Cannibal Corpse, Death, Morbid Angel CDs - Canadian pressings

Found these three death metal CDs, all Canadian pressings, for $2 each.  Nothing I haven't heard already but the price was right.

Cannibal Corpse - Gallery of Suicide

Not a huge Cannibal fan to begin with, and even then, I'd say I greatly prefer the Barnes era. This is one of the best Corpsegrinder albums though, and probably my overall personal favorite out of his era of the band.

 

Death - Individual Thought Patterns

I recently picked up some other later Death CDs too, but since they aren't Canadian pressings and I'm certainly not in any hurry to listen to The Sound of Perseverance, I'll save those for a future post. I very rarely listen to Death at all beyond the Leprosy era, and when I do, it's either live stuff or occasionally putting on Spiritual Healing to remind myself that I'm really not into it that much.  This era of Death isn't really my thing and does nothing to change my stance, although I will admit the fast section in "Jealousy" definitely reminds me of the Leprosy-era material.  Just a shame it's such a short segment of the song.

Morbid Angel - Covenant

While none of these Canadian versions are that significantly different from other presses, this one is immediately identifiable as Canadian since it has a bilingual explicit lyrics notice on the cover. I completely forgot about the re-recorded version of "Angel of Disease" on here, and it definitely stands out (positively) compared to the other songs on here. I favor the older material of course, but still solid stuff.

Dio - Holy Diver

Cost: $2.00

Wonderful to find a nice clean copy of Holy Diver. I originally bought the CD years ago for a regular used disc price, but the booklet and disc were pretty beat up, so I ended up trading away that copy when I got the 2005 reissue with the bonus audio interview.  Of course, now there are a couple of deluxe versions with extra stuff, but still a very nice find.

"Caught in the Middle" is ok once it gets going, but "Stand Up and Shout," "Rainbow in the Dark," and the title track are such absolute classics I feel they make the rest of the album a bit underwhelming.  Never particularly cared for "Invisible" or "Don't Talk to Strangers" at all.

Uccultum - Wheels of the Black Sun (2006)

Cost: $2.00

Very tasty guitar tone here that often reminds me a lot of old Cianide. Other than saying it's doom, I'm not quite sure what musical comparisons to make with this. While a few songs have it to a minor degree, it's largely free of the rocking vibe I'd associate with the more stonerish side of doom metal.  However, it's also pretty garagey and minimalist, so it doesn't sound all that much like any of the classic '80s doom metal bands or their descendants. My brain tells me I've heard a dead ringer for this vocalist in some other band, but I just can't place it at the moment. Solid clean timbre although there's a certain flatness that makes him feel like an uncharismatic Scott Reagers at times. 

While not a hidden gem of doom, this is competent enough and I can't see anyone who can appreciate stripped down Sabbathy stuff not finding this to be decent.  Nice find for the price.

Venom - Eine Kleine Nachtmusik 2CD (1999)

Cost: $2.00

Expect lots of upcoming classic metal posts, as I've been finding quite a high volume of it in the cheap bins lately.  I have most of it in some form already and there should be nothing I need to describe musically to any self-respecting metalhead, but it still feels great to find it.

I already have some older single-disc pressings of Eine Kleine Nachtmusik with the same tracklist, but curiously Deadline chose to needlessly split the tracks over two CDs even though there's no extra material.  The '85 gig is the Hell at Hammersmith show and has a few songs not on the video version and vice versa.  The '86 NY half is still a fine listen, but the song selection pales in comparison to the 1985 show.  The album did offer some live previews of upcoming material when it was originally released. The classic trio lineup plays "The Chanting of the Priests," and it's obvious their sound was beginning to shift a little even with Mantas still around, since it doesn't sound particularly different from the Calm Before the Storm album version without him. On the other hand, I do like "Buried Alive" seguing into "Love Amongst the Dead"--I think it's catchier than "Raise the Dead" and sounds a bit nastier and closer to the classic Venom sound than most post-Possessed material.  Of course the studio version (called "Dead Love") was eventually formally released on the In Memorium compilation later.  

Nothing bad I can say about this score except the minor inconvenience of having to swap discs out with this particular version.

Sam Kazerooni - Angry Planet (2003)

 Cost: $2.00

This was another instance where I grabbed a CD to reach the minimum purchase amount for a store sale without having to resort to buying a '90s R&B disc. I was happily surprised to find a listing for it on Metal Archives.  This is instrumental guitar stuff, certainly pleasant but didn't leave much of a lasting impression on me.  The majority of the 16 tracks are metal, but even the more mellow proggish tracks are enjoyable.  The album often feels closer to some sort of modern video game music than to '80s or '90s shred--it tends to be more song and mood based than riff and technique based, although I wouldn't have minded some more flash and pomposity to increase the memorability here.  Nice as a background listen but hardly anything essential.

Mensrea - Media Coil Interrupt (2008)

 

 Cost: $2.00

I was reading the liner notes at the store and  the name Cory Smoot sounded familiar, although I didn't make the Gwar connection until much later.  They're listed first in the thanks list and Sarah Jezebel Deva of Cradle of Filth fame does guest vocals on a track, so I can't say I didn't have other warning flags...

This is the kind of modern kitchen sink metal that I find to be almost no better than straight up metalcore--it mixes metalcore, melodic death metal, groove metal, and maybe some very slight hints of thrash, but of course in an uninteresting modernized vein.  It's too modern and generic to be engaging for me, and it's not even brutal or extreme enough to make much of an impression through brute force.  The vocals only come in two unfortunate flavors, a shouty aggro/HC style and a screamy -core style.  The second half of the disc seems to have a higher concentration of melodic DM influence, although that doesn't redeem the album by any means.  "March of the Malcontents" and "Memoirs" have riff ideas that might have been decent in a pure melodic DM context, but there's not even a full song of that here--everything eventually segues into something -core sounding.  Two bucks not well spent.

Vengeance - Human Sacrifice (1988)

 

Cost: $2.00

Here's the big find I mentioned in the Tourniquet post: the original pressing of the Human Sacrifice CD with unamended bandname and logo! I already have the Medusa press, and while I'm not particularly concerned with layout differences or press variations, it still felt great to find it for $2 (especially since when I attemped to order it online several years ago for $5 or so, I was sent a gospel/worship music CD instead  :-\).   Was even sealed in deteriorating shrinkwrap with ancient stickers from some long-gone religious bookstore, although since the case was pretty scuffed underneath, I'm not sure if it was actually brand new or had just been resealed.

This is easily my favorite Christian thrash album, no doubt in part to it being the most extreme major release in the category at the time (just to clarify, I don't really take Serpent Temptation into account since Incubus weren't really trying to target a specifically Christian audience).  Of course, the big reason is those insane, nearly-out-of-breath-slash-monstrous-bellowing vocals which sound totally unhinged. Never heard anything else quite like them, and I don't think even Roger himself was able to replicate them as effectively on any of their other material. Admittedly, while most of the album is solid thrash that's up to date for the time, it probably wouldn't be considered cutting edge in terms of extremity compared to what was going on in the underground--the vocals contribute most of the heavy lifting. But some nice little touches pop up here and there, like the solo run in the title track (somewhat reminiscent of the end of Possessed's "The Exorcist").  Then of course when you finally get to the end of the album, "Beheaded" is a total death/thrash rager--absolutely one of my favorite songs in the entire genre. 

So yeah, what a fantastic score! And I'm not even done with this small Christian thrash haul, as I picked up Once Dead too...