Can we ever have enough reissues? Not really. As long as the labels keep them coming and they keep the variety wide open we’ll never get bored. More labels should jump into doing what Metal Mind are doing. Let’s rescue these obscurities and learn about the past.

Noise and experimental music fans will hold a boner for hours upon checking this Crucial Blast reissue of Skullflower’s (pictured above) 1992 album IIIrd Gatekeeper. Originally released by Justin Broadrick’s (Godflesh, Jesu) HeadDirt label, this nine song mammoth helped redefine the terms ‘noise’ and ‘experimental’. This just took volume to its absolute exponentiality. Shit, just think about the current wave of drone rockers unleashing average skull fucking instrumental albums these days and think back sixteen years. How was this much noise possible back then? IIIrd Gatekeeper to this day stands proudly head, shoulders and waist above most. What takes the cake here is the organic layering of music, drone and noise, an overwhelming tidal wave of head-splitting obsessive sounds that makes sense and that surprisingly comes together as music that is both, gorgeous and totally crushing. An absolute must for the extreme music fan. 

The super awesome Polish metal label Metal Mind are treating us metalheads like royalty with its series of Roadrunner re-releases, but it is the more obscure reissues of albums by band’s like Winter that truly have us doing cartwheels down the avernus. Originally released in 1990 by Future Shock Records and later re-released by Nuclear Blast with the 1994 EP Eternal Frost (around the time that the band broke up) added as bonus tracks, Into Darkness is the textbook definition of a cult album from a cult band. Revered in the underground because of its bleak atmosphere and exhausting and grueling pace, Into Darkness makes early Celtic Frost sound like Genesis. Ok, I am exaggerating, but the vocals of John Alman have the same frosty quality of Tom G. Warrior’s with a bit of a death metal edge and the utterly simplistic and one dimensional structures are very much Hellhammer and early Celtic Frost. The strings are so dense at times it is difficult to notice the difference between bass and guitars. Truth of the matter is it doesn’t matter.  Doom fans feeling too cheery because of the Summer season? This Into Darkness reissue is the antidote, it will push you over the cliff of depression.

I remember seeing a review of Abomination’s 1990 self-titled debut in the Spanish issue of Metal Hammer back in the day.  I though the cover artwork was awesome so it stuck with me ever since. Only now do I come to check it out. Thank God I didn’t hold my breath. The cover is indeed the best thing about it. Not that Abomination suck donkey balls, but the cover is so great it must have been hard to match its striking power, especially considering Abomination were such a one dimensional band. Abomination came to be after Paul Speckman –who’d been playing in a band called Funeral Bitch after Master fell apart- joined guitarist Chaz Baker and bassist Mike Pahl who were already rehearsing under the moniker. In 1990, after a few line up changes, the band signs a deal with Nuclear Blast and the same year after recording at DKP Studios Abomination was released. These were formative years for extreme music, and that’s clearly engraved in this album; Speckman’s vocals are rough but clear, the drums of Aaron Nickeas seemingly at times falling behind tempo wise while the riffs of Dean Chioles are sloppier than the jog of a man with a leg and a half.  There are ingredients getting mixed here, but somehow they aren’t blending well.

1992 saw the release of Abomination’s second album Tragedy Strikes.  Musically, it is still a bit on the awkward side. Or we can say the genre was in its formative years which truth be told would be fair. Abomination sounds like a band caught in the middle, playing a style that is still struggling to find its sound. For the most part the songs are on the long side; usually breaking the 4:30 mark, Abomination is clearly going for a more technical and sophisticated thrash metal approach. Opener “Blood for Oil” goes through several passages but is mostly anchored by a mid tempo thrash riff that has exhausted itself a couple of times over by the time it dies over six minutes later. The more technical structure of the songs also sounds a bit like the patch work of a not so skilled brick layer. In the years since, Speckman has remained musically active, putting albums out under the Master, Martyr, Death Strike and Solutions moniker and has even lent a hand to Czech Republic’s metal authority Krabathor, for whom he currently handles bass duties.

Formed in the town of Steinfeld, Germany in 1993 and initially known as Life Reduction, Final Breath plays technical thrash death metal. There is a lot of melody to it, but this Teutonic keeps matters harsh throughout, so they should be commended for it. Some of these songs are really impressive, the guitar work is almost outstanding and I am really glad Metal Mind decided to re-release this overlooked gem. Mind Explosion, Final Breath’s second full-length following one demo and one EP, literally bursts out of the speakers in the same fashion that the first couple of The Crown records knocked a few socks off. This album was released in 2002 by Nuclear Blast and its biggest handicap is the fact that Final Breath’s sound has some of the same hardcore thrash overtones of both The Crown and The Haunted which may have distracted the critics, label and even the fans. The band’s career has been tainted by several line up changes; an issue that to this day seems to affect their career. 

Funny bands are a bit of a distraction. I am all for humor, I think it should be an element to everything we do in our everyday lives, but when it takes center stage and it is the sole purpose to what we do it becomes a bit of a distraction. Which is the reason why when I first heard Macabre’s second album Sinister Slaughter I thought of it as a joke that should be taken as such. With its cover artwork parodying The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club (Nuclear Blast , 1992) and every song on the album created around the story of a serial killer Sinister Slaughter is a record of fast thrash metal riffs that are time and time again reheated, sliced and spliced in different manners. There are some tempo variations like the slow beginning of “Zodiac” but once Macabre gets going there ain’t no stopping nor changing. The most unique aspect of Macabre is the vocals; cookie monster and high pitched at the same time it evokes a rather wicked and disturbing vibe. Quite proper for their gimmick. This reissue includes the 1994 EP Behind the Wall of Sleep which contains three new tracks and a rather atrocious cover of Black Sabbath’s song of the same title.

Milwaukee’s Acrophet had some of the same metal and hardcore elements that made of early Anthrax, DRI and Crumbsuckers nearly household names (for underground standards); non-double bass fast drumming, shredding guitars accentuated by desperate solos and yelled vocals with little melodic input form a singer that really couldn’t sing to save his ass. Also, like their contemporaries, the production of the album is OK but the bombastic drum sound is a sore point. Anyway, Acrophet’s crossover thrash sound is quite competent, the band was still in their teens so they seemed like a promise.  After a three songs demo the band signed a record deal with Tripe X Records and their debut, Corrupt Minds hit the streets in 1988. One more metal oriented album (Faded Glory) followed and after recording songs for a third release Acrophet broke up.

Featuring a pretty gruesome picture of a slashed torso on the cover (to me more explicit than the ones that adorned the early Carcass albums) comes Lowest Common Denominator, the first release by industrial metal sextet Optimum Wound Profile. Based in Ipswich, UK by vocalist Phil Vane (vocalist of Extreme Noise Terror and for a few minutes Napalm Death) and guitarist Roki in 1991, Optimum Wound Profile’s debut album sounds as lethal and vital now as it did back then. Unlike most industrial bands, the sound of OWP is quite organic with the guitars taking center stage and the industrial side of the band emerging in the filtered vocals and the somewhat mechanized drum sound. Notice, I am not saying ‘mechanized drumming’ as the playing of Nial Corr is quite organic.  This is a very solid debut from a very underrated band. Two more albums would follow (1994’s Silver Or Lead and 1995’s Asphyxia) with a fourth one titled Cult of Saints 1425 still unreleased. Optimum Wound Profile parted ways in 1996.

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