The Batlord

Slaughter: Strappado - 1987

I love eighties extreme metal. It's so ugly and ****ty sounding. Cryptopsy might be the finished article, but this kind of stuff, the stuff that you don't know whether it's thrash, black, or death metal is my bag, baby. Slaughter are a great example of this. A rough combination of thrash metal, primordial death metal, hardcore punk, and grindcore come together to form this band.

Another thing that I love is that this album is only twenty-three minutes long. The idea that an album should be longer than thirty minutes annoys me to no end. I have the attention span of a gnat and after that amount of time, unless I am truly into what I am listening to, I start to feel music fatigue. This also illustrates just how much this band is influenced by hardcore punk. The riffs are metal, the vocals cheesy thrash with a touch of death metal, but the simple ferocity of the delivery is pure punk. Many of the songs are under two minutes long, and it seems that many of the longer ones are drawn out by extended, mid-paced riffing rather than any actual songwriting. BTW, I'm pretty sure they recycle the same mid-paced riff at times throughout the album, and since it's such a simple riff, and since these sections are generally of some length, it becomes pretty obvious. If I'm wrong then they at least use a lot of really similar riffs. To some this might seem dumb, but I'm easily pleased, and this riff is heavy and catchy as ****, so I couldn't care less. And it always goes great in between the blast 'n' grind sections so it's all good.

Damn it. Where the **** is BastardofYoung to high five me for mentioning these guys?

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The Batlord

Carnivore: Carnivore - 1985

Just FYI, if you're one of those people on this site who thinks that jokes about rape aren't ever funny then you might wanna skip this one. This band couldn't give a **** about "decency" or your "feelings". In fact the lyrics to "Male Supremacy" might just cause you to punch the nearest misogynist pig in the face...

Not that Carnivore should ever be taken seriously. Their self-titled song, "Carnivore" (a charming little ditty about eating pussy that has a woman moaning halfway through), has a chorus that goes "CARNIVORE!!! I'm a meat eater!" and there's even a ten-minute song called "World Wars III and IV". So yeah, my kind of douchebags.

But what exactly do they sound like? I haven't heard their second album but I hear it's supposed to be "crossover". This album has no thrashcore influences though. In fact this sounds more like speed/thrash metal with a heavy influence by trad metal like Maiden, Priest, and I'm pretty sure I hear some Dio in there too at times. My kind of douchebags. Granted, this band isn't exactly a revelation. Like most of the bands in this thread they do their job well, but without reinventing any wheels. I definitely give them credit though for being early on the scene (1985) rather than some Johnny-Come-Latelys jumping on the bangwagon around '88/'89 or so.

Of note is that this band's main claim to fame is that they were Pete Steele from Type O Negative's first band. I've only ever heard the one song by them, but there are actually some moments on this album that foreshadow what would come later. The middle of "Male Supremacy" is taken up by a melodic, laid back, rather gothic passage not a million miles away from Joy Division that, given the delightfully offensive lyrics and the take-no-prisoners nature of the music, mocks the concept of melodic, laid back, gothic, Joy Division passages while still somehow taking the idea seriously at the same time. But the best thing about this album, other than the rape jokes, is Pete Steele's voice. He has a growl/shout whose closest comparison that I can think of is Cronos from Venom. He isn't that raw, and gives it a more self-consciously campy style that isn't any less badass for it. He's seriously one of the best thrash vocalists I've ever heard. Small wonder then that his "singing" is so high in the mix.

So, basically Carnivore is good, hearty fun for the not easily offended and the discerning thrash fan. Like me. True story.

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The Batlord

Picking my favorite Bathory album is like picking your favorite child...it's always gonna be the first one. It's still a hard choice but this album, along with Reign In Blood, was my introduction to extreme metal. Pretty much from the first time I heard the opening chords of "Hades" I worshiped the ground this band walked on and I still do. Funny thing was that I was a thirteen/fourteen year old who had avoided listening to music for the most part for most of my life (I didn't even know who Nirvana were until middle school) and I had no real concept of what made a band sound "dated" so they were just as "relevant" to me as anything. Might just be the reason why I came to love eighties metal as much as I did. But anyhoo...

This is also the most obvious choice for this thread. It's Bathory's ugliest, dirtiest, and most primitive album. Like Hellhammer and Venom this isn't much more than hardcore punk with metal riffs and abysmal production. The big hardcore influence gives this an energy that is totally infectious and, along with the monster riffs, makes this simple, catchy, and heavy as sin. Lyrically these dudes are also the same as either of the other two: Satan, Satan, Satan, and more Satan. In other words: fun, fun, fun, and more fun. Of course the album cover should have told you that in the first place. Does anything say badass Satanic metal quite like a black and white goat head with glowing red eyes on a black background under a logo with Old English font? I think not.

And I don't know about anyone else but I think Quorthon's vocals were pretty much the first time honest-to-god extreme metal vocals were used on record. Cronos and Tom Warrior had used some proto-growls in their respective bands, but neither of them had quite that same level of distorted ugliness to their voices. Yet you can still understand what he's saying for the most part, so the Satan, Satan, Satan, and more Satan is there for all to hear in all of its cheesy glory.

But of course I couldn't leave without mentioning the production. In the immortal words of Nigel Tufnel it is "none more black". I've heard it said that such-and-such album sounds like it was recorded in a garage, but this actually was recorded in a garage. On a tape recorder. Kvlt as ****. Yet even with the ****ty production they manage to get one of my favorite guitar sounds of all time. That buzzsaw guitar is simply perfect. Like as in "OMG OMG OMG!!!" kind of perfect.

RIP Quorthon. Too bad he was a racist.

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Primeval Scum

Necromansy and Hades

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The Batlord

I can still listen to those songs on repeat after all these years. Quorthon was a god.

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The Batlord

Obliteration are one of the best kept secrets in modern death metal. There are plenty of nostalgia acts in metal nowadays, but very few of them are worth your time. Obliteration are the mother****ing exception to the mother****ing rule. This band follows in the footsteps of such bands as Autopsy, Obituary, and Asphyx, combining only the filthiest, sloppiest, and most primitive death metal with gloriously sludgy doom and they don't really give a **** about any of your ****ing tech death bull****. Not that these guys are the second-rate pretenders that that implies. These guys can stand toe-to-toe with the best of the old school and come out looking pretty. Yet with all their old-school chops they still manage to bring the whole thing a few steps forward. Not by much, but they don't really care about that anyway.

The thing that really gets my goat about this band is their production. Obituary's Cause of Death was a disgusting, fecal matter-covered thing of beauty, but Obliteration manage to top that album (at least as far as the production goes) with it's foul sludge. A tasty amount of reverb and murk make this album positively reek. In fact if this album were scratch 'n' sniff it would smell like the rank stench of a six-month old corpse once the grave robber has cracked the coffin lid. And you can be assured that he won't live long after that.

Man, I've been going on too long recently, so I'll just leave it at that and tell you that if you like Obituary then you need this band in your life.

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Primeval Scum

Love that old school dm sound, I need to check out more from Obliteration.

Interesting album cover too.

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Don't grieve for me, I'm not there. I am the gentle autumn rain. Hold up my lamp to light your way. Farewell to thee...

The Batlord

They just dropped a new album last month too. Might just be their best yet. Not quite as murky as Nekropsalms and it's a bit tighter, but it's dark as **** and fantastic.

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The Batlord

These guys are a pretty straight-up trad metal/hard rock band. They combine early Maiden, Motorhead, AC/DC and any number of other like-minded acts, all while managing to sound like themselves. They seem to have the biggest hard-on for Motorhead though. The punked-up metal/rock thing they've got going on, the Lemmy-gargling-mouthwash vocals, and a lyrical reference to "Born to Lose" and "Live to Win" (I was born to win/But we live to lose) all point to an obsession with Ace of Spades.

But whether they're the most original band on Earth is beside the point since they ****ing rule. If there was any justice they'd be bigger than Avenged Sevenfold, Three Days Grace, and Nickelback combined. They've certainly got insidiously infectious, radio-friendly songs that could obliterate the charts if they'd just be given a real shot, all while retaining more rock 'n' roll cred than all of the nu metal scene combined.

*** Edit: **** me. I keep going back to add just one more song. This whole album is just all-killer/no-filler. That's what happens when you have a thirty-minute album with only nine songs, two of which are intros.

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The Batlord

Any metal fan worth his salt knows that this is the real first grindcore album, as it was recorded before Napalm Death's Scum, but had the bad luck to only be released several years later. Too bad cause this is a far better album than Scum. Scum certainly has its moments but its grind sections just sound like a wall of boring noise that kills momentum rather than adds to it. No such problem with Horrified and as such the intensity level on this album is cranked up to 11. This is no-frills noise pollution with about a 50/50 mix of early death metal and the filthiest of eighties hardcore. It's pretty much a thirty-minute long headbang with the only thing really breaking up the heads down, grinding aural assault being short, mid-paced chugging riff sections that demand the jackhammering of one's skull. Honestly, there really isn't a whole lot more to say. It rules and if you're an old school death metalhead/grindcore fan then I don't know why you haven't already listened to this.

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