During my practice hours, I spend a large amount of time listening to new music, and looking for new bands. One day I was looking up a band called Municipal Waste. I wasn’t a huge fan, but I wanted to learn more about them regardless. I’ve become interested in the recent uprising of new thrash bands, and Municipal Waste was one of the bands that came up. When I was looking at other bands that their members had been in and so forth, something caught my attention: The guitarist of Municipal Waste is also in a death metal side project called…..

Cannabis Corpse?!

You know when there’s a band called Cannabis Corpse, their song titles are going to be just as brutal as Cannibal Corpse. “Instead of Mummified in Barbed Wire”, we get “Mummified in Bongwater.” Instead of “Gallery of Suicide” we get “Gallery of Stupid High”.

I couldn’t stop laughing. Cannabis Corpse is simply a work of genius. According to their myspace, “Cannabis Corpse is a band that was born in the summer of 2006 as a way to express our love of smoking weed and listening to Cannibal Corpse.” I could easily see someone having a problem with a bunch of dead heads going and forming a jam band, because really, how cliche is that? But you can’t go wrong with a bunch of skilled extreme metal musicians getting together, smoking a ton of weed, and trying to sound like Cannibal Corpse. And you know what? They sound just like Cannibal Corpse, and in some ways even better.

The music ia much better than you would ever expect. It sounds like a combination of new and old Cannibal Corpse. Of course the solos aren’t as technical as those of say Pat O’Brien, but the riffs are just about as creative as those from when Jack Owen was in the band. And the drumming is far, far superior to that of Paul Mazurkiowicz. Every blast beat is much tighter and faster. As for the bass, it’s also comparable to that of Alex Webster(Although not nearly as technical). There are the same kind of awesome bass breaks in the songs that just have you tapping your foot along with the kick drum.

The vocals are very raw death grunts and screams, but neither of which sound like Corpsegrinder. In my humble opinion as a spectator of the Florida Death Metal genre, “Weedgrinder“‘s screams remind me more of the death vomit style of vocals, as delivered by Kam Lee and Chuck Schuldiner. His growls sound more like Chris Barnes on Butchered at Birth. Either way, this guy delivers some of the best old school death metal vocals I have ever heard, and for a parody band? Hands down the best.

I love the structure of their songs. They pay so much attention to the way the actual song progresses, instead of going the same route as many death metal bands today that will just try to get your attention, rather than keep it.

This is one of my new all time favorite death metal albums:

1. Tomb of the Mutilated- Cannibal Corpse

2. Symbolic- Death

3. Tube of The Resinated- Cannabis Corpse

4. Severed Survival- Autopsy

5. The Bleeding- Cannibal Corpse

Earlier I posted a review for the album “Symbolic” by Death. Death was indeed one of the most influential death metal bands to come out of the Florida Death Metal scene. However, in terms of sheer brutality and morbid lyrics, Cannibal Corpse stands above the rest.

If you want to know how such a  genre of music such as Death Metal has achieved mainstream success, look no further than Cannibal Corpse’s third album, Tomb of the Mutilated. Cannibal Corpse’s greatest song, “Hammer Smashed Face”, was in the movie “Ace Ventura”(Jim Carrey later claimed that Cannibal Corpse was his favorite band).

Let’s be honest; everyone wants to know how a song like “Hammer Smashed Face” sounds like. As soon as the words reach your ears, you automatically envision what a song with a title like that must sound like. Then you listen to it, and it’s the most fucking brutal song you have ever heard. Yes, Cannibal Corpse may not play as fast as Morbid Angel, or even as fast as a majority of thrash bands, but this music is as ugly and twisted as it gets.

The next song is “I Cum Blood”. If you go to see Cannibal Corpse live, vocalist George “Corpsegrinder” Fisher will summarize the lyrics of this song with just a few words of wisdom: “This song is about blood shooting out of your cock.”

However, the vocalist on this album is not Corpsegrinder. The brilliant death growls on this album were delivered by a man who goes by the name of Chris Barnes, who is probably hitting a bong somewhere in Florida right now. Chris Barnes’ attributes his awesome low growls to smoking pot every day, which may or may not be true. But whatever he does, other death metal vocalists should take note. His growls only became more and more gutteral as the years went by.

The man himself, Chris Barnes! He now plays in the inferior death metal band, Six Feet Under. His vocals are still as good as they ever were. If you’re curious as to what his new band sounds like, go to www.sfu420.com/.

Cannibal Corpse is the musical equivalent to watching Beavis and Butt-Head. Sure, after a few hours you’ve lost so many brain cells that you laugh at just about anything, but they were brain cells well spent. We’re all bound to end up senile anyways. But what causes this phenomenon? Why is Cannibal Corpse the first band that comes to everyone’s mind at the utterance of the term “Death Metal”?

Maybe it’s because of their controversial album art.  “Tomb of the Mutilated” was banned from Germany in 2006 simply because it depicted two zombies engaged in oral sex. They can play  “Stripped, Raped, and Strangled” from the Bleeding, but “The Cryptic Stench” is off limits.

The lyrics were even more cause for tedious debate. The bastards on CNN Crossfire went from criticizing the lyrics to whining about the vocals, saying “How can we tell it’s offensive if we can’t understand the vocalist?” There are two things wrong here: 1. Just what authority does the mainstream media have over any genre of music, let alone death metal? And 2. By claiming they can’t even understand the lyrics, they undermine their entire complaint.

If you value the opinions of a pundit over those of a real musician such as yours truly, then you’ve sealed your fate as part of the media’s legions of sheep. But if you’re smart, then you’ll see Cannibal Corpse for exactly what it’s meant to be: A great fucking time. If you go to a Cannibal Corpse show, you’ll see exactly what metal has always been about.

Carmel never really had much of a music scene. There was always the Carmel Music Center, home to scenester bands and ballet recitals, but I never bought into that garbage. I wanted some original, old school heavy metal! I needed some badass speed metal, pronto. And did I ever get it from any local bands? Hell no! And now I can’t help but think to myself: What was I doing when I missed out on Entruce?

A few years ago this girl named Shannon added me on Myspace. I didn’t know her too well, but had seen her working at various places around Carmel in the course of a few months. After I had responded to her once, some dude almost immediately added me. He said, “Hey, I saw you were talking to my girlfriend.” The dude’s name was Steven Roman, guitarist of Entruce. We will refer to him from now on as “The Dude”. We started talking about Yngwie Malmsteen and his recipe book for Swedish Pizzas, and the Megadeth show that I have yet to review. Eventually we became friends through a series of jam sessions. The dude was still an excellent guitarist, but the jamming did not progress much further for me to gather more than that.

I met all of the other band members the same way: through a series of random public encounters. I met bassist Ryan Logan in his place of employment; I met vocalist/lead guitarist Brian Spony at a Rush concert, who was with Ryan. And I ran into drummer Joe English with his droogie David Nearpass when I was working the night shift at Meijer. He came in around 2 in the morning, and purchased a bottle of lube.

When I talked to all of them about Entruce, they all seem to agree that the band is dead. There will be no more Entruce albums. So now, I have in my possession their first and only album: H.E.L.L.

From left: Steven Roman(Guitars), Joe English(Drums), Brian Spony(Guitar/vocals)

What an album this is. The opening track, Maximum Carnage is such a kickass intro. It comes from the excellent Super Nintendo game, Spider-Man: Maximum Carnage. Back in the day, if you were lucky, you could get this game in the red cartridge. Such a fucking cool game, you could climb on walls, you could swing around, you could pick up a fucking dumpster and throw it at motherfuckers… I still play it to this day. And the cartridge was RED! The only other game I had that was red was Pokemon.

This game was so metal. The boss music for when you were fighting Doppelganger and that lightning bitch with the black costume was actually “The Mob Rules” from the Black Sabbath album of the same name, just with midi instruments. It even had the guitar solo. So basically, the main theme from the game is the most badass song Entruce could have chosen to cover. The choice to put it at the beginning of the album was in very good taste. Not only that, but it was just over a minute long, creating an intro/outro theme correlating with the last track, Rigor Mortis Hard On. Speaking of RHO, when I saw the title I thought it was going to be a Cannibal Corpse parody.

The next song is an original, Valleys of Hell. I love these awesome Bay Area Thrash sounding riffs. What’s great is that even the original bands from the bay area now just sound like an imitation of themselves, and Entruce sounds like they came straight from the 80’s.

I love the way the double bass sounds as well, when the drums come in the sound is just tremendous. The bass sound really good, it locks in with the drums creating a tight rhythm section. I also like how they layered the guitars, although the guitar from the right channel is a little too quiet before the other comes in. Just before Spony’s solo, the band goes into sort of a half-time feel. I like how his solos are more than a collection of riff; they’re more of a composition in themselves. Each one of Spony’s solos represents a complete idea. Even though this sounds like it could be a Slayer song with the Tom Araya vocals, and the line that says “Hell Awaits”, the melodic solo makes the song unique. And that is truly a badass main riff, complementary of The Dude.

Some might think that the part in “Ripped Apart” where Joe hits the cowbell three times before going back into the riff is just the band being goofy, but I know better. Anthrax does the same thing in Deathrider from their first album! A great tribute to an awesome thrash band of the east coast.

The rest of the album has a few more thrashy songs, including “Ripped Apart”, “Immortal”,  “Covered in Blood”, and “RHO”, but there’s some variety here. Some of the songs sound more influenced by melodic black metal bands such as Children of Bodom and Norther. The song in particular that reminds me the most of Children of Bodom is Beyond the Abyss.

Overall I think there isn’t a single dud on the album, although it is very short with 8 songs, most of which clocking in at just under 3 minutes. So far I’ve listened to H.E.L.L. almost as much as Endgame. I’ve never gotten to see Entruce live, the last time I heard of them playing was in Chicago last summer. I would love to play a show with them at the Emerson, once I start a band of my own of course.

This album is one that is very near and dear to me. Black Sabbath, recorded in 1970. Not only is this album the epitome of badass heavy metal riffs, but also is an important part of the history and formation of heavy music. The term “Heavy metal” may or may not have been coined to describe the sound of Steppenwolf, but let me tell you right now: Steppenwolf is NOT metal. Black Sabbath IS metal. They were the first band to possess that dark quality that makes metal so distinguishable from hard rock. Perhaps one could trace the beginning of heavy music back to the times when Jimi Hendrix first discovered the capabilities of the Marshall stack; the ultimate rock distortion! Jimi Hendrix was arguably the first heavy metal guitarist, although his music was uniquely his own. “Are you Experienced?” was as innovative as it was inspiring. And it was extremely heavy for the time.

But you would be a fool to call his brand of flower rock “Metal”.

Indeed, Black Sabbath’s first album contains much of this blues heavy rock sound that was so prominent in many other psychedelic rock bands at this time. Before they became Black Sabbath, they were a blues band called Earth. But by the time they had released their second Earth demo, bassist Geezer Butler had developed a curious fascination with the occult, and dark mythology. It was only a matter of time that a combination of this strange hobby, and an excessive use of drugs and alcohol could only take the band in a more experimental direction. Or rather, a heavier direction. Of course, having almost unlimited amplification from the new company “Laney Amps” might have had an effect. And this new music Black Sabbath created would soon become what all heavy metal bands strive for.

Before you listen to this album, I have a few recommendations:
1.    Listen alone
2.    Listen in the dark
3.    Listen at night
4.    Preferably listen to the vinyl
5.    Turn the volume ALL the way up!

This album did for heavy metal what “Night of the Living Dead” did for the horror movie genre, and should be treated as such. The first song, the self- titled “Black Sabbath” was what made heavy metal what it still is to this day. The song opens with 35 seconds of thunder and rain, with an eerie church bell ringing off in the distance. This has been copied, exploited, and butchered numerous times, but never recreated with such perfection. After a tremendous roar of lightning, the horrible G5 power chord comes in, along with the drums and Geezer Butler’s perfectly sinister bass. The chord is incredibly distorted, but trebly and articulate, unlike the fuzzy guitar tone of Iron Butterfly and Cream. The song itself is very slow, which later became a characteristic of doom metal bands.
Most of the entire song consists of three notes, but they’re very important, and they themselves have their own history. The progression goes G5, G octave, C#, and D. Iommi trills between the C# and D for a chilling minor 2nd interval. These three first notes equal what is called a “Tritone”. This was referred in old parts writing as the “Evil” interval. To use the tritone was a blasphemy against God, or a sign of the desolate one. This is so effective because Ozzy Osbourne’s lyrics foretell the coming of the Antichrist himself!
During the last part of the song, the tempo goes into double time, and Ozzy delivers his final desperate verse, screaming “No! No, oh please, no!” And Iommi finishes the song with his greatest minor pentatonic solo. So ends the first heavy metal song ever written, and one of the greatest.
The rest of the album is very similar to this song, but are more based upon blues progressions. A few other great songs are “NIB”, “The Wizard”, and “Evil Woman”. It’s by no means a party album, or something that you would drive to. It’s one of the rawest, yet best executed heavy metal albums you will ever listen to.

Now here’s an album that will kick your ass like none other before it. Released in 2005, Nevermore’s most recent album, This Godless Endeavor is the kind of album that should give old school metal elitists a smack in the mouth. Or much rather, a much deserved punch in the fucking face! Or even better, a quick stab in the face with Jeff Loomis’ seven- string Schecter guitar.

Describing this album’s sound is almost futile, because I don’t really have much to compare it to. I suppose Jeff Loomis solos sound reminiscent of the speed metal symphony glory days of Cacophony, having a very exotic flavor a la Marty Friedman, or mind- blowing sweep picked arpeggios in the same style as the late Jason Becker. Not only can this man shred with the best of them, his riffs are fucking heavy. Imagine down tuned riffs that have the brutality of technical death metal, the rawness of thrash, the darkness of ambient black metal, and the energy of power metal. You can’t do it! Don’t even try! Buy the album, you cheap bastard! Or Jeff Loomis will fucking kill you!

And the production is among the heaviest I’ve ever heard. The sound of a seven string plugged into a mesa boogie double rectifier has never sounded so bludgeoning, yet filled to the brim with clarity. Which is definitely necessary for music this progressive. The drums are equally heavy, but not too over the top. I love the way they don’t take up the entire low end in the mix, but rather float somewhere in the middle. The divine moment of truth for drummer Van Williams is on Psalm of Lydia, which is perhaps one of the greatest drum tracks I have heard since Crystal Mountain from Death’s 1995 album, Symbolic. In fact, Psalm of Lydia is probably one of the finest moments in the history of progressive heavy metal.

The music on the album is what gives me hope for the future of heavy metal: it has the in your face attitude of 80’s thrash metal with a more modern, refined edge. Not only that, but the riffs are just as twisted as the lyrics, and just as interesting. The lyrics revolve around themes by Edgar Allen Poe, or on the woes of modern society.  In other words, they’re much more topical than that of say Dreaming Neon Black, which is about a man’s mental deterioration after his one love passed away.

The riffs have just the right amount of chug, while still blowing your mind with awesome diminished and exotic scale runs. And if you don’t believe me when I say this album has AWESOME sweep picking licks, just listen to Psalm of Lydia, or the second half of the title track. If you still aren’t convinced this man is one of the finest metal guitarists who ever walked on god’s grey earth, listen to his solo album, “Jeff Loomis- Zero Order Phase”.

Dream Theater’s Train of Thought album(I recommend this album as well)  is probably the only album that sounds anything like “This Godless Endeavor”. This album sounds like Dream Theater if they took a technical thrash metal direction, did away with the keyboards (with the exception of one great song, Sentient 6) and got a vocalist that actually sounded metal: Warrel Dane.

Speaking of Warrel Dane, these are his best vocals to date. On the earlier Nevermore records, he must have totally not gotten the dark progressive edge in the band’s sound that was so evident even in those days, because he took on more of a power metal vocal style. Some people are meant to sing high falsetto notes while alternating between full voices. King Diamond, Rob Halford, and that guy from Queensryche are all meant to perform this vocal style. Warrel Dane is not. On This Godless Endeavor, he sings in more of an operatic baritone register, while occasionally hitting those King Diamond notes. He’s shown everyone in the past he can hit those notes, but on this album he’s here to tell you that he doesn’t need to.

I’ve heard people say Warrel Dane sounds like Iron Maiden’s front man Bruce Dickinson, and I can kind of see it. But there’s so much wrong with this! First of all, never compare an American metal singer to a British one. That’s the most important distinction one can make between singers. There are no American singers that sound like Brits. He also sings in a much lower register, like the first Candlemass singer Johan Langquist. Not only that, but Bruce rarely sounds mournful like Dane, save maybe in Hallowed Be Thy Name from Number of the Beast.

But like Bruce, Dane’s voice is always distinct. When you hear his voice, you know you are listening to Nevermore. He is now one of the most important voices in heavy metal, just as Nevermore is the most important band we have in the progressive heavy metal genre.

Warrel Dane, the voice of Nevermore

To give you an idea of what a doom metal band like “Candlemass” sounds like, think of Tony Iommi’s riffs from the glory days of Black Sabbath. They’re devastatingly slow, heavy, and always memorable. Other times they may pick up to a mid- paced galloping tempo, like in Children of the Grave. At the time the first Black Sabbath record was released, there was no song quite like “Black Sabbath.” Never was there a song so malevolent. The lyrics dealt with the impending doom of humanity at the hands of Satan. No band understood how this formula worked, until Candlemass came around in 1984.

The words Epicus Doomicus Metallicus describes the sound of Candlemass perfectly: Epic Doom metal. Although the subject matter of tracks such as “Solitude” may seem too dark and loathsome to imply they can be “Epic” in an Iron Maiden sense, the epic qualities show through the music and lyrics nonetheless. The music, although very slow, is actually quite progressive. Acoustic guitars and synthesizers provide a sad, eerie contrast to bassist Leif Edling’s kick ass riffs. The songs will go from being full of sorrow to badass riffery at such abrupt times that you’ll be left scratching your head wondering how such a slow band can kick your ass.

But what distinguishes Candlemass the most from other metal bands is their singer, Johan Langquist. His moaning operatic Baritone vocals are perfect for singing lines such as “I’m sitting here alone in darkness waiting to be free, lonely and forlorn, I am crying”. The song progresses not like a whiny Ozzy song, but like an Edgar Allen Poe story about insanity and death. Anyone that understands and enjoys the feeling of reading a book like “The Fall of the House of Usher” in complete solitude, perhaps in the middle of a storm or late at night, will definitely get into Candlemass.

This is what listening to Candlemass feels like. Very cool.