Welcome to the Necro Files, just off Highway 666. Follow the trail of general debauchery and complete and utter murder and mayhem. Reviews of top horror movies. Reviews of albums by top heavy metal bands. Do not feed the Garg!
Bile of Man is a South African death metal band I've had the pleasure of seeing once or twice. I also included them among my best bands on myspace list. They are currently giving away free mp3s as part of a promotion.
To the real geeks, the tracks are also available in ogg format.
Descendant of Desecration
The first aspect of Bile of Man that kicks you in the face is the strong Dying Fetus influence. The second aspect is the foundation of some fine sound. The guitars are still a little raw, but for the most part the production serves to build a wall of sound, with some interesting stereo effects and a few disembowelling bass parts. Oh, and they can keep time, which is something of a novelty for most South African bands.
Wrath of the Stillborn
Descendant of Desecration has a few risky tempo changes, but Wrath of the Stillborn is the better of the two tracks in my opinion. It kicks off with some arsenic blast beats that flow into even more putrid blasts. Then, some awesome diabolus in musica riffs, followed by an orgy of chaotic chromatic riffs that reminds of Cryptopsy before they became Coretopsy. For the grand finale, you get some blasphemous pinch harmonics that would get Zakk Wylde fired from Ozzy Osbourne's band.
Soaring vocals, snarling guitar riffs and incredibly inventive playing. Plus it is a concept album, so I'm sold.
Review
Jeff Loomis plays guitar for Nevermore. You really should need no further convincing, but Pat O'Brien exchanges riffs of Hades with Loomis on this album. It rarely gets better than this.
It took me quite a while to get used to Van Williams' metronome-like drumming. At first, I didn't really get into it because I am accustomed to flashy drummers like Richard Christy, who employ loads of cymbals. After a while, the incredible precision took its toll and I can't really picture any other drummer in Nevermore.
Van Williams employs more drums, making his playing more brutal. That's the ultimate strength of this band - every player is a merited working part of the machine. This reminds me of what Legalism had in mind for government.
Legalism as personified by Nevermore
Legalism is one of the four prominent schools of Chinese philosophy during their Spring and Autumn period, the others being Taoism, Confucianism and Mohism.
Taoism deals with the true nature of matters, which is why Megadeth and Slayer personify Taoism in my books. Confucianism taught an unconditional hierarchy of specialised filial relationships while Mohism taught equality of all people, and these are not really applicable to Nevermore (or anywhere else, really).
Legalism on the other hand focuses on trying to establish a meritocracy.
Han Fei's proposals for leadership under legalism
Fa: Law or principle. It is obvious that metal is the law for Nevermore. Legalism considers all people equal before the law, but holds that the law must punish those who break the law and reward those who abide by it. This is why Trivium is punished with bottles of piss and Necrophagist is rewarded with awesome Ibanez guitar endorsements.
Shu: Secret tactics. These are used by the ruler to maintain the law. Nobody should be able to fathom the tactics of rule to the extent that they would want to establish rule by themselves. The idea is that subjects would see no other alternative to getting ahead other than following the law.
When they follow the law, they think they are acting towards their own benefit. In principle, they are acting towards their own benefit within the meritocracy but they are also acting towards maintaining harmony. Nevermore's secret tactics include hiring jaw-dropping session musicians like Chris Broderick.
Shi: Legitimacy. The position of the ruler must hold power in itself by virtue of the law. The ruler is merely the catalyst for the law. Jeff Loomis is definitely a legitimate guitar god any way you look at it - legally or illegally.
Metal became known for death vocals lately, but some exponents still stick to the standards of Dio, Halford and Dickinson. Nevermore is one such band. While the vocals does get rough at points, it never goes into death growls. This means you can actually hear what Warrel Dane is singing about. Unlike Metallica, it's not a case of you'd rather not hear the tripe he is singing.
Jeff Loomis. Guitar god by day, merchant of menace by night.
The album title is from the book by Dr Timothy Leary of the same name, however Dane has stated that the album is more about control issues and spirituality than better living through chemistry. Thus, the album has more in common with politics than ecstasy. You really need not concern yourself with any of these concepts. The ultimate proof of a successful concept album is that the music speaks for itself, and it does on all Nevermore albums.
After the success of Rust in Peace, Megadeth aims for the number one spot. A calculated balance between radio friendly song structures and a scorching line-up ready for immolation makes Countdown to Extinction one of the few heavy metal records with pop sensibilities that won't make you hurl.
PETA protesting against the use of fur. Even though I support seal clubbing, I must admit I prefer women without fur. I prefer them naked too.
Review
There's nowhere you can really go after a record like Rust in Peace. Of course, if Megadeth became louder and heavier, nobody would have complained. But Countdown to Extinction is a very good record, despite being lighter than its predecessor.
The 2004 remixed and remastered version features demos for the tracks "Countdown to Exctinction", "Symphony of Destruction" and "Psychotron". In the liner notes, Mustaine claims he felt a certain energy in the studio after about a week of recording. This energy told him that this record is the big one. The demos reveal just how perfectionist they were at this stage. Friedman and Mustaine tracked their guitars through tuners to ensure everything is perfect for the final recording.
Listening to the album, one can't help to notice this clinical perfectionism seeping through each track. Instead of sterilising the record, it helped to highlight the nuances in Megadeth's often complex tracks.
I used to listen to this album on cassette deck. My dad had a cassette of bird calls which was quickly transformed into a second generation copy of Countdown to Extinction. It made our mandatory game drives much more enjoyable for me, despite the fact that I got a hiding and gave my dad a headache.
The CD – now ripped to Megadeth mp3 for convenience – is in a state of pure digital perfection. Listening to it is truly awesome. Like Divine Intervention by Slayer, I can't really be objective about this record because I grew up with it. If you get a hiding for it, or if you get taken to the principal's office for a record, it automatically scores five skulls.
Useless information
"Crown of Worms" features lyrics written by Sean Harris of Diamond Head. Mustaine tried to write music in a classic Motorhead style to fit the lyrics. I am grateful that they included this hard to find track on the remixed and remastered version.
"Countdown to Extinction" is a song about canned hunting. The track won accolades from PETA and other pussies. Canned hunting is obviously much different than frolicking around in an animal's natural habitat with a hand weapon, so in this case I support PETA's views.
"Ashes in Your Mouth" has some of my favourite guitar solos of all time.
"Psychotron" is one of several Megadeth tracks about comic book characters. In this case, the topic is Deathlok, the demolisher.
This is part of the month of Megadeth series on the Necro Files. All the posts of the series are listed below:
The first real metal album I ever heard, and still probably the best. This is a completely biased review, because I love this album more than I love blonde lesbians making out with me.
I love this album almost as much as I love blonde bisexual girls making out with me. Every metal album I have heard since has been measured by Divine Intervention. The album, not the cow probing or the Elvis Presley U.F.O sightings.
Blonde bisexual girls making out with each other. Just kidding, this is 213 performed live by Slayer. Hell yeah!
Review
This album came out in 1994, the year grunge king Kurt Cobain committed suicide. Grunge was all the rage. Slayer hasn't delivered an album since 1990's Seasons In The Abyss. Since then, they lost a key member – drummer Dave Lombardo. Will Slayer bow down to the slacker grunge mediocrity of Pearl Jam and Nirvana? Nay nay.
Slayer gets new drummer Paul Bostaph to introduce this album with some wild drum rolls. After that, you get some awesome riffs with enough tempo changes to make Yes or King Crimson envious.
The seminal Thrash band is no stranger to controversy. Since the days of Angel of Death, Slayer has endorsed morbid imagery – enough so to cause some critics to accuse them of Satanic and Neo-Nazi views. Slayer adds fuel to the fire with Divine Intervention, firstly with the sleeve. The cover has a skeleton on a pentagram formed by swords – the band's emblem of sorts.
On the disk, you will find the image of a fan with the word 'Slayer' slashed into each wrist. I can just imagine how this lead to much misguided dabbling in Satanism and self-harm.
Various newspaper clippings are portrayed on the inside of the sleeve, with selected words blacked out. In typical anti-censorship, anti-government and anti-religious control stance. Albums like these are like alchemy. They turn you into metal.
Jane Austen, in all her pride and prejudice. Don't let her Victorian dress or her hessian underthings fool you. This lady had a bitter satirical bite. Apparently, she was no Slayer fan either.
Lyrically, this is no Jane Austen novel either.
SS-3 refers to the license plate number of the car Reinhard Heydrich travelled in when he was shot.
213 is based on the dealings of Jeffrey Dahmer. 213 refers to his apartment number.
Reynhard Heydrich. Don't let the fancy suit fool you. This is a wicked, wicked man. Apparently, he's no Jane Austen fan either.
213 also features some of the sickest metal lyrics ever.
Death, love's final embrace Your cool tenderness Memories, keep love alive Memories, will never die
Doesn't look like much, but once you know what the song is about it gets a bit more chilly.
Definitely still one of my favourite metal albums.
Conclusion Pete Sandoval on drums and the Mexecutioner, Jesse Pintado, on guitar for the last album he recorded before he sadly passed away due to a liver that couldn't keep up with the party. It is the only grindcore album I own, and my knowledge of the genre is limited to singing along to a few Anal Blast songs, so take my review with a pinch of salt and a shot of tequila. But I like it.
After recently reading up on clostridium botulinum, I decided this little fellow is so awesome that I had to dedicate most of my new layout to the bacterium. You may know c.botulinum as food poisoning or Botox, but I know it as the cause of botulism. Probably the most toxic substance known, a 2 kg bag of c.botulinum has enough potential to destroy mankind. Cthulhu would however make for a more cinematic apocalypse.
That's what could be lurking in your baked beans. Image taken from marlerblog.com.
muscle weakness, and eventually muscular paralysis
Quite a little terrorizer.
Review
All of the music is written by Pete Sandoval (Morbid Angel) and Jesse Pintado. Expect killer riffs and lots of brutality, although I found for the most part this album is less taxing than most grindcore out there. Read: sick, but slightly more melodic. If you are a grindcore purist, this might not be a good thing. I mean all the tracks are longer than a minute.
Pete Sandoval's drumming may cause double vision.
Anthony Rezhawk does a rasp of Cerberus similar to Steve Tucker's very own bark. Could just be my recent overdose of Morbid Angel, but this is the kind of growling I like. He also wrote all the lyrics. In proud grindcore tradition, a couple of verses are offered, after which the song title is repeated a few times. This is not rocket science, but it is good for shaking your fist. I said Cerberus, not cerebral.
Ghost Train is a kind of piano and skull-fucking double bass pedal drumming interlude. The kind that would make Jaws float upside down. This track could cause drooping eyelids. Even for sharks.
Apocalyptic visions delivered in slurred speech, with a slight tequila and mescaline nasal drip. Ah, tequila. Just the thing for a dry mouth.
The fact that all the tracks are longer than a minute makes for difficult swallowing. Similar to health drugs. But that's only if you are a grindcore purist. Sandoval plays in one of the founding bands of technical death, so a little meandering is expected with the brutality. Rest assured - there's enough complexity to merit an average of 3,5 minutes per track.
Muscle weakness? No, there's not much of that here. This is a review for Terrorizer, not c.botulinum. But if you've ever had one of those 24 hour fill-station shop pies, I'm sure you could write a good review of c.botulinum, or at least salmonella enteritidis.
Deicide posted this link to a torture playlist in a bulletin from their myspace page. I'm not sure how accurate it is, because the article offers no sources. So much for journalism ethics and standards.
The post claims their music is among that used by the American army to torture detainees. Some torture techniques applied to detainees in Iraq include:
sleep deprivation
prolonged capture shock
disorientation
interrogation
They could just put the poor detainees in a church. Then again, bible study is known to induce sleep. That defeats the sleep deprivation objective.
Rage Against the Machine's “Bulls on Parade” is allegedly used. Listening to Rage Against the Machine is enough to give me prolonged capture shock. Is it true that Chris Rock sings for them? Their music might convince Iraqis that they have valid reasons to fear an integrated secular society.
Deicide's track “Fuck your God” is listed in a bitter twist of irony. In this case, the sentiments of the Muslim detainees and those of Deicide are the same. While Scars of the Crucifix is not Deicide's best effort, any Deicide is probably enough to disorientate poor Muslims. I would rather play something from Legion or Stench of Redemption:
The “Homage for Satan” video, from Stench of Redemption
Metallica's “Enter Sandman” is also allegedly used. There are better Metallica albums to play for detainees. Like some of their metal albums. Anything up to and including ...and Justice For All would do. Then again, they are torturing people. Maybe they should play Load or show Some Kind of Monster? Pansy music is required during interrogation so you could hear what the detainees are saying.
If the Internet was not censored so much in Iraq, they could even use Internet evangelism, but now some TV evangelism would have to suffice to torture detainees. Or perhaps now that they utilise Deicide to torture detainees, they should get Bob Larson to deliver fire and brimstone sermons?
Bob Larson is my first choice, but perhaps he is busy writing another book. Make that guilt-tripping someone else into writing a book for him. In this case, I'm sure Jimmy Swaggart wouldn't mind to offer the services of his ministry. As long as you paid his going rate.
Review Since the days Ritchie Blackmore played classically inspired leads for Deep Purple, a neo-classical movement has erupted in popular music. Yngwie Malmsteen became synonymous with the movement thanks to his high level of technical virtuosity, particularly his sweep arpeggios. Since then, the cheese has been cut back considerably but the sweep picking technique remains a trusted item in the metal guitarist bag of tricks.
Necrophagist released their debut, Onset of Putrefaction, in 1999. Suiçmez played and recorded most of the instruments on the album and left the drum duties to Steve Jobs. The sound on the album is lacking, and of course for this kind of music having a machine do any work is a disgrace. The album has recently been re-recorded by Suiçmez, who was never pleased with its sound. Despite this, the album caught on well with fans of brutally technical music.
Following the relative success of Onset of Putrefaction, Suiçmez assembled a band of session musicians and toured extensively. Epitaph was recorded after the tour, mostly with live musicians.
You will be completely arpeggionated after listening to Epitaph. Suiçmez is an incredibly skilled and amazingly tasteful guitarist - enough so that Ibanez designed their Xiphos guitar with him:
The lyrics deal with your standard death metal fanfare of death and destruction. That much is compulsory, but the riffs drip with melody. All the arpeggios provided by guitarist and bassist (and one could almost claim the drummer too) are enough to confuse a nest of killer bees. There is a feeling of very strictly organised chaos in every track. Picture the nest of killer bees getting confused and then proceeding to fly along sine graphs, cosine graphs and a host of other hypnotic trajectories to torment a ferret on a raft in the Limpopo river. Despite the fact that Africa does not have killer bees. Or ferrets. Basically, imagine extremely mathematical noise.
Conclusion Suiçmez is a fair vocalist, clearly from the Melissa Cross school of screeching, but applies these methods to gargling and growling. The technical skills on display with this album are on par with that of Vital Remains, with Necrophagist being far less brutal. It lends itself to the Cynic school of odd rhythms, syncopated palm mutes and aristocratic drumming. There is a great variety of styles on display. Even though the album is barely longer than half an hour, it doesn't leave one with a feeling of emptiness once it is over. In fact, you want to listen to it on repeat.
Track listing
Stabwound
The Stillborn One
Ignominious & Pale
Diminished to B
Epitaph
Only Ash Remains
Seven
Symbiotic in Theory
Personell Muhammed Suiçmez: Guitar; vocals. Christian Muenzner: Guitar. Stefan Fimmers: Bass guitar. Hannes Grossmann: Drums.
And in case you were wondering, my personality type:
INTJ - "Mastermind". Introverted intellectual with a preference for finding certainty. A builder of systems and the applier of theoretical models. 2.1% of total population.
Lead singer and guitarist Devin Townsend is hyperactive on a quiet day. In addition to several side projects, he fronts an amalgamation of pure genius that is Strapping Young Lad. This album kicks off with all cylinders firing at maximum overdrive, and doesn't show mercy for even a second. Well, maybe for the pastures green interlude in Two Weeks.
Townsend suffers from bi-polar disorder. Disillusioned by the chemical lobotomy he has to live with due to the medication for that illness, he decided to quit his medication in an experiment to see what it does to his creative output. Alien was conceived and recorded during this period of chemically (well, at least medical chemicals) stoic habits.
Lauded for his production abilities, Townsend offers an amazing choir consisting of overdubbed vocals with the aid of Sharon Clark. As if this is not enough, the rest of the lad consists of some road-worn heavyweights such as drummer Gene Hoglan and bassist Byron Shroud.
Gone are the days of singing glam-metal sing-along anthems for Steve Vai. Townsend has a voice that resembles a school of piranha going to work on Bambi, and it serves Strapping Young Lad very well. Recommended for fans of Fear Factory and groundbreaking metal.
I recently got these 2 DVDs of live performances by Alice Cooper. Typically, I am drawn to the older Alice Cooper with a stable kick-ass band lineup that diluted due to megalomania - something necessary to both the survival of a band and its downfall - and the tolls of the rock and roll lifestyle. This lineup captured a performance on film, but that's not one of the ones I got hold of, unfortunately. The first solo tour of singer Alice Cooper after the band Alice Cooper became defunct is offered on the first DVD, while the second DVD offers an Alice Cooper from the eighties when his antics proved a hit with the ümlaut heävy crowd.
Welcome To My Nightmare Alice Cooper started in the sixties as one of the first ghoulish leather-clad shock rock mayhem makers, and not as a stunt double for The Crow as rumours may have you believe. Welcome To My Nightmare hosts one of the most compelling and influential performers of all time battling his way through props comprising gigantic spiders, skeletons, concerned parents and most ruthless of all - journalists.
It would not be a self-respecting seventies show if there were no bass or drum solos. These are thrown in for good measure, plus the bassist has a Brakpan snor and does some porno grooves which stretch the spandex of all the dancers just a tad. As an added bonus, there are many pärking lot scenes with audience members all claiming the genius of Alice Cooper in foreign accents and mock-Cooper face paint.
The Nightmare Returns The eighties. A decade of decadence. Following the precedent set by Led Zeppelin, bands like Mötley Crüe went hellbent for leather and tried very hard to destroy themselves. Alice Cooper on the other hand rediscovered Jesus and sobriety and subsequently some of his short term memory. Like where he put his old spandex.
The Nightmare Returns features a much more confident Alice Cooper with a pseudo-virtuoso band and less intervals between the songs. The audience would tolerate none of that anyway. This time the enemy comprises of boa constrictors, plastic dolls and nefarious makeup, but worst of all - he confronts it with ten years more worth of sagging skin in what appears to be the same spandex. Except it grew an exoskeleton.
Wait at least two hours after a heavy meal before watching.
Nile finally enjoys major label support after one Ozzy Osbourne (the artist formerly known as the Prince of Darkness, now just known as Sharon's hunchback slave) desanctified them for his Ozzfest. After miraculously surviving the outbreak of mall brats, a few line-up changes and Sharon's Banshee whining at the behest of ca$h registers in a fit of rage, Nile manages to deliver another sphinx-spanking album.
Expect supreme technical Death Metal, the masterly drumming of George Kollias, the exotic scales and even more exotic instruments of Herr Sanders and hymns unto Cthulhu. All the brilliant harmonies and amazing acoustics beside, what could possibly beat hymns unto Cthulhu?
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