Covered in Filth - A Tribute to Cradle of Filth (2003)

Cost: $1.00

Upon seeing this I immediately assumed it was a Dwell Records release...Except it's actually on Deadline Music (considering they're a Cleopatra sublabel, the tribute is thankfully light on gothic cheese).   The liner notes and band descriptions are laughable, a mix of corny overzealous attempts to seem metal ("Horns Up") and label PR hyperbole.

Note that for better or for worse, most bands did not attempt to emulate Dani's really high vocals.

1. Wehrwolfe - The Principle of Evil Made Flesh

Relatively straight up cover.  Guitars are upfront, so it sounds less atmospheric and more brutal than the original.  The guitar solo has been tweaked into something more technically proficient.  Vocals seem kind of monotonous.

2. Born of Thorns - To Eve the Art of Witchcraft

One of the most CoF sounding covers on the CD.  They decided to throw in some deep clean vocals that are more associated with later CoF--they don't sound out of place, but the original didn't have them.  Also, the heavy accent on the female narration at the end sort of detracts from the atmosphere.

3. Serpents Aria - Born in a Burial Gown

Ex-Fog/Fear of God.  Not bad per se, but lacks the atmosphere and subtlety of the original.  The vocals are buried pretty deeply in the mix and the keyboards are much simpler than the original.  Oddly, the first part of the song has some random guitar shredding.  There's more added guitar at the end, although there it makes sense as they substituted it for the original's synths.

4. Mirzadeh - Malice Through the Looking Glass

Musically this is one of the more faithful covers, although the main vocals seem a little off.  The mellow sections with piano are covered quite accurately, so this cover stays truer to the feeling of the original than most of the others. 

5. D.D.T. - No Time to Cry

Yeah, the booklet has some excuse for the "cover of a cover" thing.   This is Jim Dofka playing all instruments, with a vocalist who went on to do short stints in -core related bands.  I prefer the original Sisters of Mercy song to the Cradle cover, but as a cover of the CoF rendition this is extremely good.  I'm kind of divided on the main vocals, which work ok but are on the verge of being silly--they're too deep and kind of monotonous, almost like a mumbling parody of Type O Negative vocals.

6. Chronzon - Cthulhu Dawn

This band has a ridiculous write-up in the booklet, so honestly I was expecting an awful cover.   Some of the guitar parts towards the end don't translate well and sound more like generic chunky DM, but otherwise their cover is played pretty straightforward.  They actually have one of the better Dani-like vocalists and some of the best keyboards on the tribute.   There's also an added piano outro--it's more interesting than the ending of the original song, although it doesn't sound very CoF-ish.

7. Veil of Anguish - Summer Dying Fast

As with the Born of Thorns cover, very Cradle sounding.

8. Kaul - Suicide and Other Comforts
Starts out as if it's going to be some sort of mellow, deconstructed gothic rockish/almost ambient-like cover (far better than it sounds), but by about halfway through it becomes a more traditional cover.  One of only two bands that tried to do something creative/experimental with their covers.

9. Noctuary - The Black Goddess Rises
Keyboard-less (they use guitars for the melodies instead), but otherwise straightforward cover.

10. Lucifer - Desire in Violent Overture
Stripped down, simplified keyboard-less cover.  Not bad.  Actually, sort of sounds like something from The Principle of Evil... album like this.

11. Dark Army - From the Cradle to Enslave
Based on the band "bio"/write-up, I expected this to be crappy one man black metal.  Admittedly, it's probably the worst track on here, but it's not completely terrible.  The vocal effects and drum machine make it sound cheap (not in a good way), but the riffs and keyboard work are pretty solid for a cover.

12. Willow Wisp - The Forest Whispers My Name
Another very Cradle-like cover, not surprising considering the straightforward parts on their Full Moon Productions CD were CoF worship.

13. Kekal - Dance Macabre 
Starts out with a lengthy drum and bass intro bit.  "Dance Macabre" was basically a techno remix (of "Tortured Soul Asylum," I think?)...Here the techno is dropped and the meat of the cover sounds more like traditional CoF, albeit with strong progressive touches.  The least faithful cover on here, though much better than the original.

Mastery - Lethal Legacy (2006)

Cost: $1.00

I usually see this described as instrumental thrash--don't want to be purposefully finicky with semantics here, but vocal-less thrash may be a better descriptor.  As far as I understand, the band was open to having a vocalist but just didn't find the right one, as opposed to a band forming with the intent of being an instrumental act.  After listening, it definitely sounds like the material was written with a vocalist in mind rather than composed as some sort of instrumental metal EP, though obviously I wasn't privy to the recording process.

The music itself is fairly aggressive modern thrash, and while competent, the musicianship isn't dazzling enough to make up for the lack of vocals.  It's a slippery slope, because I generally DON'T like instrumental metal forays (beyond the individual song here and there) because they tend to get overly progressive or avant-garde.  It feels like they just took the vocals out of the formula without compensating for the loss--by the time the CD was only about half over, it was a struggle for me to concentrate on the music.  It was certainly worth the dollar I paid, as they don't make any major missteps, and ultimately, it's an ok release. However, the reality of the situation is that this is a listening option competing against literally thousands and thousands of other thrash recordings.

When they did get a vocalist for their full-length, it was...Billy Milano! Haven't heard it, but hopefully I'll snag it from a bargain bin as well someday. Admittedly, the idea of him on vocals isn't terribly appealing.

Oh yeah, should add that the booklet is die-cut in the shape of the band logo (when folded up, the front logo is showing through two layers of paper).  I've seen die-cut CD inserts a few times before, but this is probably the most intricate design. Seems like a needless layout extravagance, especially given the rather generic fiery background cover art, but hey, it held my interest for 15 seconds when I saw it.

Humiliation - Battalion (2014)

Cost: $2.00

I was very excited to find this so cheaply, and this crushes the majority of my usual bargain bin finds musically.  Outside the context of the bargain bin, it's still a solid release, but not fantastic.  Bolt Thrower is the main reference point here, though they don't quite sound as close as a lot of the reviews I've read would have you believe.  Imagine a distillation of Bolt Thrower's '90s output (they bypass the grindy/chaotic stuff of the first two albums completely) passed through a musically simplified, mid-paced filter, and you're pretty close.  I liked the album before this one a lot more, as it threw in some slower tempo-ed stuff, reminiscent of both old UK doom/death and the gloomy atmospheres on some of the old Sunlight DM.  Here it's almost exclusively mid-paced, with few exceptions.  The material here doesn't completely overcome the lack of variety.

Ozzy Osbourne - Diary of a Madman

Cost: $2.00

This is the old Jet Records press (previously I only had the 1995 and rightfully loathed 2002 remasters).  I picked this up at a thrift store, and was rather surprised that it was clean and in pretty good condition.  "S.A.T.O." is my favorite Ozzy song ever, and "Over the Mountain" and "Flying High Again" are okay, but I've never found the rest of the album to be very interesting.

Thrashing Like a Maniac compilation (2007)

Cost: 99¢

At first I was super excited to find this, since retrothrash hardly ever shows up in dollar bins.  Then reading the tracklist was kind of disappointing...It looked like it might be all previously released stuff, and I was hoping for unreleased material or more obscure/unsigned bands.  Of course I bought it anyway, and I felt better when I went through the booklet and saw there were a couple EP/demo tracks.  Some general observations:

1.) Like it or not, it does cover almost all of the heavy hitters of the US retrothrash scene at the time...Only Havok and perhaps Vektor are noticeably absent.

2.) In general, the quality of the vocals is weak across the board.  Not horrible in most cases, just weak.  No really vicious Morbid Saint or Kreator style vocals, and on the other end of the spectrum, no clean classic HM-styled vocals.  Suprisingly, not even any Araya or Souza emulators.  At best, there are a couple attempts at Schmier-ish shrieks with mixed results.

3.) In several cases the songs seemed to come off better here individually than on the actual releases they're taken from.  Unfortunately, I think that's because a lot of the bands don't have a tremendous amount of variety in their songwriting, so tracks stand out on their own more positively than on an album with several other similar tracks.

1. Bonded By Blood - Immortal Life
Okay, not great.  Quality-wise, middle of the pack compared to the rest of the CD.

2. Evile - Thrasher
One of their better songs despite the corny circle pitting lyrics.  As cliche as it sounds, mixes classic Metallica and Slayer influences well.

3. Municipal Waste - The Art of Partying
Not a fan.  The Brecht-like vocals worked well on their first album when they were doing the raw old-D.R.I. type thing, but they sound kinda lame on their thrashier material.

4. Dekapitator - Deathstrike Command
One of the more violent sounding tracks on here musically, but could have used more OTT or aggression in the vocals.  There's an attempt at a Sheepdog scream in the middle, but it just isn't enough for me.

5. Fueled by Fire - Massive Execution
No complaints here.  Again, this seems a little better than I remember their debut album being.

6. Decadence - Corrosion
Ironically, this sounds worse than I remember the 3rd Stage of Decay album being!  Grooviest and least old school sounding track on the album (to be fair, in the context of the entire genre they're not all that modern, but here they stick out).  Very forced vocals, like a higher pitched version of Sabina on the later Holy Moses stuff.  Worst track on here.  They even replaced this with a Crucifier track on the Japanese CD, which really should have been the case on all versions.

7. Warbringer - Total War
Yeah, these vocals are more like it!  One of the better tracks on here.  

8. SSS - Overload
For some reason I thought these guys were overly modern/hardcore influenced stuff like Stampin' Ground, but I was pleasantly surprised by raging crossover thrash.  Extra points for the Scum samples.

9. Gama Bomb - Zombi Brew
Good but doesn't change my relatively neutral opinion of them.  Never found them to be as fantastic as some hype them up to be, but I'm not bothered by their humor either.

10. Merciless Death - Exumer
Comes the closest to sounding like authentic '80s thrash in terms of sound and production, which is obviously a huge plus.  However, suffers from the same problem as all their material I've heard--solid music, but unenthusiastic vocals.

11. Deadfall - Resistance is Futile
Vocals remind me a bit of the deeper vox of Paul Arnold from At War, at least at first.

12. Lazarus - Last Breath
Okay track.  This is fairly modern sounding thrash compared to the other tracks.  Vocals seem a tad forced, but not enough to be bothersome.

13. Toxic Holocaust - War is Hell
Fine musically, but has those lethargic black metal vox with slight reverb that ruin a lot of their stuff for me.

14. Mutant - Psycho Therapy (actually "Psycho Surgery")
Quite good.  More towards the technical side of thrash than the other bands, which works well with the harsh vox.

15. Violator - Atomic Nightmare
As with the Merciless Death song, sounds considerably more like '80s thrash than the other tracks in terms of sound, and all the better for it.

16. Send More Paramedics - Twilight of the Flies
Rather punkish, especially with the semi-shouted vocals.  Not my cup of tea, but certainly more appealing than any metalcore the cutesy bandname might suggest.

John Arch - A Twist of Fate (2003)

Cost: 99¢

Take a wild guess as to which two bands the music made by three Fates Warning guys plus Mike Portnoy is going to sound most like.  Other than the admittedly strong selling point of having John Arch on vocals, this really isn't different enough from either later Fates Warning or Dream Theater for me to be very enthusiastic about it.  John's vocals are still in absolutely tremendous shape (see: Keep It True 2016), so it's disappointing he's only done more modern proggy stuff with Jim Matheos since his return, and nothing more in line with those classic first three Fates Warning albums.

Malformed Earthborn - Defiance of the Ugly by the Merely Repulsive (1995)

Cost: $1.00

This CD is available for trade.

Despite the participation of Dan Lilker and Shane Embury, there's nothing grindy or even metallic here, though that's not too surprising since this is on Release.  I'm not sure if it's the label, the oni mask on the cover, something I read, or simply something my brain concocted, but for some reason I thought this had Japanese noise influences.  Instead, it's just industrialish stuff.  The obvious immediate comparison for a good chunk of the disc is Godflesh due to the guitar tone and drum loops, although the overall atmosphere isn't as bleak.  Some of the sample usage and quirkier stuff reminds me of a darker version of Throbbing Gristle, and at times the material is very rhythmic and danceable.   No thanks.