Weekly Recap: 7/25-7/31

Yes, I am on time this week. Let's see, it was a busy week at work. My fiancee and I got back from yet another wedding last weekend. We went to Sioux City, IA on Monday where I picked up the Watain album finally, as well as the new Enforcer album. Other than that, not a ton going on. I'm trying to finally finish a collection of H.P. Lovecraft stories. I just finished "At the Mountains of Madness". Finally.

Amon Amarth: Once Sent From the Golden Hall
Amorphis: Skyforger
Angel Witch: Angel Witch
Believer: Gabriel
Blitzkrieg: A Time of Changes
Bloodsoaked: Sadistic Deeds-Grotesque Memories
Cephalotripsy: Uterovaginal Insertion of Extirpated Anomalies
Cirith Ungol: One Foot in Hell
Destroy Destroy Destroy: Battle Sluts
Destruktor: Nailed
Devourment: 1.3.8
Devourment: Unleash the Carnivore
Dying Fetus: Killing on Adrenaline
Eluveitie: Everything Remains as it Never Was
Enforcer: Diamonds
Ensiferum: Ensiferum
Entorturement: Descend into Deprivation
Finntroll: Ur Jordens Djup
Gamma Ray: Somewhere Out in Space
Goatwhore: Carving Out the Eyes of God
Goatwhore: The Eclipse of Ages Into Black
Havok: Burn
Hirax: Not Dead Yet
Judas Priest: Sad Wings of Destiny
Jungle Rot: What Horrors Await
Immortal: All Shall Fall
Iron Fire: To the Grave
King's-Evil: Deletion of Humanoise
Mastodon: Leviathan
Napalm Death: Time Waits for No Slave
Necrovore: Divus De Mortuus
Obituary: Darkest Day
Old Man's Child: Slaves of the World
Omen: Battle Cry
Ozzy Osbourne: Diary of a Madman
Pharaoh: Be Gone
Pyrexia: Sermon of Mockery
Revocation: Existence is Futile
Riot: Fire Down Under
Saxorior: Volkerschlacht
Seance: Awakening of the Gods
Skyclad: Prince of the Poverty Line
Stratovarius: Polaris
Suffocation: Blood Oath
Tribulation: The Horror
Trivium: The Crusade
Trouble: Psalm 9Venom: Welcome to Hell
Warbringer: Waking Into Nightmares
Watain: Lawless Darkness
Xenomorph: Empyreal Regimes

Various Artists: Fear Candy 69

I have a stack of sampler CDs sitting around collecting dust. As such, I have many more various artists compilations posts in the coming weeks.

This is Terrorizer's Fear Candy #69.

OBITUARY: "LIST OF DEAD"
I was not totally impressed with the latest album by Obituary, but this is the best song on it. Still has that dirty groove that Obituary is known for. Great song. I own the album.

ARTILLERY: "10,000 DEVILS"
I own this album too. Artillery's return was one of the best comebacks from the 1980's thrash wave. This song is great and the album is better.

BONE GNAWER: "CANNIBAL COOKOUT"
Bone Gnawer is the band formed by Kam Lee after leaving Denial Fiend. Lee has one of the best voices in death metal and he brings it to this intense death metal band. This song seriously sounds great. I would pick up this album.

ANAAL NATHRAKH: "THE LUCIFER EFFECT"
Easily one of the most intense bands in metal today. Anaal Nathrakh performs industrialized black metal and they play fast as fuck. Strangely I have not really done much checking into this band. That should probably change soon.

: "THE RATTLE OF BLACK TEETH"
I'm not totally sure what to describe this as. It seems to have some hardcore elements, some death metal elements, and some other stuff. It features good cop/bad cop vocals, and I don't think I particularly care for it.

NECROPHOBIC: "LA SANTISMA MUERTE"
Dirty, raw, and occult death metal. I love this stuff. Necrophobic has been on my list to check out for awhile. Here's the reason why.

ARGHARUS: "PLEISTAS"
I already own the album by this Lithuanian raw pagan black metal act. Good song, better album. This is easily the best song off of the album.

DEVOURMENT: "FED TO THE PIGS"
A little slam in this thing. I already own this album too, but this song is one of the best off of it.

INGESTED: "SKINNED AND FUCKED"
More slam, excellent. This band is more of a borderline band though between slam and more ordinary brutal death metal. No complaints here. The ever-present blast beats sound great. This is a decent song, I may look into them some more.

BLEED FROM WITHIN: "SERVANTS OF DIVINITY"
This sounds like a band combining hardcore with The Black Dahlia Murder. The riffs are okay, but not something we haven't heard before. The vocals sound exactly like The Black Dahlia Murder. I would prefer TBDM personally.

KORPIKLAANI: "VODKA"
More drinking metal from the masters. They've taken a step beyond beer on this one. The folk metal band sounds a little like Ensiferum, but more fun. Kind of like Finntroll. Not bad at all. Good drinking music, excellent for a wedding...

SWASHBUCKLE: "CRUISE SHIP TERROR"
Two self-described pirate metal bands emerged in the last few years. Swashbuckle is a little better musically, if only because I much prefer thrash to power metal. Funny stuff.

VIATROPHY: "SEAS OF STORM"
This is almost mechanical-sounding death metal. I was actually somewhat surprised by how much I enjoyed it. Especially as it seemed to meander towards metalcore in the later moments. Still not too bad.

AFTER ALL: "MY OWN SACRIFICE"
Definitely metalcore. No thanks.

MENA BRINNO: "COURT ME"
I was very surprised by this one too. It has a traditional metal sound and is driven by fantastic guitar leads and solos. It also features a sweetly-voiced female singer. The proceedings under the singer are a little more gothic-tinged, but this is still a decent enough song. I would need to hear more before making a decision.

Initial Impressions: Watain and Enforcer

Pretty swamped at work right now so I don't want to spend a ton of time on stuff.

WATAIN: LAWLESS DARKNESSWatain is one of the leading bands in the Orthodox black metal movement. Their lyrics clearly have a Satanic and evil bent to them. None of this stuff really bothers me that much. If the music is good, that's all that really matters to me. Luckily, Watain is one of the best black metal bands currently going.

Watain's music can be described as epic black metal. The sound is amazing and complex. They have a lot of Dissection influence, which is always a good thing to me. The music is very powerful, emotional, and intense. The tremolo riffs are fantastic and really add to the spine-tingling feel of the music. The vocals are understandable, but fairly typical for black metal.

Watain has been steadily improving with each album. This album is their best one to date, surpassing even the amazing Sworn to the Dark. The only issue I have with it is the length. At 70+ minutes this is a very long album. At least the music is so good that it does not feel like a chore to listen to it.

ENFORCER: DIAMONDSOn the other end of the spectrum, we have Enforcer who plays retro-sounding metal that takes a lot of influences from the NWOBHM. Hell, the album cover looks like something that came out of the late 1970's and early 1980's. Enforcer is a Swedish band that manages to sound even more retro than the uber-retro Wolf.

A few years back, a band called The Darkness was being hyped as a return to a more traditional sound of European metal. Well, that band was a joke, and they fucking sucked. Enforcer, on the other hand, are the real deal. All of the songs on this album are catchy and fun. The album is a throwback to the days when Angel Witch, Saxon, Raven, and others were at their best.

I enjoy this album immensely, mostly because of my newfound love for the NWOBHM. Enforcer sounds like they would have been very comfortable in that era.

Year in Metal: 1981

Inspired by this post from Full Metal Attorney, I decided to do something a little different and look at three of my favorite albums from each year I have been alive.

I'm starting with 1981 because that was the year I was born. Metal was not nearly as widespread at the time. Black Sabbath had already come and Ozzy was already out on his own. The New Wave of British Heavy Metal was in full force, but there was little development as far as thrash and other genres go. It was mostly traditional-sounding heavy metal.

I had some difficulty coming up with any choices as I only own three albums that were released in 1981, I know it's pathetic. So here we go anyway.

OZZY OSBOURNE: DIARY OF A MADMANThis is actually my favorite Ozzy album. I think it's strong the whole way through. It's also the last album with the great Randy Rhoads on guitar before he died in a plane stunt. Rhoads was an amazing classically-trained guitarist and those influences were always evident in his soloing style. Ozzy's voice is exceptionally strong on this album. The best tracks are "Over the Mountain", "S.A.T.O.", and the title track although I strongly enjoy every song on it, something of a rarity for Ozzy albums.

RIOT: FIRE DOWN UNDEREssentially, Riot was the U.S.'s answer to the NWOBHM. The music sounds very similar to the style of metal released in the U.K. at the time, in particular sounding like Raven, with some Judas Priest elements also present. The music is fairly good early metal and had an influence on the later U.S. power metal scene. All the songs are very catchy and the album sticks with the listener long after it is over.

VENOM: WELCOME TO HELLThe great, if mostly unhinged, Venom had a huge influence on thrash metal early on. Venom was one of the fastest bands on the planet back in 1981. They released their debut album, which consisted of several very fast, but charmingly sloppy songs, in 1981. It was loud, noisy, and fast as hell. Venom was also an early band focused on outwardly evil lyrics, such as "Sons of Satan", "Witching Hour", and "In League with Satan". The band is often cited as a proto-black metal band, and I suppose I can see that. They were certainly influential.

Honorable mentions: Black Sabbath: Mob Rules, Iron Maiden: Killers, Judas Priest: Point of Entry, Motley Crue: Too Fast for Love, Saxon: Denim and Leather

Bands that formed in 1981 include Anthrax, Dark Angel, Metallica, Motley Crue, Pantera, Queensryche, and Slayer.

Cover Art: Dan Seagrave

Inspired by this post from Kelly at Full Metal Attorney, I wanted to do a post showing off some cover art from my favorite artist, Dan Seagrave. He provided artwork on a bunch of early death metal albums and his twisted landscapes are his specialty. Here are the albums in my collection featuring art by Dan Seagrave.

Wedding-Appropriate Metal

Okay, I was having this conversation with my fiancee over the weekend. We were at a wedding in which the wedding party's entrance music was a hard rock song by some band called Skillet. She said to me that this was a possibility for me to have a metal song in our wedding. I immediately suggested Cannibal Corpse's "I Cum Blood" but that was rejected, so I am turning to you, my readers for suggestions for an appropriate song for the wedding party entrance. She hates thrash metal with a burning passion and would prefer no black or death. I have some ideas, but would like to see suggestions.

Have at it and thanks in advance.

What the Fuck Moments This Week

Totally random stuff for you today:

1. I recently bought an Iron Maiden shirt, with the Killers album cover on it at Wal Mart of all places. My fiancee is very excited about that. So, yes honey, I posted it here to tell the world, I bought an Iron Maiden t-shirt at Wal Mart.

2. This is printed in human blood:Ah, Watain. You nuts.

Nebraska Metal Pt. 4: Xenomorph: Empyreal Regimes

Well, well, well. What do we have here? There's a couple of reasons I picked this up.
1) Old school progressive/technical death metal band that was recommended on the Metal Archives boards;
2) Picture of the Alien on the cover (and obviously the band is named after the Alien), my favorite movie monster; and
3) Band from my home state of Nebraska. Omaha, more particularly.

So, is it any good? Oh, hell yes. It's extremely hard to believe that this came from Nebraska in 1995. It's like finding a fully formed fish in rock dating back to the Precambrian age. Quite the nerdy analogy, true, but it's apt. There is absolutely no way that this could have evolved out of Nebraska, because the state has not really had anything like it, before or since. It is like it came out of nowhere.

This is technical and filthy death metal. The production quality is fantastic, with a beefy sound which emphasizes every sick riff and snarled vocal. It sounds absolutely great, yet again, completely out of nowhere because this was not released on a big label, or even a medium-sized one. It just has a great sound that cannot be readily explained.

The music owes a lot to groups like Morbid Angel, Death, and Immolation, with a little more of a technical riffing style and more progressive song structure. The guitar riffs have the same otherworldly feel to them as Morbid Angel's. The leads sound more like something the late Chuck Schuldiner would have produced, with a strong tone, they are like the only light in an otherwise dark and dank room. The album creeps along like some Lovecraftian horror, slimy and cold. The drumming is intense and powerful, the bass rumbling along at the pace of the guitars.

There are frequent samples, which consist mostly of clips from horror movies. They go very well with the general sound of the album. Each of the songs is generally a little long, none of them being less than five minutes, but with the intricate and ever-changing song structures, things never drag.

As for the vocals, they sound like a slightly more malevolent, but overall not as deep version of David Vincent's vocals from the first few Morbid Angel albums. The vocals sound seriously unhinged and psychotic.

Like a fully-formed fish found in Precambrian rock, this twisted slab of progressive/technical death metal that puts many other bands even from the same time period to shame emerged out of the metal wasteland of Omaha, Nebraska. It's really extraordinary. It's a shame this band was not able to stay around and that so few people have been exposed to it.

Slam Update: Cephalotripsy, Dying Fetus, Entorturement, Pyrexia

Last week, I did something that I hardly ever do. I downloaded some albums. I did this because they are very hard to find, out of print albums, that are often expensive in physical form. I also did it because I wanted to hear them. Last year, an article on slam metal appeared in Decibel. In it, Sgt. D of Metal Inquisition posted a list of five essential slam albums. I only owned one of them. So, last week, in the midst of my latest slam kick, I downloaded the other four albums. I feel bad about it, because I don't care for downloading, but I did it anyway. I wanted to hear these albums.

CEPHALOTRIPSY: UTEROVAGINAL INSERTION OF EXTIRPATED ANOMALIESThat's quite the mouthful of a name, huh? This is a newer slam band and they perfectly embody everything that slam has become. The music sounds filthy and downright disgusting. The vocals are delivered in a half frog croak, half cricket chirp style. The music has a lot of bottom end and the slams come fast and furious. The album art is typically grotesque. The album is a bit overly long with fourteen tracks and clocking in at slightly less than an hour, but that's okay. Cephalotripsy is essentially the quintessential example of a modern slam death band, for better or for worse, depending on your feelings for the genre.

DYING FETUS: KILLING ON ADRENALINEI have a couple of albums by Dying Fetus already, so I knew what to expect. This album though, blows the other two albums I own out of the water. The music sounds a little more like technical brutal death with some grindcore elements present as well. It's fast and very brutal. There are frequent guitar sweeps and leads accentuating the music. The slams are presnet here, but this album came before the genre was really fully developed. This is a better album than the prior two Dying Fetus albums I have heard, which are their most recent. It's clear that this band was better earlier and helped lay some foundation for the genre as it currently stands.

ENTORTUREMENT: DESCEND INTO DEPRIVATIONOkay, this one's a little weird. At least the last track is weird. Up until then, we have a bunch of songs that sound a little like Devourment and Internal Bleeding, the first really true slam bands. The last track actually features rapping. I'm not kidding, rapping in a death metal vocal style. It's no secret that slam death takes some influence from rap, but this is just crazy. A lot of the music also sounds as if it takes influence from rap beats. Just a crazy album all the way through.

PYREXIA: SERMON OF MOCKERYPyrexia arrived about the same time as Suffocation and was one of the major influences on the genre. Their sound is similar to Suffocation except with some more breakdowns which later became the slams in more modern slam death. They are not as technically gifted as Suffocation, but otherwise sound a lot like the band. Of these four albums, I think this is my favorite.

Weekly Recap: July 18-July 24

I would promise that this is the last late recap, but let's be honest, it probably won't be. In fact, I have a vacation coming up soon with my fiancee that will make it difficult to post anything. We had yet another wedding. This time, in Lexington, Nebraska. This time, I was an usher, so I had to be there. Ah well. We stayed in a hotel and brought the two German Shepherds. It wasn't too bad I suppose.

Other than that, not much going on.

I lost the list of albums I listened to and don't have the desire to go back and make a new one. So there.

Cover Art: ZOMBIES!

Zombies are big lately. They have become something of a pop culture phenomenon. It has not always been that way though. However, in heavy metal, they have always been present. Here's a sampling of the albums in my collection with zombies on the cover.

Analyzing the Metalness of King's X

King's X has always been an extremely difficult band to pin a genre tag on. Their music runs the gamut between hard rock, heavy metal, progressive metal, funk, and soul. In addition, the vocals are often influenced by the above styles, as well as gospel, blues, and British rock groups of the 1960's such as The Beatles. It's an eclectic mix to be sure. So, is King's X a metal band? In a word, sometimes.

I have heard a lot of material from this band, though very little since the late 1990's. I own only one of their albums, 1994's Dogman which will form the principal material in this analysis as this album is widely considered their most metal release. As mentioned in a previous post, the music must have ties to Black Sabbath and it must sound like metal.

DOGMANOkay, this is the only album I own by King's X, so this analysis is far from complete. But, I figured looking at what is widely considered the band's most metal release will give me some indication of whether this band is, in fact, a metal band, at least occasionally.

Much of the riffing on this album is more distorted and Sabbath-influenced than on the band's previous material. The title track kicks things off here and we are immediately treated to a distorted, bluesy, Sabbathian riff coupled with Doug Pinnick's soulful crooning. The title track is definitely a highlight on this album and a great way to kick things off. "Shoes" is a slow-burning, yet heavy track that sounds as if it would easily fit in on any Deep Purple album. "Pretend" sounds like a cross between Black Sabbath and The Beatles, an exceptional song. "Black the Sky" also features a very basic metal-sounding riff along with some very heavy distortion, including one hell of a closing. "Don't Care" also has some extremely heavy power chord riffing going on. "Complain" is another song that would have sounded at home on 1970's era heavy metal albums, as would "Pillow".

On the other hand, "Flies and Blue Skies" is basically a blues ballad. Not bad, but not metal. "Fool You" sounds a lot like a hard rock band playing an old R&B song, but it has one hell of a closing as well. "Sunshine Rain" is another ballad with some impressive metallic riffing, but does not rise to the level of a metal song. "Human Behavior" sounds like Led Zeppelin, with more blues influence, especially the "Black Dog"-esque riff. "Cigarettes" is yet another softer ballad. "Go to Hell" is a pure hardcore track and lasts less than a minute. "Manic Depression" is a cover of a song by Jimi Hendrix.

As for the musicians, guitarist Ty Tabor is the principal music-writer. He brings most of the metal influence to the band. He also has a couple of metal side projects, including his solo project and a prog metal project with John Myung of Dream Theater. Doug Pinnick also has quite the metal history and was once offered the vocalist position in Deep Purple.

I have also heard some other songs by the band, all of which I felt were clearly closer to metal. I think King's X's genre probably would be a lot less controversial if the band had come around in the 1970's or 1980's. The band has the same kind of downtuned, bluesy metallic riffs that the first major metal bands also had.

CONCLUSION
King's X is a borderline band, and they are certainly questionable because of the time they came out. In the late 1980's, death and thrash metal were becoming dominant forms of metal, whereas King's X played a more basic blues-influenced form of metal, punctuated by elements of other styles.

Dusting Off a Cassette Pt. 49: Black Sabbath: Sabbath Bloody Sabbath

If I were to pick one album to point to for people to realize just how good of musicians the original quartet were, this would be the album. In my opinion, this was the last great album Black Sabbath released with Ozzy Osbourne on vocals. There are some songs that I do not particularly care for, but overall, this is a great album.

Several of the songs on this release should have been classic Sabbath tracks. "A National Acrobat" is actually my favorite song off of this album and is one of my all-time favorite Sabbath songs in general. In addition, "Sabbra Cadabra" and "Killing Yourself to Live" are also amazing songs. The title track is the most well-known song off of this album and appears on several greatest hits compilations, as well it should. But, there are other great tracks on here.

Sabbath was experimenting with some different types of music on this. "Fluff" is a very soft track and "Who are You?" features a lot of electronic keyboard effects. There is also some other woodwind instrumentation at various points adding to the experience.

As I mentioned, I don't particularly care for a couple of the songs, most notably the aforementioned "Fluff" and "Who are You?", but that does not mean they are bad songs. I just do not like them as well. The rest of the album though more than makes up for it. This was one of my favorite Sabbath releases for a long time, and remains so today.

Weekly Recap: 7/11-7/17

I know, another late one. My beautiful fiancee and I spent yet another weekend in Lincoln for a wedding. Thankfully there is only one more this summer that I am aware of. Of course that one is this upcoming weekend and I am in the wedding party, so far more stressful.

We have begun training The Reaper to be an usher. We'll see how that works out. My parents may have decided on a place for the rehearsal dinner. Other than that, we have ideas in mind for some of the other stuff, such as florist, cake designer, etc. We just need to get around to booking these people.

Not much going on in metal news. That I recall, anyway.

Archgoat: The Light-Devouring Darkness
Arkona: Ot Serdtsa K Nebu
Armored Saint: Symbol of Salvation
Benediction: Transcend the Rubicon
Benedictum: Seasons of Tragedy
Black Sabbath: Paranoid
Blood Tsunami: Thrash Metal
Brown Jenkins: Death Obsession
Convulse: World Without God
Darkane: Demonic Art
Decrepit Birth: Diminishing Between Worlds
Dreaming Dead: Within One
Ensiferum: Ensiferum
Fight: War of Words
Gallhammer: Ill Innocence
God Forbid: Earthsblood
Grave Digger: Ballads of a Hangman
HOD: Serpent
Hour of 13: Hour of 13
Hypocrisy: A Taste of Extreme Divinity
Internal Bleeding: Voracious Contempt
Iron Maiden: Seventh Son of a Seventh SonKamelot: The Black Halo
Lecherous Nocturne: Adoration of the Blade
Liege Lord: Burn to My Touch
Master's Hammer: The Ritual Murder
Metalhit.com V/A Compilation
Metallica: Kill 'Em All
Metallica: Ride the Lightning
Mithras: Behind the Shadows Lie Madness
Mortal Dezire: Mortal Dezire
Mourning Beloveth: A Disease for the Ages
Necrophagist: Onset of Putrefaction
Nihilist: 1987-1989
Nile: Those Whom the Gods Detest
Now That's What I Call Slam Compilation
Obscura: Cosmogenesis
Pathology: Legacy of the Ancients
Pharaoh: Be Gone
Sarcolytic: Thee Arcane Progeny
Skinless: From Sacrifice to Survival
Slayer: World Painted Blood
Syrach: Days of Wrath
Teitanblood: Seven Challices
Tsjuder: Desert Northern Hell
Vorkuta: Into the Chasms of Lunacy
Vreid: Pitch Black Brigade
Witchery: Don't Fear the Reaper
Witchery: Witchkrieg

Compilations: Now That's What I Call Slam

First things first, yes that is a mock reference to the Now compilations that were huge a few years ago and now barely register a blip on the market because of downloading. Yes, it's an old joke and not terribly funny. Moving on.

Well as I said in my post on the new Pathology album, I've been in a bit of a slam mood. For those not familiar with the genre, slam death metal takes the early sound of Suffocation and other similar groups and focuses on the slower groove parts. It's offensive as hell, but that's part of its charm(?). Just look at some of these song titles. It's not music to be taken seriously, it's just mindless fun. As long as you're not easily offended anyway.

This is a compilation thrown together by Sergeant D. of Metal Inquisition and put up for download on Invisible Oranges. It's a pretty good introduction into the twisted world of slam metal. I'm pretty late to this party as this was posted nine months ago originally and I was vaguely aware of it then, but only downloaded it this week. I'm not going to discuss each song in depth, as most of this sounds pretty similar and it would be pointless saying the same thing over and over again, but here we go anyway.

1. Devourment: Babykiller: This is the only band on this compilation that I currently have an album from (I have three). Devourment are probably the first real slam band, and this song is a perfect example of the genre.
2. Gorevent: Extinction: Japan has become a leading exporter of slam and many of the bands share members. Gorevent, Rest in Gore, Infernal Revulsion, and Glossectomy are all Japanese bands.
3. Cephalotripsy: Sanguinary Misogynistic Execration: This is what most modern slam bands sound like. The vocals are extremely guttural.
4. Repudilation: Fall of Oppression: An older band that helped define the genre more from Devourment's take on it.
5. Rest in Gore: Gutrectomy: Absolutely filthy vocals.
6. I Declare Goddess: I Declare Goddess: This is a collaboration between the singers of deathcore band I Declare War and slam band Disfiguring the Goddess. It does not feature a lot of the weirdness notable in Goddess's work, although there are some strange moments.
7. Infernal Revulsion: Rot in Peace: This is a bit more melodic than most other slam. It's more closely related to Suffocation. This is probably my favorite track on this.
8. Putrid Pile: Dead: This one is incredibly fast and sounds great.
9. Guttural Secrete: Reek of Pubescent Despoilment: Different guitar tone. This one also sounds like brutal death with some nice riffing along with the slams.
10. Disconformity: Endocranial Cast: This one's a bit slower with some very sick vocals.
11. Condemned: Habitual Depravity: Absolutely inhuman vocals on this track. I'm not sure those are even words.
12. Human Rejection: Infernal Hostility: These vocals sound like a bullfrog is grumbling into the mic. The whole song is basically one long slam.
13. Glossectomy: Unknown: This one flies by in the blink of an eye. It's also essentially a two minute slam.
14. Pyrexia: Sermon of Mockery: Pyrexia emerged around the same time as Suffocation and really are not that dissimilar. Fans of Suffocation should also enjoy Pyrexia, although their breakdowns are much more severe.
15. The Dark Prison Massacre: My Cock is the Truth: Charming.

Yes the music is offensive as hell. However, it's kind of fun to listen to sometimes.

Initial Impressions: Teitanblood: Seven Challices

Alright, this is what I love. I am a huge fan of dirty, raw, occult death metal. Teitanblood is all of these things, plus some twisted black metal elements. Just look at that album cover. Some kind of Lovecraftian horror erupting from the ground. Yep, that's a pretty accurate description of Teitanblood's sound as well.

I have seen this band's name thrown around for awhile whenever metalheads talk about good new death metal/black metal bands. So, I figured why not give them a shot? I liked Blaspherian and several other bands that were mentioned in the same breath. If it's possible, I think I like this more.

The album starts off on a sinister note with the instrumental "Whore Mass". It quickly jumps into creepy atmospherics for awhile until the first riff leads into the first real song, "Domains of Darkness and Ancient Evil". From that point on, Teitanblood never relents, bringing crushing riff after crushing riff. The riffs sound foetid and sick and the vocals are inhuman croaks. It's an extremely intense and suffocating album and it does not let up for almost an hour.

Teitanblood proves that there are still some truly interesting metal bands being formed. The band is very new and has a very bright future as long as they keep putting out music like this.