Goat Thrower - Cult of the Germanic Horde (1998)

Cost: $2.00

Distro/mailorder descriptions and the Gonkulator connection always made me curious about this CD.  When I finally saw the band photos and songtitles online, it was obvious they weren't a terribly serious band, and I assumed they'd just be a black metal parody with either ultra generic or ultra exaggerated music.  I saw some places give it a thrash descriptor, which I didn't take particularly seriously.

Let's not beat around the bush--the vocals here are crap. They're heavily processed (pitch shifted higher plus reverb, I think?)  They're a cross between cartoon imp and robotic voice changer, and since they're a weird style that doesn't really fit the music, they don't even have the comedic value that ridiculous vocals typically would.  The shame is, aside from the vox, the music seems like a fairly decent mix of black metal and thrash, which really surprised me.  At its best it's similar to a far more simplified, speedier take on Ritual's Soldiers Under Satan's Command album, although they unfortunately throw in some pointless blastbeat sections.  The main riff of "Battle Scars" also reminds me of the chorus riff to Sodom's "Witching Metal," though keep in mind I'm just recording my immediate thoughts as I listen, and this shouldn't seriously be compared to the greatness of early Sodom.  The Conan album intro and some of the acoustic guitar parts used to open songs are fine, but they can go overboard with the cheesiness (though given the look of the CD, what else would you really expect?) There's an untitled Halloween theme-ish interlude that sounds like it was cobbled together from a Halloween sound effects CD, and the "Praise Be Thy Goat" outro is silly mock ritual/incantation stuff (though they would have been better off letting the chick talking do the main vocals!).  Ultimately, the inept vocals completely neutralize anything positive about the disc.

The Gathering - Nighttime Birds (1997)

Cost: $2.00

Even though it's been 20+ years, this actually picks up right where I left off with The Gathering, since I bought Mandylion from a Media Play sale bin in the '90s not too long after it was released (and since then, the only The Gathering I've ever seen in a bargain bin is the remix version of Always...).  I'm aware their later material took a very non-metal trajectory, but I haven't heard any of it yet and have no great desire to.

This is far more stripped down and lightened up music than Mandylion.  I never got on the Anneke bandwagon and didn't go nuts for Mandylion, but the album has its positive points and is certainly atmospheric if nothing else.  Nighttime Birds is far less metallic and doomy.  I don't place much value on the more relaxed sound and rockish elements here, so there's really not anything here for me that the preceding album doesn't do better.  All that said, I did find the second half of the CD to be marginally more interesting overall.   Again, I haven't heard any of the material that came after this, but their shift from metal to rock doesn't seem particularly surprising based on a lot of the music here.

Eternal Reign - Forbidden Path (2005)

Cost: $1.00

I'm a total sucker for bands doing old metal cover songs.  Whether it's an oft-covered classic or something more obscure, I'm usually very curious about hearing it, and more often than not it makes me have a positive bias towards a disc without even hearing it.  That was the case when I saw Eternal Reign had covered Breaker.

 

The band play solid but unremarkable melodic power metal, somewhat like Symphorce perhaps.  I hear sparse hints of Angra, and there are some points (such as "Into My Own Hands") where the band sounds they're doing a more power metal take on Ripper-era Priest.  I've seen some reviews that overemphasize the progressive elements here--while there are some atmospheric and slightly progressive touches as well as some relatively light keyboard usage, it seems hardly enough to warrant any sort of progressive descriptor.   It's personally disappointing because I wanted (and with the Breaker cover, expected) the overall album to have stronger traditional metal influences, and they just aren't there.

 

The cover of "Ten Seconds In" is pretty good, but truth be told, I'm not a huge fan of the original apart from the chorus.  I suppose the idea of a band covering Breaker was more appealing than the actual cover ends up being.   Nothing wrong with this musically and it's fine as a dollar disc, but unfortunately they are a fairly generic sounding band in a category that's already far too crowded.

Sothis - De Oppresso Liber (2008)

Cost: 99¢

Wrongly assumed this would be some sort of black/death when I bought it--between the style of the cover art and my brain automatically associating the band name with the Vader EP, I guess I had false expectations of some death metal element here (and I didn't look through the booklet until after buying it, so I missed all the corpsepainted band photos).  Instead this is rather bland and uninspired attempt at '90s-early '00s Emperor/Dimmu style symphonic black metal.

The riffs are quite generic and forgettable.  The constant blastbeats and double-bass pedals in the drumming quickly become extremely monotonous.  Vocals are fine, and the keyboards are played well, but only fill out the songs with background melodies rather than providing any true atmosphere.   It does seem somewhat overproduced (which isn't entirely unexpected given the type of BM they play), but it seems rather wasted on the monotonous music, and there's much more at fault here than a sterile production.  There are a couple instances with some unexpectedly good soloing, but I seem more drawn to these just as monotony breakers in the guitarwork than anything really exemplary in the music.  Despite my criticisms, considering this is a blog about bargain bin CDs, this does fine in meeting my personal quality expectations for a dollar disc.  But I don't really see myself listening to it again.

Oh yeah, I must point out that the drummer's stage name is "Dross."  C'mon guys, why didn't you make it easy on yourselves...

Pain Principle - Waiting for the Flies (2007)

Cost: 99¢

To be fair, this wasn't quite as bad as I was expecting musically. I had prepared myself for straight up groove metal, and there is indeed some of that, but there's a huge amount of melodeath influence, and some modern thrash as well.  Still, with all the modern influences, this is sadly closer to melodeath-influenced metalcore than anything from Gothenburg in the '90s.  On the other hand, the vocals are what I initially feared--Anselmo aggro style.

Misty Grey - The Third Man (2014)

Cost: 99¢

Very Sabbathy doom, with several tracks having quite a lot of Witchfinder General flavor too.  This CD compiles the two original tracks from The Third Man EP, the Demon demo, and some live tracks.  The music is immediately enjoyable, but the female vocals are an oddball style that sounds like a nasally child's voice.  I'm guessing they might have been an ill-conceived attempt at emulating Zeeb Parke.  If vocals like these must exist, I think they'd pair better with a creepier/weirder atmosphere (too bad the band isn't more Italian sounding).  I did get somewhat used to them as the CD went on, but it goes without saying that I would have preferred more conventional vocals.

Unfortunately, the CD omits the two Pentagram covers from the digital version of the EP, but adds unlisted live covers of Witchfinder General "Death Penalty" and Pentagram "All Your Sins" at the end of the last track.  Both live covers are a bit on the untight side and don't end up being all that interesting, although the Witchfinder General cover seems the better of the two based on the strength of the original.

Annulation - Human Creatures (2004)

Cost: $2.00

This certainly looked like it fell somewhere on the death or thrash metal spectrum, but I wasn't expecting such a strong mid-'90s Sepultura influence.  It really does sound like a death/thrash framework with lots of Chaos A.D./Roots-inspired guitarwork and groovy riffs.  Even the main vocals sound like a deathier version of Max from that period (ironically, at times they sound a bit like later Wagner Antichrist).  Admittedly, metal being influenced by anything that comes after Arise sounds like an awful idea in theory, although they avoid many of the worst aspects of '90s groove metal, and the extreme influences make this a lot more tolerable.

Whether it's only through Sepultura or not, I have no idea, but there seems to be a bit of a Brazilian fixation here--there's some limited Portuguese in one lyric, and another song uses a berimbau.  The end of the disc has an unlisted track with two (possibly) live songs, one being a cover of "Roots Bloody Roots" (of course).   The cover isn't very compelling and the original song (the title track from their first CD) leans more towards typical groove metal,  so these are the least interesting parts of the disc (plus, the crowd noise is quite obviously a looped sample, although at least they tried to be clever about it by dubbing in the band's name being chanted at one point).

So yeah, listenable stuff, although there's nothing particularly inspired or great here.