Dementors/Evil Force - Evil Reincarnation (2013)

 

Cost: $2.00

Split CD of two Chilean bands:

Dementors - Deaththrash, with the emphasis mostly on the thrash.  The vocals remind me of the first Chakal album, especially on the first 3 tracks.  Initially I thought the vox were a bit too extreme and modernized the music a bit too much, although after getting used to them they didn't bother me.  "Diabolical Crucifixion" has a chorus riff that is very similar to the one in Sodom's "Agent Orange."

Evil Force - Blackened thrash/speed.  Evil Force is a bit more blatantly old school; there are some scarce cases of speed and classic metal styled twin guitar acrobatics (sadly, very underutilized), and while most of the vox are in a vaguely black metal style with some additional growling, the singer also often goes into higher pitched yelps and crazy falsettos.  

Solid split I was very pleased to find.  Actually, with thrash at the forefront of both bands' sound, aside from the vocals, at times they don't sound tremendously different from each other.  Normally I think I would slightly prefer Evil Force's style of music, although it would have been helped tremendously by some tasty solos and guitar harmonics as well as more controlled vocals.  Dementors come off as the more vicious band with stronger individual tracks.

Humiliation - Turbulence from the Deep (2013)

 

Cost: 99¢

 

While Humilation are still fixated on mid-paced, simplified Bolt Thrower-style riffage, this album has them occasionally using slower tempos, I think to great effect.  When they do slow down, it's quite reminiscent of old UK death/doom or slower Asphyx stuff, and even used sparingly it does help break up some of the mid-paced monotony.  While I don't have any issues with the vocal style itself, admittedly they're very one dimensional with no real variety, and it gets a little tedious as the album goes on (to be fair, I do acknowledge that with all their mid-paced stuff, where would a nice Martin van Drunen or Kam Lee style OTT high scream really fit in smoothly?).  Still, out of the couple of releases I've heard from them, this is the best by far.  Count this as a huge bargain bin win.

Pestilence - Malleus Maleficarum

  

Cost: $1.99

Found this in February, appropriately/ironically in one of my last CD hauls before everything shut down because of the pandemic.  (The store also had the case for the Sepultura Arise remaster, but unfortunately the wrong disc was inside).  I don't dislike this album by any means--in fact, just listening to it again for this post made it grow on me tremendously--but even if it clicks further, I'm afraid it will always be in the shadow of Consuming Impulse for me, which is one of the earliest death metal albums (and CDs) I ever bought.  They're very good as thrash, but Consuming is just exceptional DM to me, one of the best albums in the genre.  

I've noticed some songs (particularly the first two) have fairly verbose lyrics that need to be sung in a relatively compact space, and van Drunen sometimes seems on the cusp of being mushmouthed trying to get them all out (the verses on the title track of Darkness Descends also suffer from this, and perhaps parts of "Hell Awaits" to a certain extent too).  

I often lament that I didn't have this blog during the late '90s-mid '00s to document the period when I was constantly finding gems in the bargain bins on a near weekly basis, so it was nice to find something old and classic like this show up.  Of course, I couldn't just enjoy my great luck and was slightly disappointed when I saw the matrix was for the '91 repress rather than the original '88 press.  Still, up until now I've only had the Displeased CDs with the bonus demo tracks, so this was a spectacular find regardless.

Roman Kostrzewski - Woda (2007)

Cost: $1.00

It was exciting to find something this eclectic/exotic in the bargain bin, much more so than the music itself.  Unfortunately, besides Roman's voice, this bears no resemblance to Kat at all.  It's some sort of atmospheric/ambient rock that strongly reminds me of world music (a few parts brought Enigma to mind a bit, too).   Not too far in I lost interest in actively listening to it, so I ended up letting it play in the background while doing other things, and I suppose it worked pretty decently as mellow background music.

Domination Black - Haunting (2008)

Cost: $2.00

I'm not quite sure what I was expecting, but it wasn't this.  While I don't think they were going for a deeply serious horror vibe, some of the themes and aesthetics of this EP seem like a mismatch with the music--predominantly power metal with some modern heavy metal mixed in.  There are some slight gothic metal overtones, but definitely not as many as the vocalist's bright-goatee-and-top-hat look might suggest.  At times they sound like a power metal take on Sentenced's upbeat later material.  The cover of Kiss' "A World Without Heroes" is fairly good and heavied up without being overdone.  "Evil Has Found a Home" is an acoustic guitar track that eventually adds demonic toy (well, that's what I imagined them to be!) voices that implore "Don't be afraid - just come closer."  It seems a little King Diamond-esque in that way.  Not a bad listen by any means, but nothing really great either.

MercyKill - The Order of War (2008)

Cost: $1.50

The artwork and band name made me think groove metal or perhaps even metalcore, so my hopes going in weren't particularly high, but when I saw they covered King Diamond's "Welcome Home," that made it an automatic purchase.  Would I have taken the chance and bought it otherwise after some consideration?  We'll never know.  The cover had me feeling more optimistic, since how can you really go wrong with any band that likes classic MF or KD?

The music is a bit of a mishmash--mostly death metal or death metalesque riffage, plenty of thrash influences, some unfortunate groove metal chugging, and maybe a tiny bit of melodeath in the mix.  Dual style vocals here, with monotonous, somewhat forced death metal vocals and very forced raspish vocals.  The actual music style they play is better than I expected (despite the more modern influences to their sound, which I could do without), but it doesn't come off as very inspired.  Most of the tracks have a pretty decent part, usually a thrashy one, but I didn't come away thinking any of the original songs were particularly notable or cool.

The "Welcome Home" cover is quite good musically.  No, they don't even bother to attempt King-style vocals--while I'll agree their regular vocals aren't ideal, they're a far more sensible choice than a bad King impression.  This would have been one of the better songs on either the Dwell or Necropolis King Diamond tributes, and compares pretty favorably to the Agressor and Prototype covers of the song.

Crimson Spectre/Uwharria - split CD (2005)

Cost: 99¢

This CD is available for trade.

Wasn't sure what to expect here, but the Crimson Spectre songtitles sounded sort of grindcorish, and there's a D.R.I. shirt in one of the booklet photos.  They turned out to be pretty disappointing as they're punk/punkish HC with screamy vocals.  There's some natural thrashiness just by virtue of it being punk, but nothing to a satisfying degree.  The Uwharria side initially seemed relatively similar and had me thinking this CD was going to be a total bust, but they at times they actually kick into full-on crossover mode ("Devil's Gut" is pretty cool).   I was further amazed that the "Riparian Trilogy" is quite strongly NWOBHM influenced!  The vocals here are also a punkish screamy style, although wilder and more spastic than Crimson Spectre's.