Cephalectomy at Myspace

Cephalectomy hail from Nova Scotia, and they play a heavily Kataklysm-influenced style of deathgrind which they have dubbed “mystigrind”. Their latest release, The Dream Cycle Mythos, consists of just one 23-minute long song, which goes through multiple segments, including both growling and screeching vocals. Typically fast and brutal grindcore segments are punctuated by creepy synthesizer interludes reminiscent of Morbid Angel’s Formulas Fatal to the Flesh, with a little bit of mid-tempo metal thrown in near the end.

I personally greatly preferred the bear-grunting to the shrieking, but that’s just personal taste. I also didn’t like the use of a drum machine, as Cephalectomy had employed an actual drummer on previous albums, but some of the drum parts are so insanely fast that it’s understandable that they made that choice. One part near the end of the song stuck out to me as being extremely fast and noisy just for the hell of it, but most of the rest of the EP is strong. This release is definitely worth picking up for fans of grindcore and brutal death metal.

Runemagick at myspace

“Dawn of the End” known as “Voyage of Desolation/Dawn of the end” by some is just one in a long line of stellar releases from the Swedish underground veterans. Runemagick’s approach on this album like on all their releases differ from other Doom/Death bands such as Coffins and Disembowelment in that there are no fast Death Metal segments. Every minute of music on this album is at a snails pace yet still retains a definite death metal sound. “Dawn of the End” evokes a sense of hopeless and endless depression. It is a musical mire of brutal despair and unrelenting ugliness.

The first Paradise Lost album, Autopsy, Dream Death, Hellhammer, Eyehategod and Immolation are all certifiable influences on this dark and soul sapping piece of downbeat metal. Whilst the popularity of traditional doom/death in the underground metal scene has fallen and risen over the years, Runemagick have been creating masterpieces in the sub-genre no matter what. This is yet another one of those masterpieces.

Trephination official website

After looking back at the fifteen reviews I’d written so far for this site, I realized that out of them, only one was fully negative, two were mediocre, two were guilty pleasures, and the rest were positive. I came to a conclusion: I need to review more shit. Some background: I found this 3-song EP in a used bookstore attached to the Free Library in Philadelphia. Most of the CDs there were stuff no one would ever want, but I’d found a few gems there, and I was curious about this, wondering out of sheer morbid curiosity what it would sound like. Well, it was just as bad as I feared.

First of all, the lyrics are terrible. “Cloned Reoccurences” starts with some genetic technobabble, and continues with some horrible lyrics about how someone’s clone is committing atrocities. At one point, the phrase “50,000 less niggers” is mentioned- yes, Trephination is a white power band. “Threading the Twine” is a hackneyed song about suicide by hanging, and “Citadel” is an equally cliched song about the Eastern front in WWII.

But the lyrics wouldn’t matter that much if the music were good. Unfortunately, it completely sucks. The vocalist sounds like he’s hacking up phlegm (in a bad way), the riffing is completely generic, the solos sound out of place, the bassist might as well have stayed home, and the drumming frequently sounds like one of those wind-up monkeys. Trephination don’t have any releases to their name besides this, and it’s not hard to see why; apparently, they weren’t even good enough to hack it in the white power scene. Stay far away from this one.

Macabre at Myspace

Macabre is a pretty unique band in the death metal scene. They formed in the mid-80s, and have survived to this day without a single lineup change. They aren’t too well known, though, possibly because their material’s a bit goofy and their vocalist, Corporate Death, has a piercing scream that’s kind of hard to deal with at first. They also haven’t released many albums, with just 4 full-lengths and a handful of EPs since their debut in 1989. Still, they’re highly revered among those versed in their work, and it’s not hard to see why.

Dahmer was released on Halloween in 2000. Like all of their work, it’s about a serial killer, but this album was a first for Macabre in that it’s a concept album, not a collection of songs about different serial killers. Dahmer isn’t strictly a metal album, as Macabre dips a bit into hardcore punk quite a bit. The lyrics are another example of Macabre’s great black humor, and most songs don’t stick around long enough to get stale, as there are 26 tracks in just 52 minutes. A few songs stick out as filler (the 20-second “Media Circus” in particular- I correctly guessed its tune just from the title), but most are fairly solid. I thought that “Blood Bank,” “Drill Bit Lobotomy,” “McDahmer’s,” “Scrub a Dub Dub” and “Christopher Scarver” were the catchiest tunes on the album.

Most of the songs are played quite fast, although they do slow it down a bit for “Scrub a Dub Dub”. The songwriting dips from the “gory nursery rhyme parody” one too many times for my tastes, but all the songs are over quickly so nothing really drags. The musicianship is pretty good, with Corporate Death’s guitars and Nefarious’ bass being strong throughout, but I thought Dennis the Menace’s drumming was pretty workmanlike (with the exception of a few tracks). The production is quite good; producer Neil Kernon knew how to make the songs sound gritty without being muddy, and contributes a solo to the song “Jeffrey Dahmer Blues”. This is my favorite album in Macabre’s all-too-small catalogue, and I would recommend it to people who enjoy comedic metal, as well as bands who mix punk elements into metal well.

Aeon at Myspace

Aeon. They’re the first band alphabetically in my library,  and a damn good one. Rise to Dominate continues their brand of brutal death metal started on their EP, Dark Order, and first full-length, Bleeding the False. First of all, I have to single out the lyrics as one of the high points. They are incredibly anti-Christian and incredibly silly, but that’s why I love them. They do slip into Engrish at times (or whatever you call bad English spoken by Swedes), but the lyrics are already silly so it doesn’t matter a lot. Also, Tommy Dahlstrom’s vocals are easy to understand.

It’s amazing how this album can be so catchy and so brutal at the same time, as evidenced in songs such as “You Pray to Nothing” and “House of Greed” (I especially love the latter’s hook of “BURN! THE! CHURCH! DOWN!”). Musically, the band is excellent; the songs tend to sound a little samey, but I thought the drums really stood out, and the guitars have those jagged edges I love in metal. I’m also glad that the band has abandoned the filler intros that were on Bleeding the False. This is a great brutal death metal album, and I hope to hear more from these guys in the future.