May/June 2012 Finds

I've been holding off on reporting local hauls since the finds have been relatively weak lately, but I have to start sometime:

Amorphis - Black Winter Day - $2.00
Already have, just trade fodder.

Divine Regale - Horizons - $1.00
Definitely the best of my recent finds.  Progressive metal, their '94 self-released CD.

Divine Regale - Ocean Mind - $1.00 
Well, whaddya know?  Didn't find this on the same trip as Horizons and at a different store, but nice coincidence anyway.  Their Metal Blade full length.

Dokken - Under Lock and Key - $1.00
I'm indifferent about Dokken--I think they're often underestimated as being just a generic hair band, but on the other hand, a lot of overzealous people tend to exaggerate their heaviness a bit in defending them.  I personally only really like "Breaking the Chains" and "Paris is Burning" from the debut, and the "Mr. Scary" instrumental from Back for the Attack.  The rest I have no strong feelings about, same with this album.  "Unchain the Night," "Til the Livin' End," and "Lightnin' Strikes Again" are the best songs here (obviously, they're also the heaviest and fastest tunes), but there's lots of commercial slickness and sugary melodies abound to wade through.  

Fates Warning - FWX - $1.00 
Huh. This is from 2004, and I didn't realize as of this writing they haven't released a studio album since then.  In my head I assumed they were much more prolific.

Fates Warning - Inside Out - $2.00
All of the Ray Alder-era stuff after Perfect Symmetry (and even then, only because of the "Through Different Eyes" video) really just sounds the same to me unless they do something deliberately different, like the multi-part song gimmick of A Pleasant Shade of Gray.

Green Jelly - 333 - $1.00
Yep, you'll find the entertainment value of something increases exponentially when it's dirt cheap.  Strange thing is, I've had to re-buy their first CD a few times since I would get it cheap and someone would inevitably want to trade for it 1-2 years later.  For the most part, it's not as blatantly silly as Cereal Killer, which is both a pro and con.  Best stuff is the stylistic parody material at the end of the album, like "Jump," which sounds like an sincere alternative band wrote it.  "The Bear Song" is that "the bear went over the mountain..." children's tune, which Macabre parodied in a much more killer (pun intended) fashion.

Halo - Guattari (From the West Flows Grey Ash And Pestilence) - $1.00
Mix of doom and noise/ambient.  I was looking for some reviews on this after I initially got it, as I only purchased it because it was on Relapse--there are a lot of comparisons made to industrial metal (it's not as inorganic and structured as that generally implies) and drone (not as minimalist as that generally implies). Not my thing, but I found it metallic enough to be tolerable. 

Impellitteri - Stand in Line - $1.00
Should have been ecstatic--had never even seen a used Impellitteri CD in a brick-and-mortar store before, and in the bargain bin for a buck, no less!  Booklet already had a corner clipped, but someone did the further injustice of writing 50¢ on the cover in marker.  Messrs. Bonnet and Impellitteri in fine form here.

Mahavatar - From the Sun, the Sun, the Wind, the Soil - $1.00
Saw this on a previous trip but had to check online that it was even metal.  This tries to do the hybrid thing and mix a number of metal styles and some outside musical influences but ultimately I found it too modern and unfocused.  The vocals are unfortunately of the female variety and range from clean to growling, although they're never as laughably hysterical as say, Karyn Crisis.  I can easily imagine Mahavatar being the token "heavy" band at some alternative musical fest or being praised by people who don't normally listen to metal and find it monotonous.

Oh yeah, and the info sticker on the front is hilarious.  "THE ENCHANTING DEBUT RELEASE FROM AGGRESSIVE NYC BASED REVOLUTIONARIES - RECORDS/MIXED BY MICHAEL BARILE (CANDIRIA, 40 BELOW SUMMER, E-TOWN CONCRETE)"  Now, strictly speaking, this isn't their debut, although it includes all 8 songs from it (I don't know if these are re-recordings or it's just meant to be a re-release of sorts, and I frankly don't care).  But enchanting music from aggressive revolutionaries?  And are those 3 namedropped bands supposed to encourage anyone to buy this?  I'm curious if sticker blurbs are written by rejects who couldn't cut it writing awful masturbatory press sheets.  Maybe they offer a discounted rate.

Megadeth - United Abominations - $2.00
First let me state that in recent years, Megadeth CDs have been by far the most prevalent in local bargain bins compared to any of the other big 4 (this does, in fact, surprise me, because that *includes* copies of Stomp 442 and Sound of White Noise).  This is a tolerable album and acceptable output at this point in Mustaine's career, though the political lyrics are notably clumsy compared to almost anything coming out of the late '80s thrash scene.

Speaking of abominations, what's with the cover and back insert art?  I realize both bands and labels are capable of making exceptionally retarded creative decisions, but something seemed weird, especially since the artwork everywhere else in the layout was quite good.  So I checked, and sure enough this is the result of some misguided fan art contest--while that's still a lame thing to do, I do acknowledge it's cheaper than using Repka.

Merauder - Master Killer - $2.00
Knew/liked the title track since I've had it for years on Century Media's second Identity comp.  NYHC-inspired metal/aggro, and actually one of the only bands in the entire style I can stomach (maybe B-Thong, too? Heh...)--probably because the vocals are mean without being ultra-forced and there's not a lot of stop/start riffing.  Unfortunately, I happened to see the video for the title track, which is full of ridiculous tough guy posturing...

Motherload - Burns Like Whiskey - $2.00 
Went ahead and took a chance with this one as 4 out of the 5 members were longhairs, Ozzy was mentioned in a member's thanks-list, and the band name/album title screamed stoner rock.  Turns out this is heavy rock with a bluesy vocalist, kinda bar band type fare.  Even with the relative heaviness of the instrumentation, the vocals whip this right out of my musical interest zone. 

Pyogenesis - Sweet X-Rated Nothings - $2.00

Rage - Carved in Stone promo - $1.00 

Reign - Embrace - $2.00
Used to have this.  It's not as bad as I recalled, although it's not death metal as the Gigeresque cover art and songtitles might suggest.  There are chugging downtuned guitars and a hoarse vocalist (perhaps somewhat like a more monotonous, accentless Max Cavalera?) typical of '90s thrash, but the song tempos are generally very slow.  Even with the slowness, it doesn't feel very doomy, so things just plod along.  Only 4 of the 10 tracks are under 7 minutes, and two of those are just short interludes--there's not enough here to sustain songs that long.

Subterranean Masquerade - Temporary Psychotic State - $1.00
Progressive stuff in a general Katatonia/Opeth sort of vein.  Prominent violin and occasional growled vox.

Y&T - Ten - $2.00
Don't think I'd heard any of their post-mid-'80s stuff before.  Quite melodic and commercial, as can be expected of the time.  "Goin' Off the Deep End," the heaviest/fastest song here, stands out well, but the rest of the album leaves me wanting the rawness and speed of their older stuff.


Assorted finds and older stuff:

Battlelust - Of Battle and Ancient Warcraft - $1.00
I already had the original Hammerheart digipak (which I regret paying regular used CD price for now)--this is the Pavement licensed-jewel case version.  Fast and monotonous black metal, with the only reprieve being some acoustic guitar and keyboard use on the last 3 tracks (the mid-song keyboard passage in "With the Blackstorms I Came" is actually the best thing on the album, so perhaps they should have bit the bullet and used them everywhere).  Musically it's competent and the album is decent as background music.  But with just the speed and no real violence, bite, or significant variation to back it up, 42 minutes of this is too much.

The Pestilence Choir - s/t (2006 4-song CD-EP)
This is the only release with impaled bodies on the cover (yeah, but done in a lame tribalish computer-generated art way) I can think of that holds no musical value for me.  4 songs of that indeterminate mix of melodic death, thrash, and metalcore elements.  Vocals are of the forced HC "hysterical" variety--think someone with laryngitis attempting black metal vox.  Most annoying thing is that it's metallic enough where I'm compelled to give it a fair shot and sit it out rather than turning it off.

Vorace - Vorace (1998)

I bought this from a distro around the time it was released, and I'm glad it was described briefly there, because I don't know what I would have thought based on the minimalist lime green inserts marked with fleurs-de-lis.  The sole picture in the layout--an inner booklet pic of a home studio in a room with Mickey Mouse wallpaper--doesn't help much either.  This is a French one man band playing thrashy, mid-paced death metal (I'm hesitant to call this death/thrash since that brings to mind a more frantic style--Massacra or Agressor this is not).  It's obvious that a drum machine is being used, but the tempo of the music never gets fast enough where it becomes annoying.  The vocals are a peculiar hoarse growl; I couldn't think of anything exactly like them but they had a strange familiarity...Then it hit me--there's a certain tonality that reminds me of Lemmy! Think lower vocal passages on Motörhead stuff from the '90s and later.

This chugs along pleasantly enough, but there's nothing particularly compelling about it.  A single 2010 track from the Vorace Myspace shows more of a  melodic death metal influence, and I preferred it to most of the CD tracks.

Sirius - Spectral Transition - Dimension Sirius (2001)

 Price: Don't recall, around $2

Based on the cover art or the cosmic-sounding songtitles, it might be expected that this is an industrial or electronic-influenced black metal album (I was somewhat expecting crap of the Tidfall/Zyklon type).  Thankfully, aside from the intro, that's not the case, and this is a standard fast-paced symphonic black metal album.  Keyboard use is constant, but they're low in the mix considering how much they're used, and that results in a different sound dynamic than say, Limbonic Art, who I've seen them compared to.

The album closes with a cover of Emperor's "The Majesty of the Nightsky" with guest playing by Samoth and Faust.  It's played well (the keyboards may be better than the original) but is a bit lacking in the atmosphere; the original has those kind of ethereal subdued spoken vocals towards the end of the symphonic section, and here they're harsh and accented.

Fleshold - Pathetic

This Illinois band's first release was the '91 The Finer Arts of Dismemberment demo, and looking at the band logo, demo cover, and songtitles, the signs accurately pointed to death metal of the generic yet competent variety.  Rather than full on brutal or guttural vox, the singer had a fast-paced, more-spoken-than-sung style that was more common for thrash bands, which I didn't mind.

Pathetic, on the other hand, is very nondescript.  The guitars have a death metal like crunchiness, but nothing here is pure death metal.  Particularly on the second half of the album, there are faster parts ("Surface Tension," the beginning of "Realidream") that hark back to the debut demo--but only parts, not full songs.  There's a '90s thrash style grooviness to some of the riffs, and doomier sections here and there, but nothing that definitively categorizes the music.  The vocals are a bit gruffer than the '91 demo but still in the same basic style.

There are enough elements at play here where it's easier to just describe the music than try to categorize it.  Not great, but at least it escapes the Pantera-emulation plague of the '90s.  Have done both much better and much worse for the buck I paid.