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.

Saviours at myspace

Mixing the old school classic rock of Thin Lizzy with the raging fast tempo stoner of High on Fire with the progressive experimentation of Baroness, Saviours are quite an intriguing proposition for Stoner Metal fans. Duelling lead guitars in a traditional heavy metal fashion are fused into a rhythm of resin soaked groove and a galloping rhythm section featuring the understated but powerful percussion of Scott Batiste.

Although this release can come under the banner of stoner metal it can be seen as basically a slightly diluted form of heavy metal itself. It’s as pure as any form of heavy metal that remains true to the greats of the genre whilst keeping the subsequent generations of thrash and those which came before it in reference. With one eye on the past and one on the future, Saviours are just one in a long line of bands creating metal that is both forward thinking but yet keeps the old traditions alive.

Blue Cheer are widely regarded as one of the very first metal bands. Vincebus Eruptum was their first album, which was released in 1968, two years before Black Sabbath’s debut. It’s not hard to see why they’re considered to be metal; unlike other bands in the San Francisco psychedelic scene, they used a heavily distorted guitar tone that was extremely unusual at the time.

Vincebus Eruptum is a pretty good album; it’s fairly tame by modern standards, but one has to wonder what went through listeners’ heads as they heard this for the first time. It’s short, clocking in at just over half an hour, with just six songs, but they’re all fairly good. There are three originals and three covers; the album opener, a cover of Eddie Cochran’s Summertime Blues, is the band’s best known song. There are some rather dull moments, such as the too-long solos in “Doctor Please” and “Second Time Around”, but for the most part, Vincebus Eruptum doesn’t have many wasted moments. The bass is easily audible throughout, which is also a plus.

One has to wonder why Blue Cheer isn’t better known, since they were one of the first metal bands. This is probably due to two factors. One is the fact that the band went through a series of tumultuous lineup changes following their second album, Outsideinside, and broke up in the early 70s. The band did not reunite until the mid-80s. Another factor is that while many metal bands owe much to Blue Cheer musically, their lyrics and atmosphere were a holdover from 60s psych rock. Blue Cheer’s lyrics weren’t gloomy, like Black Sabbath, or epic, like Led Zeppelin’s lyrics; they’re pretty much a product of the time.

I highly recommend Vincebus Eruptum to those who are curious about the early history of metal, or who also enjoy 60′s psych rock or blues.

Metallica at Myspace

I didn’t have high hopes for the new Metallica album and since you’ve all heard at least the singles from “St Anger” I’m sure you know why. According to producer Bob Rock the reason “St Anger” failed was because it had “no real songs” and one look at the half a hook monstrosity that was the title track would conclude most of us to agree. Others would say the real issue was Metallica’s continuing divergence away from metal. “Load” and “Reload” were both decent if not inspiring bluesy hard rock pieces, and “St Anger” was basically a more aggressive version of those works but without any of the songwriting skill.

The questions we have to ask therefore are; are Metallica metal once again and can they write real songs? The answer to both of those questions is in the affirmative. The music on “Death Magnetic” takes influence from both Thrash Metal and Hard Rock but it’s the former that’s in the ascendance here and the songwriting is as complex and progressive as Metallica’s mid 80’s glory days whilst still bearing the infectious catchiness of the black album. This is easily their best album since the black album by a long long margin and although it doesn’t touch their classic stuff, it still blows quite a good portion of the 21st century releases by 80’s metal bands out of the water

Stylistically the music draws not only from the first 5 Metallica albums but surprisingly from other metal bands as well. I can’t be the only one who remembers one of Metallica (I think it was James) proclaiming his love for the White stripes and Interpol in interviews around the time of St Anger’s release and saying he didn’t really listen to much metal anymore. Well it looks like they do now, as “Death Magnetic” shows they’ve been listening around to quite a few of their contemporaries from the 80’s thrash scene. You cannot deny the influence of Slayer on this album, and the occasional section of riffs brings to mind the likes of Anthrax and Exodus more than it does Metallica. This is still an album that is definitely Metallica through and through though.

It’s not all good news though; there are some tracks which just don’t work. “All Nightmare Long” is the albums most chaotic and adventurous track but for all those wild and reckless solo’s, the track seems to be on the fast lane to nowhere in particular and just seems to be an excuse for Kirk and James to prove they can still shred as fast as they did on “Kill Em All”. The worse track however is “The Unforgiven III” which is so bad I wouldn’t have been surprised to see it on “St Anger”. It’s cheesy, pretentious and mawkish though bizzarely at 5:42 it has the best solo on the album; a bluesy Randy Rhoads style number which is wasted on such a musical turd.

The positives however outweigh the negatives considerably with “That Was Just Your Life” getting the album off to a flying start with a whiskey fuelled vicous kick to the face. “Broken, Beat and Scarred” features an anthemic bridge that seemingly can’t be topped until you hear the even more anthemic chorus. The standout track though is “The Judas Kiss” which is easily the best thing Metallica have done for eighteen years. It has everything you could want from a Metallica song; riffs clashing against riffs, supercharged solos, and a racing chorus that gets stuck in your head like an Aqua song but except in a good way.

“The Judas Kiss” with its “Masters of Puppets” meets “The Black Album” sensibility is a contender for one of the best dozen or so metal songs of 2008 at least at this stage in the year, but “Death Magnetic” is more in the top 50 albums of the year so far than the top ten. It’s pretty good and its better than the recent albums by Judas Priest, Iron Maiden and Megadeth, but I don’t think it measures up to the latest albums by the likes of Nachtmystium, The Rotted and Earth in terms of quality in the scheme of things. Metallica are of their time, but if for the next few years they keep making decent pieces of 80’s style heavy metal like this, I doubt they will get too many complaints. It’s not “St Anger mark II” but it’s not “Master of Puppets Mark II” either. It’s a pretty good metal album, and five years ago I didn’t think Metallica were still capable of that, so who knows what they can pull out of the hat for their next album.