Damn the Machine - Damn the Machine (1993)

 

Cost: $2.00

Not a priority purchase for me even at two bucks, but it was in such good condition for a major label release, I snagged it. It even includes the original questionnaire postcard so you can let A&M Records know about your favorite radio stations and TV shows! 

Quite mellow '90s prog metal with a certain Chris Poland on guitars. Nothing offensive to note here and it's quite accessible in a positive way, and avoids being too self-indulgently quirky or complex. I suppose the downside is that it's less immediately interesting and metallic than something like '90s Fates Warning or Gar Samuelson's Fatal Opera. It was fine to have it on in the background while doing menial home office stuff, but time will tell if I'm inclined to revisit it at all.

Hate - Intense (1997)

Cost: $1.00

 

I'd like to think that bargain bin diving for so many years has given me a keen intuition based on subtle visual cues when browing through lots of inexpensive CDs. But it's largely a moot point. Because they're all so cheap, I pick up discs I highly suspect will be crap anyway just to be on the safe side. I have to pat myself on the back for this one, since I knew it wasn't going to be just plain death metal as Metal Archives claimed.

I was right, but rather than the groove metal I was expecting, I was surprised to find out it's actually a mix of both (Brutal groove metal?  Groovy death metal?). Let's not pretend I'm particularly interested in a lot of the groovy and chuggy riffs here, but the guitar tone is nice and deathy, and the main vocals are mostly deathlike growls, although there is some aggro stuff.  So the groove metal element I typically find most offensive is largely toned down here, and with the death metal riffage and influences here, I can tolerate it.

Shallow Grave - The Fields (2009)

Cost: $1.00

This CD is available for trade.

 

Low expectations going in on this one.  I was expecting deathcore based on the logo and songtitles, and in hindsight, that may have been preferable... The band pic is very unflattering, with the members decked out in odd costuming (such as spiked respirator style masks) more appropriate for an industrial/cyber black metal/cybergoth group. Sadly, this mixes all of the worst heavy music trends of the last 30 years, primarily nu-metal and chugging -core, with groove metal style aggro vocals. Not something I'd consider to be metal and not of much interest to me.  The last track is a minimalist ballad with flamenco-style guitar playing, and I liked it the most just for giving me a break from the toughguy vocals and bouncy rap stuff.

Soul Descenders - Destruction for Tomorrow (2007)

 

Cost: $2.00

The cover immediately gave me flashbacks of drawing simple cityscapes as part of a linear perspective assignment in high school art class (vanishing points, anyone?). While I support the concept of the hastily-sketched city getting nuked, the cloud looks more like a tree.  It's all just extremely amateurish, like art that should be on a demo CD-R limited to 25 copies.  I felt a little better after seeing the Motörhead and Slayer shirts in the band pics, but unfortunately in some ways the cover is very fitting.

This is thrash that's neither particularly classic sounding, and nor is it terribly modern sounding (thankfully). There's some stylistic variety here, with some parts having quite punky speed and others being somewhat groovy, but the songs themselves aren't terribly memorable.  Mostly it seems like an unfocused take on various tropes taken from AJFA/Black Album-era Metallica--thrashier sections are used to bridge slower, groovier sections that I wouldn't really call pure thrash themselves, and two successive tracks have acoustic intros that are very evocative of "One" or "Nothing Else Matters."

What further brings this down are the vocals--the band are young and unfortunately it really shows in the singing. The clean vox verge on whiny and sound like something that would much better fit a pop-punk or emo band. The only popular comparison I can really think to draw is Gerard Way, although I was shocked that some of the vocal patterns in "Foul Mouth" reminded me of the NWOBHM band A-II-Z. I suppose the guy realized his singing was kind of wimpy and lacking in aggression, as there are some horrible attempts at forced aggro vocals which are even worse. It's no wonder my favorite track on this album is the instrumental. 

Despite the hokey cover, lyrics, and vocals, the musicianship is pretty competent even if it's not always to my taste, although I don't feel it's used for anything great. Based on them being able to scrape together a few decent thrash riffs and due to the scarcity of the disc, I'll say this is a decent find for the price. But it's definitely more like school battle of the bands metal than serious thrash.

BrainDead - Behind the Mask of Sanity (2012)

Cost: $1.00

The bandname and album title on the spine piqued my interest on the shelf, but the style of the outer packaging and the odd capitalization of the tracklist made me question if this was metal (I'll admit I totally missed the "NEW YORK METAL" on the inside of the back insert, although that would probably make me suspect some modernized -core crap).  I felt far more confident after looking it up online, so I snagged it, and here we are.

Initially I was pleasantly surprised since the disc is actual death metal, with a large chunk of the tracks having some degree of black metal influence in the riffage as well. There are also some extra elements and flourishes here and there like samples and use of piano/keyboards. It's nothing intrusive but it feels like they were added as monotony distractors rather than integrated into the music in a meaningful way. 2 of the interlude tracks and some more shreddy moments may point towards more progressive DM aspirations, but they're never really built upon. On the plus side, I found the faster, thrashier stuff like "5 Dimensional Apprehension" and "A Warm Embrace" to be pretty enjoyable. Still, several songs and the entire CD itself itself (72 min.) are just way too long for what's presented here. If this had been pared down to a mini-CD with 3 or 4 of the better tracks, I could more enthusiastically recommend it as being pretty generic but enjoyable. At this length it's a pretty tough slog through the entire thing without getting ear fatigue. A little disappointing in that aspect but overall an OK find for a buck.

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.