Hung - Hung (2012)

 

Cost: $2.00

So back when Hastings was still around, they had a cheapo copy of this album listed on their website, which I tried to order. Instead of the correct CD, I was sent William Hung's Inspiration album. Yeah, the tone deaf (all this time I legitimately thought he had some sort of mental disability until I looked up his current whereabouts while writing this) American Idol guy. Anyway, while they promptly refunded the mix-up, it took me several more years to find a correct cheapo copy. I find the whole situation kind of amusing now, and sadly, the anecdote may even be marginally more interesting than the album.

I do like the CD more than I thought I would. The bulk of the disc is decent melodic death metal. Musicianship is fine, and the vocalist seems to favor raspy BM style vox, but is versatile enough to pull off solid DM growls as well as some limited cleaner singing. It comes off well enough while the album is on, but this aspect of their sound had little memorability for me. 

There are also quite a few progressive parts incorporated into the music, which are far more appealing to the point where I found myself wishing they had just gone full-on progressive metal, death or not. Similarly, there are two instrumental tracks of acoustic guitar and violin, which are beautiful but annoyingly short. Along with some of the mellower and more atmospheric passages elsewhere on the album, I think these would have worked extremely well in a proggier or even doomier context. It's a shame, because with everything going on in the music, the most interesting facets of the band's sound seem like they're largely being wasted as embellishments for the more generic melodic DM.

This also extends to what seemed to be the main marketing point of the band, the electric violin player. Considering this is the eponymous band of a Julliard-trained violinist, the use of violin seems downright reserved at times. During the more straightforward melodic death parts, it often feels like it's pushed back into being another guitar layer, whereas there seems to be more room for interplay with the guitar during proggier parts, and more opportunities for unobstructed violin playing during the mellower sections. Also personally would have loved to see more frenzied Great Kat style violin shredding, which I could see working well over faster parts. It just seems odd considering she's the namesake of the band, though maybe they wanted to err on the side of restraint. While I feel that wastes some of the potential here, it also doesn't feel quite as overblown and contrived as, say, a lot of Ne Obliviscaris' stuff.

Alright find for the price, though I'm unsure if I'll be inclined to listen to it again. And I can't help but think that a better bandname would have spared me getting mailed a CD with "She Bangs" on it!

Hatewave - Hatewave (2000)

 

Cost: $2.00

 

I remember seeing positive reviews for Hatewave's 1997 demo in 'zines at the time, and distinctly recall the medieval impalement cover of the demo being pictured in Sounds of Death (thought their logo style was atypical, though cool looking). Never ended up buying the demo, and when the full length came out, I kind of soured on checking out the band after seeing a band pic where Weasel Walter was in his low-effort zombie getup, and the prematurely balding vocalist/guitarist sported the unfortunate combination of corpsepaint, a dog collar, and a tourist-merch Chicago t-shirt. It just reeked of being goofy and unserious. Further scaring me off, I think I read a review that quoted a bio mentioning their noise/no-wave origins. Still, I would have been willing to give the CD a chance if I had come across it cheaply, but that never happened until now.

 

As it turns out, there was never anything to worry about. This is quite an enjoyable mix of grind with black and death metal. I was expecting the black metal influences to mostly manifest in the vocals and production choices, so it surprised me a little how much it infiltrates the riffage at times, especially on the two opening tracks. The amount of DM and BM influence varies somewhat from song to song, although as a whole the CD leans a bit more to the deathgrind side. I also assumed the CD was going to be quite a bit weirder due to Weasel Walter's involvement, but this ends up being the most straightforward band of his that I've ever heard. That said, there are a couple spots with unusual time signatures, discordant guitars, or oddly structured, nearly mathgrindy bits, but these are minimal, and the music never gets too experimental for its own good.

 

The final 3 tracks of the disc are unlisted bonuses, and are the songs from the demo that were not re-recorded for the album. Stylistically they're the same as the rest of the music, although recorded with a much rumblier and grind-appropriate sound compared to the more metallic production of the album tracks, which were done at Quali-Tone with Brian Griffin.

 

Glad I was finally able to check this out.

Gallows Pole - Gallows Pole (2000)

 

Cost: 99¢ 

I remember seeing the cover of these guys' 2001 Exorcism album with the horned, three-eyed cat monster, and mistakenly thinking it was an album by the long-running Austrian band. Didn't realize there was an entirely separate German Gallows Pole for quite a long time.

Sounds right in line with the typical German power metal sound of the time, though some songs lean quite heavily into more lightweight melodic metal territory. I gravitated towards the heavier tracks on the disc--"Gallows Pole," "Tonight," and "God Bless America." "Revelation of John" is also notable for having very overt Maiden influences in the riffing. Solid stuff, not a bad find at all.

Volksmetal - Volksmetal (2012)

 

Cost: 99¢

On some level I suppose this qualifies as folk metal, since at times, it does fuse Volksmusik together with metal. Considering all the weird fusion microgenres and musical hybrids around, it's surprising that I've never heard of any bands mixing heavier music and oompah before. While it works alright, the tuba-laden oompah stuff is definitely at the forefront. I was quite disappointed by the amount of metal here, especially considering the name of the band. Many of the songs have a much stronger punk or crossover feel to them. There is some thrashiness, but most of the metal influences manifest as contemporary groove metal. "Küss Die Hand Herr Kerkermeister" kicks off with an intro that feels like it could be the beginning of a tuba cover of "Electric Funeral," but never further capitalizes on it. Ironically, the only part of the album that truly sounds like classic metal is the intro to the cover of Original Alpenland Quintett's "Mausig Schaut Mei Alte Aus," and this ends up being the best track on the disc.

As someone with no deep connection with with Alpine folk music, anything more than a few tracks as a fun diversion quickly becomes tedious, and I suspect anyone really into this style would prefer experiencing it at a Biergarten rather than on a full-length CD. I was not surprised they played the German festival circuit a lot in their day, as it's got a strong party band/festival-fodder feel. Certainly a unique style, but not very satisfying as a metal release.

Gauntlet/Contagion Black - split CD (2005)

 

Cost: 99¢

This CD is for trade. 

The vocalist of this particular Gauntlet was Craig Sielski, one of the more colorful and loudmouthed characters from the golden age of the old FMP forum. Never directly interacted with him there. I remember him being ridiculed a lot (often deservedly so), but I mostly found him entertaining. By the way, just by making this post, I fully expect some sort of combative message or comment from him, which I'll likely just ignore in lieu of listening to Torment in Fire. Anyway, I remember Gauntlet being mentioned on the boards, but never bothered to check them out.

To be fair, it's not the 3rd rate war metal I was expecting. It's also definitely not the "black thrash" or "almost 80's style Blackened Trash" that Metal-Archives and some mailorders oddly describe it as. I'd call it black/death with no thrash influence of note. It's somewhat chaotic at times, acceptable for demo level stuff but overall not all that good. The extremely buzzy guitars often give it a lo-fi BM sound that doesn't always complement the music, and the main vocals have an off-putting overly forced raspiness (it also sounds like there's some sort of distortion effect on the back end). They're serviceable, but I would have rather heard the brief guttural secondary vocals as the main style. There are also some absolutely ridiculous high vocals that come out in a few brief spots (based on the songtitles, I assume these may be attempts at emulating a screaming female victim?).

The Gauntlet side really only has two things going for it. A couple of the more primitive riffs have a fleeting old school extreme metal feel. Sadly, it's not consistent and any cool riffage is often overtaken by the more prominent BM elements. Then there's the obvious highlight of the entire CD, the Slaughter cover. It's from an earlier demo and sounds way better than the other Gauntlet tracks. Compared to Usurper's more polished version of "Tales of the Macabre," the vocals are far truer to the original (the scream is awful though), and there's a level of untightness that feels more faithful to the spirit of Strappado. The Gauntlet cover does get pretty sloppy during the fast part at the end, though.

The second band, Contagion Black, is actually the same guy who handles all the instrumentation on the Gauntlet tracks. The guitar buzz and production values are similar to the first half of the disc, although they fit Contagion Black's more straightforward black metal style a lot better. "Graveside" started out at a slower, almost doomy tempo that initially impressed me, but unfortunately ended after a minute. The vocals and overall execution of the material are much better than on the Gauntlet side, but the music is rarely above average, and there's nothing here to justify two 9+ min. tracks. The slower/mid-paced sections are generally decent and there's some early Burzum-inspired guitarwork at the end of "Death Doth Ride," but for the amount of material here, they represent very little reward.

So ultimately, I think of this as spending 99 cents for a reasonably good "Tales of the Macabre" cover, which doesn't seem like that bad of a bargain bin deal.

Gasoline Guns - Rust'n'Dust (2016)

 

Cost: $2.00

One of those metal/rock'n'roll hybrids. Given the Gromm pedigree of two bandmembers, I was a little surprised they didn't delve deeper into black metal influences and go for more of a black'n'roll sound. Opener "Jokers 666" gave me a slight Murder Junkies vibe even though it's not terribly punky, nor it is significantly different from the rest of the disc. "Panzer Rock'n'Roll" is the best song, feeling like a tamer version of Gehennah. Speaking of which, the album's gruff, croaky vocals generally remind me of a less charismatic (occasionally they're more spirited) Slavic version of Mr. Violence.

This particular style is hard to mess up, and it's loose enough where it's easy for a band to create a fun hard-rocking atmosphere, which Gasoline Guns do. But it also reveals the limitations of this style--most of the best ideas in their musical repertoire are used up by the end of the third track, and afterward it just felt like a generically enjoyable Motörhead derivative. Two things also hurt this a bit. First, they don't go full throttle as much as you'd think--much like Motörhead themselves, they're often deceptively mid-paced. In a lot of places, the music doesn't seem as powerful as it could be, and injecting more filthiness and/or extremity into their sound would have helped a lot.

Based on the rest of the disc, you'd expect the closing "Ace of Spades" cover to be a faithful rendition, but they do a mellow, stripped down country-blues version with harmonica. It's the one place where their vocal style might be a bit of a detriment, but it's far more interesting than hearing an unnecessary straightforward cover for the umpteenth time.

I'm just so used to this type of music often being a quick and dirty side diversion from metal musicians looking to explore their rock'n'roll side, but there's a certain inescapable feeling of sideproject-ness here. But it's by no means bad, just a little underwhelming overall. I got my money's worth out of this from the track "Panzer Rock'n'Roll" alone, so I'm satisfied.

Saposmittz - Kult Ov 666 (2004)

Cost: $1.99

 

Realistically assumed this was going to be industrial of some kind, although I was hoping for some kind of metal content, as several black metal bands (but also several nu bands) are mentioned in the thanks list. They're a sample-laden electronic band, with some tracks being very percussive and industrial-influenced, and others being on the more ambient side. Aside from the BM-sounding main vocals, the closest to metal this disc ever gets is the last track, "Unsane Robotikk Peoplefukk," where the overactive drum machine gives the music a strong grindcore or bestial black metal feel.

 

I normally don't care about this sphere of music, and I didn't like this as much as some of the limited electronic, ambient, and martial music side-projects of metal musicians that I've heard. But it's not unlistenable, and I will give them credit--it's not as terrible as the overly tryhard misanthropy themes, the overuse of "ov" and letter k substitution (seriously, never do this unless you're Sadistik Exekution), and band photos (they painted their faces in brown and green camo-like splotches, which reminded me greatly of Law of the Plague who I blogged about years ago) might suggest. So yeah, not a bargain bin success. Better luck next time.

Fallen Legion - Downfall (2018)

 

Cost: $2.00

I've hinted at this in other posts, but something I've noticed after years and years of bargain bin diving for CDs (and a secondary reason I decided to start blogging about it) is that there are certain types of indie/local releases that seem to attract reviews and commentary from people who clearly don't have a lot of experience with metal. The worst is when it's obviously a non-metal listener friend of the band who is trying to shill for them (I saw this a lot when CDBaby still sold physical media). It makes wish they wrote something generically benign like "This is heavy and awesome" than try to fake their way through a description.

In this case, Fallen Legion is listed as death/thrash at Metal-Archives, and this specific CD is called thrash on one site, and classified as death metal in a webzine review. I felt pretty safe picking it up, thinking it would likely be some sort of modern thrashy melodeath. 

Nope. 

And this is why I take the informational side of this blog quite seriously. 

After the intro, I was very unpleasantly surprised by metalcore filled with bouncy nu riffs and rather schizophrenic vocals. As the disc goes on, it's obvious the band is fond of adding lots of progressive touches to the music--odd time signatures, quirky bass runs, and some guitar noodling. Occasionally these parts seem somewhat System of a Down-inspired due to the vocals, although I'd say they give off more of a Between the Buried and Me vibe overall. While the proggy stuff is executed well, it's not in music I particularly wish to hear. Most of the extreme metal influence comes from the vocals, which incorporate both gutturals and shrieks. There is some melodeath here, and in fact I'd be comfortable classifying the final track "New Skin" as such, but elsewhere on the CD the core/nu stuff is very much at the forefront, and it's just not worth enduring the various influences here for such little return (nor trying to unravel them in written detail for a blog post). Two bucks not well spent.

The NULLL Collective - De Monstris (2010)

 

Cost: $1.00

Doomdeath-tinged funeral doom with added atmospheric effects and keyboards, as well as nebulous growls for vocals. Compared to a super minimalist funeral doom band, the various extra effects make it somewhat more listenable, but it still doesn't escape being quite monotonous, as the song lengths far outrun any good ideas. The overall atmosphere is quite bleak, but there aren't any truly crushing riffs to get excited about. The effects and keyboard work are utilized better on "Feed the Whore" than the band's other originals, and it would make for solid atmospheric background music, but I had serious trouble staying focused for the entire 17 min.+ duration of the song.

The two short parts of "Repulsugloid" stand out slightly among the doomier fare because they incorporate brief fast parts that sound quite death- or goregrindy (because of the thickness of the guitars, this section in the first part is even a little old Mortician-esque). These fast parts also result in a very artificial-sounding performance from the drum machine, but that may have been intentional.

The most interesting track by far is their version of "Silent Night." Yeah, the Christmas carol. It's not at all as corny as it sounds. Ironically, the doomier parts didn't catch my ear as much as the synth-only middle where the guitars drop off, as this section is a quite beautiful (and faithful) rendition.

Purely as a bargain bin find, this wasn't bad for a dollar, but it failed to leave much of a lasting impression on me.

The End 666 - The Ultra Violence (2003)

 

Cost: $1.00

I was aware of the band when I picked this up, since I have their second CD, although I had zero recollection of what they sounded like. Also, for some reason I was under the impression this was sideproject of a French band, which I guess is true, but I was strongly thinking it was the black metal band Lord, and it's actually one of the guys from Imperial (who, spoiler alert, I'd much rather listen to). The gasmask and naked chick aesthetics brought to mind the late '90s/early '00s French BM scene (for better or worse, I tend to associate those tropes with Battlesk'rs or maybe even Spikekult to a lesser extent), so I figured it had a good chance of sounding in that vein. Then there are the weird, humorous songtitles, which made me think it might be more experimental and non-traditional, like Diapsiquir, perhaps.

And it's neither of those at all. I was quite surprised, because when the distorted, screamy vocals kicked in, they immediately reminded me of the first Abigail album. Unfortunately, I can't say the same for the music, which is very noisy, kinda primitive black/thrash. There is some actual blasting, but because of the vocal style and rawness of the music, it comes across as far more grindier and punkier than it actually is. Sometimes I can even hear some vague parallels to the more chaotic stuff on Morsüre's old Acceleration Process LP, although The End 666 never gets nearly as thrashy or mechanically fast.

The more linear parts of the CD are OK--"Saddam Rules," "Racist," and the last 2 tracks all have some decent riff ideas. Beneath it all, "Rugbymen=Bastards" has the workings of a pretty good black/thrash song, and it's no surprise it's the one song that stands out as being most like Imperial's first album.

This is an interesting case because I wouldn't say I particularly liked this album, but I don't think of it as negatively as a bad or mediocre CD because it was an interesting listening experience. Can't say if I'll ever be inclined to put it on again, but the inspired songtitles and thrashiness in the music made it worth the dollar.

Iceland - Old Temples of Pagan Gods (2011)

 

Cost: $2.00

As a death/black metal band, all the musical components here are familiar, but they're put together in a way that's less common for death and black metal hybrid bands. There are a fair amount of orchestral effects here, and these help in creating a general black metal atmosphere and undercurrent throughout the songs. But the most forward presenting parts of the music--the guitar riffs and the somewhat forced gruff vocals--are definitely death metal in style.

While I'm sure there are some other bands doing music in this same general vein, I can't think of any specific ones, so the first sound comparison I thought of wasn't a super flattering one. The blastier parts remind me of the DM bands from around 25 years ago who, instead of actually incorporating popular black metal elements into their music, just got a keyboard player to add Dimmu Borgir-on-a-budget symphonic effects to their existing sound. I won't say Iceland are as bad as that, but it gives me a similar incongruous feeling.

Luckily, the songs that lean more heavily on mid-tempo riffs come across much better, and the album generally improves as it goes along. They really have it together by the last two tracks, which have a mild Unleashed feel to them.

The disc has its fair share of parts where the band are caught between the genres--I often found myself wishing they'd fully commit to more crushing mid-paced death and dispense with the black metal flourishes, and then other times when overuse of death metal brutality ruins what could have made for something substantial in a more pagan/viking metal vein. Despite it being a little uneven in that way, it's still fairly enjoyable and even very good at times, so I consider it two bucks well spent.

Municipal Waste - Tango and Thrash (2024)

 

Cost: $2.00

Since this was such a recent release, I was very surprised to see this show up in the cheapo bin. Admittedly, I've never followed the band that closely, so when I bought this, I assumed it was their newest album, not realizing it's a compilation of old tracks from some vinyl splits/comps. Even treating it as a mini-CD, it's also extremely short--it doesn't even hit the 10 min. mark. On the plus side, all of the material is from around the time of their first album, and I always found Waste 'Em All to be marginally better and a little less contrived than most of their later material.

And it is indeed in the same vein as their other early material. Opening instrumental "Escape from New York" is the thrashiest the CD gets. Aside from the vocals, the other tracks from the original Tango and Thrash split EP feel a little less overtly D.R.I.-influenced than the debut album--the relentless speed reminds me of variations on Nuclear Assault's "Hang the Pope" with Cryptic Slaughter influences mixed in. Then there's a previously unreleased version of "Dropped Out" from the Tango and Thrash sessions. It's not that different from the album version, and still sounds like a more metallic take on Dealing With It!-era D.R.I. 

Finally, there's a Poison Idea cover and two Corrosion of Conformity covers. The early COC covers aren't a musical stretch at all, but quite frankly, you can tell how even something like "Minds Are Controlled" is so much more interesting from a songwriting and compositional standpoint than most of the Municipal Waste originals.

Overall, not bad for a quick little blast of crossover, and especially because of the short running time, I'm glad I didn't have to shell out more than two bucks for it.