Dementors/Evil Force - Evil Reincarnation (2013)

 

Cost: $2.00

Split CD of two Chilean bands:

Dementors - Deaththrash, with the emphasis mostly on the thrash.  The vocals remind me of the first Chakal album, especially on the first 3 tracks.  Initially I thought the vox were a bit too extreme and modernized the music a bit too much, although after getting used to them they didn't bother me.  "Diabolical Crucifixion" has a chorus riff that is very similar to the one in Sodom's "Agent Orange."

Evil Force - Blackened thrash/speed.  Evil Force is a bit more blatantly old school; there are some scarce cases of speed and classic metal styled twin guitar acrobatics (sadly, very underutilized), and while most of the vox are in a vaguely black metal style with some additional growling, the singer also often goes into higher pitched yelps and crazy falsettos.  

Solid split I was very pleased to find.  Actually, with thrash at the forefront of both bands' sound, aside from the vocals, at times they don't sound tremendously different from each other.  Normally I think I would slightly prefer Evil Force's style of music, although it would have been helped tremendously by some tasty solos and guitar harmonics as well as more controlled vocals.  Dementors come off as the more vicious band with stronger individual tracks.

Humiliation - Turbulence from the Deep (2013)

 

Cost: 99¢

 

While Humilation are still fixated on mid-paced, simplified Bolt Thrower-style riffage, this album has them occasionally using slower tempos, I think to great effect.  When they do slow down, it's quite reminiscent of old UK death/doom or slower Asphyx stuff, and even used sparingly it does help break up some of the mid-paced monotony.  While I don't have any issues with the vocal style itself, admittedly they're very one dimensional with no real variety, and it gets a little tedious as the album goes on (to be fair, I do acknowledge that with all their mid-paced stuff, where would a nice Martin van Drunen or Kam Lee style OTT high scream really fit in smoothly?).  Still, out of the couple of releases I've heard from them, this is the best by far.  Count this as a huge bargain bin win.

Pestilence - Malleus Maleficarum

  

Cost: $1.99

Found this in February, appropriately/ironically in one of my last CD hauls before everything shut down because of the pandemic.  (The store also had the case for the Sepultura Arise remaster, but unfortunately the wrong disc was inside).  I don't dislike this album by any means--in fact, just listening to it again for this post made it grow on me tremendously--but even if it clicks further, I'm afraid it will always be in the shadow of Consuming Impulse for me, which is one of the earliest death metal albums (and CDs) I ever bought.  They're very good as thrash, but Consuming is just exceptional DM to me, one of the best albums in the genre.  

I've noticed some songs (particularly the first two) have fairly verbose lyrics that need to be sung in a relatively compact space, and van Drunen sometimes seems on the cusp of being mushmouthed trying to get them all out (the verses on the title track of Darkness Descends also suffer from this, and perhaps parts of "Hell Awaits" to a certain extent too).  

I often lament that I didn't have this blog during the late '90s-mid '00s to document the period when I was constantly finding gems in the bargain bins on a near weekly basis, so it was nice to find something old and classic like this show up.  Of course, I couldn't just enjoy my great luck and was slightly disappointed when I saw the matrix was for the '91 repress rather than the original '88 press.  Still, up until now I've only had the Displeased CDs with the bonus demo tracks, so this was a spectacular find regardless.