.emptywords.org/
With all the personality of a paperweight, Hateplow attempted to trump their 1998 debut Everybody Dies with a more focused and ferocious follow-up. Taking equal queues from both the speed and hostility of deathgrind and the balanced death/thrash breaks of their sibling Malevolent Creation, The Only Law is Survival is sadly an even more indistinct entity, failing to provide even a handful of riffs that feel fresh or exciting. The process here is all too painfully obvious and simple: blast alongside boring guitar patterns and then erupt into tough guy breakdowns, the back again, while a concoction of gruff and snarled vocals splatter about the atmosphere with violent abandon.
It's a tightly executed sophomore, but that's about all I can say in its favor, for it sizzles off its own chemicals like a bum flare that is fired into the atmosphere but fails to provide any signal to its anticipatory audience. Searching for a mindless metallic onslaught which you'll forget existed within about 5-10 minutes? Sate yourself on numbing, generic explosions of testosterone like "Should I Care?", "Outcast", "Emotional Catastrophe", and "Traitor". The majority of the album feels as if someone gathered up the least impressive riffs/albums of Malevolent Creation, Deicide and Napalm Death and chucked them into a blender, recording whatever emerged as a result. I would honestly consider this the most indistinct studio album Phil Fasciana has ever performed upon, solely staked upon its lack of intriguing material. Even when the band breaks their vapid velocity mold for the slug and chug of "Incarcerated (Intent to Sell)", nothing comes of it.
This album even fails to be as revolting or shocking as its predecessor. You get a general musing tribute to the adult entertainment industry in "Addicted to Porn", but most of the remaining lyrics are focused around generic threats of bodily harm, somewhat dumbed down and 'safer' than a few of the disgusting concepts explored on Everbody Dies. The mix here is efficient but dry, not that the writing has much depth for it to flesh out, and I have the lasting impression that these gentlemen could have written ten albums of this quality within a week, choosing to adopt the first riffs and tempos that come to mind and abandoning any notion of longevity. Sure, it's all fast and would piss off your in-laws, but these are not effective enough criteria to make the CD stand out against a massive international expose of disposable death and grind.
Verdict: Fail [4/10]
http://hateplow.cjb.net/
Chris Barnes and Six Feet Under had been scattering cover tunes over their past three releases, hitting up some of their most obvious influences, or really the obvious influences for any metal musician over the age of 30. Thin Lizzy, Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, and KISS are not the most unusual choices, nor did this drab death metal rebound do a hell of a lot to improve upon them other than slather them in Barnes blunt incantations. So it's not exactly out of nowhere that the idea was birthed to provide an entire album's worth of fare, presumably for the fans to digest, and noting a few of the selections the band has made here, presumably to inspire the younger lot to seek out a few classics they might not be aware of. This, of course, is assuming that there actually ARE Six Feet Under fans. Are there? I've never met one, but someone must be buying this shit.
To be fair, Barnes and the boys have made some pretty intriguing selections. Most impressive to me are the NWOBHM and classic metal pieces. They've got "Confused" by Angel Witch and "In League With Satan" from Venom, in addition to "Son of a Bitch" by Accept, and the great "Holocaust" from fellow Floridians Savatage, which is likely the most unexpected on the entire disc. Unfortunately, none of these offer more than the basic ingredients, thicker in tone but less effective than the originals, so we're supposed to get by on the novelty of Barnes' vocals alone. I suppose it's funny the first time you hear someone performing Udo Dirkschneider or Jon Oliva lines in gutturals, but really, after about 30 seconds, the humor is lost upon me, after all it's been done a thousand times, even by myself. It also doesn't help that these are all boring as fuck, in particular the Venom tune.
6FU stretches back a little farther to further cultivate their dope habits with Black Sabbath's "Sweet Leaf" and Deep Purple's "Smoke on the Water", and we're treading on all too obvious territory with these and the rest of the album's selections. Again, there is is no impetus to ever dive into these versions, as they're incredibly bare bones rendering could be achieved my just about any band jamming in their practice space on a Friday night. The most aggressive cover they've chosen is "Piranha" by Exodus, a pretty exciting song that would seem a natural for a death metal act, but yet again comes off wholly uninspired. A couple of generic punk pieces like the Sex Pistols' "Stepping Stone" (a cover of a cover) and the Dead Kennedys' "California Uber Alles" don't exactly quicken the pace, and the rest are all rock staples: Jimi Hendrix' "Purple Haze", the Scorpions' "Blackout" and AC/DC's "TNT", the last of which is arguably the most potent fun on the entire disc, even if it's as retarded as the rest.
Graveyard Classics must have been some sort of a hit, because Metal Blade and 6FU would go on to release two more volumes later (the third of which is admittedly the least annoying). But in all truth, this is even more petulant and loathesome than the band's original albums like Haunted and Maximum Violence. Chris Barnes does not have bad taste in music, but he's also not very good at performing that written by others', much less himself. Thus, it's hard to view a taste numbing tribute disc like this as anything more than a cash in on Barnes' post-Cannibal Corpse 'celebrity', milking this sluggish, sorry parade of failure for all its worth, scoring pocket change for a gram of forget. Meanwhile, his alma mater was releasing a record so good that this is even more laughably by comparison...
Verdict: Fail [2.5/10]
http://www.sfu420.com/
By this point, most concerned parties have likely seen the video of Liturgy's 'Triple H' Hunter Hunt-Hendrix making an arse out of himself through the pretentious hipster ramblings on the nature of his creations; or been incessantly inundated with hyperbole like 'pushing the boundaries of black metal'. Despite this unintentional humor, the shit has gone, like, viral, the latest meme to sate the swollen funny bones of a vast and unforgiving audience of vultures. In an attempt to more objectively critique the New Yorkers' sophomore full-length, to the extent that a piece of music can be 'objectively' experienced; and beneath the assumption that Mr. Hunt-Hendrix was not at all intending to come off as such a vapid twat, I'm going to ignore that interview ever happened.
So, its lack of corpse paint, foreboding and grimness aside, how does the music of Aesthetica hold up under the strain of such hype? How does it wrestle at the boundaries of its inhabited genre? The answer is that it doesn't. Really. There are already dozens of other bands performing the same hybrid of adventurous, atonal Sonic Youth strain and rabid accumulation of crass and melodic, streaming notation inherent in black metal. Sure, these New Yorkers perform their instruments with inarguable energy. Competent if humorless blast beats, jarring bursts of ineffable yet expressive chords, and the rasping tortured drawl of obsequious USBM cults such as Xasthur, Weakling and Leviathan. They best remind me of another New York city act flirting with this mutation: Krallice, and they also suffer from the same drawbacks, most notably the frustrating inconsistency through which they deliver a scintillating, immersible sequence of notes and then throw it to the dogs with the needless inconsistency of lamentable chaos.
Let's take one of the finer moments on Aesthetica: "Returner". This song opens with a wonderful floe of melodic disgrace, baby-black vocals occupying an elevated niche like some urban raptor gazing upon a big city causeway from its skyscraper nest. Then it proceeds to turn into dog shit, first through a dull, Rush-like punctuation and blast bursts adorned in far less interesting note patterns, as if the sheer speed were going to somehow provide enough variation and intensity to carry the listener's attentions. This is, more or less, the problem with every song on this album. Total inconsistency and incoherency of content. "Sun of Light", "Red Crown" and the amusing, slower crawl of "Veins of God" all contain admirable highlights, squandered on structural flaws that would have any civil engineer scratching the lice out of his/her head. What's more, the black metal tracks are interspersed with unusual forays elsewhere: the dour, goofy chanting of "Glass Earth" and "Harmonia", the prototypical synth-prog of "Helix Skull", or the intros to "High Gold" and "True Will".
It's interesting that the band wishes to diversify itself, but the pieces simply do not fit into the same puzzle. Time would have been better spent on fleshing out and improving the metal itself than asserting such eccentric, eclectic drivel, as if that would be somehow enough to elevate this beyond the saturated din of creative missteps that plague the lion's share of these modern and minimalism-driven USBM acts. Otherwise, the production of Aesthetica is dry and shimmering, appropriate enough to the atmosphere created. There are a few moments in which the harpy hiss of the vocals, poesy of the lyrics, and glossy guitar strands entwine into something stunning. But PAINFUL few. The majority of the album is misspent on mundane padding and dull spasms of salacious self-indulgence. I'll admit: Liturgy is not nearly the god awful obstruction we might have been led to believe through the front man's rambling. But the only boundaries being pushed here are those of my bowel walls.
Verdict: Fail [4.25/10]
http://www.myspace.com/liturgynybm
Hateplow was an outlet organized by several members of Florida's Malevolent Creation to wax their crude and callous opinions on prostitutes, drug addicts and the mentally handicapped. Signed to Pavement through their obvious association, they forged a parallel existence to that better known (and superior) group during a time when they were releasing some pretty average efforts (In Cold Blood, The Fine Art of Murder). One might hold on to some hope that Phil Fasciana had shuffled some of the inspirational writing that lacked from those albums over to this project, but Hateplow is surprisingly even more void of good ideas or memorable sequences. Everybody Dies has more of a grind and hardcore aesthetic surging through its crack star running shoes, with speed and intensity that rival what Phil's mainstay were recording at the time.
One could certainly dub this 'ghetto death' or 'white trash metal' and get away with the phrase, because that's really the purpose of the band: to explore the hard truths of urban decay by the most mean spirited means possible. Malevolent Creation covered the more serious aspects of cultural decline, serial killings and so forth, but Hateplow pursue more baseline atrocities like killing crack addicts ("Crackdown") or the cycle of the cocaine addict ("Ante Up"). There's also a clear sexual element to the album, celebrating coprophagy ("Ass to Mouth Resuscitation"), anal sex (the brief brute-grinder "Anally Annie", and those are the lyrics...the only lyrics), or the stereotypical caricature of the prostitute ("$20.00 Blowjob"). Even anger at having one's toilet serves as a menstruation depository ("The Gift Giver"). I'd like to say that this stuff was pretty shocking or revolutionary for the time, but it's little more offensive than the 11 o'clock news or the latest King of the Hill episode. There's definitely still enough violence involved for the fans of the related band, but it seems somehow more shallow in this context.
That aside, the music itself is simply too forgettable. "Everybody Dies" opens with a nice pulse of explosive grinding death dowsed in Kyle Symon's percussive gutturals, which carry an adequate resonance through the album, but nothing lurks deeper in the track except repetition and drab chugging breakdowns. A few of the tunes rely too closely on the bland moshing chug rhythms like "Stalker" and "Challenged", while others whittle away in unmemorable deathgrind brutality like "Ante Up" and "Denial". Often, the two will collide into a more dynamic series of blows, but aside from a small handful of riffs ("Prison Bitch" and the silly "Born with Both"), the album fully lacks distinction outside of its primitive lyrical mire. Drummer Larry Hawke, who sadly passed away after laying down his tracks, does offer a strong and taut performance, and the production of the debut is in fine shape: clean and effectively percussive. Otherwise there is just not enough of value to recommend this. Not even the potent cover of Cream's "Sunshine of Your Love" is worthy of redeeming the sum of these parts. Not for me I guess.
Verdict: Fail [4.5/10]
http://hateplow.cjb.net/
While in no way, shape or form could I consider Haunted a success, or a 'good' album, it at least had that nudge in its favor of Obituary-styled riffing and a blunt and angry Barnes. It was a control group, from which quality material might have sprung had the members of Six Feet Under been able to place two and two together, writing towards catchier vocal lines and more intricate rhythm guitars. Alas, Warpath would put an end to such possibility, a hideous slab of sun 'baked' excrement that does nothing to further their case. This is but a vapid array of re-arranged Obituary rhythms shat forth alongside some of the most effortless rock riffs I've ever beheld, an astounding failure of pedestrian LCD lyrics and worthless music, proving once and for all where all the talent went after Barnes split with Corpse.
Pathetic in all ways, the straggling audience members are subject to boring ass political lyrics which show not even the strength of the first thrash bands in the 80s to adopt its positions. I've always found it unusual when a band alternates lyrics about serial murder with flexing their first amendment rights, which is precisely what Chris Barnes is doing here. Just read the chorus of "Manipulation" and revel in his wondrous chorus ability: Don't speak to me about freedom, don't speak to me about being free (and refrain). Are you fucking kidding me? You probably could have improved something better than that. Then, of course, there is the mighty marijuana hymn "4:20", Six Feet Under taking up the bandwagon alongside the other amusing pothead manifestos of the 90s like Cypress Hill. Sadly enough, this is the most poetic of the lot, though the music and vocals suck, Barnes adopting a more emotional canter to abominable that you wonder how he got through it without breaking into laughter. In addition, there are a number of tracks in which he issues a raspier vocal tone which is unintentionally hilarious.
At its very best, which is to say almost NEVER, Warpath sounds exactly like a derivative of World Demise or Back from the Dead sans the good vocals. Where Obituary were steering to a more hardcore/groove influence, SFU (which also might serve as an acronym for SHUT THE FUCK UP) were inserting straight rock & roll ("4:20" or the punky "Revenge of the Zombie") beyond the drumming. About the only remotely acceptable song is "Death or Glory", but that's a Holocaust cover from The Nightcomers (1981), and adding Barnes bludgeoning drawl does nothing for it, much like his mediocre rendition of "Grinder" on the Alive and Dead EP. The mix is not a lot different than Haunted, but manages to render the material even more boring. It's true that a few tunes like "War is Coming" and "Animal Instinct" fall short of offensive, but Allen West had already done these riffs far better in his other band. Coincidentally, this is his last studio effort with the project. Who could blame him? After suffering through Warpath, all of us.
Verdict: Fail [2.5/10] (I should just puncture my ears)
http://www.sfu420.com/
Irrespective of the general lack of excitement and quality inherent in Six Feet Under's music, they were given the royal treatment via Metal Blade Records, and as a teaser for their sophomore Warpath, they released the Alive and Dead EP in 1996. This is a basic setup for such a release, with a few non-album tracks, a cover, and various live selections. Now, all three of the studio cuts were released with the limited edition digipack of Warpath the following year. But assuming you were not one of the 'lucky few' to attain that version, the fodder presented here is at least not utter canine excrement, though there is no conceivable reason to want to spend actual money on this.
This is the same lineup and writing style as Haunted, and thus the two new studio pieces here: "Insect" and "Drowning" are your basic Obituary plodding pace with Chris Barnes' lackluster grunting affixed to rhythms. "Insect" has a bit more of a thick, doom groove to it, while the latter has a faster guitar line reminds me of a "Memories Remain", even breaking into another groove, though it's nowhere near as catchy. In truth, these songs are about level with the less memorable fare from the debut, and are easily skipped, but for what? Judas Priest's "Grinder" is flabby and lifeless in the hands of Chris and company, with no real differences from the original apart from the weak gutturals and less enthusiastic guitars. A real yawn.
So then, the entertainment factor here might be solely placed upon the shoulders of the live material, which has been culled from a few performances in Switzerland and Holland. There are four of them: "Human Target", "Beneath a Black Sky", "Suffering in Ecstasy", "Lycanthropy", all from the debut. If you enjoyed Haunted, then there's not much to complain about. The vocals bear slightly more charisma than the studio incarnations, and though the single guitar feels thin, it feels fibrous and rich like an early Obituary performance sans the stereo effect. "Human Target" is the catchiest of the quartet, but the incline in quality to the rest is not a steep one. Still, I can imagine the European audiences being underwhelmed by Barnes' new project, falling asleep or hitting up the bar while they waited for the next act, if there was one, and I hope for the audience's sake there was...
Verdict: Fail [4.5/10]
http://www.sfu420.com/
