Deceased - Behind the Mourner's Veil (2001)

 

Cost: $2.00

This is one of the other Deceased CDs I mentioned finding in my post about The Blueprints for Madness. One of the reasons it took me so long to get around to this one was that I already had it, so it was less of a priority. Speaking of priorities, when I originally got this, I was super focused on the cover songs and hardly paid attention to the original tracks.

1. It's Alive!

A very thrashy song that feels more intense than the thrashier material from Fearless... and Supernatural..., in no small part thanks to the very Mille influenced vocals.

 

2. The Mausoleum
A more melodic track in line with the Supernatural Addiction material. This made me realize one of the reasons I'm generally not into post-'92 Deceased as much is the lack of creepy riffs despite the horror themes of the material. While they occasionally use slower tempos, it seems like they've cut back on them a lot.

 

3. Zombie Attack (Tankard)

Musically, solid cover. King's vocals here are a little cleaner in an attempt to emulate Gerre, but I wish he had just used his normal vocal style. 

 

4. Reaganomics (D.R.I.)

It's funny to me how they covered stuff like this and Impetigo so well, yet grindier influences never really manifested in their own sound. Up there with the best covers on the first Rotten to the Core CD.

 

5. New Age of Total Warfare (Warfare)

Good. 

 

6. Deathrider (Anthrax)

Probably the best Fistful of Metal cover song ever (offhand I can't think of any "Metal Thrashing Mad" covers that have really grabbed me). This feels so much more energetic and over the top than the other covers here. My only complaint here is that Neil Turbin's vocals in the pre-solo part on the original (the "here it comes/you better hide.." part) are very distinctive, yet here they're pretty flat. Still awesome though.

 

7. Victims of the Masterplan (I-V) 

For listening purposes, forget the 5-part thing. That's based on the lyrics. It's really two parts. Although I still prefer older Deceased, the first ~6 minute part is the kind of thing that should have defined quality death/thrash in 2001, not overly modern Swedish stuff like The Haunted or Hatesphere. The second half is instrumental and way more traditional metal influences, with lots of dueling solos. While it's great, unfortunately the solo trade-offs remind me of the magnum opus of a certain veteran Japanese band. While they're ultimately not that similar sound-wise, it's also a reminder that they completely obliterate this from the top of their hill...

Ambassador - Living & Dying (1998)

 

Cost: $3.00

This looked like it had potential and I was excited to listen to it, but unfortunately it ended up being very meh. Calling this straight-up power metal like Metal Archives is a major oversimplification at best, although the music contains enough semblances of it where I suppose it's not totally inaccurate. 

After the intro, the first track delivers somewhat thrashy power metal, although as it progresses it picks up some chunkiness and stop/start groove metal riffage. Then "Open Your Mind" is straightforward groove metal, and "Feel My Rage" retains some grooviness, but it's tempered with more melodic elements and feels less prominent. The closing title track probably has the best guitarwork of the disc, although it comes off as a mishmash of various power, heavy, and thrash metal elements (with choir keyboard effects) than a cool cohesive song. The opening riff even reminds me somewhat of the intro to Van Halen's "Ain't Talkin' 'Bout Love."

The vocals are one of Ambassador's lower points. Often more weak than outright bad, they're only a few steps above being an accented speaking voice most of the time. On the plus side, despite the groove metal influences, there are never any aggro vocals.

The drum sound is the other negative point. I didn't take any great notice of the drumming on my first playthrough of the opening track, but the second song has extremely artificial sounding drums. After listening through the whole CD, I think it's safe to say an electronic drumkit was used for the whole thing, although it's not nearly as prominent as on track #2.

Usually even amateurish demos and indie releases can have a particular charm, and to a certain extent, that's the case here too. But ultimately, there's not anything particularly memorable here. 

Bloodbath CDs

 

Cost: $2.00 each

 

I was quite happy to find these, since I thought they would be my very first Bloodbath CDs...Much to my surprise, while making room to slot these in on my shelf, I saw the original 3-track press of Breeding Death. Huh. No recollection of where or when I got it, and no memory of what it sounded like.

I was never in a hurry to check out their material since so much other metal took priority. Before hearing them, I had a sense it would be decent, certainly better than the musicians' current output in their main bands, but probably not spectacular. I do remember hearing a song from one of the earlier full-lengths and being kind of disappointed because it seemed they were hyped up as a largely HM-2 worshiping supergroup, whereas I recall thinking the track I heard sounded more like something like Insision than any of the Swedish death metal classics. On the other hand, I did hear a few songs from Survival of the Sickest, and they more like what I originally expected. Not great, and maybe not as old-school sounding as I would have personally liked, but good. 

Bloodbath - Breeding Death (2006 reissue) 

Hey, this is actually really good! It's not as overtly Entombed-influenced as I was expecting. There's the obvious nod to the Phantasm-inspired section of "Left Hand Path" at the end of "Furnace Funeral," but in general the music seems to be more influenced by Dismember, Grave, and Carnage. I didn't perceive any particular Morbid Angel influence on the first playthrough, but the bonus demo version of "Breeding Death" starts off with short reversed riff snippet ala "Immortal Rites," and really highlights their influence in that recurring intro riff.

 

Bloodbath - Nightmares Beyond Flesh (2005 reissue)  

Unfortunately no debut in the bargain bin, so we'll have to skip forward to their second full-length. This is far more contemporary sounding and has less of a tight focus on the old Swedish death metal sound. While most of the more melodic guitar lines on the EP seemed to be a Dismember influence, here there are some that have more of a Heartwork-era Carcass feel to them. The snarlier side of the vocals that pops up occasionally is even reminiscent of Jeff Walker. It's fine, especially considering what I paid, and there are definitely some cool parts, like the slower ending section of "Stillborn Saviour," but I much prefer the EP. This reissue even tacks on the same two early demo bonus tracks that were on the Breeding Death reissue, and they stand out as being way better than the album material.

Zakas - Shunk Daddy Grind (2000)

 

Cost: $2.00

When I saw this in the cheap bin, there was actually some slight name recognition. I had seen the cover of the band's second album (this is the first) somewhere online, likely back when CDBaby actually, you know, sold CDs. I remember assuming it was power or traditional metal based on the fantasy artwork with the white-haired fellow swinging a sword at a monster coupled with a very typical looking symmetrical band logo, but I never checked out the actual music. The weird album title (and no, there's no grind in the music), song names, and sheer amount of tracks made it evident this wasn't going to be a straightforward metal album.

Typically for the purposes of this blog, I'll listen to something in its entirety and summarize my thoughts afterward. Two songs into this, I realized that would likely just lead to me unhelpfully describing the whole thing as strange with some sparse examples and moving on. So here's a more descriptive track-by-track. All 18 of them...

Also should add, the main drumming on the album is all programmed, so for better or worse, any track with it automatically has strong industrial overtones. I'd rather just mention it once then keep having to reference the synthesized percussion over and over below.

1. Flying 2 Kites

Starts off with heavy guitars and feels almost dirge-y for about 45 sec., then tribal drumming kicks in and despite the chuggy riffs underneath, the vocals make it feel more like heavy alternative than metal. Halfway through the song the vocals suddenly permanently switch to being very nasally for the chorus, which is admittedly catchier. There are also male choir effects and towards the end of the song they throw in some funk bass parts.

 

2. Bunechu Shenobi

Begins with a very brief sitar part, but almost immediately switches to a more Far East-sounding melody with flute that persists throughout the song. The main vocals, performed by a deep-voiced black guy, are more like slightly melodic narration than singing (their drawn-out cadence reminds me of the Bushwick Bill parts on the Geto Boys' "Damn It Feels Good to Be a Gangsta," but they have absolutely nothing to do with rap, that's just the first thing that popped into my head). There are some female backing vocals, but the strangest backing vocal contribution to the song is the use of ancient text-to-speech software, which makes it sound like Stephen Hawking is interjecting during the chorus. Ultimately feels more like an Asian influenced prog. fusion track than anything.

 

3. Tranq. Dart

Arguably the most metallic guitarwork of the album so far laid on a bed of rhythmic tribal drumming. Unfortunately the vocals are in a homeboy pseudo-rapped style which really detracts from the song.

4. Brand Old

Seems like an amateurish attempt at a '90s pro-environmental pop/rock ballad, but the artificial drumming and guitar shredding make it feel especially cheap.  The worst part are the gruff semi-yelled secondary vocals which keep popping up. There's a pretty long stretch of vocal-less song around the guitar solo, and in fairness, I must say I found it quite pleasant.

 

5. No Right Turn

Alternates between a very Balinese-sounding pan drum led rhythm, and more prog./Asian/shred fusion stuff. Totally instrumental, and much better for it.

 

 6. Behind the Veil

 Middle Eastern-influenced ambient with distorted, whispered female vocals.

 

7. Jewel of Shalizar

More Middle Eastern influence, but this time incorporated into a jazzy track with saxophone. The deep-voiced Laurence T. is back with some spoken word, but he actually sings too. Based on his sung vocals and a quick web search, I'm fairly sure this is Lawrence Thomas/Laurence Inkatha who was in the '60s Detroit soul group The Four Pro's and moved to Las Vegas (where the band's namesake Steve Zakas is from) later in life.

 

8. Welcome to the Club

Very prominent, funky bass-playing here, which makes the underlying music closer to straight up prog/jazz fusion than the earlier tracks. The deep vocals return again, although both the narration and singing now have more effects applied, making them weirder and less appealing than his appearances on previous tracks. 

 

9. Lion Wait

Shred over a tribal drumming/jungle noise background. Another instrumental that stands out positively both to being more metallic and not having any weird vocal styles. 

 

10. Tremble Tremor

Somewhat thrashy industrial metal with clean female vocals and interspersed with spoken Bible verses.

 

11. Floodgate

Uses the pan drum sounds again which makes it vaguely similar to "No Right Turn." The disjointed stop-start vocals are really jarring. It's a shame, because as an instrumental, the main melody would have been very unique, almost alien-sounding. 

 

12. Hounds of the Horn

Based on Michael Moorcock's Corum books. At first, I thought this was just going to be deep voice guy doing narration over a minimalist ambient background track. This is his last appearance on the disc, and unfortunately rather than being his shining moment with a cool dramatic performance, it's obvious he's reading a little hurriedly off a script. C'mon, even Orson Wells put some effort into "Defender." On the plus side, the sections of narration are interspersed with a repeating musical part that's actually a nice little piece of epic doomy metal. It's too short and simplistic to really develop into anything, and I wish the vocals were stronger, but as a small spot of pure metal on a album like this, I'll happily take it. 

 

13. Cro-Magnum

Other than some weird sound effects, pretty much straight-up industrial metal, complete with distorted shouty vox. 

 

14. Skylab

Thrashy/groovy industrial with a shreddy section. No real vocals, just text-to-speech gibberish representing alien language and some audio samples of space related radio transmissions.

 

15. Jahntu

Text-to-speech alien chanting over tribal music. The text-to-speech recites the album title in a very mangled fashion at the very end, so I'm wondering if the title was already established and they just ran it through the voice synthesizer, or whether the "Shunk Daddy Grind" title actually came from the odd text-to-speech vocalization. Steve Zakas himself is dead, so we may never know. 

 

16. SmakRulz

Throwaway groove track (with nu-sounding vox). According to the inserts, it's about sports radio host Jim Rome.

 

17. Jungle Karma

More of the same, although marginally better due to the thrashier music and use of a faux Indian accent at the end.

 

18. F-Johnny 

Short Howard Stern Show-themed joke track, comes off a little better than the last two since it actually sounds like a groove metal parody that would come from a radio show's production staff.

 

 

The individual tracks are less avant-garde and off-the-wall than I was expecting. Most of the weirdness comes from the hugely varied nature of the song and vocal styles, and the lack of consistency between them. A few semblances of good ideas here, but none of them justify sitting through a 68 minute CD. Two bucks for this feels like I overpaid.

Azrael's Bane - Wings of Innocence (2005)

 

Cost: $2.00

 

While this doesn't sync up much with my personal old school metal tastes, it's still well-performed enough to be enjoyable. About half the tracks feel like they could be on the cusp of being power metal, but never fully commit to it. The multi-part harmony layers in the vocals give off major Euro power metal vibes and contribute a lot to the power metal-adjacent feeling. Several songs have attempts at hookier, more hard rock (think late '80s) songwriting, which I didn't find as appealing. Overall though, they don't stray from the melodic metal side of things, and there are enough progressive metal touches (particularly in the guitarwork) that I can see it appealing to prog fans too.

 

This particular version of the CD is a reissue which adds a cover of Ozzy's "Diary of a Madman," which is great, but as such, completely overshadows the original material. Good find.

Neurosis - Masters of Thrash (2007)

 

Cost: 50¢

 

This was an extremely lucky find in a blind bag sale from a closing distro, where I bought 100 mystery CDs for $50. I was a little shocked at the relative rarity of this compared to everything else, and it was one of the discs that interested me the most musically, since around 80% of the haul was modern black metal and goregrind.

 

There are covers of Slayer, Blitzkrieg, Asphyx, Death, Motley Crue, S.O.D., Destruction, Black Sabbath, Hallows Eve, Metallica, Nirvana, and Diamond Head. I'm not going to waste time with a track-by-track, since the cover quality is consistently decent across the board. Other than some overly altered/improvised guitar solos, the only issue I have is every single song is performed with fairly monotonous death metal vocals, so there's much less sound variety than you'd expect from such a wide array of covers. Ironically, you'd expect the vocals to be weakest on the songs that originally had cleaner vocal styles, but I thought they stood out as most lacking on the cover of Asphyx's "The Rack," since they just come off as ultra-generic compared to Martin van Drunen. 

 

Even with the severe shortage of Hallows Eve covers in the world, the best renditions are Destruction's "The Antichrist" and Death's "Forgotten Past." The Death song and the cover of "Postmortem" by Slayer are closest musically to Neurosis' own death/thrash sound, so they're the two renditions that feel most natural stylistically. The CD closes out with a new original song and outro track, which are fine, but I'd much rather listen to the Verdun 1916 album or even the earlier demo.