Heavy metal is a masked ball where everyone pretends to be a lunatic. No matter how excessive KISS, Black Sabbath, and Slayer, they were always willing to unmask themselves at the end of the night and admit that it was an act.
It was only a matter of time before metal attracted a band of actual lunatics who didn’t realise or care that it was supposed to be an act . Mayhem was that band. Marking their career with dead bodies and burned churches instead of gold and platinum records, the sheer spectacle of Mayhem destroyed any serious mainstream interest their music might have had. Maybe that was their goal from the start. Either way, there was no mask or pretense with the music they played and the people they were, the ugliness started at the face and went straight to the bone.
Deathcrush, released in 1987, provides a bridge between the first wave of black metal and what would eventually become its second. It retains the sloppy punk tendencies of Venom and Discharge, but spikes it with antifreeze, creating something colder and more emotionless. The guitars are trebled to a fizz that sounds like hissing bacon. The drumming could be described as “spirited”, and not the good kind of spirits, either. The percussion section thrashes and pounds wildly like a demonically possessed horse trying to gallop on three broken legs. Somewhere in this mess there’s a bass guitar. Songwriting? What is this songwriting of which you speak?
Tracks kind of blur into each other, merging amoeba-like into a continual impression of darkness and coldness. It’s certainly violent and noisy. It’s also calculated and conniving. The EP opens with an avant garde percussion piece by experimental electronica producer Conrad Schnitzler – probably to give the EP art school pretentions. “(Weird) Manheim” is more experimentation, this time on a slightly out of tune piano.
The rest of the EP is a blur of frost-rimed crust punk. The title track is fast and unrelenting, “Chainsaw Gutsfuck” is even more so, and then you almost stop noticing when one track ends and the next begins. There’s a Venom cover stuck somewhere in this anthology of musical hoar frost, pulverised into something as brutal and faceless as all the others.
Despite the EP’s 17 minute length, you’ll eventually start searching for more substance, and you will not find it. The musicianship is basic. The riffs are all interchangeable. Maniac’s yelps and shrieks soon stop being terrifying and start verging on being nearly comical, like a cat trying to yodel.
Is a dark atmosphere enough to anchor an EP as a classic? In the minds of many people, yes. For the rest of us, it’s interesting to know that at Prince Prospero’s ball, the Red Death once walked in earnest – if perhaps only for a brief time.
How many tell-all books about KISS do we need? Here’s everything you need to know: Gene and Paul = high-functioning assholes, Peter and Ace = low-functioning assholes. This dynamic anticipates and explains every twist and turn of the KISS story in the past 40 years.
Drilling a bit deeper, you could say that Peter is deeply insecure and has a Napoleon complex, while Ace was/is a skinsuit piloted by various drug monkeys that doesn’t care about anything much except getting high. You could say Paul is deeply insecure and holds fantasies of being an “icon” (a rock god, a sex symbol, whatever), while Gene Simmons is basically after “fuck you” money. So in a sense, you could draw a dividing line orthogonal to the first one. Peter and Paul’s motives are complex. Gene and Ace motives are simple.
Despite his simplicity, Simmons is the most intriguing part of KISS. The man is so naked and undisguised in his greed that he becomes fascinating, and even a bit likable in a perverse way. It’s as if Donald Trump played rock and roll.
This is the worst album I’ve heard all years. It’s the worst album I’ve heard in several years. It is unmarred by a single listenable cut. It’s not even a failure, it’s just…anti-musical. Like something that was never even intended to be good.
What do you think of bands like the Pretty Reckless? If you’re like me, your answer is “not much”, but I wouldn’t dispute that they’re at least trying to write music that you’ll enjoy. There is no way on earth you’re supposed to enjoy Asshole. It was made by a mind filled with contempt and loathing for his audience, someone who wishes he could just reach into your wallet and take money but is limited by law to the next nearest thing. It’s like having Gene Simmons flip you the bird for 40 minutes.
Horrible performances of horrible songs, that’s what’s on offer here. Gene’s voice is shot, he sounds like a 60 year old man doing karaoke. “Sweet and Dirty Love” and “Weapons of Mass Destruction” sound like what old people think heavy metal is – noise and no hooks. The title track features the couplet “you’ve got a personality / Just like a bucket full of pee”…yes, that’s what we’re working with here. “Carnival of Souls” has an unbelievably terrible chorus.
Then there’s a cover of “Firestarter”, a perplexing choice that is ruined by Gene’s flat “your call is important to us” vocal delivery. You know how they used to joke that Arnold Schwarzenegger has an acting range stretching from A almost to B? Gene Simmons is the same, but remove the “acting” part.
And are you ready for the horrible news? The terrifying “Soylent Green is People” revelation?
These are the album’s good songs.
The rest of this CD is packed with terrifying and near-apocalyptic crap that sounds like adult contemporary/soft RnB music. It’s not hard rock, it’s not even soft rock, it’s basically Boyz 2 Men with a bad singer. I couldn’t believe it. I still can’t. It feels like this must be a false memory implanted by the government. Why would the bassist of KISS release an album where at least 50% of the music sounds like a gentle spanish. Then I hear the gentle Spanish guitars and female backup vocals of “If I Had a Gun”, and I realise the nightmare is made of flesh, not dream matter.
Did you know Gene Simmons has a sex tape? Yes, I’ve seen it. No, he doesn’t look any better in his birthday suit. This album sounds like the kind of thing that could have scored it.
You know that guy at work who can burp the alphabet? And does so at length? That’s what this dipshit’s voice sounds like.
Dethklok is the fictional band on Adult Swim’s animated TV show Metalocalypse. As happens to all fictional bands (Spinal Tap, The Monkees, the Blues Brothers), eventually someone smashed the fourth wall with a Flying V and made them real. Obviously it’s possible to beat a joke into the ground through overuse and thereby make it not funny, except Metalocalypse avoids that problem by not being funny in the first place. I’ve watched a few episodes of the show. What am I missing?
It’s just The Big Bang Theory, except about heavy metal. Shallow, pandering references and cheap namedropping, without any effort at serious analysis or commentary. I remember seeing an episode where they’re at a burger joint called “Burzum’s Burgers”. Lest you miss their writers’ sparkling wit, there’s a metal band called “Burzum,” who’s name sounds a bit like “Burger”. Let me try: Underoath Underwear. Bathory Bathtowels. Great stuff. If only I an aisle to roll around laughing in.
Is there good music on this album? Fuck no! Why would there be good music? This is an album made for people who don’t really listen to heavy metal and have no way to tell good from bad – who only appreciate it as a kind of fashion accessory. It’s just crummy unoriginal dogshit from beginning to end. I hate even thinking about it.
The drums have zero reverb and sound sterile and fake. The guitars have no body, and seem half as loud as everything else, especially Brendon Small’s voice. This is bad news, as he should not be twice as loud as ANYTHING, including the repairman working on the power lines next door and the bird crapping on the roof. Words cannot describe how shit his voice is, how utterly devoid of emotion and intensity.
“Murmaider” merely sounds like Pantera with bad production up until he does that incredibly annoying “Knives, check, rope, check, dagger, check” part. Remember Metallica’s “frantic-tick-tick-tick-tick”? This guy apparently decided that was the future of metal. “Awaken” – tonelessly shouting the song title over and over again, awesome. “Bloodrocuted” actually has two or three good riffs, a stupid chorus, and then they self-consciously switch it out and bring in an equally stupid chorus. “Hatredcopter” got a laugh out of me. “Face-Fisted” is more senseless chugging on an album that conspicuously does not need more senseless chugging.
Even when there’s actual songwriting happening, the weak production and bad vocals just cut everything away at the knees. There’s no sense of brutality or heaviness, everything sounds like a fake plastic-like slab of processed sound. The overall tone is something like Slaughter of the Soul era At the Gates with the guitars turned down 9db at the mixing desk, songwriting c/o a troupe of monkeys, with awful burpy vocals. What a horrible, horrible album. If your imam catches you listening to this in the back streets of Riyadh, you richly deserve beheading.
