It’s hard out there for a son of Northern darkness. The internet has only made black metal’s rigid (and downright silly) ethos only more cagey, and the older the greats get, the less interested people are in hearing your fairly pointless retread of it. We’re close to twenty years away from black metal’s infamous peak, and there are still people insisting it shouldn’t evolve. So if one wants to get more than seven people interested (which you’re not supposed to, but slathering on pancake makeup clearly isn’t solely for your benefit), what is there to do?

The answer, of course, is plant one foot firmly in the past and jam the other into the future. Getting the balance right is imperative (well, in terms of remaining a black metal band, not so much in terms of making good music… see: Nachtmystium, Enslaved, Alcest, and all the other bands for which guys like me perpetually have cartoon hearts swirling over our heads) to properly avoid sounding like your making a cloying play for relevance or simply falling flat on your face. For two great examples of that balance, take the new albums from Craft and Taake (out now Stateside on Southern Lord and available on Candlelight in North America on November 1, respectively). Perhaps too otherworldly for black metal diehards in parts and too orthodox for the “IT’S SILLY LOL” crowd, they exist in the excellent middle for the rest of us.

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Cynicism is a dangerous thing to give in to. That being said, it’s hard not to give in, and in the waning days of humanity (or, you know, just the shitty stretch of time we’re living in right now), the status quo machismo of metal doesn’t always hold water, so it’s hard not to blanket oneself in misery and despair. And not the self-loathing/shoegazing kind, but the writhing in agony variety. And sludge/doom collective Beneath Oblivion excel in this, providing a charred landscape of molten riffs on their appropriately histrionically-titled latest album, From Man to Dust. It’s a hard-to-digest bruiser, but despite its uninviting abrasiveness, it’s never superfluously obtuse or dull. It takes some easing into, but once there, it’s fascinating.

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One-man death metal is a seemingly odd prospect: the genre is so wed to the idea of 4-5 guys hunched over their instruments, doing their thing. But it does make some sense. Death metal’s technicality requires a ton of practice time to get your chops up to snuff, and not every drummer is Kevin Talley, not every guitarist Erik Rutan, etc., so it could be argued that it’s best to rely on one’s self for the most desirable results. Granted, it’s not as prevalent as it is in black metal — where it can seem like 64% of all of it is made by one-man projects — but it’s an interesting subset. And these guys actually play out from time to time, so it’s not all jacking off and hoping somebody notices. The goals are the same as with most death metal bands, just with 80% fewer guys.

Granted, the shows aren’t always riveting, as I learned with Bloodsoaked. When I saw them (er, him) at New England Deathfest two years ago, I was struck by how utterly fucking boring it was (in contrast, Putrid Pile — another notable one-man act — managed to put on a surprisingly lively show despite being just a nerdy looking dude in a Devourment hat and a drum machine). And when I heard about their/his latest album — The Death of Hope– the name stuck with me. And while I may have been underwhelmed with Bloodsoaked live, on record, they’re fucking magnificent. It’s death metal for guys who would wear an Obituary long-sleeve and clip-on tie to their sister’s wedding: the dirty, technical yet straightforward stuff. Nothing you haven’t already heard, but certainly the type of stuff that you can never hear enough of. Thirty-one minutes of claustrophobic, atonal riffs and last-breath-from-a-corpse’s-mouth vocals, all of it great.

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Landmine Marathon are a competent death metal band. To their fans, that may sound blasphemous; to casual admirers, it may sound like I’m underselling them. But, really, isn’t that a compliment? To be a band that a) can play their instruments, b) can play their instruments without Pro-Tools tinkering, c) leave something of an impression all while d) still playing ball in the rigid rules and orthodoxies of death metal is quite a feat; we’re so conditioned to seek out the BEST OF THE BEST that sometimes it’s easy to forget that there are competent bands out there doing great work. So while I don’t think the metal world would be any different if Landmine Marathon weren’t in it, I’m certainly glad they’re around to roundhouse kicking motherfuckers in the face. And Gallows, their latest, is a great front-to-back listen of gruff, unpretentious death metal. Nothing more, and that’s for the best.

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Perhaps right before the deluge of fall releases hammers us with “PUT ME ON YOUR YEAR END LIST!” demands, it’d be a good idea to take stock of what’s come out thus far. It’s been a good year for metal– as, admittedly, are most years — despite the absences of new Neurosis or Pig Destroyer albums (which, once again, could apply to any year). And even though there are a few albums I haven’t gotten around to hearing just yet (Altar of Plagues, Vastum, Disma, Origin, Shining), haven’t been lucky enough to hear (Revocation) and haven’t spent nearly enough time with yet (Wolves in the Throne Room), there’s been quite a bit to marinate on thus far. So allow me to jump on the ship Axl, Vince, Corey, Gary, Anso, and Leyla are already on and name a few I deem noteworthy. In no particular order, of course.

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Even in Today is the Day’s hard-to-classify catalog (Deeply disturbed psychogrind/doom with apocalyptic deathfolk influences? Intense grindy noisecore with suicidal outlaw country asides? Christ, who the fuck cares?), Pain is a Warning is somewhat of an anomaly. Granted, there are elements on it that have been touched on my the band before — big-ass riffs and quiet, contemplative moments — but… something’s missing. Early TITD albums (and Kiss the Pig, of course) were akin to starting up a conversation with the guy standing alone and twitching at the train station: he’ll be intense, at times hard to relate to, have some interesting things to say, and ultimately very much not for everyone. There’s been a tense wall of standoffishness to the band’s stuff, and that’s what made it great. If it was your thing, it was like someone was speaking to an intensely personal place. If it wasn’t your thing, it was incredibly unnerving. Even the folks in the middle would at least say it wasn’t a band they could listen to every day. That element is missing on Pain is a Warning.

Well, not completely, but it’s more manageable on their new album. And while the NEW THING=NO DEAL! kneejerk reaction awaits, Pain is a Warning, a curveball in a career full of them, is boldly different, and thus, fucking excellent. Whereas something like In the Eyes of God is taut and jittery like a rabid animal, Pain is a Warning is elephantine. We know what Steve Austin sounds like when he’s pissy, losing his religion, furious, murderous, bummed out, depressed, despondent, and fairly angry; what does he sound like when he just wants to bowl shit over? Pain is a Warning answers that question.

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All Pigs Must Die: even after a decade of band names evoking countless forms of violent death, dying fetuses, every disease in a medical dictionary, and hundreds of creative methods of vaginal demolishment, that name sticks out. It reminds me of how Pig Destroyer got their name: wanting to go with the most confrontational moniker they could conjure, they went from Cop Killer to Cop Destroyer to Pig Destroyer. But whereas that band has a paper-thin veil of vagueness as to what their moniker means — me, I thought they were a Mike Patton-y or Devin Townshend-esque squiggly omni-metal band until I actually heard them — All Pigs Must Die don’t fuck around. If your uncle is a cop, you can’t wear their shirts to cookouts (and as an added bonus, if your older sister is a vegan, you can’t wear their shirts to her solstice gatherings). And with a name with all the subtlety of a bottle of Old English being smashed over your face, it’s pretty easy to tell what they sound like: hardcore. Serious fucking hardcore. And I can’t tell if their name is so appealing because their brand of annihilation is so alluring, or if their brand of annihilation is so appealing because it’s attached to that name. All I know is I can’t stop saying it, or at least find reasons to say it as often as possible.

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(photo by Seth Ballentine)

It’s been just a little over a year since Isis called it quits, but Aaron Turner has managed to keep busy (which isn’t out of the ordinary): he put out an album with Mamiffer (the band he’s in with his wife, Faith Coloccia) as well as starting up a new record label, SIGE. He’s also been working on posthumous Isis releases as well as reissuing the band’s long out-of-print live albums (heavily culling from Oceanic and Panopticon material, and cool enough to be streamed by Metal Sucks). So even though his highly influential and beloved group is done, he’s not coasting in early retirement (or getting a day job and riding off into the sunset, telling neighborhood kids about the glory days when he toured all over the country for a decade in motherfuckin’ ISIS).

While Turner isn’t know for his stodgy release habits (he’s also a member of House of Low Culture and avant-garde metal supergroups Greymachine and Old Man Gloom), Isis looms largest, and Turner not only seems at peace with that but enthusiastic about it, thankful for the people who have supported him and his art over the years. At the same time, he doesn’t have any reservations about how it ended or that it did, but simply accepts it as the end to a chapter in his life, albeit a chapter he has no problem reminiscing about. In a recent conversation with Metal Sucks, Aaron discussed the demise of his most well-known band, future Isis releases, and how running SIGE compares with running Hydra Head.

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A new Thou release is as expected and shows up as reliably often as a new season, so it can be a little hard to keep track of them. Being wonderful, generous, and generally superior people, we here at MetalSucks wants to help by streaming their new EP, The Archer and The Owle, right here, right now.

Picking up — quite literally — where their last full length left off, it’s full of the band’s distinctive dredged melody and the torturous crawl of their sludge/doom riffs. And while I want to rip on it for being packed with filler — it consists of one new song, two older ones, and three covers — it makes sense. Summit’s closer “Voices in the Wilderness” gets a new context in which to breathe, and benefits greatly: as a finale to an hour-plus album’s worth of doom, the listener may reach it tapped out. But as the opener of an EP, it unfolds lusciously, alternating between scorched earth sludge, metalgaze beauty, and folky intros and outros. “Summit Reprise” works the same as it does on Summit, as a breather and mood builder, as well as re-imagining “Wilderness”‘s melodic themes. The band also prop up Kurt Cobain’s ode to homeless people befriending animals and enjoying a grass-and-fish-centric diet for a fairly straightfoward (yet fairy revelatory) cover of “Something in the Way,” as well as introducing the world to Pygmy Lush with two covers of their songs at the end of the EP. “Bonnet Carré,” Archer and the Owle‘s sole new track, is vintage Thou, full of mile-high lumbering doom riffs and shattered arpeggios dragged across ten-plus minutes. Even in semi-abbreviated form (thirty-eight minutes, a full length for most bands, a brief excursion for these guys), there’s plenty for Thou fans to latch on to (or re-affiliate themselves with) here.

The Archer and the Owle is available for preorder on colored 12″ vinyl and cassette (!) via Robotic Empire. It comes out August 2. And make sure to check out the band’s site for Thou updates and an obscene amount of free music. And speaking of free music, check out new Thou below.

[this streaming promotion has ended]

-SO

My love of Tombs’ last album, Winter Hours, is well documented. It was my #4 album of the year in ’09, and I proudly displayed my critical hard-on for it for all the world to see in my initial review of the record. And yet, there was something holding it back from being an all-out classic: it was too short. And not in a “IT WAS SO GOOD I JUST WANTED MOOOOOORE!” way, but after “Seven Stars The Angel of Death,” there was a brief instrumental (“Old Dominion”) then it just… stopped. The arc of the album felt like it was setting you up for another song or two, then a big finish, but Winter Hours was ultimately a collection of (admittedly excellent) songs that petered out after about a half hour. Which in its own way is fine — better to understay your welcome than overstay it in terms of the eighty minutes a CD provides — but Tombs seemed to be reaching for so much more. Winter Hours was as frustrating as it was satisfying.

So despite the fact that Winter Hours was the band’s full length debut, Paths of Totality, their latest, feels like their first proper album. It’s significantly longer, yes, but instead of a collection of songs, it feels like a statement of purpose. They delve more deeply into testosterone-fueled blackened hardcore and (good) goth-y/post-punk avenues, as well as explore the relationship between the two. There’s plenty of the charm from Winter Hours still present, but Tombs also make good on the potential they showed on that album as well as fostering more to come. Their workmanlike soul and penchant for brashness remain intact, making them already one of the more interesting and satisfying bands in heavy music. But even though they’ve never a band that were wrapped up in shallowness or gimmicks in their brief existence, Totality feels more mature.

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Is it possible to judge Carnival is Forever, the new Decapitated album, solely on its own merits, and not by the events leading up to its inception? Yes and no. Yes, in that it’s a killer metal album with nothing but top-shelf, groovy tech-death riffs one after another (seriously, it gets a little absurd after a while). But no, in that one can’t help but wonder in the album’s more ruminative moments if guitarist Vogg is reaching tendrils out to his audience, expressing a deep sadness in losing two-thirds of the permanent lineup of the band he founded in his teens, including the death of his brother, beloved and influential drummer Vitek. Whether or not a black veil is lowered over the album is beside the point; it’s there from our point of view.

But this isn’t a funereal affair in the slightest, and the band doesn’t get lost in angsty navel-gazing. A new Decapitated release that didn’t have the verve and balls of Carnival would be an insult, and Vogg knows that. Even if the record (through no fault of its own, really) runs the risk of being known as the Resurrection Album, he certainly didn’t reform Decapitated with all new guys just to cash in on a traumatized fan base: Carnival is Forever is overflowing with intent and purpose, getting an eyeful of the sun in the shadow of the legacy of the band that made it. Phoenixes and ashes aren’t exclusive to Hate Eternal, after all.

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Maybe it’s hardened cynicism, but I’m always wary of stuff that seems to be too much of a good thing. Several great elements in the same place doesn’t necessarily denote something great: if you put Nietzsche, Stravinsky, Monet, and Ingmar Bergman in a room together, you wouldn’t get a challenging, dense, beautiful piece of genre-defying art, but most likely some awkward conversation, a lot of black clothing, and probably some pockets stuffed with hors d’oeurves before heading back to wherever they came from (probably using a time machine in some cases). Same thing goes for bands: whenever a band combines two or more things you like, it’s usually just those two or more things independent of eachother in the same place, never really working off each other to produce some substantive.

That substantive quality is what makes me REALLY wary of bands like progressive deathgrinders Gigan, especially considering the glut of (extreme metal genre) + (psychedelic noise) = QUALITY METAL, RIGHT??? acts from the last few years. But though proggy inclinations aren’t anything particularly fresh right now, Gigan utilize them well, breaking up vicious deathgrind with a spirited jaunt on the outskirts of metal before running back in. The difference between them and the throng of Cynic-fellating bands that have been kicking around as of late is that Gigan have personality beneath their guitar wanking and trippy asides, particularly evident on their sophomore effort, Quasi-Hallucinogenic Sonic Landscapes. It all goes together because it has to, not because they want it to. Though that may be a subtle distinction, a little goes a long way in this case.

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There’s a fascinating psychology to a true failure of an album. And I’m not talking about how The Sound of White Noise pissed off Belladonna-Anthrax fans or whatever. No, I mean your St. Angers, Cold Lakes, your Unspoken Kings: albums whose defenders are more often than not defending just to be contrary. They’re usually made by bands with some renown and a fan base that — if not sizable — is devoted enough to know a blasphemously awful album when they hear it. There are so many points where the band’s handlers and/or hangers-on could have stopped them and said, “Wait, you’re not being SERIOUS about this, are you?” But either the band were so resolute in their belief that the album was a risk worth taking or were surrounded by a bunch of wincing Yes Men that it still comes into existence anyway, completely un-self-conscious and without a shred of self-awareness. There’s a beauty to those records, albeit a beauty that exists in terrible, regrettable art.

And although Morbid Angel haven’t been immune to Trey Azagthoth’s pretentiousness over the band’s multi-decade career, personally, I didn’t see an album like Illud Divinum Insanus coming down the pipe. Like Cold Lake and The Unspoken King – creative rock-bottom moments for Celtic Frost and Cryptopsy, respectively — it’s ill-calculated to an unfathomable degree. But unlike those albums, which on top of being terrible had a whiff of being sell-out moves (hair metal for Celtic Frost, mall-grade deathcore for Cryptopsy), Illud Divinum Insanus is a passion project for Azagthoth and Dave Vincent (back in the band for the first time on record since Domination). This is an incredibly personal record that they’ve decided to hang the Morbid Angel name on– a name that’s not just sacred in death metal but among the most respected in metal as a whole- – and have subsequently turned the band from a name synonymous with greatness to a name immediately followed with the statement “Just stick with their older stuff” if mentioning them to the uninitiated. Illud Divinum Insanus isn’t just terrible: it’s magnificently dreadful. If the last Six Feet Under album is a mentally ill guy holding a cardboard “REPENT” sign on the street, the new Morbid Angel record is that guy who cashed out his pension to buy ad space for the “THE WORLD IS ENDING ON MAY 21, 2011” hysteria.

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What’s the point in resurrecting your band if the resulting reunion album is going to be a flaccid state of affairs? To make a few more dollars so you can better pay for your kids’ school clothes and cover your rent/mortgage? Of course, and that’s a damn fine reason.

Alright, so, to REPHRASE the question, what’s the point in fans paying attention to a reunion album if it’s just a weak rehash of a band’s glory days? The answer, of course, is that there isn’t one. Decidedly non-metal band The Pixies have it right: an extended reunion tour with absolutely no new material, keeping whatever legacy they already had mostly intact (Judas Priest have it backward: no more touring but more new music no one will care about). Because for every new Suffocation album, albums that stand up to their iconic predecessors, there’s a dozen similar to new Sepultura records, albums that fully exhibit the leathery skin, newly-formed jowls, formidable beer guts, gray hair, and phlegmy wheezing of the band at the helm (or whatever’s left of the band in Sepultura’s case).

So for Autopsy to return in 2011, one would hope that they wouldn’t be doing it for the money, but instead because the band have more to say. Having watched the genre they helped refine go from lanky, unwashed social outcasts to kids in cargo shorts, flat brim caps, and 8-string guitars (as well as socially awkward weirdos indulging in guitar wankery on YouTube), a new Autopsy album better mean something. And, perhaps unsurprisingly, Macabre Eternal, the band’s first album since their rightfully-maligned swansong Shitfun, means quite a bit. It’s not a winded Autopsy stumbling through slightly-rearranged classics; this is new Autopsy in earnest, familiar-yet-uncharted. It’s also top-fucking-notch death metal, grimy in all the right places and nimble in the others. It goes toe-to-toe with most other death metal kicking around right now, and there’d be no purpose to a new Autopsy album otherwise.

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MetalSucks recently polled its staff to determine who are The Top 25 Modern Metal Guitarists, and after an incredible amount of arguing, name calling, and physical violence, we have finalized that list! The only requirements to be eligible for the list were that the musician in question had to a) play metal (duh), b) play guitar (double-duh), and c) have recorded something in the past five years. Today we continue our countdown with Nile’s Karl Sanders…

No one is saying Nile’s Egyptian themes are obscure or necessarily revolutionary: it’s a particularly brutal part of history taking place in an unforgiving environment, so it’s pretty easy to make something metal out of it (see also: vikings). But in a field as broad-yet-limited as death metal, even the smallest of tweaks or gimmicks can make you a visionary. When all your contemporaries are squabbling over whose dick is bigger, people will be more inclined to pay attention to an argument that your dick is more unique and interesting (note: not a great ice-breaker with women).

Of course, words like “gimmick” exist to demean what Karl Sanders does with Nile, and by no means is Nile worthy of being shrugged off. Playing ten-fingered riffs blisteringly fast? Karl Sanders is on that shit. Menacing, memorable slow parts that sound oppressively evil and evocative? Karl Sanders has that shit leased with an option to own. If he did none of that well, he and his band would be remembered as That Band That Wrote Songs About Mummies and Stuff. But Amongst The Catacombs Of Nephren-Ka, Annihilation of the Wicked, Those Whom the Gods Detest, and the rest of Nile’s discography are masterful, epic, and brilliant death metal albums with interesting thematic elements. But while there are guys who can play faster and slam harder, none can do it with the soul Nile does. Karl Sanders is that soul, and his playing is much more than a focus on modal riffs in lieu of atonal chromatics. It’s crafting a world of brutal heat, oppressed millions slaving for the benefit of a chosen few, and a complex system of gods, religion, and politics so ancient that it’s completely foreign to us now, all before dropping a pen to a legal pad for lyrics. His dexterity makes him a solid death metal guitarist; his penchant for atmosphere in addition to brutality is what makes him great.

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Like I (and many others) have said before, drone doom, like grind, is incredibly easy to make and almost impossible to make well. But unlike grind, its success lies not in its riffs or intensity, but in its overall atmosphere. People don’t like drone-doom because it’s slow (well, unless they’re insufferable people); they like it because it’s menacing, ominous, and full of intensifying-yet-rarely-resolved dread. Which, fortunately, means it’s easy to weed out genuine dronesmiths from the scores of assholes-with-amp-boners. There’s nothing quite like the toxic air great drone-doom summons, and inversely, there’s nothing quite as unbearable as vapid, pretentious, assfaced hipsters thinking they’re conjuring evil when all they’re doing is contributing to a trust fund-financed circle jerk because metal is the cool thing to nod to when your Deerhoof vinyl is backordered. Profound Lore’s Dark Castle don’t sit firmly on the latter end of that spectrum, but they don’t really sit at the former, either. There are some decent songs, some great ideas, but ultimately, not a whole lot to grab on to.

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Anaal Nathrakh’s seemingly permanent problem — that it will never top it’s brilliant debut, the filthy The Codex Necro – isn’t unique to them, nor even unique to metal. Like Nas — who arrived with Illmatic, one of the hip-hop’s most influential albums, and has subsequently tried to top it for almost two decades, at best coming somewhat close and at worst falling embarrassingly short — their first official effort set an impossibly high watermark. But unlike Nas, the band have never given the impression that they’re trying to recapture lightening in a bottle, which could be why The Codex Necro feels less like a fluke and more like a sturdy foundation for the band’s career. After introducing clean singing on their next album (Domine Non Es Dignus), it was clear if they couldn’t shoot past their debut’s excellence, they could fire to the left of it. So while Anaal Nathrakh have never been as good as they were on Codex Necro – and arguably never will be — their catalog has been remarkably consistent in its wake. Nas positioned himself to have to compete with hip-hop’s brightest stars while his was on the wane; Anaal Nathrakh have only had to compete with themselves. Even in a relatively diminished capacity, there are few that are more fierce and eviscerating as them.

So while the band have been wobbling back and forth between great albums (Eschanton, The Constellation of the Black Widow) and spotty ones (Dignus, Hell is Empty and All the Devils are Here), they haven’t come as close to the viciousness of their debut as they do on Passion (oddly enough, their most subdued album title yet). Though it lacks Codex’s red-eyed anger and grime-caked production, it tweaks the band’s post-Necro additions — big choruses and tempos below that of “ridiculously fast” — to seeming perfection. Perhaps it’s unfair to hold them to an impossible standard, but if one must, Passion is as good as the band can get. “All killer, no filler” feels literal in its context.

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MetalSucks recently polled its staff to determine who are The Top 25 Modern Metal Guitarists, and after an incredible amount of arguing, name calling, and physical violence, we have finalized that list! The only requirements to be eligible for the list were that the musician in question had to a) play metal (duh), b) play guitar (double-duh), and c) have recorded something in the past five years. Today we continue our countdown with Enslaved’s Ivar Bjørnson…

Enslaved arrive at our feet as a package deal: woozy synths and atmospherics; Pink Floyd-ian touches; Grutle Kjellson’s harsh, phlegmy scream; and the back in forth between prog-flecked black metal and black metal-flecked prog. But considering the band’s individual achievements, none come off better than Ivar Bjørnson, founding axeman. Their metamorphosis into what they are today — a truly great metal band you could at best arguably call “black metal” — would have been impossible without him. The bold steps between Frost — their debut full length — and their latest — the dense masterpiece Axioma Ethica Odini – are like listening to someone grow up, taking in more music and life experience. Along the way Enslaved always flourished, and there isn’t a band in black metal with more interesting, bizarre, and pleasing guitar work than them. Ivar was at the helm for that the whole time.

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I guess combining brutal death metal and mathcore is something to be commended, in that it’s like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole if the peg and hole are screaming at each other. And France’s Zubrowska do it fairly well: the line between brutal death and tech-death is razor-thin, yet Zubrowska manage to sound more like a decent mathcore band in their noodlier moments than Necrophagist Ripoff Collective #687b. They even sprinkle in bits of latter-day DEP weirdness and post-hardcore dust. The thing is, though, by keeping so many elements reined in and sounding coherent, the band don’t manage to do anything particularly memorable. They’re pretty formidable and manage to avoid the whole train wreck thing, but one almost wishes they’d be a train wreck so they could leave more of an impression.

Not that Zubrowska Are Dead, their latest, is a chore to listen to, though. The band keep things interesting by illuminating the fairly unexplored common threads between brutal death metal, mathcore, and post-hardcore. Hammer-ons/pull-offs rain down frequently, jagged chords are hit like a nail, and vocals veer back and forth between esophagus-scraping screaming and brees (hell, clean vocals are kept to a minimum, so you know they’re trying their best to make this easy for us). The hypothetical chaos is kept at bay thanks mostly to drummer Theo Astorga, who kind of brilliantly navigates between math-y jazz drumming and tight death metal blasts. But… there’s nothing to grab on to. There’s no juicy riff that embeds itself in your head, no moment of overwhelming chaos, no brutal death extremity eviscerating whatever flesh isn’t attached to a bone. Zubrowska do everything competently, often exceedingly so; but is that enough for what they’re trying to do (or, possibly judging by the album title, did)? The album is never really boring, but one can’t help but feel they’re coming up short.

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So, I don’t like all the Celtic Frost albums I’m supposed to as much as I should. I mean, don’t get me wrong: To Mega Therion? Awesome. Monotheist? Excellent return to form. Triptykon’s debut? Motherfucker’s still got it, gym pants, eyeliner and all. But they don’t hit me like a great album’s supposed to hit you. What does, though, is Morbid Tales. Raw and primitive but not apathetic and sloppy, it rides that line between doom, black metal, and thrash on a fleet of mammoths (well, mostly because none of those things really existed in earnest yet). So while they would go on to do more interesting things as well as hilarious things (Cold Lake, of course), to my ears, none of what the band did (and, who are we kidding, are doing with Triptykon) is nearly as fierce or, arguably, as satisfying as Morbid Tales.

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