Sacrament - "Haunts of Violence"

Sacrament - Haunts of Violence

1992/2014, Retroactive

1. Haunts of Violence

2. Carry the Corpse

3. Destructive Heresies

4. The Wicked Will Rot

5. Supplication of the Destitute

6. Souls in Torment

7. Separate From Iniquity

8. Seared Consciences

9. Under Threat of Death

10. Portraits of Decay

Haunts represents a noticeable shift in the band's sound. Instead of death metal/thrash the band plays it far more technical this time around. Also Rob Wolfe replaces Mike Torone on vox. Rob's style is in a higher register with a tenor shrill that fits the music very well. If Testimony is a spiked cudgel then Haunts is scalpel - precision is the name of the game here. Whereas the debut smashed through your speakers like the Hulk, Haunts keeps its wits about it and carefully dazzles you with well placed riffs and technical mastery. I like Haunts though sometimes the songs can sound the same, especially if you're not paying attention. Though I must say I did learn a lot of Scripture with this disc as each song could be used as its own Bible study. I think "Under Threat of Death" is my favorite on here.

I've been able to update my hard copy to the new Retroactive reissue released in 2014. While the remaster is spectacular, the actual packaging leaves a little bit to be desired. It's a simple four panel digi-pack with no lyrics or much in the way of liner notes. Additionally, they've still got Mike Torone listed as the vocalist when it should be Rob Wolfe. I don't know how much it costs to make a CD but a label like Metal Mind was able to do some pretty high quality stuff with digi-packs, so I don't know.

Useless Fact: This was Sacrament's last disc. They sort of dropped off the face of the earth though a few members from this band and Believer went on to form a goth-type band called Fountain of Tears.

Sacrament - "Testimony of Apocalypse"

Sacrament - Testimony of Apocalypse

1990/2014, Retroactive

1. Testimony of Apocalypse

2. Slave to Sin

3. Hellfire Denied

4. Repentance

5. Valley of Dry Bones

6. Mortal Agony

7. Conquer Death

8. Absence of Fear

9. The Risen

10. Blood Bath

Back in the day my local mall had this little Christian bookstore called The Giving Tree. I was in there so much that the people got to know me. One day one of the women there said, "Here, you'll like this" and gave me Sacrament's debut. I think my teenage brain was sold on the cover art alone. I popped that demo in the tape player and I was just floored. It was stinking HEAVY! Probably heavier than anything I'd heard up until that point. Remember, Mortification hadn't really come out yet and Sacrament hovered on the boarder between thrash and death metal. When I bought the tape and took it home I remember having trouble following the lyrics because vocalist Mike Torone rapidly spat out the lyrics like a machine gun. I think the muddy production on this one actually serves to make the whole disc that much more brutal. While I'm not sure I count this as a "classic" per se, it is a quality metal record and well worth your time. It's also been rereleased so now's the time to get it.

This is completely off topic but wasn't it cool how Christian bookstores had demos? You could listen to just about everything they had. I remember taking fistfulls of demos to check out every so often. Granted, it's WAY easier to check out new music these days but still....*sigh* I miss the old days sometimes!

Useless Fact: Mike Torone's voice apparently only survived this one album. Though there's stories saying he was kicked out and stories saying he left because of his voice. Maybe someone out there can enlighten us....

Bloodgood - "Detonation"

Bloodgood - Detonation
1987, Frontline

1. Battle of the Flesh
2. Vagrant People
3. Self Destruction
4. Alone in Suicide
5. Heartbeat (of the City)
6. Eat the Flesh
7. Holy Fire
8. Crucify
9. Messiah
10. Live Wire

So there I stood. A young fifth grader with two tapes in my hands. One was Bride's Silence is Madness. The other was Bloodgood's Out of the Darkness. I could only get one. Trying to pick one tape to get out of many was probably the best feeling I'd ever had up until that point. Agonizing, yes, but awesome because there was SO MUCH cool music out there. I said all that to say this - I picked Bride and somehow Bloodgood got lost by the wayside and I never got into them. My experience with Detonation is coming twenty years late. Sad, I know. Have to say though, I think the record holds up pretty well. The thin production cannot hide the passion that these guys must have had back in the day. The music hits hard as well as the lyrics. Bloodgood has a flair for the theatrical which is evident in "Eat the Flesh" but even more apparent in the two-song cycle "Crucify" and "Messiah." These are simply amazing tunes. Such emotion! I think the band got some crap for "Alone in Suicide" even though it's very obviously against suicide. I should also mention that the cover art rocks. I can see now why people have such respect for this band.

Useless Fact: Okay this is very much a "non fact" but Bloodgood put out two live album/videos. True to the theatrical nature of the songs there were a lot of cool costumes, actors, etc. They haven't made anything brand new since 1991's All Stand Together.

Mortification - "Blood World"

Mortification - Blood World

1994/2008 Metal Mind

1. Clan of the Light

2. Blood World

3. Starlight

4. Your Life

5. Monks of the High Lord

6. Symbiosis

7. Love Song

8. Live By the Sword

9. J.G.S.H.

10. Dark Allusions

Bonus Tracks:

11. Altar of God (Studio)

12. New Beginnings (Live)

13. Blood World (Live)

14. Entering the Eternal Dawn (Studio)

Mortification got a lot of guff for this disc when it originally came out. The Intense Records cover had the tamed logo. There were simpler song titles like "Your Life," "Starlight," and "Love Song." The liner notes were handwritten, which was something just about every alternative band was doing at the time. Oh, and let's not forget that Steve relies on his clean vocals for most of the album. Like I said, they got a lot of guff and I was one of the guff givers. When I first heard this I thought it was kind of a sellout and as a result Blood World never ranked among my favorite albums. However, a couple years ago I downloaded the track "Blood World" off Limewire (don't tell Steve!) and it was a lot better than I remembered. So when it came time to fill out my Morty CD collection I took a chance and bought this reissue. I can now say that it is by no means a sellout. Actually it's a natural evolution from the sound the band refined on Post Momentary Affliction. Jayson Sherlock is gone but Phil Gibson is a suitable replacement - doesn't quite have that Sherlock flair but not many drummers do. Michael Carlisle is still around (though this is his last disc) to give the tracks some old school death metal flair. The songs themselves lean more toward thrash this time around and "Your Life" has a cool groove section. It sounds a lot heavier than it did before but I think that's because of the remastering on this edition. They've also spelled all the songs correctly and used the cooler Nuclear Blast cover art. The extra tracks are quite enjoyable, especially "Entering the Eternal Dawn" but I'm not sure why they put "Altar of God" on here. Isn't that from Relentless? Anyway, I am enjoying this disc so much more these days. It's a fine addition to the Mortification collection!

Useless Fact: There's a studio version of "Symbiosis" on here. Given that Michael Carlisle thanks both Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine , I'm almost positive he got the idea from this song from Deep Space Nine. Maybe someone can confirm it...

Mortification - "Hammer of God"

Mortification - Hammer of God

1999, Metal Blade

1. Metal Crusade

2. Martyrs

3. Lock Up the Night

4. In the Woods

5. A Pearl

6. Hammer of God

7. Liberal Mediocrity

8. Extreme Conditions

9. Ride the Light

10. D.W.A.M

11. Medley

12. God Rulz

13. At War With War (Demo 1997)

14. Visited By an Angel (Demo 1997)

15. Unified Truth (Demo 1997)

16. Metal Crusade (Instrumental)

After Primitive I went through a period where I just wasn't into music anymore. I was only listening to worship music and some other odd stuff here and there. Unfortunately the world of metal trudged along without me so when EnVision Evangeline came out I was really out of the scene. Now that I'm back I've never had much affection for the later-era Morty discs. Steve's clean vocals annoy me. He's got the absolute coolest, most unique growl in metal but his shouts sound... I don't know... obnoxious. So anyway... Hammer of God. Not really impressed. "Martyrs" is a cool thrash tune and that's about all I like here. Everything else just doesn't hook me like the older stuff does. "Lock Up the Night" is a simplistic song to which I made up my own lyrics, which are as follows: "Lock up the dog!/Take out the trash!/Clean up your room!/ Doooooo your home work!/." Maybe I'll give this another chance at some point but right now I think it's probably the weakest disc I've heard from the guys.

Useless Fact: There's demos from Triumph of Mercy on here. Kind of weird to have demos from your last album on your new album but it's Steve's band he can do what he likes!

The Throes - "All the Flowers Growing in Your Mother's Eyes"

The Throes - All the Flowers Growing in Your Mother's Eyes

1990, REX

1. Black Birds

2. All the Flowers Growing in Your Mother's Eyes

3. Just One Moment

4. Love is an Ocean

5. Eyes of My Sisters

6. Skin Kings

7. Tell

8. Nature and the Soul

9. Inside View

10. All Alone

11. Sea Song

12. Passion Flower

Frequent commenter, Ricky H., cited The Throes' debut as his personal favorite. Since it was relatively cheap and easy to get I figure I'd check it out for myself. One thing I immediately noticed was how good the instrumentation is. Harold Evans is doing more than just keeping time with his drumming and I can see why he was so missed on later albums. I also have to tip my hat to bassist Joy Gewalt as her lively bass lines inject these songs with some personality, especially on the funky "Inside View." It's really too bad these two didn't stick around longer. Most of this disc is fairly upbeat alternative rock that reminded me a lot of the Prayer Chain's Whirlpool EP even though this predated it by two or three years. It kind of surprised me given how moody Fall on Your World is though that's probably because Harold Evans wrote most of the songs on this disc. While I don't think this will overtake Fall as my favorite Throes disc, it's far better than 12 Before Nine or American Afro. My only regret is that I didn't pick this up when it first came out. Thanks for the suggestion Ricky!

Useless Fact: The Throes appeared on a REX compilation CD called "Argh!" which also featured thrash bands like Believer, Living Sacrifice, The Lead, and Sacrament. Seems like quite a gear shift if you ask me.

Music Musings: The Things You Do For Pretty Girls...

Now that I've gone through just about everything on my Ipod I won't have as much to post. Sad I know. I'll only rely on the new stuff that I can get ahold of and with a baby due any minute now I don't know how much I'll be able to get. However, I don't want to just leave this blog sit, so I'm going to start a new column: Music Musings. Basically whatever I feel like writing about music. I'm going to start with a story or two which might not be interesting unless you've read most of my entries and wonder how I developed such strange tastes in music.


The Things You Do For Pretty Girls...

When I was younger my music taste was pretty myopic - strictly metal and rap. Mostly metal. If it was slow I wasn't interested. Ballads? No thanks. Experimental? Ick! Give me distorted guitars and meaty riffs... give me METAL! My teenage music collection consisted of Deliverance, Tourniquet, Mortification, SFC, Dynamic Twins, etc. Actually *ahem * I guess it still does, but that's neither here nor there. Anyway, I can remember when I finally started branching out into other styles of music.

See just about every year our youth group (Known as "The Hippy Youth Group" - a story for another time...) went to Kingdom Bound, a Christian music festival at Darien Lake Theme Park. We were in Elmira, NY and the festival, which was in Batavia, NY was the ONLY one we could ever afford to go to. Oh, we longed to go to Cornerstone but the cornfields of Illinois were one promised land we would never reach.

The year was 1992 and the only act I can remember from that year was Bride. This was just before they were to release Snakes in the Playground. It was the third year we had attended and we had a habit of picking up some strays that weren't actually part of the group and took them with us. Not off the street or anything just random people we'd somehow hooked up with. One of those was Ben. He was a quiet dude that my cousin was enraptured with because he had long black hair and played bass in a metal band. He was pretty funny and we got along well. He and I were walking around the park between concerts and noticed several people wearing King's X shirts. Now both of us being the King's X fans that we were, were a little jealous. I spotted a cute girl with an Out of the Silent Planet shirt on. Now you have to understand how weird that was. Where I was from girls liked Vanilla Ice or whatever crappy pop diva was popular in the early 90's. Seeing a pretty girl in a King's X shirt was like seeing a real live unicorn. So with all the suave sophistication I possessed at thirteen I blurted out, "Where are all these people getting these King's X shirts?!"

We walked over to her and interrogated her as to the origins of this shirt and she said that she had brought it from home. We were sad. But not so sad because the cute girl, Melissa, was a pretty cool chick. That was one of the best things about Kingdom Bound back in the day - it always seemed like you could go up and talk to anybody and become best friends. Christians get a bad rap for being douchebags these days but I can tell you that I never felt more at home than at Kingdom Bound. Just about every person in the park could be a potential friend. You could strike up a conversation with the random dude next to you and end up praying and blessing one another within a span of minutes. Everyone was so friendly! But I digress...

So, yeah, Melissa was cute and I cannot stress that enough because it basically provided the motivations for everything I did at the festival that year. I went on the friggin' Viper for that girl. The Viper. That's the upside-down roller coaster at the park that I was terrified of. I hate roller coasters. But I went because I was in the presence of a hot chick and I refused to be seen as a weenie gosh darnit! So anyway...Ben, Melissa, and I talked a lot about the kinds of music we liked (a lot of metal) and parted ways. If memory serves we met up with her again at another show and the three of us were inseparable after that. One day she suggested that we go see this band called The Choir. She said they weren't metal but they were pretty good.

"Eh, alright." I thought. Of course when a pretty girl who likes most of the same music as you asks you to a concert you friggin' go no matter who it is. So I went. The Choir was awesome. I'd never heard anything like them before. I became a lifelong fan right then and there. The band had just released Circle Slide and I bought it as soon as I could. I listened to that tape to death. It was the most mellow thing I'd ever let through my earholes, but I was enraptured. It wasn't long before I was buying the band's back catalogue. My voracious appetite for new music prompted me to check out EVERYTHING after that. That's how I found Adam Again and Daniel Amos and how I can to this day appreciate just about every genre of music from grindcore to Lady Gaga.

As for the pretty girl? Well we continued to hang out throughout the entire festival. After it was over we wrote letters pretty frequently to one another. I could almost predict the days that I'd get one (this was WAY before email, folks). It was amazing how consistent we were! We wrote letters for a year or two and met up at Kingdom Bounds after that. I was always hoping we would actually date and if I had been a bit bolder we probably would have. Eventually we drifted apart for two reasons. She lived a couple of hours away and long distance anything is just too much maintenance for a 14 year old. The second was my fault. I remember the last conversation we had over the phone. She talked about some of the stuff she'd gotten into and was doing. It made my Christian heart very sad. That was when I decided it was too much effort and that we would probably never have any kind of future together (not that we were ever going to anyway! LOL). In retrospect it wasn't fair to her at all but we were drifting apart long before that and that conversation was just the last nail in the coffin. I have no idea where she is now or what she's doing and I'm okay with that. I hope she's got a great marriage with some great kids and is loving life... I know I am right now.

Meeting Melissa and going to that concert gave me a completely new paradigm on what good music could be and is one of the main reasons why you see so much different stuff on here.

Tankian, Serj - "Elect the Dead"

Tankian, Serj - Elect the Dead

2007, Warner Bros

1. Empty Walls

2. Unthinking Majority

3. Money

4. Feed Us

5. Saving Us

6. Sky Is Over

7. Baby

8. Honking Antelope

9. Lie Lie Lie

10. Praise the Lord and Pass the Amunition

11. Beethoven's Cats

12. Elect the Dead

Okay, Serj Tankian's (System of a Down) solo album should be really good. My wife and I both love System of a Down. Sadly, aside from "Empty Walls" and a couple of other tracks (namely "Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition") Serj's debut is boring. There's not really anything here besides the songs already mentioned that are anything more than half-baked System tracks. Some people just shouldn't go solo and I think Serj is one of them.

Useless Fact: I'm not sure what track eleven's really name is because everything is blanked out after the "C". I don't know what it is and I don't want to know, there fore I've renamed the song "Beethoven's Cats" and "Cats" it will remain.

Poor Old Lu - "Mindsize"

Poor Old Lu - Mindsize

1993, Alarma

1. More

2. All Pretty For the TV

3. So Good To See Me

4. In Love With the Greenery

5. Sometimes Cry

6. Do I?

7. Tried and True

8. Cruciality

9. To Be Awake

10. Tigger's Daily Jog

11. Peapod

12. Shine

I used to love Mindsize back in the day. Loved it. I was a freshman in high school and I almost wore out my original tape. I'm not sure what it is but upon hearing this now I don't really get it as much as I did as a young 'un. Not sure why. I can say that while I found the vocalist unique before I find him a little grating now. This certainly isn't a bad disc but my affection for it has waned as has my affection for the band. Also - is it just me or did every alternative band back in the day have to have a song named "Shine"? Seriously, look it up.

Useless Fact: For the few who don't know the band's name comes from C.S. Lewis's The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe. Specifically the line, "Poor old Lu, been gone so long no one noticed."

Austrian Death Machine - "Total Brutal"

Austrian Death Machine - Total Brutal
2008, Metal Blade

1. Hello California
2. Get to the Choppa
3. Rubber Baby Buggy Bumpers
4. All of the Songs Sound the Same
5. I Am a Cybernetic Organism, Living Tissue Over (Metal) Endoskeleton
6. Come With Me If You Want To Live
7. What It's Like to Be a Singer at Band Practice
8. Who is Your Daddy, and What Does He Do?
9. You Have Just Been Erased
10. Boo-Tall Song Idea
11. Here is Sub-Zero, Now is Plain Zero
12. So Far, So Good, So Let's Talk About It
13. Screw You (Benny)
14. Why?
15. If It Bleeds, We Can Kill It
16. It's Not a Tumor
17. Not So Hidden Track

Listening to Austrian Death Machine's first disc is a little bit like playing the original Final Fantasy after having played Final Fantasy VII. It's good but in going backward you loose some of the charm. That's kind of how I feel about Total Brutal. I loved Double Brutal. Loved the jokes, the songs, the impersonator. On this debut though nothing is as funny or as entertaining though if I would have heard this one first, it probably would have been just as awesome as Double Brutal. The "Ahnold" impersonator isn't nearly as good and I don't think there's as many memorable songs here either. I do like "I Am a Cybernetic Organism..." especially because of the melodic chorus that is a nice diversion from the usual angry growls. Also, "Get to the Choppa" is awesome as well as "Who Is Your Daddy, and What Does He Do?" Otherwise though everything is a step down which is good in the fact that it's the band's debut and they improved on their next disc. So yeah here's how it is Total Brutal = Final Fantasy 1, Double Brutal = Final Fantasy VII (or whatever your favorite one is - for me it's a toss up between IV, VI, and XII).

Useless Fact: Anybody know what "Rubber Baby Buggy Bumpers" is from? I seem to remember seeing a movie with Arnold saying that but I can't remember which one.