Shitfucker : " Sex With Dead Body"

Raw dirty black n Roll coming from Detroit. It does owe perhaps more to the Stooges than Darkthrone, but only by a margin. I like the initial sting of their sound. It's dark. The vocals have a somewhat original flare of crazy to their scowl. Not the best produced album, that adds to the charm, Then the second song sounds pretty much like the first song and I get worried. The title track feels more punk than not except for the mean spirted growl to the vocal. The drums are lost behind the crashing of guitar. "Leather Lady Lover" is the best of the bunch...at least of the first four songs. It has a Venom vibe to it. The vocals serve more of purpose and the spoken part helps foster a more rock n roll feel to it. They are simplistic , but still chaotic when it comes to the clear cut path of the songs.  Much like punk the songs do not venture very far over the four minute mark.

"Serial Killer" takes the punk vibe they had going for them and force feeds it meth. The drums come more into focus, the guitar can be heard but losing track of what it is trying to do in this song When they get too fast for their own good things begin to blur and all the songs sound the same. Part of this is due to the vocals that do net a great deal of variation. Sometimes the vocal accent things in a more hooky way than others. Then there are songs where it just sounds like ranting. By the time we get caught into the storm swirl of "Splatter Master" it has become hard to tell the songs apart . "Splatter Master" has a more defined riff, but once they build speed it loses itself/. Their reckless enthusiasm can sometimes get the best of them when it comes to song writing , so they only thing that can compensate for this is much like punk attitude and energy.

There is more of the Venom feel again on "Touch Me I'll Scream".  The chorus has just enough hook to it to work amongst the noisy vomit of sound. They stop fucking around and get musical in a more conventional metal was at the end of this. Proving they can play their instruments when they try. I will give this album a 7.5, It is almost too punk for me , but if you are a punk who dabbles in metal you might find that this is for you. This is being released on Hell's Headbangers.

Cultes Des Ghoules : "Sinister"

The fourth album from the Polish black metal band finds , an almost more Urfaust sound . The vocals are more sung in a resonate bellow on the first song , than howled or screamed manically. They continue to get darker , though perhaps no heavier. It all drones off of one central riff. There is more of a metallic chug to "Woods of Power". It does descend into more of a old Mayhem like take on black metal. It's pretty rough around the edges with a crazed honesty, yet sounds more like traditional black metal than I am used to hearing from these guys. The guitars utter out melodies that get a little buried in the din. "Day of Joy" has more determined and deliberate pound to the accents of it's attack. In some ways it comes across as a more musically fulfilling song. I  think it follows more traditional metal rules while the crazed vocals are the coat of chaos to distract you from this fact.

The production is a double edged sword here. While I might benefit the songs to have taken more time in the process, the roughness does give it more black metal cred. So they can't win either way on it. I think some of these songs that clock in at over the ten minute mark could stand to have some fat trimmed in the compositions. "the Serenity of Nothing" starts off more angry and smooths out for the chant that is layered over it in what could be the first verse if you were going to attempt to hold these guys to song structure. The song does ebb back into something that reminds me of Alice Cooper's "Black Juju".

They pick up the pace to close the album with "Where the Rainbow Ends" which is the least black metal song title ever. But that is fine with me. It starts off pretty run of the mill black metal, so much so that I hope I don't have to go thru a full 12 minutes of it. Then it slows into more of a gallop. It is still very Mayhem, more so when the vocals try to sing more than snarl. The guitar unexpectedly drops out and things get interesting. They go off into something angular and proggy, proving they can really play before blasting back. Things ebb back down, so they are making an attempt to justify the 12 minute mark. I will give this album a 9, though I doubt it's something I will get many spins from. It's a mature effort on their part and finds a balance between making fans of true black metal happy as their grim souls can be, without getting stale and embracing experimentation.

This album is released Sept 23rd on Hells Headbangers.

Abysmal Lord : "Disciples of the Inferno"

Well we had to cover these guys on name alone. They are very lo-fi and primitive form of black metal that makes Horna sound slick. The vocals are a dry gurgled rasp with lower growls bubbling up every now and then, which is one of the more interesting elements of their sound. When they slow things down there is more cohesion. While their own press kit refers to the vocals as "vomit vocals" , to me they sound like  drunken muppets with Animal eating his kit as he plays the blast beats. What feels like this album is missing is the ambiance black metal locks into when droning on a blast beat. These have a crusty punk abrasion to them.

The punches at the beginning of "Golgotha Crucifixion" sound more like a grind core flavored death metal. The drums are trying to keep up the blast , but it reminds me of Deicide's Amon demos. "Black Liturgy" just sounds like a shift in the previous song. It really feels more like death metal to me at this point as their is a grime ridden element, but it doesn't feel all that dark to me. The tormented squawks and ranting of the rabid vocals become on of this album's most entertaining elements. The title track really doesn't distinguish it's self much from the songs except for a rattling ride cymbal. The pace picks up on "Sermon of Fire", the vocals might as well not even be attempting to recite real lyrics. The solo is the most musical element to the entire album.

It sounds like these guys spent more time putting on their corpse paint  and polishing their spiked belts than they put into writing these songs. I am amazed this is a four piece band, that means one of two things , that there are two guitarists making this noise and I can not hear the layering or their vocalist's sole job is to spew this into the microphone, but of those options blow my mind in the wrong direction. I'll give this album a 2.5...oh, it will be on a top ten list this year, just not on one of the more flattering ones.