Ääritila - …Ja Kaikki Kuitenkin Päättyy Kuolemaan! (2003)

Cost: $1.00

This CD is available for trade.

Some Swedes and Finns playing old style Finnish crusty hardcore.  Unbeknownst to me when buying this, the bassist is Mr. Jocke Hammar of Chronic Decay fame.  Not going to bother blindly namedropping all the previous bands members have been in since I'm pretty unfamiliar with most of them except for Dischange.

The day God was not with me: Believer - Extraction from Mortality (1989)

Cost: $1.00

 

As an avid used CD hunter, I've had my share of triumphs (some to be blogged about shortly).  This was one of my biggest disappointments.  Why, you ask?  Let's go over what happened in my head:

The spine is sighted on the rack.

Oh, Sanity Obscure is in the bargain bin.  Already have it, but it's cheap, so that's cool.  I'll pick up an extra copy to trade or sell.

I pull it out and look at the cover.

Hell yeah!  Extraction from Mortality!  I need this!

Wait...

WHAT?

 

Yeah...The booklet was for Extraction, but the back insert was for Sanity (creased down the middle, no less).  I went through the bargain bin a couple times, hoping to see the correct back insert with a Sanity Obscure booklet, but no luck.  On the plus side, the disc inside was Extraction from Mortality, so at least I got the music with the correct booklet. This had always been a minor want I was hoping to find in a bargain bin--it would have meant I got all 3 of the first Believers for dirt cheap), making the initial letdown worse.

 

Getting to the actual music, this is my favorite Believer release. By far. Even saying that, it doesn't come anywhere close to being one of my favorite thrash recordings, but it's still pretty good.  Despite the technicality here (though nowhere near as much as the succeeding albums), it's still fast and furious with a lot of bite. The vocals are a little shoutier than what I normally prefer, but not terrible. In fact, the vocal style coupled with the type of thrash they play reminds me of little bit of Devastation's Idolatry. 

 

They never really cross over into death metal territory, but the album often seems right on the cusp of being death/thrash. I've mentioned this before, but the first time I heard Believer (on the R/C At Death's Door compilation), I think I assumed they were some sort of death/thrash or death metal, since that's how I thought about them early on, and they didn't seem significantly different than the other bands. In fact, they fit quite well considering Sadus and Exhorder were also on there. I don't remember what I thought of their track back then and my only specific memory of them from the comp. was thinking Joey Daub's side-shave in the thumbnail band pic looked weird. Listening now, the song they chose for the comp., "Not Even One," isn't awful or anything, but there's much better stuff on the album.The first three tracks are all great ragers, and I love the eerie intro of "Shadow of Death."

 

P.S.  Anyone got a spare back insert for the original R.E.X. pressing?  And does anyone need a spare back insert for the R.E.X. pressing of Sanity Obscure?

Eternal Ryte - World Requiem (1990)

Cost: $1.00

I was originally going to cover this in one of the local finds posts, but I'm getting way behind on them since I don't really group new acquisitions together.  So I'll just do a quick stand-alone writeup.  If I recall, this was the best find from the last of three consecutive trips to the same place that yielded a lot of goodies.

I can summarize my opinion of this disc thusly: it falls slightly short of living up to the coolness of their logo, but the music is far, far better than what the embarrassingly glammy Britny Fox-esque shots on the back cover suggest.  I personally thought their heaviness was somewhat understated by some of the online reviews and info I saw, leading me to expect something along the lines of early Dokken, but that's pretty much what the lightest songs sound like.  It helps that other than some balladish stuff, a majority of the songs are fast-paced and that makes them seem more substantial.  The melodic vocals are okay, but they're admittedly more suited for a hair band and one of the lighter parts of the equation.  This is metal with a very blatant commercial sheen.  Even though it suffers from some of the same commercial pitfalls, this is heavier than a lot of the typical L.A. stuff--just don't go in expecting old W.A.S.P. or Lizzy Borden.

Integrity - Seasons in the Size of Days (1997)

Cost: $1.00

Someone actually gave me a promo version of this album as a freebie around the time it came out, and I remember getting rid of it without even bothering to listen to it since it was a Victory Records release (heh heh).  I've heard a little bit of their stuff in passing, but I never really checked them out...One thing that sort of surprised me...they weren't a super obscure band by any means, I knew they had at least some metallic influences, and lyrically they sometimes covered some pretty esoteric and untypical-for-HC topics, including the occult...Yet I didn't really see them mentioned much all that much compared to other punk and HC bands, even by guys who like both metal and HC. 

This is a little better than I thought it would be.  The metal-to-hardcore ratio varies in each song, but the vocals are pretty much the cincher that make this HC...With different vox, this could ostensibly be called thrash.  Most interesting is that I'd heard before about how Integrity sounds like Slayer, and sort of dismissed it as someone just using Slayer to represent a generic metallic sound.  But lo and behold, "Season Decided Fate" opens and closes with a fast riff that is indeed very reminiscent of "Reign in Blood" material.  Otherwise, I wasn't specifically reminded of Slayer at any point.  Should also add that actual Integrity songs make up less than half of the play time on the CD...The last 27+ min. track has long sections of the Guyana "death tape" (supposedly the final recording of Jim Jones and the Peoples Temple cult members as they were preparing to commit mass suicide) with tribal style percussion played over them.

Mars on Earth - Mars on Earth (2001)

Cost: Free

I got this as a freebie in an order, and initially set it aside, thinking that based on the cover it was a non-metal Red Stream release ala Koan or Nightmare Lodge.  I finally look it up months later and am alerted to the fact that it may be a metal release.

For some reason I had a strong notion in my head that this would sound like either Red Harvest or Oxiplegatz.  Nope.  Metal-archives labels this as "industrial black metal," which I think is misleading, as it doesn't really have the percussion-heavy and inorganic feeling normally associated with industrialized metal.  The first intro track is pure ambient, but what follows is black metal punctuated with spacey electronics.  Imagine a harsh-vocalled black metal band with symphonic elements.  Put ambient/electronica in there to replace the keyboards/orchestral effects, and you're getting close.  

This turned out to be a nice little surprise...It's not destined to be a favorite of mine, but it beats Darkthrone emulation any day.  The ambient/electronic influence lends a unique atmosphere but it never overpowers the black metal, and being just a mCD, it doesn't wear out its welcome.

Dokken - Dysfunctional (1995)

Cost: $1.00

This was Dokken's comeback album (well, for everyone outside of Japan, at least).  Some songs, particularly on the first half of the album, have a '70s rock influence ("What Price" goes back even further, as some of the vocals reminded me of Jim Morrison a bit in their delivery).  Most of what's left sounds like a modernized continuation of their '80s output, with '90s production sensibilities and darker musical/lyrical themes replacing some of the hair band cliches.  Some songs can be pretty heavy (see "What Price" again) and there's a general sense of heaviness in places, but face it, a lot of time had passed...The metallic edge of the first album is long, long gone, putting this out of my league.  George Lynch was always one of Dokken's biggest assets, but the only time he really shines is the short intro to "Long Way Home," which is a bit reminiscent of "Mr. Scary." 

Gotta love the updated look of the band members...Mick Brown in particular looks unrecognizable from his former long-haired self, it didn't even register that he participated on this album until reading the liner notes.

Piranah - New World Disorder (1996)

Cost: $2.99

This wasn't a great find, although for thrash I thought it was better than what the release year might initially imply.  A lot of the common modern thrash/post-thrash pitfalls are present here...Speed is completely sacrificed for groove, as the songs rarely exceed a mid-paced tempo.  The majority of the vocals are in a style similar to later James Hetfield, which wouldn't have been so bad except that they sometimes slip into an overly aggro mode.  Other than the vocals, the music didn't seem overly forced even for its more modern style, so it did come off better than the typical Pantera/Machine Head crap.