And the second discussion is “what’s the heaviest riff of all time?” and everyone will dance around that one, too, with a half-dozen almost correct answers and never agree.

While I find all of those opinions to be valid (I don’t) and all of those arguments to be interesting (again, I don’t), the answers to both are incredibly simple, and part of that is because it’s not even answerS, in plural – it’s just one singular answer. And the answer is “the song ‘Black Sabbath’ by the band Black Sabbath on the album Black Sabbath.” Survey says “We have a winner.” Collect your prize and let’s go to the bar.

Heavy metal begins right there, in the rain and the tolling bells and the heaviest damn riff ever written, even to this day. The Kinks were not ever a metal band, no matter how ratty the guitar sounded; Blue Cheer wasn’t a metal band, no matter how loud they played; Hendrix, Humble Pie, even goddamned Led Zeppelin weren’t metal bands – they had the volume, sometimes the tone, the skills… but they didn’t have the vibe. Sabbath didn’t want to be a metal band, really – back then – at least according to Geezer, Ozzy chose to describe them merely as “hard rock” – but they invented the genre in those first three notes, and solidified it across the run time of that track, and then proceeded to further develop it into an art form across the run times of everything they did afterwards.

Literal tomes have been written about Sabbath’s importance – there’s nothing I’m going to say here that can add much to that, except stop arguing about the two points above because we know the answer, no matter how obscure you want to go. And as for what’s below, well, we also have a dozen more contenders for the titles of, if not the absolute best or first or heaviest metal song ever written, then at the very least, one (or twelve) of those in the form of absolutely unimpeachable classics from the founding fathers of heavy metal. [ANDREW EDMUNDS]

WAR PIGS

Proposed as the title track for black Sabbath’s second album but losing out to “Paranoid” at the last minute, “War Pigs” nonetheless serves as the album’s opening statement, and it’s a hell of a statement, at that. A sonorous power chord tolls like a funeral bell, and nearly eight minutes of masterful metal ensues.

Despite having an odd structure and entirely lacking a chorus, “War Pigs” is riddled with iconic passages: The dirge-like feel of the intro induces instant dread; Iommi’s two-chord verse riff plus Bill Ward’s high hat ticking like a bomb in the near-silence between creates almost unbearable anticipation; and Ozzy intones the first and third verses with such gravitas “War Pigs” takes on the feel of a metallic hymn. If that wasn’t enough, there are Ward’s manic fills in the bridge, not one, but two epic solos from Tony, and of course, Ozzy’s “Oh Lord yeah!” It’s practically absurd how good Sabbath is at its craft only two albums into its career.

You’ll notice I’ve scarcely mentioned Geezer Butler’s contributions, but old Geezer is getting his own paragraph. First his playing: rock-solid in the verses, but more adventurous in the instrumental sections, particularly during the intro and solos, where he grooves hard, but quite melodically. As to Geezer’s lyrics… well, they are almost always poetic, insightful and thought provoking, and “War Pigs” is no exception. Although Geezer was born five years after the conclusion of World War II, Birmingham was hit hard by the blitz and the effects from it likely colored nearly every aspect of his early life, to say nothing of the ensuing Cold War. Though his experience with war was not first-hand, Geezer was smart enough to see war for what it has essentially always been: the rich and powerful sending the poor to die for dubious ends. Although Black Sabbath was never counted as a protest band, releasing a song that brutally and incisively depicts the horrors of war and the callous cruelty and of its architects during the height of the Vietnam conflict couldn’t have been more timely.

Sadly, the theme of “War Pigs” is timeless, but fortunately, the music is, as well. We’ll lose all the remaining members of Black Sabbath eventually — later rather than sooner, I hope — but I have to imagine their music will live far, far beyond them. [JEREMY MORSE]

SWEET LEAF

It’s with a bit of hesitation that I inform you that your favorite band, Black Sabbath, was on the pot when they recorded the track known as “Sweet Leaf.” While that may not seem out of bounds by 2025 standards, back in 1971 that was extreme badassery. At this point in Black Sabbath’s career they had moved beyond the early riffage and entered the more psychedelic sounds and subjects of similar, but less badass, British heavy rock bands.

“Sweet Leaf” was the only logical choice to open Sabbath’s third record adorned with trippy letters spelling the ironic album title, Master of Reality. And naturally, the only way to open a track paying homage to the dankest of herbs was with Tony Iommi coughing his lungs out because Ozzy handed him a joint so big it made him puke. And by puke we really mean cough on microphone and have it legendarily altered and looped.

Like much of Sabbath’s songs at this time, the sound of “Sweet Leaf” is a fuzzed out repetition of thick guitar riffs interspersed with R&B-style bass proficiency over hazy, ‘60s-inspired drum rhythms. Ozzy haunts the vocal track with proclamations of love for this new drug he would soon supplement with much, much more intense proclivities.

But like so many before him, and so many after, his proclamations of love for marijuana arose thrill and excitement in the listener and horror among the parents. As the listener it felt like you and Ozzy had formed a bond over a secret—only the two of you knew about the powers of this strange plant, and the only way to understand what it could truly be like was to smoke more and more of it.

It’s almost comical how much “Sweet Leaf” fits the profile that many square politicians wanted to fuel the flames of Satanic Panic with. It encourages the listener to go ahead and try this illegal drug that the young would certainly put themselves in danger to obtain and ultimately destroy their life over. For once they tasted the earthy scent of the sweet leaf their parents would lose all control over these youngsters as they took to a life of crime to pay for the new freedom handed them by Ozzy and the other posterchildren of drugs.

It was likely equally exciting for Ozzy, a showman to the very core, to have his voice enshrined in near ecstatic prayer over something that is now commonly readily available as well as legal. And do we have him to thank? In a way we very much have him to thank, along with a few others that rose to his importance. Figures such as Ozzy gave people freedom, inspired them, to grow up, take control and make changes.

And despite the frantic bridge in this song, which is a good example of how being high usually starts for me, it’s great to lay back and listen to Black Sabbath with Ozzy as their frontman and pretend, even if only for a few minutes, that Ozzy is still here with us wandering around and muttering humorous phrases to all he greets. It lets us believe that we will once again get to see him perform, his voice thrilling and titillating until the end. For the use of substances, as supported by most religions on the planet, are, much like music, a way to connect with not only the higher powers but with those beyond. So go to your home on this Friday evening and light up an overstuffed dolma and think of Ozzy – I’m sure he’s thinking of you. [LIN MANUEL DE GUERRA]

SYMPTOM OF THE UNIVERSE

If this were a just world, you and I could meet each other for the first time and by way of greeting, one of us would say, “‘Symptom of the Universe’?” and the other of us would nod knowingly and then we would both walk away in heroic slow motion. What else is there to say, really?

If we’re getting into it, though, let’s acknowledge the iron-clad truth that most of Black Sabbath’s absurd wealth of bulletproof classics are built from Hall of Fame-level Tony Iommi riffs. “Symptom,” though? Not really, right? Don’t get me wrong, it’s a powerful, memorable main riff, but it’s notable mostly for how it animates the song with its primal, forward-tumbling momentum rather than for some ineffably brilliant melody. I’m saying: it’s simple. But oh my sisters, oh my brothers, oh my siblings, “Symptom of the Universe” is signed, sealed, and delivered by one of the most unearthly performances ever put to tape by our dear departed John Michael Osbourne.

Yes, it’s reasonable to surmise that Ozzy’s performance here might have been, shall we say, chemically enhanced, but if you fed me a wheelbarrow’s worth of cocaine and put me in a recording booth, I’m sure I wouldn’t know my ass from an aux cable. These seething, howling, spitting, bleeding-edge verses from Ozzy are, like Iommi’s lead riff, SO simple! Ozzy’s entire melody for the first three verses is basically just three, maybe four notes, but he sells these (admittedly ridiculous AND awesome) lyrics with a messianic conviction. Running close behind Oz in the song’s MVP race, however, is Bill Ward, whose flailing hammer-hand fills give an even more unpredictable energy to the main riff tumbling into that suspended chorus. And, friend, this doesn’t even get us into the matter of how beautifully the song is crafted in thirds, with a nicely snaky thirds-jumping lick from Iommi popping in at exactly 2 minutes, and then with the wickedly intense guitar solo burning out into the glorious acoustic coda with about 2 minutes left in the runtime. Perfect playing, perfect singing, perfect song, perfect album.

“Symptom of the Universe”? [arms fold, heads nod, feet walk; exeunt all] [DAN OBSTKRIEG]

THE WIZARD

Following the title track, “The Wizard” is Black Sabbath’s second official missive. The band’s second opportunity to knock you onto your knees and assault your eardums. And when I first heard it, I think that was my thought—like, wow, this early and we’re already clicking into high gear. There’s a very bluesy confidence.

It’s important that it follows “Black Sabbath” on the tracklist. Or at least its placement there is relevant to the discussion of its impact because “Black Sabbath” is an inarguably slow build. Almost theatrical. It’s a statement. And so is “The Wizard,” but largely due to its symbiotic relationship with “Black Sabbath.” It capitalizes on that slow build with something equally playful but also more immediate.

When I think of Sabbath, I often hear “Black Sabbath” and “The Wizard”—not because they are the two best Sabbath songs but because, together, they are how I recognize Black Sabbath in my mind. The unique alchemy of bluesy playfulness and heavy undertones. Immediacy and delayed gratification. Fantasy based lyrics sung by a very working class and untrained vocalist. All of this, and more, produced that special brand of Black Sabbath magic.

There hasn’t been a band since—nor will there be a band, ever—that sounds this self-assured and commanding on a debut, while playing music this unique and inspiring. Music “journalism” begets a ton of unchecked hyperbole. But there’s no checking here. I love this band. I especially love this album. And “The Wizard” is at least one of my two favorite songs on this album. [CHRIS C]

HOLE IN THE SKY

As for best opening song of a Black Sabbath album, you can make a strong case for each of the first six. “Hole In The Sky” makes its own case by punching the listener in the face straight out of the gate with a riff so packed with sativa-high energy that it continues to ripple through time and the cosmos in waves of subsequent stoner rock iterations. And it’s a great song; way more than just a nifty riff.

Like so many Black Sabbath songs, it’s hard to imagine it holding its greatness without Ozzy. Pantera’s cover is pretty cool and they own it but, come on, Phil ain’t Ozzy. And Metallica’s recent tribute was nice, but… Indeed, Ozzy imbues the “Hole” with a manic energy that maybe nobody else ever could, landing convincingly between crazy-guy-on-the-corner and the-one-guy-in-the-horror-movie-who-actually-knows-the-truth-but-nobody-will-listen-to-him.

Iommi’s second major riff, separating verses from each other, careens and spirals downward, suggesting something calamitous or at least foreboding. His third riff, though, comes with the chorus and opens it all up, brighter and more diffuse, perhaps signalling something glorious, consistent with Ozzy’s observation of a gateway to heaven. A little closer listen to Ozzy’s chorus-closing intonation, though, as he cries, through it I flyyyyyyy, suggests again that this is a bad trip after all.

There’s a lot of theories about the lyrics but the one that makes most sense is that the titular hole is in the ozone, just one more example of people, and Westerners in particular, fucking up our own lives, helpless to do anything but watch our own slow suicide. And, actually, it’s a hypothesis supported not only by Geezer, but by the future itself, just… look around you.

“Hole In The Sky” is a kick ass heavy metal song, the apparent simplicity of which belies it’s underlying depth, just like the iconic band that created it. [LONE WATIE]

SUPERNAUT

“Supernaut” is in the running alongside “Sabbra Cadabra” as the most forcibly and ferociously happy Black Sabbath song ever, the principal difference being the latter feels a bit more… impish, whereas the former opts to underscore a magnificent and wholly indestructible STRUT. Seriously, no matter how loud the outside clatter happens to be at any given moment on Earth’s increasingly troubled timeline—wars, threats of war, any and all political friction, depression, loneliness, fear of disease and demise, etc. ad infinitum—“Supernaut” delivers a 4.5 minute stretch that’s forever prepped to stand in as an incredibly loud and shatterproof personal defense system.

The song is perfectly straightforward in design, launching playfully with a light cymbal lead-in from Ward that’s quickly lifted by an impossibly infectious and valiant Iommi riff that mutates into an even grimier and thicker walloper a mere five seconds later. “Supernaut” then opts to CHAARRRRRRGE mostly uninterrupted like a buffalo with a swingin’, iron-plated pipe the size of a ’72 Lincoln Continental for the remainder of its run, punctuated briefly by a wonderfully feral and groovy drum breakout (often stretched from the stage) that only serves to amplify the song’s cheerful rush. Sure-as-shitzky, Iommi’s presence here is herculean to the point of excess (Frank Zappa’s favorite Sabbath riff!), but the true hero of “Supernaut” is absolutely Ward, who levels the countryside with the strength of ten John Bonhams as he rumbles and annihilates his way to the slowly fading finish line. Honestly, I’m surprised ol’ Bill didn’t get slapped with assault charges after laying down this absolute drubbing.

Is “Supernaut” the best close to a side A from the original Black Sabbath lineup? That could be up for a very “fun” debate. One thing for sure, though: It’s a song that never fails to launch you into good spirits. Timely, that.

“Don’t try to reach me, ‘cause I’d tear up your mind
I’ve seen the future and I’ve left it behind!”

INTO THE VOID

In my humble opinion, the greatest guitar riff ever written belongs to Tony Iommi and Black Sabbath’s beloved classic “Into the Void.” An epic conclusion to their 1971 masterpiece Master of Reality, the song is quintessential Iommi. Often imitated but never replicated, “Into the Void” is the epitome of metal — heavy, catchy, and downright creepy.

Much of the song’s tone derives from not just the fuzz from Tony’s Laney/SG combo (and missing fingertip), it was one of the few Sabbath songs — “Sweet Leaf,” too — at the time tuned down to C#. In hindsight, perhaps it was a sample of what we’d get from Sabbath Bloody Sabbath. That, paired with Ozzy’s best vocal performance on the record, sparked magic.

While the aura, without a doubt, screams the 70s, it’s timeless. From Tony’s signature godly guitar tone to Bill’s work behind the kit, and from Geezer’s grooving bass lines to Ozzy’s hypnotic vocal melodies, there’s no room for criticism. It’s perfect. And as we look back on that era, the lyrics are a time capsule of a world at odds with the idea of war in Vietnam, and the urge to give the good in humanity a chance to start anew on some distant plant spinning somewhere out there in the cosmos. Again, while relevant to that decade, sadly, those words remain relevant to the present.

Freedom fighters sent out to the sun
Escape from brainwashed minds and pollution
Leave the Earth to war and sin and hate
Find another world where freedom waits, yeah

Earlier, I said “Into the Void” bestows metal’s greatest riff. I’ll take it a step further: it might just be one of the top five greatest metal songs ever written. This one will stand the test of time — after forever, if you will. [BLIZZARD OF JOZZSH]

FAIRIES WEAR BOOTS

Allegedly inspired by a rumble between the band and some skinhead types, known for their preference for Doc Martens footwear, “Fairies Wear Boots” is a fantastically fantastic piece of heavy psychedelia, and the perfect closer for one of the undisputed giant albums of early metal. Opening with delayed, palm-muted arpeggios, “Fairies” slides into a classic Iommi riff and lead, buoyed by the irrepressible Butler / Ward rhythm section, before shifting to a completely different feel about a minute in. (For contractual reasons, the intro was tagged as a separate song, “Jack The Stripper,” on American pressings, but that’s just semantics.)

Once that main riff hits, the song becomes completely irresistible, that minor-key chunky chordal thing sitting perfectly beneath Ozzy’s plaintive wailing tale of booted fairies and dancing dwarfs (and later, his admission that “drinking and tripping is all [he does],” delivered in third-person as advice from his doctor, who, it would appear, did not believe him about fairies wearing boots, despite his insistent pleas that “you gotta”).

The lyrics are fairly simple, straightforward, almost minimal, and the melody is immediate, but also primarily based on the repeated hook of “Fairies wear boots, you gotta believe me…” So the ultimate power of the song lies not in those, but in the interplay between the band itself, as Ward proves (yet again) that he was one of those rare heavy rock drummers who could actually incorporate a sense of swing, while Butler wanders around beneath Iommi’s multiple lead breaks, holding down both the low end and the middle in the absence of a rhythm guitar. And of course, what would Sabbath (and metal… and life…) be without those Iommi guitars? The main riff swaggers; the intro and secondary riff swaggers even harder; the leads aren’t flashy, but they’re heartfelt, harking back directly to the blues roots of the band even as they moved farther away from that into a new territory they were carving out for all of us. An often overlooked gem from their most heralded album, “Fairies” may not be as heavy as “Iron Man” or “Electric Funeral,” or as bleak as “War Pigs” or “Hand Of Doom,” or as trippy as “Planet Caravan,” but somewhere in between them all, lies the middle ground that it covers perfectly. [ANDREW EDMUNDS]

SNOWBLIND

As the 70s went on, Black Sabbath’s drug use became much more apparent in their music, to the point that they sounded positively zonked on certain songs (and we wouldn’t have “Hole in the Sky” any other way). But the song most directly about cocaine, “Snowblind,” comes across as rather restrained compared to some of these other tunes, to the point that it communicates both a celebration of the drug and a lamentation of what it has done to them, using the metaphor of a brutal winter in place of drug addiction.

It starts with a perfect “we’re back!”-kinda riff, ideal for kicking off the b-side of Vol. 4, before settling into a laid back verse drive that is just playful enough in the hook department. Ozzy is absolutely in the zone here, able to communicate the dual meaning of the song through his voice while maintaining just the tiniest hint that he’s trying to push the powder on the listener. I’m not sure you can hear a twinkle in someone’s eye, but Ozzy is definitely grinning while delivering lines like “Makes me happy, makes me glow,” or even more directly and obviously, “cocaaaaaiiiiiiine…”

Of course, the chorus takes on an incredibly somber, sadder tone, both in the music and the vocal. “The sun no longer sets me free / I feel the snowflakes freezing me,” sings Ozzy, before Iommi’s solo maintains the mournful tone. By this point, the fatalism seems locked in, so that even when the song picks up energy and Ozzy screams out “You’re the one who’s really a loser,” it comes across more as a user in denial than someone that’s really having fun.

As the song returns to the verse once more – this time aided by a string section – the true meaning of the lyrics become plain as day: “Lying snowblind in the sun / Will my ice age ever come?” The narrator desperately wants freedom from the chains of addiction, even if it means death. “Snowblind” is a brilliant depiction of both the exhilaration and misery of drug use, communicated by a band at the height of their musical powers and chemical indulgence. [ZACH DUVALL]

N.I.B.

Upfront, I’ll say that “N.I.B” is one of my all-time favorite songs. Not simply my favorite Black Sabbath song, but a top-tier must listen across genres and decades.

The funky bass intro, which rumbles in for about 40 seconds before fading out, only to triumphantly return and unleash the primary riff of the song, had me hooked immediately. That first “oh yeah” punches through the song like the precursor to Tom G. Warrior’s “OUGH”s that it is. Ozzy’s singing during the early stretch feels bouncy and playful at first, matching the loving lyrics, but pivots to a pleading call as it hits the more musically toned-down chorus, hinting at drama to come. You absolutely do feel it in your bones when he holds the “I’m going to feeeeeellllll” on the repeat of the closing line.

What comes next, however, is one of the elements of “N.I.B” that really gives it an extra edge within the Black Sabbath discography – the narrative twist. Sure, if you’re really paying attention, a line like “The sun, the moon, the stars, all bear my seal” should probably be a dead giveaway. But love songs in the ’70s were often weird. It wouldn’t be that surprising for this dude to simply be overdramatic as he pleads for a life-long connection. Instead, halfway through the song, as our narrator is crooning about this powerful love growing, the other shoe drops, and we get “Look into my eyes, you’ll see who I am. My name is Lucifer, please take my hand.” And then, bam, Tony Iommi jamming guitar time to further explode your brain. From there, our song essentially repeats itself before letting the closing minute be more excellent jamming and an outro tailor-made for closing a set. “N.I.B” is a masterclass in building toward a climax, balancing heft with joy, keeping the listener on their toes, and knowing exactly when to create a hook or unleash chaos.

I can’t imagine Black Sabbath thought the song they named after Bill Ward’s beard would end up becoming an undeniable classic, but hey, I guess Lucifer really did give them those things they thought unreal. [SPENCER HOTZ]

SABBATH BLOODY SABBATH

Hey, Stevie Wonder, thanks for doing your part to ensure Sabbath Bloody Sabbath (and therefore “Sabbath Bloody Sabbath”) would find its way into our infernal lives. That’s it. That’s the tweet. Or the… X… Or the final words chiseled onto my incredibly impressive gravestone.

By 1973, Black Sabbath was fully tapped: Ripping coke hangovers, bone-bending exhaustion from full-scale touring, and just impressively sick-to-death of each other’s ever-present faces. They were California boys at the time, and no one, especially Tony Iommi, had a bloody clue where to place the next step forward. The final straw? Or what I generally prefer to believe was the final straw? Their cozy room at Record Plant Recording Studios in LA was now used to store a massive T.O.N.T.O. synthesizer that Stevie Wonder used for Talking Book and Innervisions.

“THAT’S IT, WE’RE HEADED HOME TO RECORD IN A HAUNTED CASTLE,”  said all four members at the exact same time as they aggressively piled into The Mystery Machine to head to the airport.

Hey, haunted castles, thanks for doing your part to resuscitate the dark energy of heavy metal, even when the four souls involved are at the very brink of withdrawing in favor of… hippier pastures?

The plan worked like a odious charm, as a craggy monkey’s paw fell from webbed rafters to paranormally strum the opening riff to “Sabbath Bloody Sabbath” on Iommi’s fatigued SG. Not really, but Tony did come up with it in a literal dungeon after apparently seeing a ghost in the halls with Ozzy. And verily, the whole of Sabbath Bloody Sabbath has that distinct haunted castle vibe bedeviling its corners, but it’s also “the most Scooby Doo release” in the band’s extremely impressive catalog, thanks to the hippie undercurrents that still manage to sneak into the eeriness.

“Sabbath Bloody Sabbath” is a perfect example. Following an opening foray of doomed brilliance built on the back of that mighty monkey-pawed riff, the song suddenly flashes a bit of beatnik before even crossing the one-minute mark. Hey, a flower in your hair is a lot easier to swaller when it’s properly offset by fat, black-widowed doom riffs and Ozzy’s siren wail. Also, can anything on God’s Green Earf ever be as H-E-A-V-Y as that stretch from 3:15 to 4:40? It’s so looming, large and dark that Ozzy’s voice literally sounds like a severe weather warning (“aaaAAAWHERRRRE CAN YOU RUN TO”), and even something as friendly as a tambourine rattle sounds more like a western diamondback’s caution when nailed to this sort of dismal weight.

Sure, Ozzy eventually let it be known that Sabbath Bloody Sabbath signaled the initial death knell for the band’s original lineup—something that perhaps seemed even more feasible when fans first caught sight of the cover for Sabotage—but holy hell did a change in venue and a little spooky Scooby magick find a most impressive way to rescue the four Brummies from California Coke Craze hell. [CAPTAIN]

CHILDREN OF THE GRAVE

It’s high school, junior year, and yours truly thinks he’s Mr. Maximum Metal. How metal? The task was thus – create a video collage representing an era of American history and set it as elegantly and appropriately as you can to a song of your choice. Wouldn’t you know it? Isaac had just the song, and not another soul in class would DARE question his heavy cred once the music crashed down into their gaping maws.

(“Valley Forge” by Iced Earth, a mid-paced snoozer from the recently released The Glorious Burden, played over static images of ahem, Valley Forge)

Got ’em. Got ’em good. Until… another group of boys go up to the front. Their era was ALSO the American Revolution. Their video began, that iconic riff sauntered from the speakers, and all of the blood ran out of my face and into my shoes. That was the first time I heard “Children of the Grave”, and boy, was I put in my silly little place.

So… would I look upon me now in anger and disgust? Yes, yes, absolutely. 37-year old me, freshly (though unsurprisingly) embarrassed by the antics of Jon Schaffer, can’t help but wonder how 21 years ago I had only JUST heard one of the greatest songs in heavy metal history, the warhorse-heavy gallop that launched 1000 bong metal bands. No matter, that’s not the story. “Children of the Grave” and Black Sabbath are the fucking story. There could not have possibly been a more thunderous track in 1971. Sure, “Stairway to Heaven” was a big deal, but its frillly opulence stood in stark contrast to the Black Sabbath’s oil-black, compact burliness. “Aqualung” could hit hard, yeah, but Bill Ward launched dynamite at his toms. These four Birmingham boys had birthed something greater than the sum of its parts, a massive, anthemic beast of a tyoon. And underneath it all? “Children of the Grave” was a song of peace, a paean to the triumph of love. Ozzy was no stranger to that trick, folding his positive messages into origami leviathans, but we’ve been through that, haven’t we?

Can you fathom a world without Tony Iommi’s riffs from this song? How could there be? He tapped into the very essence of what makes “heavy” heavy and blew the resulting crude into the ether like the Exxon Valdez of “Sick Riffs, Please!” And we haven’t even gotten to Butler, Geez?!

“Children of the Grave” forever and always. [ISAAC HAMS]

BLACK SABBATH

G power chord. Octave on the D string. Trill on the fourth and fifth frets of the A string. Slide. It’s the Big Bang, lightning striking the primordial ocean, the first breaths of God. It’s the tritone, or diabolus in musica, or whatever technical term you want to use to try to corral it. It’s the riff that would beget a million riffs, start a million bands, and influence the lives of millions of fans. It’s “Black Sabbath” from the album Black Sabbath by the band Black Sabbath, and it is heavy metal.

Appropriately, “Black Sabbath”‘s origins have an almost biblical air, a print-the-legend confluence of serendipities. During a rehearsal for the then-named Earth, bassist Geezer Butler messes around with the militaristic opening of the Mars movement of Gustav Holst’s The Planets, and guitarist Tony Iommi returns the following day with The Riff. When the band starts jamming out its second original song in a speedy session where everyone’s minds are melded, Ozzy Osbourne spontaneously sings the lyrics, basing them on Butler’s retelling of a night terror featuring a figure in black standing before his bed in his occulted-out apartment, a presence perhaps summoned by a Satan-laden book Osbourne previously gifted him that mysteriously vanished as soon as the apparition did. Hell of a yarn, even if it’s not hard to see the seams where the myths were stitched together.

That said, even “Black Sabbath”‘s more verifiable details seem to be as impossibly fortuitous as those written-for-the-screen scenes, making one’s head spin when thinking about how different history could’ve been if a butterfly flapped its wings. Without any appropriate title surfacing in the song itself, Butler nicks the name from the Mario Bava anthology flick, which later becomes the quartet’s handle when it decides to leave the confines of Earth behind. Later, a brief 12-hour recording session for its debut album forces the newly christened Black Sabbath to bring its live energy, its terrifying grit and frightening rawness, into the studio with minimal overdubs. However, one of the few overdubs that producer Rodger Bain and engineer Tom Allom made time for is the most famous intro in heavy metal. “We rented a set of tubular bells, and we just clanged one of them,” Allom told Kory Grow in a 2020 Rolling Stone feature. “I sort of made it fade in and out with reverb here and there, like when you’re standing in a field and a village church bell rings, as it comes and goes in the wind. It is iconic, isn’t it?” It was a total audible. Black Sabbath’s band members didn’t know that a peal of a bell cutting through a rain shower kicked off its famously eponymous album until they dropped the needle on it for the first time. Now, imagine you’re listening to a substantially drier and overproduced “Figure in Black” by the band Paper Sun, where the bell does not toll for thee: Are we even here right now?

But this is all bar trivia. The reason “Black Sabbath” endures is not the story; it’s the song’s power. Iommi, Osbourne, Butler, and drummer Bill Ward could feel that power from the jump, especially when the reaction to that power was being reflected back at them. “The audience was small, and nobody really knew quite how to react to it,” Ward said to Rolling Stone about the first time playing “Black Sabbath” live. “But we put so much into the song onstage that everybody just started to nod to it, especially towards the endings and the very loud parts. People were just like, ‘Wow, holy cow.’ I think we were blowing them away very quietly.” In Osbourne’s autobiography, I Am Ozzy, the singer remembered a different response. “All the girls ran out of the venue screaming. ‘Isn’t the whole point of being in a band to get a shag, not make the chicks run away?’ I complained to the others afterwards.”

Thankfully, those complaints were not heeded. Nevertheless, the girls were right: Over half a century later, there is something still authentically unnerving about “Black Sabbath,” a harrowingly horrific sensation that heavy metal has been chasing ever since. Maybe it’s the relative simplicity of Iommi’s playing, a byproduct of getting the tips of two fingers snipped at a sheet metal factory. It’s gutsy in the gutbucket sense, unadorned and austere, the lack of unnecessary frills elevating the evilness of the impact, while imparting the same earthiness and red-hot power as a fountain of lava. Then there’s the way that Butler and Ward seem to slink around in the shadows during the quieter verses, these bumps in the night that reunify into an imposing giant when it comes time to turn the dials of The Riff to as bowel-shakingly loud as possible. And, of course, there’s Osbourne as both the narrator and audience surrogate, his stentorian voice becoming more tremulous with the mounting realization of what he’s witnessing until, overcome by terror, he finally cracks. “Oh, no, no, please, God, help me!”

Black Sabbath could’ve settled on the dread teased out by the tension of those loud/quiet sections and called it a day. But the genius of “Black Sabbath” is its third act, a sped-up trip into the unknown, like how a Lovecraft story eventually descends into unhinged mania. That gives the song dimension, the kind of aural storytelling at which better metal excels. Once it closes with those staccato punches, a very Romantic era denouement, you feel like you’ve been through something. “Black Sabbath” is less a song; it’s more an experience. It’s a journey.

For these reasons, “Black Sabbath” not only endures, but still sounds remarkably untouched, immune to the ravages of time, downright vampiric in its agelessness. It’s a hyperbole-rebuffing wonder, the rare historical document that remains just as vital as when it was first recorded, able to balance the usually opposed poles of nostalgia and novelty. To that end, think of how many times you’ve heard it, how many events it has soundtracked. It’s there during languorous, love-struck summers and desolate, lovelorn winters. It’s there during your graduation and your children’s graduations. For those on the younger side, it was there for your births, and it’ll be there during your deaths. It’s eternal. It’s just there. And it never gets old. G power chord. Octave on the D string. Trill on the fourth and fifth frets of the A string. Slide. For some of us, that’s life itself. [SETH BUTTNAM]

The post A Devil’s Dozen – The Original Black Sabbath appeared first on Last Rites.

But for now, we’ll laser-focus on the back catalogue of one of the innovators of tech-thrash.

The Coroner lore dates back to the early 80s. OG roadies for the legendary Celtic Frost, the band recruited one Tom G. Warrior for vocal duties on their demo Death Cult. Of course, Mr. Warrior had other obligations. Bassist Ron Broder took the vocal reins for the Swiss band’s subsequent releases: R.I.P., Punishment for Decadence, No More Color, Mental Vortex, and Grin. By his side? Tommy Vetterli and Markus Edelmann. The result? Well, it’s what we in the metal scene deem “legendary.”

Each record encompasses something unique. From the aggression on R.I.P. to the groovy/industrial Grin, Coroner has always had a knack for using their stellar musicianship to create earworm tunes even in the most technical settings—a feat in and of itself. Moreover, for those first five LPs, the band maintained a steady focus on the holistic listening experience. The records sound cohesive; each song meshes well with its predecessor/successor. Although, according to some recent quotes from the band, the soon-to-be-released record will adhere to a more song-focused approach. Nonetheless, those first five stand the test of time for their grandiose nature.

There is no shortage of classics throughout the Coroner discography. It’s nearly impossible not to feel that rush of pure adrenaline when “Semtex Revolution” kicks in or the urge to put on your dancing shoes when “Internal Conflicts” breaks down. Without continuing to pummel the deceased horse over the noggin with a sledgehammer, these dudes are purely badass musicians. And while some folks may find that boring or that technical prowess takes away from the character of a band, Coroner is a reminder that learning theory, diving into classical music and plucking and hammering your instrument until your fingers leak crimson may not be the worst idea.

Today, Coroner maintains a cult following. Perhaps they never truly received the recognition they deserved. The real kicker is their sound could have reached mountainous heights had they not stepped into the shadows in the mid-90s, assuming they’d have continued following a more industrial/groove metal-centered path.

Such is life.

Circling back to that new record, whether or not it lives up to the legendary status of their prior releases, their legacy is forever etched in stone. So, without further ado, we present a devil’s dozen brought back from the dead time and time again. These are 13 essential offerings from the one, the only…CORONER. [BLIZZARD OF JOZZSH]

REBORN THROUGH HATE

If you were to be unfamiliar with R.I.P. by Coroner in 2025 and hit play for the very first time on “Reborn Through Hate,” it would be understandable for you to think you were listening to an instrumental demo for a modern record. Ultimately, the tone and lengthy stretch of music that opens the song sans vocals sounds precisely like its release date of 1987, but brings a technical precision less common for that era.

The song hits every key item for peak 80s thrash:

• Pinch harmonics? Check.
• A galloping rhythm? Check.
• A shredding solo? Check.
• Riffs that jump across enough of the fretboard to make your fingers want to call you an asshole? Check.
• Gang shout vocals in the chorus? Of course, you idiot. CHECK!

While the exceptional riffs and hooky chorus are the main attraction here, Ron Royce’s persistently fluttering bass and pack-a-day Tom G. Warrior-esque gasping-for-air vocals help take the whole affair to another level. The galloping sections that sound like Iron Maiden on fast-forward certainly aren’t hurting anything either. There is a quirk, however, where a significant portion of the opening is copied and pasted into the second half of the track in a way that would have you thinking this specific song was solely responsible for latter-day Vital Remains’ approach to songwriting. Rudimentary structures aside, the viciousness and technicality mean “Reborn Through Hate,” well, RIPS. [SPENCER HOTZ]

DIVINE STEP (CONSPECTU MORTIS)

Mental Vortex was the final of Coroner’s three all-killer no-filler tech-thrash masterpieces, and it hits hard from the get-go with the opening track “Divine Step (Conspectu Mortis),” which showcases the band’s now-signature style of intricate lightly-dissonant guitar work layered over Mark Edelmann’s impeccably tight rhythmic base. Vetterli throws down another masterclass in hooky riffing, with Royce’s vocal line mirroring the pedal point riff throughout the verse and dancing around some palm-muted runs in the bridge, before the whole thing breaks down into a brief dreamy middle-section that musically encapsulates the lyrical theme of dying and crossing into whatever comes after, returning after only a minute or so departure into a fresh, chugging riff and another strong Tommy Vetterli guitar lead. A dash of epic synth strings push that final verse (really a repeat of the first) and chorus that much higher, closing out an absolutely epic tech-thrash song on an even higher plane. Say what you want about where Coroner went after Mental Vortex – opinions on the industrial-tinged, nu-leaning Grin are certainly divided – but for this album, they were still dialed in, and this first track lays it all on the table. [ANDREW EDMUNDS]

MISTRESS OF DECEPTION

You’d be challenged to find a record with greater combination of techy goodness, infectious riffs, and sheer rippery than No More Color. The record is, to put it lightly, supremely kickass. But part of that techiness is the ability to go heavy on the shred, and “Mistress of Deception” is some seriously shreddy (and gloriously catchy) thrash.

It might start with a rolling fill from drummer Marquis Marky, but this tune absolutely belongs to guitarist Tommy T. Baron, who starts doing tricky fretwork things during the first verse and never looks back. After a particularly venomous chorus – “Mistress of deception / daughter of death!” – Baron launches into a shredfest of epic proportions. Listen carefully and you’ll realize it’s both Baron and bassist/vocalist Ron Royce going nuts during this passage, but soon after Baron recaptures the focus with solos both subdued (after the song opens way up) and fiery (after the thrash kicks back in).

It’s a sophisticated performance in what was at that time one of Coroner’s most advanced songs, but this being No More Color, the band leaves time to mosh. After the second chorus, instead of re-upping on the shredfest, Coroner instead hammers you with mid-paced thrash before getting a little jazzy/playful and bringing it all back around again to the verse and chorus (and yes, the shred). There’s a little something for everyone in these five glorious minutes, be you a Guitar Center geek, prog/tech freak, or good old fashioned, dirtbag mosher. “Merciless, invincible!” [ZACH DUVALL]

WHEN ANGELS DIE

“When Angels Die” stands out on an album full of awesome, even if it’s not obvious why. It’s full of killer riffs and drums, the bass lines rule, and the vocals are rough and rad which, of course, is also true of the other seven songs. “Angels” feels different, though, maybe because it was written so effectively to reflect a pervasive anxiety of the time. You can feel the simultaneous awe and dread, for example, that might come with a world-ending event, even without knowing this is a song about nuclear holocaust.

All three players are in lockstep pretty much throughout as they blast a trench through the foundation in sections that successively scrape and ring (what would become a trademark sound), rip and tear, drive and pound, and swiiiiiing a few times, tracing the shock, confusion, concussion, and disorientation that would (will?) surely come with the razing waves of a megaton detonation. The dissociated respite implied by a chanted vocal chorus is cruelly short-lived, ushering in 30 seconds of fiery solo in a section all its own. You can imagine the poor soul bearing witness, staggered and stuporous, awed by the dreadful beauty of a nuclear sunset, whispering with his final breath, “Bitchin.” [LONE WATIE]

SKELETON ON YOUR SHOULDER

“Skeleton on Your Shoulder,” creepy, huh? That’s precisely the vibe from the start on this classic from Punishment for Decadence. A brief acoustic intro slowly builds to triplet riffs and eventual key and tempo changes throughout its duration. One moment it’s 170 BPM, the next it’s 145, then 181.

Slabbed in the middle of their 1988 classic, it’s five and a half minutes of Coroner at their very best—catchy and technical—and an epic crusade on the back of ’80s thrash. However, “Skeleton on Your Shoulder” is also an example of the band exploring the limits of what thrash could be—similar to their peers in Watchtower and Voivod—blending progressive elements into its construction. Sure, it isn’t the most technical Coroner tune, but the point I’m trying to make here, friends, is that it perfectly encompasses the paradoxical experimental yet traditional aura. Not to mention, it features one of my favorite leads in their discography.

So, have fun revisiting this one. “Skeleton on Your Shoulder”: it’s here to please; it’ll bring you to your knees! [BLIZZARD OF JOZZSH]

PALE SISTER

Now, stay with me here…

“Pale Sister” is the tech thrash equivalent of Mercyful Fate’s “Nuns Have No Fun.”

No, the two songs don’t sound much alike, but both paint the requisite pessimism we as metallers are required to attach to the idea of leading a vestal life devoted to religion, and both additionally approach said narrative from an almost deranged sense of glee. Seriously, hit play on “Pale Sister” and you… Well, you’ll immediately get hit in the face with one of the oddest riff patterns on the whole of Mental Vortex—a run that really shouldn’t work, but it’s attached to a groove that’s so steeped in swaggering happiness that you almost can’t help but picture Vince McMahon happily strutting into some ring. That joyous groove is the crux of “Pale Sister,” as it sort of is for Coroner in general, but it feels extra next level when nailed to a theme that involves a potentially conflicted nun “with wounded knees… and the musty scent… of incense in her hair / Captured by the barbed hook… of eternal devotion.” Then again, welding that sort of unabashed joy to tech thrash that twists, turns, climbs, dives, punches and glides through umpteen time and tempo shifts has always been Coroner’s specialty, and if you can walk away from that stretch of absurdly cheery leads “Pale Sister” drops just before its halfway point without grinning like a devil, you just might be the un-funnest SOB swirling around the ol’ vortex. [CAPTAIN]

SPECTATORS OF SIN

Tom G. mother-f’n Warrior! As we discussed earlier, the former roadies recruited the Celtic Frost frontman for their 1986 demo Death Cult. With Thomas Gabriel behind the mic, it does sound like a more technical Celtic Frost at times—he even throws in his patented “OOGH”—but while there’s that glaring similarity, “Spectators of Sin” still sounds like Coroner. Sure, they were still fine-tuning their sound, leaving opportunities to unveil a plethora of surprises up their sleeves for the remainder of their career. But, man, this track sure does kick all kinds of ass, even if it is Coroner at their most primitive. It’s also yet another reminder of just how influential Celtic Frost was on the entire 80s extreme music scene. We owe a lot to those lads.

If you’re a die-hard Coroner fan, I’m sure you’ve heard this one. If not, well, you’re in for a treat. It won’t be the most groundbreaking thing you’ve heard this year, but it will be one of the coolest. The emergency response call ends in a “666” before that killer guitar tone drops in—legendary shit. [BLIZZARD OF JOZZSH]

FRIED ALIVE

Good morning, chowhounds, and welcome back to “He’s A Real Ham n’ Egger”, your FAVORITE reaction channel this side of the griddle. On this week’s edition, Isaac slurps down his first ever “Fried Alive” by Swiss tech thrash jumbos, Coroner! He’s buttering up the headphones right now – let’s tune in…

“Hmm. I swear I buttered up these cans…this track is desert dry. Oh well, as long as it rips. (audible, punchy bass lines) Hey! It rips! OK, so the Genius info says this is from their debut album released in 1987. Holy shit, 1987?! That’s…sick. Yeah, this is definitely sick. (time passes and Isaac’s gradually and continually distorts, slack-jawed and squinty-eyed) Wow, so I just hit about 2:50 in the track and they are going OFF. This is like…super technical but tasteful? Is it elegant? Leave it to the Swiss to make elegant, techy, tasteful thrash in goddamn 1987.” (classic thrash punch-out finish and gang vocal teabag).

“Well, yeah. I was expecting greasy but this, fellas, was FIRE. Plenty of groove changes and technicality without sacrificing the bone-headed fisticuffs of your average thrash group. Yeah, I’d eat at Coroner again. This one gets 4/5 coffee-stained napkins. LIKESHARESUBSCRIBE.” [ISAAC HAMS]

READ MY SCARS

The first ten seconds or so of “Read My Scars” feels like a horror movie scene to me. Jolting, percussive riffs split by silence that feels longer than it is. Like flashes of a silver edge against the shadowy shapes of a midnight alley, a wet toothy grin there then gone. That’s a good lot of the song’s charm, actually, how it plays to those base emotions the way a soundtrack can.

There’s just so much suspense throughout, from those opening seconds to the wailing guitar line presaging Ron Royce’s opening words, “My cries echo on a naked wall.” Frenetic riffs and drums alternating between sharp strikes and rolling volleys symbolize the conflict behind the harrowed figure’s hands on the album cover.

The solo section is the song’s centerpiece and it is remarkable, just an incredible musical portrayal of manic maelstrom, what it might feel like for that paranoid schizophrenic trying desperately to keep it all together, to keep us safe from him. There is a very slight resolution, though it’s still chaotic, tenuously held. Uh-oh, here comes the pain.

Of course, we find comfort in making entertainment of such experiences, distancing ourselves from the fear it might happen to us, but heavy metal relates more honestly than a lot of communities and “Read My Scars” is a great example. [LONE WATIE]

INTERNAL CONFLICTS

Coroner’s Grin, their “final album” until they finally release another this fall (we think), represented both an evolution and devolution of their sound. The riffs were less complex and the thrashing subdued compared to earlier records in favor of something far groovier, but the time signature trickery and general proginess in the song structures was as prevalent as ever. There’s a reason it’s a little divisive among fans.

But, it definitely has its fans (hello) and more than a few standout tracks. One of these is “Internal Conflicts,” which succeeds largely by being a song of contrasts. It’s a huge slab of groovy riffs, driving (and sometimes tricky) rhythms, Tommy T. Baron shred, and Ron Royce vocal vitriol, but it’s in how it combines all these things that it rises to greatness. It uses repetition as a tool, but because it features crescendos and dynamic shifts, never quite fully repeats itself. Some passages give extra space and atmosphere for Baron’s soloing, but others are made extremely knotty and heavy by Marquis Marky’s relentless drumming and those little extra rhythmic touches. And yes, it features infectious groove riffs that would make Pantera jealous, but it also manages to stay true to Coroner’s progressive sensibilities through its complex structure. Not even a touch of jumpdafucup could erase Coroner’s sophistication. [ZACH DUVALL]

MASKED JACKAL

“Masked Jackal” from 1988’s Punishment for Decadence tells the tale of a demagogue peddling false promises to gain power. “Worshiped By The Masses, Leader With Ulterior Motives” goes the chorus, and I think it’s fair to call such a tale timeless. Coroner’s tale, at least, has a happy ending, with the leader being shot to death on live television.

The frenetic nature of thrash doesn’t always make it best suited to conjuring a sinister vibe, but Coroner does yeoman’s work accompanying this sinister tale with complimentary music. A set of riffs not-exactly mid-paced, but restrained by Coroner’s standards begins the tune: a driving and insistent pulse interspersed with undulating melody. Though the tempo may be relatively moderate, the band’s trademark combination of precision and intensity is still evident: there is very little breathing room between notes, and riff transitions are quick and seamless.

Of course, a band like Coroner can only be reined in for so long, and so it is no surprise that the band cuts loose in “Masked Jackal’s” mid-section with not one, but two immaculate solos from Tommy T. Baron. The song then reaches its climax at 3:04 with a melodic riff so fast and furious it would give Yngwie Malmsteen sore fingers. One could say the band was showing off, but why listen to Coroner if not to be dazzled?

In the end “Masked Jackal” succeeds for all the typical reasons that a coroner song succeeds: grim, thought-provoking lyrics, clever composition, and absolutely brilliant playing executed with blistering intensity. [JEREMY MORSE]

SEMTEX REVOLUTION

Look, here’s a silly and unscientific way to think about Coroner: album length. R.I.P. came in just under 40 minutes: long enough to settle into a statement but not long enough to linger. Punishment and Color each trimmed things down to a tight and savage 34-35 minutes. With Mental Vortex, Coroner started to stretch, and get (perhaps self-consciously) serious. Then with Grin, we’ve ballooned out to nearly an hour. Like I said: silly, right? This doesn’t automatically tell us anything. And yet, and yet…

Anyway, hello: “Semtex Revolution”! The short version: it kicks ass! The slightly longer: the year is 1991, and although we know Coroner is not a death metal band, the warm-toned funk moves that they heave and push against their otherwise woozy staccato tech-thrash means it kinda makes sense to notice that, hey, this was swimming in the same stream as Unquestionable Presence, Human, and Testimony of the Ancients. If you sit and dissect the structure of the song, even though it A-B-A-Bs itself seemingly halfway through the alphabet, it all flows with an internal logic that you can recognize even if you can’t precisely name it. Best of all might be a gorgeous and unexpectedly elongated guitar solo in the midsection, but it’s so nestled in tasteful acoustics, nervy rhythm work, punchy shout-along verses, and a feeling of hairpin dread that no single piece eclipses another. Hell of a band, hell of a song. [DAN OBSTKRIEG]

DIE BY MY HAND

Let’s start off bold, kids: “Die By My Hand” is not only one of Coroner’s best songs, it’s one of the best thrash metal songs ever written, by anyone at any time anywhere. The opening number to Coroner’s third album (the middle in their trilogy of solid-10/10 tech-thrash killers, 1989’s blistering No More Color), “Die By My Hand” is a perfect summation of the power of this Swiss trio, all technical riffing atop a rhythmic interplay so tightly wound that it feels less intricate than it really is. Vetterli and Royce weave spiralling runs atop Marky’s primal rhythms, building from a rolling tom and bass intro, and all of it spins up into that instant-hook chorus, damned near impossible not to shout along with, custom-made for fists in the air. That chunky slashing verse riff is irresistible, and Vetterli’s lead break is impressive, and the whole of it is top-tier… but it’s really always all about that chorus, the stabbing high notes bolstering Royce’s Tom G. Warrior-esque snarl… Sing it with me now “Die! By! My! Hand!” And that’s why this is one of the best thrash metal songs ever written by anyone at any time anywhere. [ANDREW EDMUNDS]

The post A Devil’s Dozen – Coroner appeared first on Last Rites.

Turnover is more often than not an Achilles’ heel for bands that leads to a downfall or at least inconsistent quality across a discography. Somehow, these gore fiends have managed to take every exit and turn it into an upgrade across 16 albums. After three releases of some of the most depraved tunes available at the time, guitarist Bob Rusay leaves? No problem, Rob Barrett can come in to help them craft one of their most approachable and commercially successful albums in The Bleeding that yielded live staples still played at every show today. Rob’s not feeling it after two albums? Take a break, my friend, we’ll just bring in Pat O’Brien to significantly push the band’s technical chops. Guitarist Jack Owen is burned out and decides to light a fresh fire under Deicide’s flame-licked butt with The Stench Of Redemption, enjoy yourself; we’ll bring Barrett back because he’s smart enough to know when he’s made a mistake and is ready to create some of the best hooks the band has ever written while igniting their strongest run of albums to date. O’Brien experiences a mental crisis? That’s unfortunate, but luckily, our go-to producer and long-time pal Erik Rutan has worked with roughly half of the entirety of death metal while playing with Morbid Angel, Ripping Corpse, and Hate Eternal. I guess he might be alright as a full-time member.

The most obvious change, of course, happened when Cannibal Corpse parted ways with original vocalist Chris Barnes in 1995. Barnes had been one of the originators of the super-guttural vocals that would become standard for the genre, had penned what remain some of the gnarliest lyrics in the game and had established himself as the face of the band. To replace someone of that caliber is no small feat. Rather than find the next best grunter, however, the mad lads poached George “Corpsegrinder” Fisher from Monstrosity in what would be their strongest move. Fisher’s speed, clarity, and more varied approach to vocals opened the door for the band to create more complicated songs and riffs while ratcheting up the intensity tenfold. It also doesn’t hurt that Corpsegrinder helps them beat the real-world murderer allegations by being the most likable dad in death metal whose obsession with claw machines is nothing but charming.

Barnes deserves a lot of credit for creating the horror vignette path the band would stick to even today, but by turning over lyrics to the wider band, they’ve wisely moved away from his sometimes dubiously misogynistic approach. That has also created a much greater variety of topics and allowed the band to lean into the absurd, such as using the heads of dead victims to clobber the next one to death (“Severed Head Stoning”) or even endeavor to let men get their comeuppance on occasion with tracks like “Blunt Force Castration.” Sure, a song’s victim will still be female from time to time, but more often than not, those being killed in bizarre and absurd ways are genderless, or a song simply focuses on some sort of evil entity. More tracks about burying people wrapped in someone else’s flesh (“Cerements Of The Flayed”), the general decomposition process (“Dormant Bodies Bursting”), or having back problems (“The Spinesplitter”), please!

The other vital rarity that has helped Cannibal Corpse stand out among their peers is the striking visuals they’ve gotten from artist Vincent Locke. These two have the perfect symbiotic relationship not unlike that once shared by Derek Riggs and Iron Maiden. There’s no chance Cannibal Corpse reaches the heights they have without covers like the ones from the first three records, grabbing the attention of nervous teenage metalheads in the record bin and convincing them to make a buy without having heard a note. Similarly, I can’t imagine Locke has even close to the recognition or career he’s had without getting the steady work of album covers every few years and an endless slew of t-shirt designs for all the years in between. A skeleton ripping its own guts out, a weird fish monster bursting out of a pregnant lady, zombie doctors surrounded by dangling babies and so much more epitomize death metal as a visual art form.

Ultimately, the 13 songs chosen below are going to fall short for you. It’s not because the ones selected aren’t deserving of their spot, but simply because reducing a discography that boasts nearly 200 original songs to 13 is a silly endeavor. With that many songs, every fan will have different favorites and even getting our small team aligned was no easy task. With 16 albums under their belt, we can’t even give each one its proper due. So, dear reader, we hope you enjoy what you read and that this may inspire you to binge one of the best discographies in death metal just so you can tell us how wrong we are. Hit play, get hammered and try not to smash your face! [SPENCER HOTZ]

THE TIME TO KILL IS NOW

KIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIILLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL!!!!!!!!!!!

Two minutes and three seconds. That’s all it takes for Cannibal Corpse to make an absolutely perfect mission statement on Kill. It’s possibly the most devastating and relentless song on a particularly devastating and relentless album, even by the very devastating and relentless standards of this band. Everything about this song wants to see you dead and flattened. The riffs are either buzzing technicality or brutal heft. The solo is a blur of maniacal shred. The tempo and drive are determined.

But this is Corpsegrinder’s show.

TIME TO GEORGE IS NOW
TIME TO GEORGE IS NOW

His rapid fire, unyielding delivery is the stuff of which legends are made, even for a dude that was already several albums into a very Death Metal Hall of Fame career. This is the type of shit that young headbangers absolutely dare their friends to try and laugh hysterically when they fumble over lyrics just three lines in. It’s as if the technical wizards playing instruments in Cannibal Corpse are working to keep up with their vocalist, as opposed to the other way around, and it’s all within the album’s very brief opener. The forty minutes and five seconds that follow this lightspeed bulldozer of a song all destroy, but their lethality is inexorably shaped by the bludgeoning the listener receives at the hands of this, one of the most perfect openers in death metal history.

THETIMETOKILLISMOTHERFUCKINGNOW

You are dead. Enjoy Kill, you pile of hammered viscera. [ZACH DUVALL]

DECENCY DEFIED

Sure, it’s all “Decency Defied” until someone wants to write about “Stripped, Raped and Strangled,” but here we are. Still, the former highlights latter-era Cannibal’s ability to whip the hooks deep into the flesh and let them fester. It’s got to be one of the most infectious songs in death metal: It just does everything right to make it stick in the skull.

It’s so fucking stupid anyone with half a brain left after getting sideswiped in the noggin by a snowplow could pick up on its cues, but that’s exactly why its brilliant. It’s still got the Cannibal chops of the latter era in the chunks of meat that slap across the face, but Corpsegrinder’s vocal delivery makes it work on an almost primal and instinctual level. I can still remember the first time I heard the song, and felt like I knew the (surprisingly decipherable) words as I was hearing them. Its pulverizing mid-pace almost betrays its intensity, and, even lyrical content aside, it’s still one hell of a brutal tune for how catchy it is.

The little breaks and chops and shifts that betray latter Cannibal’s desire for technical proclivities stand little chance in the way of getting “Decency Defied” getting stuck in your head for a week. It works because they aren’t dumbing themselves down. It sounds like they’re still writing material that is fun and challenging for them to play together as a group–fact is, they’re dumbing you down. [RYAN TYSINGER]

DEVOURED BY VERMIN

Did you think we weren’t going to include the song that acted as Corpsegrinder’s introduction to the Corpse faithful? Fans knew Barnes was out but had received no information or sample of what the new guy sounded like. It seemed like a safe bet they would try to get someone who would match Barnes, but boy howdy, did this song immediately dispel that notion.

Four quick, solitary hits of the drum and an unholy, piercing scream kicks in unlike anything Barnes could ever be even remotely capable of. It’s also not the only one, as he unleashes a pained shriek later on before a hideous couple of leads. Every element of the song sounds like they put something from Butchered At Birth on fast-forward. They had moved on from the radio-format structures and approachability of The Bleeding and made everything more ravenous. You still couldn’t understand most of what was being said, but that wasn’t because it was unintelligible Cookie Monsterisms; it was flying at your brain too fast to process.

That speed was also already hinting at the increase in technicality the band would be leaning into now that Corpsegrinder had unlocked a new gear. Granted, the slowed break about halfway through the song is so much more brutal because of how unhinged everything else was before it. They simply could not have chosen a better song to announce the new era of Cannibal Corpse in 1996. [SPENCER HOTZ]

SCOURGE OF IRON

Back in the day, I used to watch this VH1 show simply deemed Classic Albums. One episode I remember vividly centered on Metallica’s self-titled, affectionately known as The Black Album. One interviewee described “Sad but True” as music for “pulling out your teeth.” The anecdote was used to recall a moment when they were prepared to undergo a dental procedure, and just as the anesthesiologist placed the IV into their arm, they heard the main riff from the song ringing in the background. Of course, this is a loving nod to the iconic brooding tune—often regarded as the first ‘Tallica song tuned a whole step down.

If “Sad but True” is music for extracting teeth, Cannibal Corpse’s “Scourge of Iron” is music for amputating limbs. From the moment that tremolo riff kicks in over Paul’s rolling work behind the kit to launch the near-five-minutes of absolute mid-paced death metal greatness, it was evident the song was made for the stage—both anthemic and true to what makes them the most iconic death metal band of all time. Cannibal Corpse has always had this phenomenal ability to intertwine heaviness and catchiness. Here, the riffs are grooving, George’s vocals are devastating and simply sound like a battle cry on a march into the depths of hell.

In terms of their best songs in the post-Barnes era, “Scourge of Iron” is at least sitting in the top five, and I wouldn’t blame you if you put it at No. 1. Depending on the day, I might even throw it atop their discography. [BLIZZARD OF JOZZSH]

PULVERIZED

My introduction to Cannibal Corpse was not a particularly auspicious one. I remember reading a review of Butchered or maybe Tomb – can’t recall which one now, and it doesn’t really matter – but the review savaged it pretty seriously, something to the effect of “this is stupid music for kids in trailer parks who think Faces Of Death is cool” or whatever. That wasn’t me, so I didn’t bother to spend my allowance on whichever Cannibal Corpse cassettes I ran across. (The fact that, in the mall record stores of the South, all I ever saw were the censored covers didn’t help sell me anything, either.)

And then I actually heard some Cannibal Corpse, and I was intrigued. All that to say: The Bleeding was the first new Cannibal Corpse album after I decided that maybe they weren’t so stupid, after all, and to some extent, where my Cannibal Corpse journey begins, as I moved forward with them and backward to the ones I’d ignored. As an entry point, The Bleeding was actually a pretty good place to avoid the stupid tag applied by that forgotten reviewer before – by then, they’d sharpened themselves into a much tighter machine than earlier; they were still well past the line of good taste (and there are some songs on this record that are lyrically… problematic, it’s true), but they sanded down some of the rougher edges musically, made a more accessible record (although that’s a relative term, remember), and Chris Barnes turned in both his best and final vocal performance before being ousted in favor of Corpsegrinder.

Of all The Bleeding’s ten tracks, “Pulverized” is my favorite, its title an accurate descriptor of the results of its impact. Webster and Owen handed in some blistering tremolo riffs and that churning chorus section – Webster’s bass is particularly punchy, almost bouncy at times, while Mazurkiewicz hammers along beneath. When the song downshifts halfway through into that skittering, pinch-harmonic-tipped midsection, it’s only the briefest of respites before it all kicks back in, just a breath before the final hammer swings down. Three minutes and thirty seconds of classic death metal that will leave you exactly as it says it will. [ANDREW EDMUNDS]

INHUMANE HARVEST

Hello, boys and girls. Do you like them heavy? I mean really goddamn hefty hefty hefty? The Corpse is here to oblige. The Rob Barrett-penned “Inhumane Harvest,” off of 2021’s Violence Unimagined, is a blunt force assault that starts out heavier than an anvil aimed at Daffy Duck’s noggin and just keeps getting thicker. Sure, that buzzsaw opening hints at Corpse’s more technical side, but before long a serious chonker of a riff pattern backs up the verse…

…Then the verse just keeps getting heavier, chunkier, and blunter in its impact as Corpsegrinder spews lyrics about harvesting every last body part before the victim is even killed (“EVERYTHING MUST GO!”). The chorus isn’t about to get beat either, with a descending arpeggiated riff pattern supporting seriously thick George growls. It’s pretty easy to only talk about how ungodly heavy this song is, but in truth it’s a showcase for the whole band, not the least of which Paul Mazurkiewicz’s double-kick-heavy drumming and how he really amplifies just how heavy this song is.

Okay, let’s just stick with the heft, which only increases with the bridge (oh lord he coming). Slower, heavier, meaner, more demented, weightier than a Jovian moon, and perfect for a pair of wild solos from Barrett and Erik Rutan. Listen, enjoy, be flattened. [ZACH DUVALL]

AS DEEP AS THE KNIFE WILL GO

If you know this song, there’s a good chance you read that title and immediately heard the descending chug that happens after the second time Corpsegrinder belts it out during the chorus. Before we get there, though, the song immediately batters you with an absolutely thunderous opening. That little bit of open space with the high-hat tapping in the verses that act as a preamble to the chorus is a chef’s kiss decision. A bridge with some repeated squiggly notes, more rhythmic assaults accompanied by shrieks of “BLEED IT DRY, BLEED IT DRY,” followed by a nifty little lead, and you have yourself a gold medal winner on your hands. Doesn’t hurt that this masterpiece also happens to close out the greatest three-song run in Cannibal Corpse’s career.

I don’t need a knife in the gut to experience a life-changing transfer of power because that’s what I feel every time this song comes on! [SPENCER HOTZ]

PIT OF ZOMBIES

The year is 2002. Cannibal Corpse had finally won me over with Bloodthirst and for the first time I’m anxiously awaiting the release of Gore Obsessed. The band did not disappoint, delivering not just a worthy follow up, but an album that would emphatically establish the new regime and wipe the last remaining drops of Chris Barnes’s name from the lips of even the most stubborn fans. Press around the album played up an ungodly 14-second Corpsegrinder scream on “Mutation of the Cadaver,” and the legions new and old quickly swarmed around “Hatchet to the Head” as a brutallic battle cry, but it was “Pit of Zombies” that would soon worm itself deepest into our brains and their setlists.

Man, zombies used to be cool. Macabre staples of the horror and death metal genres. Few bands were better suited to tackle the bloody zombie apocalypse like Cannibal Corpse. Pummeling riffs and pounding rhythm put you right there next to our poor victim, while Corpsegrinder narrates their immediate – and your pending – fate:

They claw at my face
and rip off my scalp
Exposing my skull
Arteries severed
Gushing blood showers them
Drives them mad
Raging mob
A hideous feast

One can almost… DAMNIT STOP HEADBANGING AND GROWLING ALONG TO YOUR DEMISE, YOU FOOL! Just like a Hollywood horror film…no survival instincts. You’d probably hide behind that curtain of chainsaws, too. But…I digress.

Chris would have found some way to turn this into a schlockfest more befitting the modern day zombie culture of bar crawls and cutesy puzzle games that makes Zombie Nightmare look like Night of the Living Dead. This era of the band took an almost disturbing turn towards realistic, visceral imagery. It was no longer about how much blood they could spill – it was about how red (and black, maybe even green) they could make it. [DAVE PIRTLE]

THE WRETCHED SPAWN

Title tracks, amirite? Some bands put ‘em right at the top of the album. Other times, maybe drop it midway for a recalibration. Possibly you close things out with a final curtain-call elbow to the giblets. Point is, when I see a title track I’m seeing a band tell me to pay some goddamned attention.

Hi, hello, do you like Cannibal Corpse? If you do not, you have found yourself in a very strange place today. Regardless of your deep personal failings, you have likely noticed that “The Wretched Spawn,” from 2004’s The Wretched Spawn, is a title track. It literally tracks the title! As a band with many title tracks, Cannibal Corpse has given itself some fierce competition, but for my viscera-sodden money, this one is the best. (It’s a lucky technicality that “The Time to Kill is Now” doesn’t quite count, because, y’know…)

“The Wretched Spawn” does one of those fantastically gooey things that Corpse does so well, which is to ease off the gas after a spastic set of short tunes and dig into a greasy nastiness that goes so lowdown it’s like a subwoofer on the Titanic. The song’s main riff/motif is a dirge-paced doomer that feels like a ball-swinging groove until you get knocked repeatedly off-kilter by its woozy punctuation. It’s a bit like a verrrrrry specific kind of mullet: Nile-business in the front, Pantera-party in the back. Halfway through it takes off into a two-step sprint but even that is just a brief feint, a quick flurry of blows before we get back to the grinding churn. Oh, and does Alex Webster’s bass run the board like liquid mercury down a sewer grate? Oh, and are there notable vocal crescendos? Oh, and is there a Jack Owen solo so squiggly it sounds like it’s being played by a fork jammed into an electrical outlet?

“IT / WAS / MADE / TO / KIIIIIIILLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL.” (That’s Cannibal Corpse for, “yes please and thank you.”) [DAN OBSTKRIEG]

UNLEASHING THE BLOODTHIRSTY

What is it with Cannibal Corpse and placing absolute bangers at track No. 3? “Scourge of Iron,” “Sentenced to Burn,” “Pit of Zombies”—they’re all batting third. Anyways, “Unleashing the Bloodthirsty” is also track No. 3, on the classic Bloodthirst. Much like “Scourge of Iron,” there’s a pummeling nature to “Unleashing the Bloodthirsty.” For its majority, it sits at a more mid tempo but is still pulverizing. Regarding George’s vocal delivery, it’s some of my favorite work from him behind the mic, featuring some of his most iconic moments.

BlOOOOOOOD
THEYYYYYYYY LIVEEEEEEEEE, THEY THIRSTTTTTTTT
BlOOOOOOOD

Of course, how could you not love those intertwined quick, grooving breakdowns before jumping back into absolute chaos? I’ve always thought those pinch harmonics were the sonic equivalent of a panic attack, too. Beautiful stuff from these fine gentlemen. [BLIZZARD OF JOZZSH]

FROM SKIN TO LIQUID

Who did it better? Was it Barnes’ rabid animalistic style or Corpsegrinder’s massive esophagus? Who cares when you have an instrumental this good?! Perhaps a bit odd to be an all-time favorite from a band like Cannibal Corpse, but good lord this tune gets me every time. The centerpiece of the band’s most sinister album, it plays out like reaching the top of the highest tower in the fortress of depravity featured on the censored version of the album cover. The drums plod away, like taking a dreaded, heavy step up the spiraled staircases. The guitars twist ever-so-slowly like thumb screws on every finger, the pinch harmonics screaming out like tortured wails as the breaking point of pain is achieved. The warbles of the whammy bar cut unevenly, like a serrated knife slowly tearing the flesh until a full blood eagle is achieved and a monument to horrific pain remains where the human form once stood. Webster’s bass creeps along, like a fresh nightmare lurking in the shadows ready to inflict new and unprecedented terrors.

As good as the bells and whistles are, the real organs exposed in the song are revealed in its pacing–its so. fucking. heavy. It’s like a twisted take on “Black Sabbath” in that it wouldn’t be nearly as terrifying if there was less room to breathe. Plenty of bands try to induce nightmares by being fast and claustrophobic, but Cannibal drive the nail home the olde way–letting the fear build and the anticipation of terror get the blood racing and ripe to be splattered. They don’t have any others quite like it, and understandably so. They executed it flawlessly the first time.

A SKULL FULL OF MAGGOTS

Even though it’s not all that indicative of the true Cannibal sound, especially now three-and-a-half decades removed, there are more days than not when I’d hold up Eaten Back To Life as my favorite Cannibal Corpse album. Straddling that line between ferocious thrash and the then-new madness of death metal, Eaten Back is a snapshot of a young band finding their feet, and as such, looking back on it now compared to would come after, it’s possessed with a certain rawness and inchoate aggression that would be sharpened, expanded on, and intensified as the band changed. But there’s something in that rawness, a spirit or a spark, some youthful exuberance at pushing the boundaries of both heaviness and good taste, and it bridges that gap between what had been, what was, and what would come.

And now here’s the part where our intrepid hero tries to say something truly profound about a song titled “A Skull Full Of Maggots”… and you know what? Profundity can pound sand, at least for now. “A Skull Full Of Maggots” is awesome, not because of what it might mean or what it might say, but because of what it is and what it does say. In that order, those are this: It’s a kick-ass example of the earliest days of death, when thrash metal was ratcheted up past its breaking point and into the next level, and also it says ‘maggots,’ and it says it, like, a lot. We’re not just talking a few maggots. We’re talking a massive amount of maggots, a whole lotta maggots. A whole skull full of them, in fact, and it’s almost scientific fact that your skull might be full of maggots if you don’t like this. And it’s equally likely that your skull will be, after hearing it for the first time, once that razor-wire descending riff kicks in, and the careening-right-upon-the-edge-of-chaos punch of Paul Mazurkiewicz’s drums hammers that smashing lack of profundity right through your face. Don’t waste time thinking about it – just get with the maggots, maggots. [ANDREW EDMUNDS]

HAMMER SMASHED FACE

Before the die-hards obliterate this installment of the Devil’s Dozen for throwing this song on the list, let me say: “Hammer Smashed Face” isn’t the toast of Cannibal Corpse’s catalogue—we get it! But to leave it completely off would be malpractice, and let me tell you, we’re keen on putting our metal doctorates to good use for the foreseeable future here at the Last Rites headquarters.

Without “Hammer Smashed Face,” would death metal be where it is today? I don’t know—I’m not big into what ifs. But I do know that crossing over into the mainstream didn’t hurt. I mean, the song made its way into Hollywood by way of 1994’s Ace Ventura: Pet Detective. EVER HEARD OF IT?! Hell, audiences were even forced to watch it performed in all its glory thanks to the blockbuster film. And rumor has it, Jim Carrey is/was a big fan.

While it may be death metal’s “Enter Sandman,” that intro riff and Alex’s bassline are enough to keep me coming back. At this point, you’ve heard it, and if not, what are you doing here? Nonetheless, “Hammer Smashed Face” has reached legendary status. What more is there to say? [BLIZZARD OF JOZZSH]

The post A Devil’s Dozen – Cannibal Corpse appeared first on Last Rites.

Kicking off a piece lovingly dedicated to Defeated Sanity with what looks like a modest slight ain’t exactly the smartest move, but it does set the stage for the following curious truth: What Defeated Sanity delivers… it’s a lot to absorb at first blush, and It’s honestly akin to suddenly sticking your face into a blowing fire hydrant. There are viable gripping points here and there, mind you, but the brutality is enough of a landslide that even seasoned vets who grew up addicted to the early US scenes in Florida and NY might struggle to absorb the full gist amidst opening bouts. And for anyone with little-to-no previous death metal experience? You might as well be listening to an active car crusher vehemently chewing through a ’73 LaBaron.

Suffice to say, initial exposure to Defeated Sanity should include some sort of avalanche warning, and finally cracking that seal and diving in is a bit like opening Poundora’s Box: The pummel spirits are now freeeeee! OH SHIT, THE PUMMEL SPIRITS ARE NOW FREE.

“But, like, isn’t that basically the plan for all brutal death metal bands,” asked the enlightened champion draped in a three-piece Devourment suit.

Yes. Yes, of course it is. But Defeated Sanity finds unique ways to stand out and ensure each album brings something new to the plate. Much of that is planned, fortunately, but some of it is a result of… well, unforeseen obstacles such as having six different vocalists spread across six full-lengths.

Lille und Wolfgang

Currently, drummer extraordinaire Lille Gruber is the only recurring DS force from day one, having started the band WITH HIS FATHER, Wolfgang Teske, who somehow found a way of getting interested in the extremest of extreme metal after spending a significant portion of his life playing drums and guitar for various early psych / jazz-fusion / krautrock acts such as Muck Grohbian, Grotesk, Skipjack, et al. Father and son were a force to be reckoned with across the opening bout of Prelude to a Tragedy (2004) and its follow-up, Psalms for the Moribund (2007), but Teske soon realized that Defeated Sanity was getting more serious and more and more technical, so he bowed out in 2008 and became joyful spectator. The split was, of course, completely amicable, but very unfortunately, Teske succumbed to cancer complications at age 57 just two years after stepping away from the band.

Lille Gruber soldiered forward, and outside of the revolving door for vocalists, Defeated Sanity found a level of stability across multiple releases as bassist Jacob Schmidt and guitarist Christian Kühn settled into permanent roles, which subsequently allowed the band’s sound to evolve more into its own identity. The influence of outfits such as Suffo and Disgorge were purposely bold-faced for the earliest DS model, and it will likely always be there, but a crucial record like 2013’s Passages into Deformity shifted into something so Floridian it might as well have been classified as an even more brutal embodiment of the whirlwind debut from Deicide. From there, things got heavier (how is that possible) and proggier, manifested rather creatively via 2016’s yin-yanged Disposal of the Dead // Dharmata that pitted a side A whose gravitational pull could challenge Jupiter (and win) against a side B that delivered the closest thing Defeated Sanity has ever come to the fusion explosion of Cynic’s pivotal Focus.

Alas, ye olde membership woes reared its unfortunate head in May of 2019, when longtime guitarist Christian Kühn and Defeated Sanity amicably parted ways. A new vocalist also joined the ranks, which was of course nothing new, but without the prospect of a suitable guitarist, Gruber was forced to add the riffing role to his resume for 2020’s triumphant The Sanguinary Impetus, a record that took the two worlds explored through the 2016 split and masterfully fused them into one beautifully curved monstrosity. Big surprise: Gruber’s riff aptitude proved to nearly rival his flailing ability, but adding to Sanguinary’s overall windfall was the additional guitar shenanigan contributions from guests such as Collin Marston (Krallice, Behold the Arctopus, and nearly every other band from the U, S and A), Justin Sakogawa (Splattered), and Dan Thornton (Novena).

As for the future and where Defeated Sanity opts to go moving forward? If I were a bettin’ man, which I’m really not, I’d wager they plan on focusing even more energy on exploiting that perfect balance between brutality and innovative fusion, and moreover manage to crack the code necessary to retain a single vocalist across multiple releases. Whatever ends up gurgling to the surface henceforth, I’m sure it will of course inspire our innards to suddenly become outtards, and it will throw a whole lotta notes and mountainous left hooks in every direction. Fortunately, a patient (and masochistic) set of ears really couldn’t ask for a more delectably brutal reward.

And with that, please enjoy the following guideline to having your brain rearranged by an alarmingly ferocious force. [CAPTAIN]

NARAKA

This may come as something of a shock, dear reader, but I have never had my ass kicked by Andre The Giant. Or by anyone, really, despite that I absolutely should have had my ass kicked by many people many times over many years, and by everyone within arm’s reach a few times.

I bring that up to say that I don’t really know what it’s like to have your ass kicked by Andre The Giant, but I would imagine it’s a bit like listening to Defeated Sanity, although I will also concede that my own already-silly metaphor is somewhat of a short-sell because it fails to account for the deft precision shifts and delicate jazzy influences that lurk just beneath the surface of Defeated Sanity’s incredibly impressive aggression. So maybe listening to Defeated Sanity is like… getting beaten up… by Andre The Giant… while he’s performing Swan Lake? Again, it’s conjecture here…

But imagine, then: Sheer heaviness, a sonic size that is beyond gigantic and undeniably pissed-off, perfectly executing twists and turns inside the barrage of body-shots, a dance of destruction in a intricately-arranged assault. Its sheer unrelenting aggression belies the subtle-but-noticeable beauty within its brutality, and that is both the whole of “Naraka” and of Defeated Sanity’s aesthetic as a whole.

Jacob Schmidt’s bass intro is the taunting before the beatdown, a quick flurry of a semi-melodic motif, the musical equivalent of slapping a glove across your enemy’s cheek to challenge him to a battle he cannot win. And then the whole band comes crashing down, Lille Gruber’s furious flurry of drums and Christian Kühn’s 20-ton riffs, chopping downstrokes alternating with spindly single-note runs. Settling into a series of world-crushing midsong grooves, “Naraka” outwardly displays little in the way of defined structure, but yet each of its myriad sidesteps is placed perfectly, the band in lockstep through five-minutes of one of the heaviest songs by one of the heaviest bands around. It’s not just a smackdown; it’s a performance, a thing of beauty. It’s goddamned art. [ANDREW EDMUNDS]

HIDEOUSLY DISEMBODIED

What makes “Hideously Disembodied” a standout track from 2007’s Psalm’s of the Moribund is not that it is the most brutal or the most chaotic song on an album full of brutal and chaotic songs, but rather that it is the album’s most straightforward composition. I should clarify that when I say that “Hideously Disembodied” is straightforward, I mean so strictly by Defeated Sanity standards, as by any reasonable standard, the track is not at all straightforward.

“Hideously Disembodied” begins as most Defeated Sanity songs do, with an immediate onslaught of precisely executed, but, chaotically structured brutality. After about a minute of this (by which time the band has already played three song’s worth of riffs), however, “Hideously Disembodied evolves into something significantly different. The tempo slows dramatically and the band adopts a slow, slam-death sort of groove. While this is approach is still relentlessly bludgeoning, the break from the group’s usual riff-cyclone is refreshing, if a tad jarring. Not surprisingly, the track explodes into to frantic violence again for a bit, recalling some of the riffs from the intro but, soon enough, it’s back to trudging, and the band sticks with it for a while this time, evolving the trudge into something almost atmospheric. Of course, Defeated Sanity can only restrain itself for so long, and so the band whips itself back into a properly furious maelstrom in the song’s finial minute, before a near seamless transition into “Butchered Identity”.

The lesson here, I suppose, is that there are no weaknesses in Defeated Sanity’s game; the band is mercilessly punishing at any tempo, in any meter, and at any degree of complexity. [JEREMY MORSE]

TORTURED EXISTENCE

Perhaps the most fun I’ve gotten out of the recent romp our little band of idiots have had with Defeated Sanity is torturing the existence of my poor editor by waiting until the very last minute to turn these blurbs in. From “What band are we doing again?” to “The intro is finished!” to “Glad we’re finally doing a Devil’s Dozen on Cannibal Corpse!” to “Whoops I accidentally deleted the entire article,” I did my very best to crush my well-meaning overlord’s spirit while having as much fun as possible. What can I say, there’s a gleeful sadism in the band’s music that brings out the absolute worst rapscallion in me.

As if I didn’t already know what to say about “Tortured Existence.” Want to know what about the band makes me feel like such a conniving, sassy little worm? Throw the song on at full blast. It’s off the debut, so it’s but a mere taste of what’s to come, yet such an irrefutable highlight of the band’s catalogue. It speaks (growls? smoulders?) as a furious statement of intent: Defeated Sanity want to pummel your body and your brain: the body with the Suffocation groove and twisted technical meat hooks of Cannibal Corpse, the brain with an instinctual feel for progressive mindfuckery that sneaks its way into the cranial mass like an undiscovered parasite.

“Tortured Existence” masterfully walks the tightrope between ignorant and intelligent. Brilliant riffcraft, cerebral moments (the backwards chanted vocals teased at the intro coming back around on the breakdown before the torturously brief solo providing emphasis to this point), coupled with on-a-dime changes that continually whip the ol’ attention span into shape barely works on paper. And yet, the song is the prime example of the band forcing a square peg through a round hole via the force of sheer, unbridled brutality. Were I given one tune to introduce a newcomer to the brain parasite of Defeated Sanity and leave them wondering “what the hell comes next?” this would be the one.

Zach, if you’re reading this (he is), I’m sorry! [RYAN TYSINGER]

ENGORGED WITH HUMILIATION

Let’s face it: we’ve all been there. The King has up and told you that you are to bring back 56 sacks of potatoes for the feast, and despite working your nubbins to the bones, you have only been able to muster up 55 sacks of taters. Sitting there in whatever year you’re reading this you would probably think that it’s no big deal. Overlords are flexible and after all, a sack of potatoes can’t hold more than 134 unblistered potatoes anyways. What’s a few hundred potatoes short. But you don’t know my sire, and you don’t know my life. For each sack of potatoes I’m short, he will remove at least one finger and probably one toe from one of my children unless the daughter is of mating age at which point he will just take her entirely. Sure, there is a silver lining because it’s one less mouth to feed, but it’s a sure pain when my wives realize I went ahead and wasted one of their daughters with my insolent potato picking. Thus, it becomes I who am engorged with humiliation. And that’s why this song here is so powerful. Every time I hear it, I am reminded of my ineffectual work ethic, despite my more-than-sufficient bread ration and nearly lazy 19-hour work day.

As my sanity becomes defeated and the blinding pain of loss sears through my otherwise leprous body, this lovely little track creates the perfect accoutrement to my torture. As they are wont to do, the lovely folks in Defeated Sanity provide riffs that could toil away with the best serf in the field. Their drummer works harder than a gate sentry ready to pour hot oil over the heads of raging goblins trying to break into our keep. And sure, there’s a breakdown of sorts—in the world of Defeated Sanity, of course—but doesn’t everyone deserve a break? Doesn’t every good soldier have to jam a red hot poking iron into a wound on occasion? Of course he does. From the ripe age of 6 up until the old age of 31. In fact, this here song is so buttery and lovely I might just play it for the King in case he tries to take out my tongue.  [SIR WILLIAM OF UR-SAG]

CARNAL DELIVERANCE

It’s positively embarrassing that hundreds, maybe thousands of bands are out there trying to do the brutal technical death metal thing when Defeated Sanity already put out a tune like “Carnal Deliverance.” I imagine a lot of budding slammers were downright deflated the first time they heard this, much in the same way plenty of bands were back in ‘91 the first time “Infecting the Crypts” mashed their skulls to a fine powder. This track is incomprehensibly heavy and brutal. It takes under 15 seconds to arrive at one of its many slow, brutal breakdowns, demolishing the listener with the inexorable force of a hydraulic press, before beginning a back-and-force between the trudge and some flashy tech and blasts. Before long, the track does its best impression of a minigun (blasts aren’t supposed to be that fast, Lille), drops a lot of playful rhythmic tricks, uses cymbals to simulate glass breaking, and then somehow gets even heavier than it began.

Three minutes and eight seconds. That’s all it takes for Defeated Sanity to set a new standard for brutech devastation. The real kicker is that basically every tune on Chapters of Repugnance matches this track in this department, and the band upped their game even more on Passages into Deformity. But it’s hard to think of a better nugget of all encompassing destruction to play for a friend as an introduction to this band. Friends that slam together stay together. [ZACH DUVALL]

ENTITY DISSOLVING ENTITY

Last time I left you it was thirteen years prior and I was engorge in humiliation. Well, reader, you might not be surprised to find out that I am now a mostly dissolved entity. Thirteen years is near a lifetime in this kingdom and I’ve suffered the loss of multiple limbs and countless injuries. Don’t worry, though. We’ve got some of the best artisans in the county working on prosthetics, so my hands are potentially even better at scooping up potatoes in the field than they were when they were shaped like actual hands. I just can’t do many things aside from picking potatoes. Which is fine because that was most of my life anyways. But of course you don’t want to sit there in your throne reading about my rise into the high culture of peasantry.

What you probably do want to hear about is the necksnapping, arm crackling, finger polishing rhythms that Defeated Sanity drop here in the year 2020. And boy are those rhythms are swirling and twirling. This here tune starts out with a stoic beat like that we’d march to just before being ordered to charge headlong into a superior army. But as the drums race and the guitar, followed by the bass, play a nifty call to action, Defeated Sanity dives right into the chaotic and brutal metal for which they are not only known, but praised. They boil that rhythm into a snarling double dip of terrorous torture before adeptly backing it down to the mere chug of a guitar and some tom rolls, and then a furious gallop of guitar riffs. Again, what makes Defeated Sanity such a great and consistent band is not that they change constantly, but more what they keep the same — always building upon the same tried and tested strategies of battle. “Long Live the Kingdom of Hanover!” [SIR WILLIAM OF UR-SAG]

VERBLENDUNG

Imagine, for a moment, that you’re Paul Masvidal of the progressive metal band Cynic. It’s been a long day in the studio–at last, you’ve arrived home. You light some votives and incense, burn some sage, rinse yourself with cleansing moon water, and ponder your crystals before entering your meditation pod to unwind and re-align your chakras. Now imagine your terror as you realize a bunch of rowdy Germans have sealed you inside your sacral pod with blowtorches before going to town–battering its shell like a Saturday demolition derby matinee, warping its structural integrity and disrupting its very sacred geometry with a curated selection of sledgehammers and ball-peens of varying sizes and weights. 

That’s essentially what “Verblendung” sounds like–a variety of riffhammers from delivered from rapid punctuated attacks to total slamming weight that does some serious damage to the fluid, instinctual form of the bass lines. Of course, this isn’t nearly enough to destroy all semblance of sanity, so, for good measure (at around the two-minute mark), Defeated Sanity load the spiritual vessel into a colossal trebuchet with one hell of a breakdown. You can feel every groan of effort, every muscle bulging under strain of the labored groove as they load the catapult and, at the “environment turns into inferno!” command, launch the pod (and poor Paul) into the nearest mountain range, triggering an avalanche that twists, crushes, and maims every bit of progressive, ethereal lucidity to a pulp.

Paul, if you’re reading this (he’s not) I’m sorry! [RYAN TYSINGER]

PROPELLED INTO SACRILEGE

First of all, let’s all step back and appreciate the song title “Propelled into Sacrilege.” Let’s go even one further and take it literally. People are being propelled into sacrilege. Heaved into heresy. Impelled into impiety. Blasted into blasphemy. Accelerated into antichristendom. You get the picture. Whether it’s being dropped into the snakepit in Conan the Barbarian, the Event Horizon hitting warpspeed to hell, or some of the mean things people are doing to Koroks in 2023, there’s ACTION involved. Fun!

But hey, this tune… it’s a whopper. The Sanguinary Impetus saw Defeated Sanity indulging their jazz side more than any release except the intentionally Atheistic Dharmata, and “Propelled into Sacrilege” manages to push the mix of sophisticated noodling and inhuman brutality to a new limit. The beginning is a mind bending whirlwind of buzzing technicality, bludgeoning impacts, and Jacob Schmidt’s ever bubbly, mobile bass. When the verse arrives, it manages to achieve a real churn despite lots of elements threatening to break the sound barrier.

This is all impressive, but where the song wins is where Defeated Sanity often leaves their peers: the songcraft. One of the coolest tricks in “Propelled into Sacrilege” is when the band achieves almost an implied slam, setting it up as you would expect, and adding some typical slam rhythms while sticking to a total cacophony of notes. Only after this do they do the real mosh part, which again they take up a level with a real nutty “bee sting” hook, creating an effect that is as infectious as it is devastating. Get launched to the leviathan, or something. [ZACH DUVALL]

THE MESMERIZING LIGHT

The whole of the Disposal Of The Dead // Dharmata concept and execution is amazing, on several levels, between the “it’s two EPs!” idea and then the fact that the second of those two – Dharmata, from which “The Mesmerizing Light” is taken – is a total sideways turn into an early-90s-styled progressive death metal that eschews Defeated Sanity’s signature spinebreaking crush in favor of cleaner tones, tremolo riffs interwoven with jazzier breakdowns, midrange vocals that are clearly made by a human, a less-than-oppressive mix. Surely, if you’re a band on the creative plane that Defeated Sanity was on after the run of Psalms / Chapters / Passages, then you wouldn’t just change your sound entirely… would you?

But what’s craziest about Dharmata is that not only did these wacky German fellows do something completely different… they did it brilliantly.

Clean chords and arpeggios, a bouncy bass beneath, spacey delays… “The Mesmerizing Light” opens like it fell from Cynic’s writing sessions circa Focus, and then slides through Atheist-esque riffery and then a further step over into a sound not far from later-day Death. The riffs spin and circle; the rhythms are syncopated, a swirling barrage of drum hits and cymbal pings, jazzy and jaunty and yet still very much made from metal. Guest vocalist Max Phelps has his Schuldiner-ian bark down pat, an entirely different style from the typical Defeated Sanity grunted growls, and yet, absolutely the perfect voice for this song. But really, as with all Defeated Sanity, it’s the interlocking weaves of Kühn’s guitars and Schmidt’s bass and in the dance they do with Gruber’s jawdropping percussive performances… in there, in that middle ground, that’s where it’s truly mesmerizing. [ANDREW EDMUNDS]

PERSPECTIVES

As I alluded to up there for the intro to this piece, my favorite element attached to 2013’s Passages into Deformity relates to how the album so successfully incorporates the Tampa, FL death metal scene from around 1990 into the Defeated Sanity blueprint. Crank this rascal to ear-splitting levels on your stereo and I absolutely 100% guarantee a spectral version of Steve Asheim in jogging shorts and a Budweiser t-shirt will drift into the room as if by magic, and with him will come an occult bong and Scott Burns with a wide selection of Dunkaroos for everyone to enjoy. In light of this, it stands to reason that one can expect to have their face totally rearranged by an endless assault of high-velocity riffs forged from a razored thrash outline, as well as an abundance of wholly relentless drumming and vocals that sound like a 700lb ogre trying to get an old and very stubborn lawnmower started. Game, set and match, Mr. Sampras! Why did you never wear Defeated Sanity sweatpants to Wimbledon?

For its part, “Perspectives” delivers the longest song on the record, which means it’s either a ballad (wouldn’t that just be grand), contains some sort of “atmospheric stretch,” or allows for a lil proggy adventuring. It’s the latter, heroically, as the song really starts flappa-diddle-biggly-booping right around the 5-minute mark, with the earlier minutes fully devoted to the album’s overall plot to violently force blood to explode from any and all orifices within a five mile stretch. There’s an absolutely unhinged lead around 3:30 that happily throws the apple cart into the fires of Hell, and precisely one minute later, a notably indecent riff gets decorated by one of the snazziest Gruber drum patterns of the record. Basically, it’s a golden song—a song very literally forged from gold—and it does a fantastic job of summarizing everything that’s great about the full 38 minutes of Passages into Deformity in one terrifically thorough 7 minute assault.

Blasphemaaaaate meeeeee!

REMNANTS OF THE DEED

Writing about Defeated Sanity is a little bit like peeing on your neighbor’s pet alligator: you can do it, but it’s not entirely clear what you were hoping to accomplish. If Defeated Sanity’s excellence is not self-evident, it is doubtful the words of some chump are going to mend your wayward ways. Nonetheless, the penultimate song from Defeated Sanity’s nearly 20(!)-year old debut, “Remnants of the Deed,” is instructive of the band’s music in several regards. First, it is so loud and rude and fast that you might mistake just how smart it is. The band careens between lurching pinch squeals and jackhammering speed with what sounds like drunken randomness, but everything still hangs together.

Second, it’s just goddamn fun as hell. The guitars and bass often sound like some kind of rubbery wind-up toy that’s just been released, its pull-string whipping through the air as it chases after and knocks over the drumming’s pile of mismatched chopsticks. Third, it sculps confrontationally gross noises into structures resembling alien geometry. Just after the three-minute mark, the band crumbles together into a big, heaving breakdown replete with gravity-blast, but then they spend another minute+ bending and tweaking that breakdown groove into a swaying outro, pulling at the tempo, kicking out the legs, tightening up the mortar. Defeated Sanity would go on in their career to get weirder, techier, proggier, heavier, and disgustinger, but it’s testament to their demented craft that these first strikes are still so deadly. [DAN OBSTKRIEG]

THE BELL

“The Bell” exists in that rarefied air composed of the heaviest of the heavy in all of death metal, itself the heaviest of heavy metal subgenres. Its weightiness alone justifies its inclusion in any serious consideration of Defeated Sanity’s best tracks, but “The Bell” is a top tier song regardless. Even in its relative brevity, this roughly four minute beast exemplifies everything great about one of the greatest death metal bands on the planet.

The last song on the Disposal of the Dead side and a fitting thematic segue to the Dharmata side of this famously “split” album, “The Bell” explores the bizarre practice of sokushinbutsu, or self-mummification, among Japanese Shingon monks. The ritual involved extreme self-deprivation over the course of about three years, culminating in interred meditation, during which the monk would ring the titular bell from his grave, its final silence marking death and, if worthy, transcendence. No mere schtick, the thematic content here clearly forms a framework, as the song comprises several distinct sections corresponding to both spiritual rationale and practical description, in addition to each of three stages of the process, all of it laid out in brutal lyrical detail.

Themes and lyrics and even their structure are cool and all but, as with any great song, it’s the music that makes it and “The Bell” is a masterclass of music-making, technical brutal death metal or otherwise. In the first three quarters of the song, representing everything up to final transformation, jazz structures and odd times form the cosmic current through which death metal riffs burst and charge and paint marbled light, somehow shaping a smooth and flowing course even through rhythmic turbulence and percussive convulsions.

Then, in the final minute, there rings a decidedly different tone. Here riffs and rhythm are channeled to singularity, tumult condensed to perfect form, reflecting the monk’s final mortal silence. Sokushinbutsu was, perhaps unsurprisingly, quite often unsuccessful, as the process frequently failed to fully mummify the body. But the monk of “The Bell” seems to have achieved salvation, as the second side of the album, Dharmata (referring to the truest nature of existence), is teased in the closing moments with a few prophetic technical metal riffs before it all settles to silence with the transcended monk’s meditative hum.

What a fantastic metaphor “The Bell” is for its topic. Imagine the weight of expectation for a monk on the precipice of this transformation, the implication that he already contains the light of the Buddha, if only he can prove his worth by adequately preparing his body for all time, to achieve everlasting life by denying it almost completely. [LONE WATIE]

ENGULFED IN EXCRUCIATION

It’s a pretty safe bet that “Engulfed In Excruciation” accurately describes anyone who has ever been involved in the recording process of a Defeated Sanity song. Finger blood flying everywhere from mis-plucked bass strings; drum sticks being loosed from cramping hands into people’s eyes; barfing mouths after too many sessions of rapid-fire vokills; and bashed foreheads of engineers as the slam part kicks in and short-circuits their brain so they collapse into the monitor. I have no insider knowledge to say these things happen, but it seems EXTREMELY likely.

But what makes this particular song so likely to have ended the lives of a few people during its recording? Well, it hits an absolutely filthy Suffo-style grooving slam after a barrage of militant drumming a grand total of 30 seconds into the track. There are moments of fluttering bass paired with flailing cymbals and a blur of sword-swipe guitars that get mashed up against pure pit-killing majesty and chugging kicks. The entire song feels like a hardcore crowd getting into a fistfight that occasionally gets broken up by a tech-death twister, only for the fighters to come back dumber and angrier. It’s an unreal amalgam of swagger, muscle and rabidity.

“Engulfed In Excruciation” is sublimely ignorant with an ingenious flare for technicality, which is exactly what Defeated Sanity is at its best. [SPENCER HOTZ]

The post A Devil’s Dozen – Defeated Sanity appeared first on Last Rites.

A lot of rock and roll stories are of the Cinderella type, characterized by a lot of hard work, sure, but also by as much dumb luck. The rise and durability of BÖC certainly owes much to the hard work of the band members, especially a touring ethic second to none and that continues to this day. But what might appear to have been luck really all comes down to one Sandy Pearlman, the band’s manager, producer, and promoter from the outset and the guy who called so many of the right shots on everything from the band’s name to its first record deals and even its original (classic and most commercially successful) lineup. Pearlman’s imprint can be found throughout BÖC’s career in the imagery, lyrics, and concepts, and the involvement of other artists and authors in the development of lyrical ideas and songwriting, including Patti Smith (many times) and Michael Moorcock.

And it’s not just the music. The Blue Öyster Cult concept from pretty early on was steeped in mystery and the occult. Much of that air emanated from Pearlman’s enigmatic Soft Doctrines of Imaginos, a collection of poems that spawned the lyrical concepts of some of BÖCs most enduring work. Add to that the mysterious hook-and-cross logo (inspired by the alchemical symbol for lead, i.e., heavy metal), the simple but lasting impact of an umlaut over the O, and an array of album art reflecting arcane imagery and strange circumstance, and it’s no wonder BÖCs influence can be found in the music, art, and imagery of bands across a wide variety of musical styles from stoner rock and grunge to prog rock and punk, and throughout an astounding array of hard rock and heavy metal bands spanning virtually all the subgenres. One of the best ways to understand a band’s importance is to look at its influence on other bands and you don’t need to look very hard to see the outsized influence of BÖC on so many; essentially, any band that makes use of occult imagery and lyrics in the context of rock and roll based music owes at least a little something to BÖC.

It’s probably true too that the most critical ingredient in the Blue Öyster Cult formula is the most organic, even more than talent or genius or even creativity, and that’s Fun. Above all, BÖC records stand the test of time because they’re weird and eclectic and esoteric in a way that feels inclusive, inviting, as if to say, “Hey! Come on into this song, up onto this stage, into this mystery, and have fun with us!”

Because we at Last Rites love bands that are mysterious and weird and know how to kick ass and have fun, we decided it was finally time to pay tribute to one of the most influential bands in rock and metal with a Devil’s Dozen.

Of course most of these songs come from the albums made by the classic line up of Buck Dharma (lead guitar and vocals), Eric Bloom (guitar, synthesizer, and vocals), Allen Lanier (keyboards and guitar), Joe Bouchard (bass, vocals, keyboards), and Albert Bouchard (drums and vocals), which produced the band’s best known albums. There’s no way to get all of their great songs into a single dozen (even with the Devil’s extra) so some worthy songs didn’t make the cut. Such is the ruthless nature of a best of list for a band whose catalog is as amazing as Blue Öyster Cult’s.

Here is our Devil’s Dozen of Blue Öyster Cult’s best songs. [LONE WATIE]

TRANSMANIACON MC

It’s said you never get a second chance to make a first impression, and though Blue Öyster Cult kinda had several chances at it, since they changed names a few times and made records that sat shelved for however long before settling on this name and this sound and this record, it’s definitely true that the first track on the first record should always be a classic, an indication of the true power of the band behind it.

So they got that right, at least. (Just as they got lots of other things right, which is why we’re still celebrating them, some 50 years later.)

From those first stabbing notes, “Transmaniacon MC,” is a rollicking roiling rocker, Buck and Bloom’s guitars and Joe Bouchard’s bass all in constant motion, riffs spinning around one another in an intricate weaving dance, anchored by Albert’s deft rhythms and Allen Lanier’s organ chords. Sandy Pearlman’s semi-obtuse lyrics detail the infamous Altamont Free Concert, where Hell’s Angels were hired as security guards and that went about as well as you’d expect, with everything from a stabbing death to multiple stolen cars to an LSD-induced drowning. Dharma snakes leads around the words, backing up the chorus with a maniacal almost-carnival-calliope descending riff, while the midsection splits the verse structure apart for a quick flash of machine-gun soloing. It’s pain; it’s steel, a plot of knives… It’s “Transmaniacon MC,” and it’s the introductory song to the first record, the first track many people ever heard from Blue Öyster Cult, and it’s a beauty. [ANDREW EDMUNDS]

HOT RAILS TO HELL

Perhaps you’re one of those metalheads thinking, “Why should I care about this ancient rock band? They aren’t metal!” Well, this song is precisely the one that should prove to you how silly you’re being right now, and if you keep it up, I’m telling your mother how disappointed we all are in you.

I mean, look at that title.

Hell? That’s been metal since long before Slayer told us it awaits.

Rails? Trains, cocaine, and getting railed in a sundress are all incredibly metal.

Hot? That’s the temperature we like to keep our tempos at and so does Blue Öyster Cult on this here fiery gem of a track. The opening guitar lick has the cocksure swagger of a slowed-down Lemmy; “Born to Be Wild” can suck that riff’s taint. After the second chorus, the guitar thrusts into the spotlight, jamming some weepy blues while the bass holds down the rhythm with a steel-toed boogie. There’s a solid minute in the middle of the song where Albert Bouchard’s rollicking drums start dominating while Donald “Buck Dharma” Roeser fights every note with more jamming fretboard fireworks, making the song feel like it may just fly off those very hot rails.

BÖC told the sophomore slump to piss off with Tyranny and Mutation, and “Hot Rails To Hell” is precisely the song that ensured off it pissed. [SPENCER HOTZ]

VETERAN OF THE PSYCHIC WARS

The militaristic manner in which drummer Albert Bouchard opens “Veteran of the Psychic Wars” offers the perfect counterpoint to the exquisitely moody and atmospheric keyboard play that floats alongside and acts as the fundamental backdrop for so much of Fire of Unknown Origin. This interplay between Bouchard and Allen Lanier is particularly dark on this cut—the grimmest offering of the record, outside of the walloping “Vengeance”—and it gives the song a favorable “soldier reflecting on the weight of warfare, after the fact” impression that’s crucial for the overall gravity of the record. “We’ve been living in the flames / we’ve been eating up our brains / oh, please, don’t let these shakes go on,” our protagonist laments, just as Buck Dharma tears into a beautifully tragic and trippy lead. There’s just something so… palpably heavy metal about it all, without Fire of Unknown Origin coming even close to the actual heaviness of, say, Mob Rules, Welcome to Hell or Killers, all of which landed that same year. BÖC circa 1981 were masters of balance, though, doing what Mirrors failed to do in one respect—delivering a commercial success with a top 40 hit—while also upping the ante on a cryptic atmosphere and a general sense of doominess, which “Veteran of the Psychic Wars” most certainly represents.

On a record that’s loaded with a myriad of moods and emotions, this is the song that most ideally represents that wonderfully dark and supernatural Greg Scott cover art, so it will always be a Cult freak favorite, all the way to the very end. [CAPTAIN]

DOMINANCE AND SUBMISSION

BÖC is rightly regarded for being a combination of 70s-heavy, delightfully nerdy, and having an unabashedly adventurous mindset. But holy schnikes, when they decided to bring the swagger they could give even bands like ZZ Top a run for the crown.

“Dominance and Submission,” from Secret Treaties, has more strut than a trio of Gibbs walking down a rough street wearing gold medallions. The track’s opening riff pattern is positively *chef’s kiss* in quality, as fun and catchy as it is mildly intimidating. It’s as if you’re going out for the night in a setting that has at least a little (if not massive) potential for danger, and as the danger odds go up, so too do the thrills. Drummer Albert Bouchard provides lead vocals here and while he’s often doing a Big Rock Thing (“Oh yeeeeah!”), he also isn’t afraid to sound a touch on the edge, a bit deranged (“Can’t you dig the locomotion?”).

The song transitions from pure 70s metal drive to the tiniest touch of blues and some Beatles-y leads all before hitting that killer call-and-response closing section. As the band sings “Dominance” with no variation, Bouchard responds with continually nuttier statements of “Sub-mission…. ssssub-MISSION!” as if he’s fighting with both himself and the rest of the band. It fittingly closes with a white-hot Buck Dharma solo, because by that time our protagonist had likely lost his mind, so the shred takes over. [ZACH DUVALL]

BLACK BLADE

Hey, kids! Who wants some cool, crisp Blue Öyster Cult pop rock? Not a great many of you, apparently, as 1979’s Mirrors—BÖC’s cleanest venture into chipper radio rock—did not chart nearly as high as all interested parties hoped and dreamed. In an effort to placate the angry and mighty gods of Mount Mullet, BÖC tossed Cultösaurus Erectus into the grumbling volcano one year later, and thus the village was finally saved. Hooray! Praised be Martin Birch, a fearless production cavalier with a resumé that included Deep Purple, Black Sabbath and Iron Maiden, who bolted into the fray once again to deliver heavier armor and armaments to the young heroes of the Cult. Is a song like “Black Blade” actually heavy metal? I mean, not really. But for 1980? And for a band that recently released a tissue-thin record like Mirrors? Hell, it might as well be something off Left Hand Path. Sure, it still has radio playability, thanks to that unmistakable BÖC hook, but it also has serious punch, and that midsection is as dark and threatening as the fantastical Moorcock-penned lyrics concerning the voracious blade of the Eternal Champion that accompanies it: “I’m told it’s my duty to fight against the law / that wizardry’s my trade and I was born to wade through gore / I just want to be a lover, not a red-eyed screaming ghoul! / I wish it’d picked another…to be its killing tool.” [CAPTAIN]

JOAN CRAWFORD

I think I was 13 when I first heard “Joan Crawford” and it blew my mind. I don’t remember seeing the video then, nor any of the controversy it created, but the song was provocative enough without all that. It was inspired by the titular actress and, in particular, her adopted daughter Christina’s autobiography, Mommie Dearest, which exposed her mother’s frighteningly abusive behavior. I’d seen the movie based on the book (released in 1981, just after Fire of Unknown Origin, actually), and knew enough to get the song’s allusions to the story and the horror implied. That’s important, because this is a fun rock and roll song at heart but also one that absolutely swells with movielike suspense and dread thanks to Allen Lanier’s piano intro and supporting riffs, especially the trills underneath the chorus, “Joan Crawford has risen from the grave!” The juxtaposition of classical style with rock is expanded to great effect later with the addition of strings in the verses, lending further cinematic air to the song. Meanwhile, Joe Bouchard’s bass bounces along playfully with brother Albert’s drumming to provide a mildly disconcerting contrast. And Eric Bloom’s vocals carry the story in his inimitable way, dynamic and cool as hell as the aviator’d narrator of this very specifically terrifying zombie tale (with Catholic schoolgirl vampires in the video!).

Of course, as fun and good as the song is, it’s the irreverent and frenzied bridge that steals the show with a collection of sounds that appear to have no business in this song or maybe any other (hello, “Future World”), including screeching tires and a car crash, a rotary phone ringing, a vacuum cleaner, a baby’s cry, pins falling at a bowling alley, a rooster’s crow, a cash register tilling, a car engine struggling to turn over, a bugle blowing the call to the post followed by the horse race starting bell, a moaning cow(?), a car horn, a single note sung by a nice opera lady, and an old timey fire or burglar alarm bell ringing. All in less than 20 seconds. How in the heck should that ever work? But it does in ”Joan Crawford” because it’s assembled so perfectly that the sounds presented in this way seem like it’s precisely the way they were meant to be presented. It almost seems as if the sounds tell a story within the story (maybe someone smart has figured that out).

The wackadoodly bridge is appended by Albert channeling the recently risen Joan, calling to Christina, “Mother’s home,” as Bloom responds with Christina’s simple plea, “No, no, no, no!” Buck Dharma finishes things off with a twisty little devil of a solo alongside the last desperate cries of the chorus, ushering in the closing shot before fading to black.

Even though I didn’t know it at the time, BÖC’s sense of mystery and cavalier attitude about making rock and roll set the early stage for my love of progressive music and “Joan Crawford” was a big part of that, a weird and wonderful song that only barely makes sense and never takes its story or itself too seriously because what would be the fun in that? [LONE WATIE]

TAKE ME AWAY

The classic Buck-Bloom-Lanier-Bouchard-Bouchard lineup of BÖC was beginning to fragment in the years following Fire of Unknown Origin, and The Revölution by Night begins what many consider the decline years for the band, in addition to being the first without Albert Bouchard on drums and vocals. But it’s far from the least of these later albums, and as the wickedly good opener “Take Me Away” shows, it also has some serious keepers.

Like most of Fire, the best material on The Revölution by Night finds an ideal balance between 80s sheen and BÖC’s arena metal riff craft, and “Take Me Away” starts with one of those massive, instantly infectious riff patterns—a might twitchy, a lot sassy, and the type of line that they had been writing for over a decade by that point, just adapted for the era. Whether over the metal riffs or Allen Lanier’s prominent keyboards, Eric Bloom’s vocals are captivating, and the way his statement of the song’s title leads right back into the main riff motif is peak BÖC slickness.

There are basically two ways to look at this era of the band. You could be a Debbie Downer and point to the overproduction and Bouchardlessness of “Shooting Shark,” and say that BÖC by 1983 was well past their prime, and you wouldn’t be wrong (still, good song!). But a Positive Patricia would also be correct when listening to tracks like “Take Me Away” and instead choosing to appreciate how much was still left in the BÖC tank at this point, which was plenty. [ZACH DUVALL]

THE SIEGE AND INVESTITURE OF BARON VON FRANKENSTEIN’S CASTLE AT WEISSERIA

In order to understand the impact of a song like “The Siege and Investiture of Baron von Frankenstein’s Castle at Weissera” for an article such as this, one must first grasp the oddness of its existence at all, which is of course tied to the absolute aberration that is Imaginos itself—an album that’s… Well, at best, Blue Öyster Cult mostly by relation. Good fricken gravy, where to even begin to succinctly summarize all this…

As our own snuggly Lone Watie pointed out in the intro, Blue Öyster Cult owes a LOT to original manager / producer / mentor Sandy Pearlman, a gent responsible for guiding the lads from the earliest days, and a fellow whose book of weird fiction / sci-fi poetry, The Soft Doctrines of Imaginos, provided not only the band’s iconic name, but most all of the early mythos and mystery that helped land the hard-nosed New Yorkers on the Rock And Roll map in the first place.

Somewhere along the timeline, however, BÖC decided to separate themselves from Pearlman in an attempt to spread their wings a bit. Long before that fully went down, though—as far back as 1972—Pearlman planted the “Imaginos as a rock opera” concept in the mind of drummer / songwriter Albert Bouchard, who intended to use the material for a trilogy of solo albums that featured other BÖC players filling in some cuddly corners. The ensuing years found Pearlman and Bouchard frequently pushing the Imaginos vision and songs, with the rest of the band becoming more and more disinterested in abetting the seemingly wacky caper.

By 1981, BÖC had largely shifted away from Pearlman (he would be back for 1985’s Club Ninja), and A. Bouchard’s increasingly erratic behavior resulted in his ousting from the band altogether. Strange days, for certain, but days that allowed Pearlman and Bouchard to focus more attention on the Imaginos angle, netting guest players—Aldo Nova (you know “Fantasy”) and Doors’ guitarist Robby Krieger, just to name a couple—to help round out the sessions.

Having already provided significant funding for the project since its earliest inception, Columbia Records kept tabs on the project, which I can only imagine included several conversations akin to: “How in the hell is this still a thing we’re throwing money at?”

Unsurprisingly, the label shelved the project in ’84, dooming every lick of work to a restless grave. Then, following the utter collapse and disbandment of BÖC after poor sales from Club Ninja (1985-‘86), Pearlman renegotiated a deal with Columbia Records to push Imaginos as one last Blue Öyster Cult album, and a modest stipend was allotted to see the project to the end. Pearlman got the original tapes from Albert Bouchard and put a modern sheen to it, he convinced Eric Bloom and Buck Dharma to throw down some additional work, and he persuaded a handful of new guests to give things a little added punch—shredder Joe Satriani and Blind Illusion’s Marc Biedermann (say whut) being the most relevant to our metal interests.

The results??? Yeah, it didn’t make a very big splash, especially considering the amount of time and effort that went into the construction of this House of Usher. But is the album the absolute fucknado disaster it has every right to be? Oddly, no. Sure, it’s flawed and strange and likely wouldn’t sell 1000 copies if it were reissued today, but it’s an engrossing snapshot of a notably wild ride that does absolutely deserve its day in the sun, and there are moments of brightness and a surprising amount of heaviness that really make the effort seem worthwhile. For its part, “The Siege and Investiture of Baron von Frankenstein’s Castle at Weissera” stands out amongst the rest because it sounds like some sort of frenzied collision between the Riverbottom Nightmare Band, Hammers of Misfortune and Jørn, plus it features a sizzling lead from ol’ Satch, who financed the release of Surfing with the Alien with his share of the Imaginos proceeds. So, yeah, here is “The Siege and Investiture…,” drilled to the bumper of 12 other extremely worthy BÖC jams and really not sounding that out of place amidst all the excellence.

And as a parting motion, I would certainly recommend a dive into the full story behind Imaginos, all of which is hammered down via the album’s lengthy wikipedia page. [CAPTAIN]

CITIES ON FLAME WITH ROCK AND ROLL

BÖC has often been called “the American Black Sabbath,” and though there are some definite similarities, that description has always felt pretty wickedly off-base to me, with a few notable exceptions, one of which is this dark and heavy stomper from the self-titled debut. The primary riff harks directly back to Sabbath’s “The Wizard,” albeit with exactly one fewer harmonica, and in true BÖC fashion, it’s twisted up and around into something unique and bizarre, balanced out with a swinging boogie chorus that could’ve been from one of Status Quo’s harder-edged moments. Flourishes of psychedelia dance around proto-metal mastery, as Albert Bouchard sings of the world-shattering, city-burning, ear-(and eye-)melting power of ten thousand guitars, while Buck’s fretboard-frying fingers peel in and out of that riff, slinging sinewy solos around the stomping groove, settling into a swinging drive alongside Lanier’s majestic Hammond organ before the whole thing wraps up with one last three-note smash.

Blue Öyster Cult weren’t always as heavy as Sabbath, nor as dark (and were usually headier, smarter, and always weirder), but when they were heavy and dark, they were Heavy. And they were Dark. “Cities On Flame With Rock And Roll” is a prime example of some of the Öyster Cult’s blackest blue, and an early classic of what would one day be called “heavy metal.” [ANDREW EDMUNDS]

(DON’T FEAR) THE REAPER

In our previous celebration of the 40th anniversary of Rush’s glorious Moving Pictures, I discussed that my introduction to “Tom Sawyer” was through the game Rock Band. I also mentioned that while many people may feel the song is overplayed, it remains an absolute touchstone of their career and there can be no denying its greatness. I can say precisely the same things about Agent of Fortune’s “(Don’t Fear) The Reaper.”

Despite the song being nearly 50 years old and receiving seemingly-constant radio play since its release, “(Don’t Fear) The Reaper” still manages to appear in pop culture regularly enough to hook new audiences. And do you know why? Because it’s a really damn good song, simple as that.

The main riff, somber vocals, and ethereal guitar wafting in and out in the background give everything a weird mix of feeling like you’re at the beach, but you know it’s haunted. Somehow, buried in the mix, there’s a cowbell constantly banging away, but it never takes away from the tone, becomes annoying or even feels cheery. The chorus is easy for the crowd to sing along to and pits la-la-las against brief stints of weeping guitar. The middle portion of the song gets downright intimidating as it feels like aliens have just abducted the listener from that haunted beach; then, with a wailing note, your mind is erased and your plopped back down to Earth for more of that chill ominous tune.

Every element of the song feels incongruent with what overlays it, yet it all manages to gel in a way that no song should be able to. It’s upbeat and sad. It’s light on the surface but incredibly heavy the more you listen to it. “Reaper” is one of Blue Öyster Cult’s most enigmatic songs and deserves every one of the billions of plays it has gotten since 1976. [SPENCER HOTZ]

VENGEANCE (THE PACT)

This mid-album stunner from BÖC’s finest album is one of those masterclasses in mood, tone, and seemingly effortless songwriting that this band tossed out with ruthless regularity. Its shifts encapsulate the huge stylistic range within which BÖC could operate, opening with a delicate synth intro that feels like fluttering flutes before dropping a rubber hammer with that elastically heavy main riff. “Vengeance” is Joe Bouchard’s only lead vocal tune on Fire, and with slightly twitchy understatement he swirls the lyrics of flight and battle in a way vaguely reminiscent of Zeppelin’s “Immigrant Song” while his bass digs particularly deep in the groove. The staccato oohs-and-aahs on the backing vocals lay a bed of eerie counterpart, and when Buck Dharma dips out for a solo, it’s one of his sparsest, most elliptically bluesy.

But then, with a rather stunningly ballsy transition that speeds up the tempo, the band rockets into a galloping sprint. I’m as guilty of this as anyone, but there’s a pretty weak-sauce tendency among metal fans to try and find the metal-ish bits of not-quite-metal songs. Even so, it is undeniable that the, ahem, metallic fire BÖC brings to this midsong digression lands them essentially in the still-coalescing terrain of NWOBHM. With top-notch tunes like “Vengeance,” you might find yourself asking: were they the most mystical face of blue-collar rock, or perhaps the most down in the gutter, street-brawlin’-est wizards? Good grief, you BÖChead. It’s an amazing song from an amazing album, and that ought to be good enough for us all. [DAN OBSTKRIEG]

FLAMING TELEPATHS

Come on. There was only one way we could have closed out this article, and that was with the two songs that make up the greatest album finale in BÖC’s career. When analyzed as a whole, Secret Treaties is a rather wild album full of diverse sounds ranging from playful proto metal and arena-ready tracks to material that flirts with prog rock. It all forms a rather satisfying arc, but it’s impossible to imagine that coming through if the two-part finale was not so magical. So yes, this was the only way we could have possibly finished this article.

The first of these finale tracks, “Flaming Telepaths,” begins in a rather unassuming manner with a simple lead guitar melody and straightforward rhythms in both the drums and piano, but without the listener even realizing it soon grows to something somewhat tense, very emotionally-driven, and ultimately quite beautiful. There’s a theatrical drama and subtle bombast to the song that is only achieved due to the performances of a positively magnetic Eric Bloom on vocals and a band in peak form.

For the record, I have very little idea what Sandy Pearlman’s lyrics are actually about here, but when analyzed in a silo they create a setting that is both deeply regretful (“Well I’ve opened up my veins too many times / And the poison’s in my heart and in my mind”) and pointing to retribution (“Is it any wonder that my joke’s an iron / And the joke’s on you”). Through all the mystery, Bloom displays nuance and power. Just his pronunciation of “fire” in the chorus line “Is it any wonder that my mind’s on fire?” feels both dismissive and melancholic, and he deftly follows (and enhances) the punch and rhythm of the backing music throughout.

It’s one of his best performances, but he arguably tops himself on the very next song. As stated, “Flaming Telepaths” is really just the first part of a perfect album finale, so if you have only ever heard the second part alone on a live album or potentially because a pretty famous band covered it, you owe it to yourself to hear both songs together as part of this wondrous record. As for that other song… [ZACH DUVALL]

ASTRONOMY

There’s a certain type of Blue Öyster Cult fanatic that shows up when it comes time to track down all of the band’s live performances and bootlegs, especially during its peak performance era, which was primarily during the 70s and lasted through the release of Fire of Unknown Origin. It is not that the album versions of each song commonly found on a BÖC setlist are incomplete or suboptimal, but rather that experiencing every iteration and subtle difference each recording of a track offers further sheds light on the emotional message the band intended to convey. I am one such fanatic. And if there was ever a perfect song to exemplify the feeling of enlightenment that occurs when a new iteration is discovered, it is “Astronomy.”

Now, I am going to tell you about the three necessary elements that make this song — in all of its forms — absolutely perfect. When I say perfect, I’m not merely talking about the musical composition. I’m talking about the daunting task of one solitary song being the lodestone on which every other Blue Öyster Cult achievement rests. The proverbial nutshell encapsulating the furnaces that burn slow in each and every Blue Öyster Cult fanatic’s heart.

First, the lore. No, not just Astronomy’s lyrical lore, which we’ll get to in a minute, but let’s start with the mysticism surrounding the band in general. From the logo appearing throughout each of the band’s album covers, to the way Eric Bloom wore his watch facing inwards (a man who when once was asked what Blue Oyster Cult means to him, gave only “higher mathematics” as a response). The lasers the band used live to further the storytelling were groundbreaking for the time. Clearly, The cult is more than just a band, and it doesn’t do any good to attempt to explain its magic, because explaining magic diminishes the very thing we feel when magic hits us. In the case of Astronomy, a song that was written by the mastermind of the band’s image Sandy Pearlman, the lore factor is turned up to eleven. Take, for example, that the lyrics were altered to match the original poem when it was recorded a second time on Imaginos (the second of what would be three separate studio recordings). Are two doors locked, or four? Which version of the song will open the Ninth Gate? Now, I’ve not managed to locate any sort of life-altering wisdom within the confines of Astronomy, but I think it’s safe to say what gives the song so much power and mystique is how much it clearly meant to the band that wrote and played it. For almost fifty years now, Blue Öyster Cult doesn’t merely stumble onto stage, perform the identical album versions of the songs, and punch out their time card at the end of the day. Sure, they’ve earned the right to do so, but even though the piss-and-vinegar years are long in the rearview, the band treats this song like a living, breathing, and ever expanding organism whenever it gets played live. Each performance has the same energy, but different exexution. That energy behind the song’s lore is the first ingredient that gives it power.

Next up, the actual musical components of the song. If you’ve never seen Bloom perform Astronomy life, just know he’s telling a story with layers and layers of meaning. It doesn’t matter if any of us ever decipher its messages. What matters is that he knows he’s the storyteller, and he believes that Desdinova’s story is one hundred percent real. From his capes, to his laser pointers, Bloom is a perfect captain for this voyage. Allen Lanier definitely shows off less on the keys here when compared to Fire of Unknown Origin, but he and Joe Bouchard build perfect, rhythmic suspense between guitar, bass, and keys, while Albert Bouchard follows suit with subtle fills and quiet intensity. The beauty of the lot of them holding back a bit on this track compared to some others is that it sets the stage perfectly for the third element that makes this song — and so many others — so special. Lanier, Bloom, and the Bouchards know exactly when to let loose, and when to refrain. That power of control is exactly what unlocks the song’s third and final element.

The secret weapon. Buck Dharma himself. Perhaps uncoincidentally, the only member who continued to use the occult name given to him as a pseudonym throughout his entire career. To put it simply, Dharma’s style of playing makes one feel like the man came out of some metaphysical time capsule sent here to teach the human race something. The band threw the poor guy some sweaty costume as he emerged and told him to just get up on stage and put his innermost feelings directly onto his guitar strings. Possessing the mind of Mozart and the heart of Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Dharma doesn’t just command his instrument, he uses it to tear back the firmament and transmit layers upon layers of emotion out of the fucking stratosphere with it.

Let’s sidestep for a moment. You know that level of trust you have when you see someone wearing merchandise representing an album that means a lot to you emotionally? Sure, it’s a complex and ever evolving world, but there’s a layer of protection that melts away when you mention something to that person, yes? As if at least a part of them thinks or feels similarly enough to you that you feel like you’d get along. This is the type of communication that can’t really be put into words, because it’s all in the NOTES. A kinship may exist when we discuss art we love, but it comes to fullest fruition when we get to experience these notes together, because the notes are so much more powerful than words. Human language is an imperfect method of communication, because, well, it was created by people who are imperfect. Music, on the other hand, much like mathematics, is a universal language we’ve merely begun to figure out how to grasp. We harness it through different mediums. That is all. It’s too perfect to describe using a method as emotionally incomplete as human language, and the more powerful its message, the more likely we are to trust others we know have felt the same thing.

Back to some more astronomical shit. Ever wonder if we’re being watched by a much more intelligent life force? Like a child watching squirrels fighting over a nut under a tree, the extraterrestrials must know that nothing is to gain by contacting us now. We’re still killing, maiming, raping, and taking advantage of each other for… well… some really stupid reasons. But would that we could build some sound cannon the size of the Hubble telescope and blast every perfect note of Astronomy to the farthest reaching corners of the universe as a plea for someone to give us a road map to a better way. Because if there is some higher intelligence out there waiting for a sign the human race is ready, my guess is they have as firm a grasp on whatever language Blue Öyster Cult spoke when they first wrote Astronomy, and every single time they played it since. Maybe then we’d be the stranger on the train wearing the Secret Treaties t-shirt, and a lone and compassionate space traveler would recognize it, and perhaps let its guard down so that we may begin to learn its secrets. [KONRAD KANTOR]

The post A Devil’s Dozen – Blue Öyster Cult appeared first on Last Rites.

Even fewer bands can say that they helped to launch more than one.

But Carcass can. In the span of five records and less than a decade, this sometime trio / sometime four-piece exhibited a remarkable progression that saw them expanding and perfecting different branches of extreme metal with each subsequent release.

The initial three-piece line-up of these Liverpudlian giants were among those who lead the charge in the early British grindcore scene, beside the likes of Napalm Death, Bolt Thrower, Extreme Noise Terror, Heresy, and Sore Throat. Though there are distinct differences between them, each of those bands was raw, furious, and born as much of hardcore and anarcho-punk as of thrash and speed metals; they ratcheted tempos up to nearly inhuman numbers, only to play songs that were one-minute (or much less) blurs of pure aggression; the guitars and bass were distorted and noisy, sometimes indecipherable atop the blasting, the vocals gurgled and screamed and spat with a venom above and beyond anything anyone had heard before. A new child was born, and the new child was ugly.

In the midst of the birth of grindcore on the whole, Carcass’ lyrical emphasis on medical terminology and general gory grossness would, in turn, directly and almost single-handedly launch the sub-sub-genre of goregrind, paving the way for so many imitators that the term “Carcass worship” would virtually become a genre tag in itself. Pitch-shifted vocals, a pathological obsession with the morbid and pathological, riffs as sharp as scalpels, short bursts of bonesaw-buzzing surgical intensity… Here’s where it really begins, for better or worse, and I’m going with “better,” because thirty years and thousands of goregrind records later (many of them excellent, and many more of them very good), no one has yet done it better than Carcass did.

From humble and woefully underproduced beginnings in Reek Of Putrefaction, Carcass cleaned up their production and tightened up their metal, improving on both fronts with each subsequent release. Through the death/grind hybrid of Symphonies Of Sickness to the full-on death metal of Necroticism to the melodeath masterclass of Heartwork and the death ‘n’ roll drive (some might say “dive”) of Swansong, Carcass expanded not only their own horizons, but those of extreme metal on the whole with every new album. They rode the first wave of grindcore and invented goregrind along the way; they perfected a death/grind hybrid all their own, one that set the template for countless clones. And then, not content to just be nasty, they added melody and musicality without sacrificing any of their intensity, releasing one of melodic death metal’s earliest and strongest touchstone albums. Finally, they dropped into a rot ‘n’ roll groove by the end of their first era, stripping down the death back a notch in favor of a more accessible aggression. That’s five sub-genres across as many records, each performed impeccably, each perfect in their own way, all shades of the same bloody red but all distinctly different. Ask a Carcass fan to name the best Carcass record, and you’re very likely to get five different answers, depending on which of the band’s forays into various styles that particular fan holds dearest. (Author’s note: The correct answer is Symphonies Of Sickness.)

Now fifteen years into the second chapter of their career, Carcass has settled into the role of elder statesmen of extremity. Though it offered little in the way of musical surprises, Surgical Steel was one hell of a comeback, showing the returning duo of Walker and Steer still on top of their game despite a decade-and-a-half hiatus. Last year’s Despicable EP was a bit of a holding pattern, not bad but not transcendent, but if the first single from the forthcoming Torn Arteries is any indication, there’s still plenty of gore left for these gods to grind.

In preparation for the new, come along now and let’s take a walk through the morgue and check out thirteen of the most rotten Carcass-es… [ANDREW EDMUNDS]

CARNAL FORGE

For the first minute or so, “Carnal Forge”, the second track on Heartwork, seems like a straightforward, albeit catchy and thrashy number. For a melodic death metal song, the initial riffs are focused more on punishing staccato rhythms than they are on melody. This is Heartwork, however, an album so brimming with musicality that even the most seemingly stock tunes are filled with luxury features. Consequently, after blazing through the first chorus, all of a sudden, it’s sexy time. The band slips into a half-time groove and Bill Steer delivers an exquisite, silky smooth solo. There’s your melody, ladies and gents, and it’s the real genital grinder, if you know what I mean. The half-time grind continues a bit longer, but with a decidedly more menacing bent as the band slowly, but purposefully works itself back into a thrashing furry, just in time for Michael Amott to deliver a certified guitar hero-grade solo that would do Randy Rhoads proud.

Ultimately what makes “Carnal Forge” such a great track is what makes Heartwork such a great album: In five minutes or less, Carcass gives you light and shade, beauty and terror, blistering speed and creeping death. The band gives you everything and everything is performed impeccably. [JEREMY MORSE]

BURNT TO A CRISP

So I was a little (OK, a lot) slow in digging back through Carcass’s pre-Heartwork catalog. What I needed was someone to give me a giant kick in the ass, and who better than a Carcass-obsessed college freshman who built his entire college radio profile around them? I used to hang out in the studio with him and he wasn’t having any of this melodic business, no sir. He made sure we all got Reek of Putrefaction rammed up, in, and through every orifice we had. “Burnt to a Crisp” was a favorite, and the first thing I ever heard off the album.

I was floored. This wasn’t anything like I was expecting from their first album. It was still filthy as hell, but… it had melody, structure, vocals you could tell were words. It chugged and churned in a death metal vein and grinded away at ridiculous speeds in between. It had a closing solo named “Malevolent Scrotal Incendiary Including Extreme Hate.” Why had I been so trepidatious? They were kicking my ass and I was liking it. “Forgive me, for I have sinned!” I’m pretty sure I exclaimed to nobody in particular, as they incinerated just about every preconceived notion I had of what grindcore was.

Oh I would soon come to learn that they were full of surprises and often exactly what I thought they’d be, but it was a good thing. “Burnt to a Crisp” wasn’t the straightest line line to Carcass’s days of residency, but it damn sure was direct. [DAVE PIRTLE]

CORPORAL JIGSORE QUANDARY

After a sample discussing the aspects of identifying dismembered bodies and a brief drum intro, “Corporal Jigsore Quandary” hits the listener with one of Carcass’ most iconic riffs. When I think of this band, it’s this riff and the one from “Heartwork” that first pop into my head. It chugs and it flows with equal measure while the stop-start kick rolls provide a glimmer of groove that make it impossible to not bang your head. From there, Walker and Steer trade off snarls that bite harder than a snapping turtle. Around the 3:30 mark, a mighty roar and momentary dip in the guitar notes announce the first of two absolutely glorious leads and right between the two is another top-notch riff that hints at the type of melody they would more steadily rely on moving forward. The majority of the remaining runtime hunkers down into an almost doomy and ominous realm punctuated by gross gurgles and other vocalizations that carry no words before one final twisting passage concludes the track.

Oh and how about the amazing lyrical concept for this one? The whole song is about a human meat puzzle, which has to be one of the greatest death metal topics ever. Check out this snippet:

“A pathological toy, each chunk rigorously
Inter mortis locking, as you pathogenically rot
Such a perplexing task
To fit the remains in the casket
Uliginous mess so quiescent…”

NONCOMPLIANCE TO ASTM F899-12 STANDARD

You clearly don’t need me to tell you what a big deal Surgical Steel was for Carcass fans after it finally dropped back in 2013. However, for the sake of clarity: If you’re the sort of individual that either jumped in fairly late to the game or who, at the least, appreciated the band’s journey from gutter grind to insanely melodic sophistication, you were likely rather underwhelmed with Carcass’ literal swan song (er…onetime swan song) and spent the whole of Surgical Steel’s 47 minutes doing the sorts of flips that could prompt a tidal wave of Béla Károlyi spit-takes. Was the record better than Necroticism or Heartwork? C’mon… Get outta here with that stuff. What it absolutely did, however, was make the lines separating the age-old “please progress / please regress” conundrum blur enough that we maybe perhaps possibly stopped remembering how incorrigible we all are just long enough to simply enjoy having these totally degree-less surgeons slice into our bodies with melodic and reckless abandon.

Although the record is stacked to the rafters with songs that cut straight to the heart, it is “Noncompliance to ASTM F899-12 Standard” that does so with the strongest nod back to the Necroticism / Heartwork days, and it does so while underscoring melody in an absolutely maniacal manner. That lyrical opening fret-run will stick to the brainpan until the end of time, and the overall speed, energy and utterly seamless fluidity dispensed as the song whips, tricks and dips is enough to keep you beaming even in the darkest of times. Solos: un-named :’( [CAPTAIN]

TOOLS OF THE TRADE

Becoming a fan of Carcass in the mid-90s meant learning very quickly that Heartwork represented a rather drastic stylistic shift. Wake Up and Smell the Carcass and its reverse chronology soon provided the chance to hear the band devolve from the melodic death metal of the day to their snotty goregrind origins. I still wasn’t impressed, but smack dab in the middle of the track listing was a glimmer of hope: “Tools of the Trade.”

This was the bridge between two eras: the speed, guttural growls, and low-fi production of grind (a genre which I was not a fan of at the time) entangled with the riffs, comprehensible vocals, and song structures of melodic death (which I didn’t even know was a thing). It’s the audio equivalent of a poor sap being dissected and dismembered, delectably disgusting. Some of the medical stuff was a bit silly, but you could hear where they had come from, and you could hear where they were going (and wish that they had kept the crazy naming for their solos). Still a far, jarring cry from “Heartwork”, but at that time, it was what I needed to convince myself that the earlier stuff was worth hunting down.

It would be a couple more years before I’d finally find my way back to proper full-lengths, and I’d always held on to “Tools of the Trade” as a motivator to track them down. The track became so embedded in my mind that when it came time to add a knife set to my wedding registry, I opted for the Tools of the Trade brand, and pronounced it just like Jeff Walker (in my head) as I scanned it in. [DAVE PIRTLE]

PYOSISIFIED (ROTTEN TO THE GORE)

Let us first address the elephant in the room: Paul Talbot’s work on Reek Of Putrefaction may well be the pinnacle of music production. You hear that, audio engineers around the world? Take your reference copies of Aja and OK Computer and Pet Sounds and insert them into your vomited anal tract. Nothing will ever sound as dynamic and perfectly well-crafted as this record.

I’m being ridiculous, of course. Imagine a world where Reek Of Putrefaction became the gold standard for audio engineering. (Looks sideways at stack of Agathocles and Haggus records.) Sonically, as has been mentioned in roughly every single piece ever written about it, this first Carcass album is a total shitshow, a muffled and rushed roughshod calamity that the band was “anything but happy with,” per guitarist Bill Steer. And yet, Reek Of Putrefaction was also the sound of a new sub-genre being born, and though it likely seemed incredibly unfathomable at the time, this album has been often imitated (and seldom equalled) in the thirty years since, even if (or perhaps entirely because) it sounds like something went horribly, horribly wrong.

So while initial listens are confounding at best (and off-putting at worst), when the dedicated grindophile scrapes away the piles of mud and shit, Reek Of Putrefaction is actually quite a strong album, filled with killer riffs and gut-churning grind and pointing directly toward the more refined mastery of Symphonies Of Sickness a few years down the road. At nearly three minutes, “Pyosisified (Rotten To The Gore)” is one of Reek’s two “epics” (the other, “Oxidised Razor Masticator” also deserves a spot on this list, if you ask me), and it’s a clear-cut example of how early Carcass still brought the gory goods, even if you can hardly hear it. That mid-section lurching trudge? Perfect. The way it drops right into a blasting goregrind cacophony? Also perfect. The descending riff that you can barely make out because the guitars are tuned lower than the engineer apparently could hear? That’s a great riff, just begging to be noticed, waving its hand since that’s all that’s above the mire. They’re all here, all the tools of Carcass’ trade. You just gotta dig for ‘em. [ANDREW EDMUNDS]

REEK OF PUTREFACTION

For context, imagine it’s 1989. Furthermore, and I know this might be a lot to ask, but imagine you’re John Peel. You’ve heard Reek of Putrefaction, the debut from this bizarre Liverpool band spawning from the cesspools of grindcore. You heard a brilliance in the haze of the–ahem– traditionally “sub-optimal” production, even going so far as to invest in this band, and, at extreme risk to your reputation, amplify them with a treasured spot on your radio program. Now imagine you’re dropping the needle on this bizarre, grotesque band’s follow-up effort, Symphonies Of Sickness, for the first time. Confusingly enough, it begins with “Reek Of Putrefaction.”

Imagine hearing those cymbals crash out of the warped pulsing noise that starts off “Reek.” Imagine hearing that thin production on the debut given some depth, apparent even from the suspense oozing from the synths echoing haunting, hollow breaths. Hearing Jeff Walker’s vocals converting from a dry and distant snarl on the Reek album into the wet and odorous gurgle that belches out at the 0:33 mark. The chainsaw-cranking windup howls in the form of the whammy squeals, screaming across the soundscape. There’s anticipation in the little hammer-ons between the chords of the introductory riff, and it all accumulates into pulsating tachycardian anticipation. The tension across the introduction to the song alone consumes a full third of the track’s total length. It gets the heart pounding, the blood pressure building as adrenaline secrets its way from the glands and into the clusterfuck of erythrocytes.

The hormone, spawned from fear and the anxiety/relief of amputative catharsis, pumps heartily through the bloodstream as Ken Owen’s teeth-chattering blast beats rattle with amphetamine bruxism. They never stop moving, even from the blast transition to the blitzkrieg d-beat and through to the gastrointestinal spillage of the grove section. The sticks whirl their way down the toms as the kicks thud with the hyperactive intensity and surprising weight of exposed tissue spilling from the open incisions. The palm mutes blur their way across the soundscape, wielding a surgical blade across the exposed, vulnerable flesh of the organs that pulse so intently from the rhythm section. The hypertension in the track alone spews blood with every slice, cut, and incisition across every inch of the crude operating room.

It is hard to put oneself in the position of John Peel listening to “Reek Of Putrifaction” and not already be blown away at the fully realized potential of the band you heard such promise in, let alone what they would go on to become. The excitement at hearing the sounds that were but only teased before being actualized by Carcass as the major step up to the work that would go on to be a definitive leap in the evolution of gross, gory, grindy death metal, a scar that that still lurks within the delicious wounds Carcass inflicted on the flesh of extreme metal so many years ago. [RYAN TYSINGER]

PEDIGREE BUTCHERY

Have you ever looked at your dog and thought, “I wonder how much you’d enjoy eating me if I were crammed into a tree shredder and then added to some dry kibble mostly comprised of sawdust?” The answer is A LOT. Your dog would probably like that a lot. And then he or she would likely wonder where the hell you went like five minutes later. For this reason alone, look to humans other than yourself to press into a tree shredder when considering bolstering your dog’s diet with meat that’s likely somehow worse for them than the canned horse lungs and zoo odds-n-ends they normally scarf down at 6am. That stout Amazon delivery person who always peeps in the window when they drop off culottes and instapots, for example—excellent choice.

Hey, it’s Michael Amott! Sure am glad he was never fed to the dogs, because ushering him into the Carcass fold for Necroticism resulted in one of the most crucial developmental building blocks for melodic death metal, like, ever. Sure, Carcass probably would’ve headed in this notably more technical direction even if they’d netted Billie Joe Armstrong for second guitar, but the Steer / Amott back-and-forth throughout Necroticism—and particularly with regard to the four distinct lead break-outs within “Pedigree Butchery”—was just sublime, and I don’t mean Sublime the reggae-rock band that should’ve been ground up and fed to mongrels thirty years ago.

In truth, you could probably pick just about any song from Necroticism and make a case for it being the most exceptional—the album’s just that good. But “Pedigree Butchery” wins the day because it’s got a fresh beat you can dance to, the leads are particularly effervescent and contrast Steer’s vulgar riffing perfectly, and by God, it’s just plain fun to think about ol’ Sarge scarfing down a hearty can of Kid Rock ’n’ Vital Organ Meats. Solos: Gutted, Hashed and Deboned; Prepared On the Slab; Choicest, Prime Cuts; and Firm, Meaty Chunks. [CAPTAIN]

THIS MORTAL COIL

“This Mortal Coil” is a pitch-perfect track to kick off Heartwork’s B-side, particularly coming on the heels of the thick, chugging swagger of side A’s closer “Embodiment.” The opening riff is a sharp, clinically slicing thing, taut and off-balance in its drop-beat shuffle which immediately sets a contrast to much of the blossoming groove to be found throughout the rest of the album. It flits around for nearly a full minute before dropping into a spryly bouncing gallop with the verse, but the most impressive thing is how fluidly the band drops in and out of that quick-meter riff and the song’s other sections. The bridge that follows the solo section pulls way back, so much so that it almost seems to slow down. Ken Owen’s drumming on this track in particular is a model of economy, punching in louder as just the right spots but then laying back to highlight the fleet, almost airy interlocked guitars from Steer and Amott.

With the hindsight of almost 20 years’ distance, it’s tempting and easy to try and look at Heartwork as either a purely transitional album, or somehow as the apotheosis of everything Carcass ever wanted to accomplish. It even makes sense to want to contextualize the album as part of a death metal push for the mainstream, or in terms of the development of death ‘n roll (Entombed’s Wolverine Blues was released just two weeks prior to Heartwork), or in terms of the still somewhat nascent melodic death metal scene (Dark Tranquillity’s Skydancer had been released a few months prior, and At the Gates had debuted one year before). If there’s some truth in a lot of that, though, it does a disservice to an album absolutely littered with death metal piss and heavy metal vinegar, swinging for fences that maybe had yet to be built. Carcass has yet to release the same album twice, and what a song like “This Mortal Coil” reveals is that tomorrow’s legends are always today’s toilers, sweating it out one riff and one stitched-up transition at a time, playing with all the confidence they can muster and trying to see if they can punch it one level higher. [DAN OBSTKRIEG]

RUPTURED IN PURULENCE

There’s of course a lot to be said about the way Symphonies of Sickness kicks off with a song as overwhelming as “Reek of Putrefaction”; speaking as an individual crusty enough to have been there when the album first dropped, I can confirm that literally nothing outside of an alligator battle over a drowned wildebeest sounded as unhinged as Carcass circa 1989. (Macabre was close, but perhaps a little too muppet-like.) “Ruptured in Purulence,” though—that’s the song you played for your friends who hadn’t yet had the Carcass pleasure, even (or perhaps especially) those friends who couldn’t even care less about metal. There’s just something about the frolicsome manner in which the song opens with Ken Owen gingerly tapping out that entrance beat, Jeff Walker’s ensuing YE-OWWW replete with brutal bass flutterings, and the whammy-squeal that conjures yet another Bill Steer riff eruption—it’s like a siren’s song to any and all oddities exploring the deepest recesses of the early Earache extreme metal treasure trove. The opening minute-or-so is just so…danceable, while the remaining 3 minutes finds itself largely dead set on shredding your face to ribbons with an interminable vortex of gurgle-durgle vocals and “music” that sounds like the very literal aural translation of having a carbuncle nestled deep in the forbidden depths of your large intestine…well, rupture in purulence! Solo: Smeared Organic Mess. [CAPTAIN]

INCARNATED SOLVENT ABUSE

“Incarnated Solvent Abuse” holds a bit of an interesting place in the context of Necroticism. On one hand, it’s among the album’s most direct songs, coming in at an even five minutes, a good deal shorter than many of the quite-long-by-Carcass-standards songs. But on the other, it’s always felt like a bit of a centerpiece, thanks in large part to the way it starts: in extremely alarming fashion.

After the requisite pathological intro, the track shrieks itself into existence with the sound of a thousand ambulance sirens all fighting for your attention, and they’ll have it with every grinding blast and jarring riff. It’s all the more alarming because it isn’t even the very first piece of music in the song. It’s preceded by the briefest of chunky riffs that is almost immediately taken over by those klaxons, serving as both a bit of a false start and preview for the rest of the song’s brutal heft. It’s a sneaky little trick and a downright perfect kickoff to a monster tune.

Soon things settle as much as Carcass ever settled during this era, trading off between a catchy drive featuring some key bass progressions and sections of extra riff chonk, with the vocals adding the majority of the splatter. The track builds through controlled chaos, rumbling and bouncing and almost seeming to fold over on itself before it eases up a tad and arrives at a smooth Bill Steer lead. The rest of the song then seems like a journey back to the start, calling back to previous sections, offering yet another solo (this time from Mike Amott), and dropping into a dragging and almost smartassingly deliberate passage ‒ complete with Ken Owens’s great syncopated hi-hat use ‒ with the opening sirens eventually returning to close it out.

And a more fitting bookend there could not be. “Incarnated Solvent Abuse” covers as much if not more range than the longer tunes on this particularly dizzying, whiplashing record. It demands your attention, rewards you greatly when you comply, and then demands your attention again before leaving you wondering what the latest emergency was all about.[ZACH DUVALL]

HEARTWORK

In the span of five years, Carcass had gone from releasing one of the worst-sounding debuts ever to releasing an album on Columbia Records through that label’s ill-fated partnership with grindcore pioneers Earache.

They’d also grown up, shifting from gnarly gory grindcore gods to a precision-tuned melodic death metal machine, so, in retrospect, the major label signing makes a bit of sense. If there’s any death metal album that’s ever been released that could’ve courted mainstream success without generating immediate cries of “sell out,” then Heartwork is it. Building on the razor-sharp riffage and meathook-to-the-skull catchiness of its predecessor in Necroticism, Heartwork balances its melodic sensibilities against a hefty death metal underpinning. It was both the logical continuation of their trajectory and a massive leap forward in their musicality, one that eschewed the medical dictionary lyrical slant in favor of an equally verbose sociopolitical angle. It also left behind the gore-gurgle vocals — the last vestige of the goregrind in their sound — in favor of a newfound focus upon only Walker’s snotty snarl. And yet, even as it was a clear break from the Carcass of the past, Heartwork was and is of such undeniable quality that it established a new direction for a band that had already released two straight classic records and it managed to bring along a good number of the fans in the process.

As the title track of one of the greatest extreme metal albums of an era, there’s a lot riding on the song “Heartwork,” but it delivers, no question. In fact, it overdelivers, laying waste to everything around it with a quick tremolo-picked d-beat raging intro that resolves into some sweet Amott-Steer interplay and an eminently hooky verse/chorus combo. Still, as immediate as that “a canvas to paint, to degenerate” chorus is — and just try not to scream along with it, I dare you —it’s the song’s ferocious bridge section that gets me every time, a quick detour into pounding kick-drums that are balanced against a descending chord pattern and the return of that tremolo-picked intro. This is melodic death metal power, perfect in four-point-five minutes, and one of the earliest examples of how metal can be both utterly destructive and legitimately catchy. [ANDREW EDMUNDS]

EXHUME TO CONSUME

With two quick hits and a little guitar squeal, “Exhume to Consume” is off to the races with another patented putrid plucky Carcass riff accompanied by the grossest era of the band’s vocals being rhythmically vomited into your ears. If that wasn’t punishing enough, the kick drums are blasting away to create extra puncture wounds in your cranium. The song then decomposes into a buzzing bacterial sprint that’s regularly sliced through with bends so perfect they’ll give you vertigo. Don’t worry though, Carcass knows you want a sickly lead, so at the 1:30 mark everything opens up and a twiddley tinny guitar crawls through your skull with an eerie tone equivalent to an evil cartoon mortician’s voice. The speed is brought back to the forefront and the final minute of the song is a Ken Owen drum clinic as he blasts, rolls and fills like a maniac beating the hell out of the kit as if he just found out it dug up his mom’s corpse and had relations with it.

If you haven’t listened to Symphonies of Sickness in a while, it’s time for you to exhume the album from the crypts of your collection and consume it in full. Bless yourself with the rot! [SPENCER HOTZ]

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Photo: Gene Smirnov

The post A Devil’s Dozen – Carcass appeared first on Last Rites.

That isn’t to say that they aren’t very much about rhythmic trickery, because with all their polyrhythms and irregular phrase lengths and odd time signatures, they definitely are about rhythmic trickery. It was these achievements, of course, that attracted attention in the 90s—attention that spanned from the metal underground to the Guitar World/Modern Drummer sphere and even into academia (and that’s only the most prestigious and prominent example of the latter).

But Meshuggah didn’t start out by playing around with listeners’ ability to headbang in sync with the music. Their roots were much more humble, however brief that humble period was, because…

Meshuggah is about evolution.

Two fifths of the current lineup of the band ‒ vocalist Jens Kidman and guitarist extraordinaire Fredrik Thordendal ‒ formed Meshuggah way back in 1987 in Umeå, Sweden, and drummer / primary lyricist Tomas Haake joined soon after. Their early material and 1991 debut Contradictions Collapse were more of a groove-aggro-thrash form, a bit like …And Justice for All with more beatdown, although there were certainly hints at what was to come, especially on Contradictions. When second guitarist Mårten Hagström joined up in 1992, the Meshuggah core was complete.

Their ascent was as rapid. The None EP in 1994 represented a monumental leap, and the following year’s Destroy, Erase, Improve served as their official arrival. Now viewed as a watershed moment in progressive metal, the album saw the band rise to their full power, if not quite yet their final form. A combination of that early aggro groove/thrash, quieter, progressive passages, a lot of very jazzy soloing, and a whole heap of polyrhythms, the record remains Meshuggah’s legend-making moment.

They have not made even a passing glance backwards since. Chaosphere upped the intensity and madness to near death metal levels in 1998, stripping away even more of the obvious thrash roots while really embracing their weirder tendencies (especially in the lead department). 2002’s Nothing then dropped the tempo and increased the heavy—a lot. The riffs often took on a stretchy, elastic vibe without the songs losing any of the previous records’ impact or progressive scope. It was their final form, or at least the earliest version of their constantly-shifting final form.

A couple years later came the I EP, a single, 20-minute song that felt like an extra complex missing link between Chaosphere and Nothing. 2005’s Catch Thirtythree was then the ultimate in self-one-upmanship—a hugely ambitious 47-minute composition that seemed to evolve as it progressed while also expanding the band’s dynamic scope, and is still likely their artistic peak. (Oh, and at some point early in the millennium they also started using 8-string guitars. Because of course they did. Because they actually use all 8 strings.)

Photo by Olle Carlsson

They were not (and are not) done. Still to follow was the combination of fierce rippers and weirdo intense prog numbers on obZen; the breadth, occasional creepiness, and thoroughly balanced brilliance of Koloss (my personal favorite); and the surprising band-together-in-a-room, ultimate headbangability of The Violent Sleep of Reason. And while they have kept evolving and finding variations on their vision and sound, one thing has remained…

Meshuggah is about RIFFS.

For all of their constant evolution and fun with polyrhythms, none of it would matter if it wasn’t for the elite quality of Thordendal and Hagström’s bottomless bucket of riffs. They find a way to make the simplest lines a source of suspense, and the heaviest, most colossal parts catchy and rubbery (not to mention Scorsese-able). They often repeat a riff while growing it, with the development of each motif and passage as much a key to their complexity as the polyrhythms, leading to airtight compositions that have more secrets than are initially obvious. And none of it would be possible without a perfect seed: the riff.

Eventually the uniqueness of their riffs ‒ in combination with the polyrhythms ‒ led to countless followers, and at some point the word “djent” was invented by a bunch of Guitar Center geeks. I kid, to a point. There are a lot of extremely talented musicians that consider their music djent as a genre, but the majority of them seem to rip off the riffs and place them in something shredder, more atmospheric, or more metalcore-y. Meshuggah themselves don’t seem to take the term (or their imitators) particularly seriously, making jokes about it from time to time, as their biggest impact on metal isn’t necessarily an entire form of music, but a riff style. Maybe all those bands realized that trying to beat Meshuggah at their real game was pointless, or maybe they simply couldn’t replicate the real thing, because…

Meshuggah is a singular state of mind.

Way back in 2001, I joined some friends at an amphitheater outside of Indianapolis to see Tool on their Lateralus tour. For nearly everyone in attendance, including my pals, it was only about seeing Tool, who had just released arguably their finest album and were at the top of the rock world. I was there to see Tool, sure, but Meshuggah was the opener, and live, even from back on the lawn, they were intense. Judging from the reactions ‒ which ranged from indifference and confusion to outright anger that Tool would bring along a band so aggressive ‒ I was one of a very scant few that viewed this as a true multi-band attraction. There was no one like Meshuggah 20 years ago, and no matter how many imitators they have collected over the decades, there is simply no one like them now.

Because of all these reasons, they have built an fierce and extremely dedicated following that ‒ while it certainly hasn’t given them headlining crowds like those they saw opening for Tool ‒ has allowed them to live off the music, particularly with all the endorsements that guys like Thordendal and Haake have received during their career. Some members of that fan base include the Guitar Center legions that launched all the djent forms. Others are like the guy I once saw making a very obvious show of perfectly fist-pumping every rhythm of “New Millennium Cyanide Christ” right up front at a show. And many, many others are just adrenaline-fueled metalheads that love the feeling they only get from listening to Meshuggah flatten skulls and move asses. (Include in this group my wife, who played “Neurotica” on the internet juke at our wedding because it’s the only song she definitely wanted to be part of our nuptials.)

Above all else, Meshuggah inspires dedication through their consistent excellence. No one can compete with Thordendal and Hagström’s endless well of golden riffs, Kidman’s infectious and timely roar, or Haake’s practice-it-until-you-go-insane drumming. To many a massive fan (hi), they are nothing short of perfect, a vision of the future that exists permanently just out of reach to the rest of us. Below are 13 good examples of why they are the once, future, and infinite overlords of this vision. [ZACH DUVALL]

I EP

Looking back on it now, it’s almost tempting to look at the 2004 single-track EP I as a test run for the longer-form Catch Thirtythree which followed in 2005 (and in fact, much of the press at the time made precisely that argument). And while it’s not hard to imagine that Meshuggah might have felt encouraged by the successful experiment of I and curious if and how they could extend some of that experience, I is very much a free-standing testament to an elite band pushing itself to a new level. The song’s scene-setting opening frames Meshuggah’s endgame nearly as well as anything: it’s roughly 90 seconds of frenetically chugging rhythm guitar against a steady fill on the toms. It stretches time just as it punishes it, and every time your mind has a fix on what’s going on, it slips just out of reach. 

Even if the attention-span-starved listener takes nothing else away from I, the breakdown that erupts around the 3:30 mark is one of the most fuck-OFFingly heavy, grimiest, meanest, Stank Face-iest moments in Meshuggah’s career. And although standout moments like this are scattered across the full 21 minutes, and it’s pretty easy to mark the breaks between discrete movements (a particularly excellent movement-transition happens at exactly the midpoint when the band straight from an off-kilter stutter rhythm to a neck-wrecking, straight-ahead pummel without skipping a beat) , I truly does work as a whole, particularly when appreciated in its chronological placement in the catalog. That is, I can almost be seen as a hybrid of the incredibly different two albums which preceded it. This piece is nowhere near as caustically overwhelming as something like Chaosphere’s “Elastic,” but it also amps up the live-wire intensity notably from the thick alien trudge of Nothing. If Chaosphere was a faceful of shrapnel and Nothing was a tidal wave of molten rubber, I is a set of sharpened projectiles inside a trapezoidal prism being launched into the sun. The final five minutes of the song, then, function like an extended, anguished dirge as the prism succumbs to the inescapable pull of the gravity well.

I understand why Meshuggah has ardent detractors, but I can’t grant their sentiment even if I understand their logic. Meshuggah exists in a musical space that somehow manages to be both jazz and anti-jazz at the same time, where it sounds like a brain-fried free jazz eruption from some Eastern European pirate radio station circa 1965, but where the band can also sound like a set of robotic arms using pistons to try and play a big band swing chart. Friends, don’t you crave that kind of masterful ambiguity? Meshuggah have meshuggot you covered.

FUTURE BREED MACHINE

It’s 1995 and you’ve spun up Destroy, Erase, Improve for the first time, expecting some competent but derivative thrash. Instead, an alarm clock klaxon announces that this is anything but what you expected. The rhythms! They’re all misshapen. The drums enter and exit at unexpected beats. “I cannot wake!” shouts the vocalist, “I’m not asleep!”

It’s 2021 and you’re spinning Destroy, Erase, Improve for the uncounted hundredth time. The grooves and counter-grooves are familiar to you now. People always joke that “you can’t headbang to Meshuggah,” but you can, because while the polyrhythmic complications make the music feel chaotic, it’s not random, it’s structured.

“Future Breed Machine” doesn’t demonstrate the extremely down-tuned, high-gain sound that would later come to be associated with the djent movement. Instead, Thordendal borrows heavily from jazz fusion pioneer Alan Holdsworth for his guitar tone, with a slight dash of Buckethead thrown in to truly express the computerized chaos of the future.

That this song kicked off a whole new musical trend isn’t surprising. What is amazing is that after 26 years and the veritable plethora of djent and math metal bands that have followed, not to mention Chaosphere, Catch Thirtythree, or Koloss, “Future Breed Machine” still feels fresh, vibrant, and inspiring. “An eternity defeated by a new machine” indeed. [MEGAN ASTARAEL]

RATIONAL GAZE

Nothing is the perfect career-transition album for Meshuggah, particularly if you listen to the two versions of the album side by side. The original iteration offered a more fiery production befitting its orange cover, where the cymbals, snare drum and vocals all sit a little higher in the mix creating a crashing intensity hewing closer to the madness they unleashed on Chaosphere. The songwriting, however, had drifted away from Chaosphere’s staccato brain-splitting chops to add in even more rubber-band elasticity creating an undeniable groove that would permeate through all their future works. The 2006 remaster (blue cover) of Nothing offered a crisp and mechanical production that focused more distinctly on the guitars (now with eight strings) and bass, which gave them a significantly heavier tone; a lesson likely learned from Catch Thirtythree the year prior.

No song better encapsulates that desire to blend groove that belies the chaos they continued to inject with wonky time signatures and guitar leads that sound like a terminator short-circuiting than “Rational Gaze.” The opening immediately delivers one of the heaviest moments of the entire album as it drops laser-precise bombs on the guitar. The grooving riff repeats while the rhythms behind it terrorize your ability to lock any form of headbanging in sync. The first switch moves one guitarist into the background simply creating eerie sounds while the main rhythm continues to pulse forward before every instrument locks together and Jens Kidman’s steady shout takes over. Even Kidman’s vocals have come down from the unhinged nature of the past to provide a clearer and more precise attack. Every part of this song is a push and pull between offering some form of a hook for your ear while constantly setting it off balance, so you can’t settle in.

Any hardcore band knows the best way to get the crowd to go absolutely apeshit is to have all the music cut out, yell something cool and then drop a monster breakdown. While Meshuggah is no hardcore band, they absolutely nail that move at the end of “Rational Gaze.” At 4:05, a single note rings out when Kidman yells, “Never stray from the COMMON LIIIIIIINES” and that opening passage comes back with a vengeance. You’ll feel as powerful as Robocop when it hits. [SPENCER HOTZ]

DO NOT LOOK DOWN

“Do Not Look Down” is the sexiest, hip-swingingest, ass-shakingest song in the entire Meshuggah catalog, but we’re not going to talk about that (yet). We’re going to talk about the lyrics. That’s right, lyrics. With all the attention the band rightly gets for their polyrhythms and galactic heft, the quality of their words ‒ most of which are penned by drummer Tomas Haake ‒ seems a little ignored.

In short, “Do Not Look Down” is a scathing critique on the repetitive and automaton nature of modern life, in which the worker is the consumer is the product is the worker. We are lucky to be allowed to strive towards the goals already set for us. We are privileged to be allowed to “fall into the coveted line.”

Great viable citizen
Are you happy now?
Then praise your god and bow

The god is wealth, capitalism, the empty recognition of one’s peers and always-judging neighbors—really whatever you imagine it to be. The point is that it’s all an illusion, we know it is an illusion, and yet we stay right in that line. Looking through the obvious cracks in that illusion might lead to madness. That way be dragons. So above all else…

Do not look down. Do not look down
Or the abysmal beast of nonconformity
Might stare some unpleasant truth
Into your desensitized mind

The fact that this song is so ludicrously infectious only makes its message seem that much more snide and bitter. It’s almost easy to imagine some conservative politician in the band’s native Sweden (let’s call him “Pål Ryön”) doing curls to it without ever really listening to the words.

Because holy schnikes, folks, with grooves and thumps this thick, it’s easy to ignore the underlying message, until you realize that all the rump-movements aren’t meant to be part of some Woodstock ‘99 debauchery, but good old fashioned catharsis. By all means, do look down, and then move your ass. [ZACH DUVALL]

BLEED

Meshuggah have often been a bit of a paradox – too brainy for the meatheads, too heavy for the mainstream, too brutish for most prog-fiends. While this means their appeal is narrower than it might otherwise be, it also means that their devotees often make an even deeper connection to the material, as if to make up for the presumption of its underappreciation. Nevertheless, at the time of its release – as has so often been the case – the general metal public (both fans and journalists alike) spent too much time mistaking process for product. Specifically, it was a grand hullabaloo that obZen marked the return of Tomas Haake’s live drumming after the programmed drumming excursions of both Catch Thirtythree and the re-recording of Nothing. By focusing too much on the tools they used, though, people seemed to pay too little attention to what those tools were used to craft.

To be frank, after the meandering sprawl and cosmic sheen of Catch Thirtythree, obZen was almost shockingly brutal, and although its opener “Combustion” rang the doorbell, it was really the third track “Bleed” that stomped the flaming bag of shit to really drive the point home. (This is a good thing; please keep up.) Although the shorter edit worked fine as the album’s lead single, you really need the song’s full, seven-plus minutes of throttling, hyperspeed groove to underscore the way in which “Bleed” manages a critical latter-day Meshuggah feat: it manages to make that unrelenting choppering sound almost normal. In fact, Thordendal’s and Hagström’s rhythm work is so drily precise that if you squint at the song just right, at times it almost sounds like something from …And Justice for All being played by a pair of malfunctioning pneumatic drill presses. And if you listen to how Thordendal’s beautifully restrained solo floats atop the mix just after that eerie, clean midsection, it sounds like one of the most forceful statements of the band’s career of the struggle for the human spark to persist in the face of persistent dehumanization and mechanization. [DAN OBSTKRIEG]

MONSTROCITY

For whatever reason, by 2016 my relationship with Meshuggah was starting to strain. Whether it was the result of aging, the 15-plus years of being flooded with new music (including so many bands attempting and failing to replicate Chaosphere), or just being largely unimpressed at the time with Koloss, I’m not sure. Still, I dutifully picked this up shortly after release. The early returns and preview tracks had me feeling lukewarm and I started to think this might be the end of the road for me. Then it happened: “MonstroCity” kicked in, and all those feelings from the past came rushing back. It was vintage Meshuggah that bent, swayed, and smashed in all the right ways. Plus, it showed the legions of pretenders how this djent thing is supposed to be done. That fucking bassline, man, it just wraps itself around your body and mercilessly whips you around before unceremoniously dumping your quivering mass on the floor just past the 5:30 mark. What a ride. As crushingly heavy as the rest of the album soon revealed itself to be, it was the sheer might of this track that carried it all to way to a respectable #11 placement on that year’s best-of list.

That, everyone, is “MonstroCity,” where the norm is that of the insane. So the next time you hear me ask if Meshuggah is running out of gas, you have my permission to smack me upside the head and say, “Zeit nishte Meshuggah!” [DAVE PIRTLE]

GODS OF RAPTURE

For all the aggression and promise on debut Contradictions Collapse, most metal historians likely point to Destroy, Erase, Improve as the moment when Meshuggah really started to change the game. But the biggest early leap came not on their 1995 classic, but the prior year’s None EP. Like Contradictions, the EP has plenty of remnants of their thrash roots (and even some ill-advised clean vocals from Kidman), but for the most part it’s locked into all the futurism, rhythmic trickery, aggro groove thrash, and jazzy lead goodness of DEI.

In other words, when it cooks, it cooks, and nowhere does it cook more than on the beastly “Gods of Rapture.” The tune is largely based on the type of groove-techy, polyrhythmic riffage that wouldn’t sound out of place on any album they released after, but then out of basically nowhere drops an absolutely batty passage ‒ super punchy drumming and riffs plus some wicked fun gang shouts ‒ before an extended, atmospheric, and really melodic solo section. It’s hard to think of any other band making these various ingredients work in the same recipe, and back in 1994 it probably sounded pretty bizarre to a lot of listeners. But observed 27 years later, it’s obvious that these were all building blocks of a metal monster that was just about to hit its seemingly eternal plateau.

Okay, they weren’t all building blocks, as the band phased out the gang vocals ages ago. A bit of a shame, really. Those were fun. [ZACH DUVALL]

CLOSED EYE VISUALS

The opening salvo of “Closed Eye Visuals” sounds like it’s on drugs. Each strike of the chords is accompanied by the auditory equivalent of a half-conscious stumble with one foot dragging behind it to cause a tripping delay. But then the song shakes its head and clarifies the main riff just before Kidman launches into whatever lyrical lunacy he opts to shout during these seven-and-a-half minutes. That element of a dragging foot lessens, but stays with the guitars throughout the song always pulling out a note just a bit longer to give it a touch of swaying groove. Haake’s hi-hat work consistently drives the song forward giving you some semblance of steadiness among the wobble.

Around the 4-minute mark the guitars really start to let the notes hold for a long time on each hit as Kidman initiates a spoken-word passage before the song opens up for Thordendale to launch into a jam-session take on a guitar solo. He keeps plucking away and stitching small runs together to create a discordant nightmare, but then it ceases and all that remains are some loose bass notes and echoing plucks of a creepy guitar bouncing from ear-to-ear creating a sense of ominous unease. Just as it seems like “Closed Eye Visuals” is working toward fading out, the band drops the hammer one more time and closes out with those creepy guitars backing the hefty chunking guitars. [SPENCER HOTZ]

SUFFER IN TRUTH

It didn’t take long after discovering Meshuggah via Chaosphere that the snobbier metal types started with the “Pfft, yeah but Destroy, Erase, Improve is way better, dude” comments. For some reason that caused my defense mechanisms to kick in, and that thing inside my head screamed “THEY’RE WRONG AND WE MUST DEFEND THE CHAOSPHERE!” It was… fine, as it turned out. You could see where they were going. The structures were mostly there, but the band hadn’t quite found that lowest end yet, the secret sauce that would bring them god-like status.

Though I didn’t dislike it, I rarely went to Destroy, Erase, Improve for my Meshuggah fix. Combine that with being a very stubborn man and it was years before I would finally drop my bullshit and really start to appreciate not just the material but how important the album was to their evolution from run-of-the-mill Metallica worshippers to bonafide musical innovators. “Suffer In Truth” had a lot to do with that. Although it was album opener “Future Breed Machine” that authoritatively announced their new direction hinted at on the None EP, this cut shifted the album into another gear right as it was threatening to idle. The tight rhythms of each verse hold steady into bridges that grow more urgent each time around, plateauing into choruses that clear the field, a pattern broken up just long enough to deliver a welcome beatdown just before the 2:30 mark. The track never officially stops, it just fades away. You’re helpless to stop it. All you can do is wait for it to come around again. You know it’s worth the wait, but you still silently resent the band for doing that to you. [DAVE PIRTLE]

DEMIURGE

And now we come to it. The thematic apogee on Koloss; the eight-string guitars hyper-saturated with gain and mercilessly slammed into that low F note; the slow pounding groove of toms and kicks. Twenty-five years taught the band one of the hardest lessons for technical players to learn—don’t overplay it. “Demiurge” is six minutes seventeen seconds, but only has 59 words in the lyrics. This paragraph contains 68.

The highlight of the song is the spine-snapping riff at 2:27. Jens Kidman announces “A prophet of extinction!” and the whole band crashes into the riff. The second time around, Jens weaves his furious denunciations amidst the thorns of the riff, and the band iterates on the shape, adding flourishes that compel a listener’s body to respond.

And yet, the patterns aren’t in themselves overly flashy. The tempo is low. How does this riff manage to sound like it could fold space-time? The magic is in the players themselves, not only in the composition. Meshuggah have discovered exactly how to extract maximum power from these tones. Anyone can downtune a guitar and crank the gain to 11, but for the average player the only thing that will come through the speakers is mud. Fredrik Thordendal, Mårten Hagström, Dick Lövgren, and Tomas Haake are all playing in the same sonic spectrum. If the band isn’t completely locked in with itself, those frequencies would cancel each other out, making the music sound lifeless and drained instead of powerful and crushing.

Meshuggah are simultaneously the progenitors and the masters of this kind of heavy music. Koloss stands tall as one of the band’s greatest works, and “Demiurge” is the crystal clarity a listener reaches at the top of the climb. [MEGAN ASTARAEL]

NEW MILLENNIUM CYANIDE CHRIST

While it was “The Mouth Licking What You’ve Bled” that introduced me to Meshuggah (thanks again, Death is Just the Beginning V), it was this Chaosphere track that really grabbed me. It was an exciting time in the evolution of this metal fan. College radio had opened a floodgate of new bands to discover, and none of them sounded like Meshuggah. This was the track everyone told me I had to hear, the one they’d play when they said, “DUDE you’ve got to hear this band Meshuggah!” They were right, of course. This was so goddamn heavy, with fat grooves and infectious melodics that made you hunger for more. No band had any business being this heavy, this rhythmic, this infectious. It was a blessing and a curse. No one else was doing this, so any attempts to find “bands that sound like Meshuggah” were futile. They had basically created their own genre; and even if you went back just one album to Destroy, Erase, Improve it just wasn’t the same (it rules, but it’s a different vibe). No, all you had was this. And you were more than happy to just sit there, taking abuse again and again as the staggering, djarring riffs of “New Millennium Cyanide Christ” pummeled you until blood ran from both ears. [DAVE PIRTLE]

DANCERS TO A DISCORDANT SYSTEM

As a whole, obZen seems to contain some of the catchiest, most live-ready tunes in the Meshuggah library. Opener “Combustion,” the hefty title track, and “Bleed” all seem written with concerts in mind, even if the latter still pushes past seven minutes in length. But the album’s later stretches get more abstract and rather more cerebral in structure, all leading to monumental finale “Dancers to a Discordant System,” one of the tensest and altogether most draining songs the band has ever done. Like “Bleed,” it’s popular in Meshuggah setlists, and has frequently been used as a closer, when the crowd is already exhausted and needs that last little bit of energy sucked out of them.

The song, to put it bluntly, is large. At nearly 10-minutes in length, it’s among Meshuggah’s longest tracks (it’s the longest that isn’t part of a fully contained album or EP unless you count all that nightmare fuel in “Elastic”), and nearly every second is used to grip and pummel the ears and minds of listeners. “Dancers” starts with stark, creepy clean guitars before introducing a weird, backwards-sounding line that serves as the roots for nearly everything that follows. Sometimes the motif is played at quieter volumes with Kidman doing more of a whispered spokal and Haake pounding on the toms (like some sort of semi-extreme metal Tool), and at other times it is unleashed in its full heft, but the important thing is that it is nearly always in motion, and always evolving.

As that main motif, that weird, backwards-sounding line evolves and grows, so too does the song’s gripping intensity. It isn’t until almost the 5:30 mark that the tension is released in the form of the song’s chorus. The backing to a rather lengthy solo section is largely unrecognizable as variation of the main theme until each evolutionary link is observed back to back. Meshuggah has used this particular songwriting trick throughout their career, but “Dancers to a Discordant System” does it as well as anything, proving that no matter how mechanical Meshuggah’s tunes may sound to the uninitiated (or unconvinced), their music remains among the most purely organic in the sphere of heavy metal. [ZACH DUVALL]

CATCH THIRTYTHREE

The more litigious of our readers may be leaping to their feet and shouting “OBJECTION!” as they see us include the entirety of Catch Thirtythree on this list. BUT, these Devil’s Dozen features aim to include a staff-voted top-13 SONGS, not tracks, and Catch Thirtythree is technically a single-song, 47-minute album, despite being split into 13 tracks. As such, we the judges are opting to overrule your silly objection and humbly request that if you would like to take any form of legal action, it should be against Meshuggah themselves for making the bonkers decision to replace one of heavy music’s most talented and enigmatic drummers in Tomas Haake with a gatdamn drum machine (even if it did pull all samples from his works).

The foundation for Meshuggah’s most ambitious work was clearly laid by the I EP a year prior, but they mixed it with the elements of groove and creepy ambience they implemented more strongly on Nothing. One of the most impressive things about listening to Catch Thirtythree is that the majority of the tracks really do run together so seamlessly that you won’t notice the change without directly seeing a track number on your device. “Autonomy Lost” through “Entrapment” set the tone with a prominent repeated groove and tremolo riff passage that appears as a thematic element multiple times throughout the album, particularly on “The Paradoxical Spiral” as the tremolo sounds like it’s on a broken endless loop for much of its three minutes.

A patented weirdo Thordendale solo in “Entrapment” leads to the return of that tremolo element, which is abruptly cutoff by what sounds like a steel cable snapping and swinging a giant air conditioner into a wall as “Mind’s Mirror” begins. This is where the Catch Thirtythree hits its weirdest moment, with a robotic spoken-word passage going over those swelling steel cable sounds. About halfway through, clean-plucked guitar parts that sound like they’re coming out of a haunted hall of mirrors start echoing in and a bass slowly rises to the top. The break for creepiness is interrupted by what sounds like the musicians slamming their fist into their guitars before dropping back into that opening groove and tremolo combo once again on “In Death – Is Life.”

“In Death – Is Death” is likely the best representative track of the full song as it offers pure circus shenanigans on the guitar, wild Thordendale noise, elastic stretching riffs, unsettling cleans, that thematic tremolo and long exploratory stretches that offer the most transformations during any single portion of Catch-33. The light show and additional heft that this track gains from the stage, is truly something to behold.

As alarm clock sounds slowly waft to the top of the mix at the end of “In Death – Is Death,” a visceral Kidman scream and pummeling drums announce Catch Thirtythree’s heaviest segments starting with “Shed.” The album delivers some of the most crushing angular heft of the band’s career through this stretch until close to the three-minute mark on closing track “Sum” when an ambient slow strum to helps the listener wind down after so much chaos.

Ambition can often lead to experimenting simply for the sake of being challenging and quickly become self-indulgent garbage. Catch Thirtythree finds the rare musicians whose talent can match their ambition as they created a one-of-a-kind masterstroke among a discography of truly unique albums. [SPENCER HOTZ]

Photo by Anthony Dubois

The post A Devil’s Dozen – Meshuggah appeared first on Last Rites.

But then… Maybe we were onto something? And maybe we should consider doing similarly again, because Manilla Road is at long last getting the Devil’s Dozen treatment, and they have 18 studio albums spanning a 40-year career for us to consider.

Hello, have you met Last Rites? We’re the humans who have made vacation plans together based around Manilla Road shows in the past, and we’re also the individuals who were so shaken by the sudden passing of Mark “The Shark” Shelton—the patron saint of epic heavy metal—back in July of 2018 that we wrote three memorial pieces and continue to openly weep when we hear certain glorious Shelton solos.

O Romeo, Romeo! Wherefore art thou such a Manilla Road fan, Romeo? And why hast yon band stoked thine collective fires so profoundly over these many years, Romeo? Hell, even the Road’s later material that for some fans began treading the ol’ familiar “maybe a little too old and familiar” terrain still managed to get cranked under our roof loud enough that the State Farm office next door to our HQ occasionally attempted counterstrikes by turning speakers and Kenny Chesney albums against a shared wall. You will never win that battle, State Farm. YOU WILL NEVER FUCKING WIN THAT BATTLE, STATE FARM.

Heavy!
Metal!
To the world tonight!

It’s a clichéd statement, but Manilla Road is the marrow of heavy metal. Cut through the skin, hack through tendons, and crack open the very bones of this genre and thar she glows: Manilla Road in all its magnificent glory. Sure, some might reserve such acclaim only for bands that set the foundation in a more widespread manner, and who in their right mind would not consider the Sabbaths and Priests and Maidens responsible for pumping the lifeblood of heavy metal from day one as fundamental parts of the full metal anatomy, marrow included. Not us dinosaurs, that’s for sure. But you’d have to search high and low to find a band with as long a rap sheet as Manilla Road that managed to deliver so much unassailable epic heavy metal while remaining buried miles below the underground with infinite hardships standing in the way. That, friends, is heartfelt love and determination for spreading the loud ’n’ proud gospel, no matter how craggy and impenetrable the terrain. That’s devotion. That’s armor-plated integrity. That’s the sort of commitment that makes records such as Crystal Logic, Open the Gates, Mystification, and other Road classics some of the first things we reach for when times are tough and we need a lift, when times are great and we’re looking for a proper complement, or simply when someone asks for “some of that real underground shit that’ll rattle the walls and make the neighbors wonder.”

Without further delay, we humbly present thirteen of our favorite Manilla Road songs. If some of your headliners are missing, take solace in the fact that they are missing for us as well. Really, how could they not with 18 Road records on the shelf to consider? [CAPTAIN]

Up the hammers & down the nails! May the Lords of Light be with you!

DEATH BY THE HAMMER

One of the most endearing aspects to me about Manilla Road’s run from 1980-1990 is how that sound has never quite been duplicated. While plenty of bands have taken inspiration from the sound, no one quite has the guitar chops, the voice, the ear for songwriting, or the ability to tell a story across a track quite the way Manilla Road did it. Regardless of what they were doing or when, the boys from Kansas always found a way to make it their own. So when they began taking some of the faster, heavier elements of the metal scene around them and incorporating them into their sound, it always, always seemed like a natural progression for a band that retained their core spirit and clung to it like the precious bounty of treasure it was.

By 1987 and their sixth studio full-length, the light bearers in Manilla Road were incorporating a little more speed into their sound on Mystification. While it wasn’t quite as thrash-oriented as the follow-up of Out Of The Abyss, tracks like “Up From The Crypt,” “Children Of The Night,” and, of course, “Death By The Hammer” all added a bit more crushing weight to the band’s lofty, dream-world fantasy metal. “Death By The Hammer,” originally pressed as the album’s closer, is a straight-up power anthem — it pulls every bit of strength from the Viking mythos so often tapped by the band and swings it straight to the skull with the same force as a 70-pound warhammer. The ominous opening is unmistakable, drawing back tension for a full swing before releasing under the snap of Randy Foxe’s crackling drums. The driving chug of Shark’s guitar thrusts the song into battle before the chorus; his wizened voice gains a little more snarl as it calls out the battle cry of, “Death! By! The Hammmah!” The little guitar licks between each word are so subtle, yet absolutely crucial in making that short chorus simply leap out of the song.

Speaking of guitar work, it would be totally remiss not to mention the solo — not only are Shelton’s licks as powerful as ever as his fingers dance across the frets, peppering and flavoring the dish with pinch harmonics and hammer-on’s aplenty — but the setup before the first flurry absolutely builds that tension again before it lets loose. The way the full band sets up for the release in the bridge is really something, with Foxe’s tom work dominating the field of battle, alongside the occasional pop of the snare to foreshadow what’s to come. And it’s not just one: A second solo emerges following a final verse/chorus to add an exclamation point to the conclusion of the song. It’s a powerful end to one of Road’s finest hours. [RYAN TYSINGER]

THE RIDDLE MASTER

On what is surely Manilla Road’s most beloved album, Crystal Logic, amongst a host of now-classic songs, “The Riddle Master” manages to stand out as one of the best and most unique songs, not just on Crystal Logic, but of the band’s entire career. In contrast to the mostly up-tempo, melodic heavy metal that makes up the rest of the record “The Riddle Master” is a brutish, primarily plodding, riff-centric tune, owing more to doom metal than power metal. Yet, for all that it goes against the album’s grain, “The Riddle Master” is nonetheless thoroughly epic heavy metal.

Much like the Charlie Daniels Band hit “The Devil Went Down to Georgia,” “The Riddle Master” is about a duel with the Devil, but with a riddle in place of a fiddle. Unlike Johnny, who made pretty short work of Old Scratch, the unnamed hero of “The Riddle Master” has a pretty rough go of it, as the riddle has him thoroughly stumped for most of the song. With time running short, our hero’s desperation is echoed by the track’s frantic coda, wherein the doomy slow-grind is dismissed in favor of something more akin to speed metal. On the brink of defeat, but resolved to battle with “blazing steel” if he must, at last, the answer comes to our hero, and the Riddle Master is vanquished to the fires of Hell where he belongs. It doesn’t get much more epic than that. [JEREMY MORSE]

NECROPOLIS

I mean, c’mon, right? You knew it, I knew it, we all flippin’ knew “Necropolis” would find its way onto this list. While far from being the only song in the Manilla Road assemblage to launch fans into unrelenting earworm status, no other cut does so as swiftly as “Necropolis.” Just seeing that word on its lonesome anywhere / anytime is all it really takes. In fact, the spell is powerful enough to trickle into word associations. Take a couple wrong turns in Annapolis, Maryland? You better believe anyone lucky enough (ahem) to be in the car with you is about to get an earful. Goth night at Metropolis? Totally appropriate. Find yourself at a party where some poor bastard mistakenly asks, “What line of work is your wife in?” Goodnight, Irene, someone please stop that man from screaming “MY WIFE’S A BAAAHHTANAAAHHST.” “Necropolis” is Manilla Road’s answer to “We Will Rock You,” “The Final Countdown,” or “Beat it,” and any band worth their salt should hope to have at least one of these songs in the quiver for every live show.

The truth that “Necropolis” isn’t even the “best” song on Crystal Logic speaks to the strength of its hook, but it also deserves list recognition because it represents the proper introduction to Manilla Road’s newfound epic metal trajectory after two releases of stoned hard rockin’. Following a short and sinister intro, Shelton’s opening riff leaps into your face like a puma from a tree, and then things speed off into a full sprint until the first chorus slams home after only 30 seconds. The midpoint breakdown is muscular and establishes a new connection to lyrics that go beyond arcade games and going out of control with rock ’n’ roll in favor of more fantastical, poetic motifs that underscore righteousness and gallantry.

“I have seen your cities burning
I have felt your daughters’ yearning
For the peace you had before the tides of war

I have witnessed funeral pyres
Burning bright with man’s desires
I will fight the demon horde forever more”

And oh blessed blade of felled titan, that lead that tears across the sky thereafter—it’s surprisingly short, but it shoots the perfect amount of vigor into the bloodstream before the chorus carries the rest of the song to its heroic close. What an incredible way to launch the next chapter of the Manilla Road adventure. [CAPTAIN]

THE NINTH WAVE

The centerpiece of the majestic Open The Gates album, both figuratively and (on the CD version) almost literally, “The Ninth Wave” is an absolutely stunning masterwork of epic heavy metal songwriting from the band whose name should forever be synonymous with such. From over a minute of squalling feedback comes a perfect metal riff, part doom and part trad and all killer, an instant musical hook buoyed by Randy Foxe’s rolling fills and lifted to Valhalla by the ascending chords that punctuate it. His vocal melody following that beastly riff, Mark “The Shark” Shelton croons a tale of mixed mythology, part Arthurian and part Norse — and maybe parts of others, as well; I’m no student of various ancient legends, I fear, no matter how many Grave Digger albums I own.

Somewhere in the midst of all those myths there’s a vague storyline, one of an ascendent king and of dragonships and the Lady Of The Lake and whatever else, but here as with so much of Manilla Road’s canon, what the whole of it boils down to are these: that epic metal majesty and mastery that transports the listener from some suburban bedroom straight onto the battlefields and beerhalls of Ye Olde Tymes, and Shelton’s seemingly endless supply of great goddamned guitar solos. And on that front, fear not, Ol’ Shark lets loose with some winners here, fleet-fingered runs atop Foxe’s insistent tom-pounding and Scott Park’s persistent quarter-note pulse. For a song possessing such undeniable power, “The Ninth Wave” stomps along at a deceptively lazy pace, and yet because of that power, it’s far from boring, far from lackadaisical — it’s methodical in its trudge, moving ever onward as those guitar leads swirl around you, like those dragonships sailing forth to Camelot. Or wherever dragonships would like to sail to. Who are we to dictate the destination of a dragonship? We are but mere mortals, and these are the ships of gods, written about in songs that were also performed by gods. Absolutely epic, absolutely perfect. [ANDREW EDMUNDS]

MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH

The clock strikes midnight. The plague rages outside as party guests gather in Prince Prospero’s abbey, convinced by their noble arrogance and feelings of superiority that they’re safe from the disease ravaging the land. Nope. In bursts the titular Red Death. In bursts Shark’s utterly hot-as-hell opening riff and Manilla Road’s intense attack during an extra thrashy verse and infinitely singable chorus. Out snuff the lives of those 1,000 rich chumps, because no amount of money or aristocratic isolation can stop the inevitability of death.

Inequality, overpopulation, rampant disease… damned if Poe’s story and Manilla Road’s song don’t currently feel way too timely. Not that Poe was necessarily writing a People’s Anthem or Road went anarcho punk with their song, but if the last year has taught us anything, it’s that creepy orgy masques and all they represent won’t protect you from illness as well as a good N95.

But lyrical meanings aside, “Masque of the Red Death” is unforgettable. We already addressed that verse and chorus, but just as key is the bridge, which arrives with a seamless and absolutely golden transition out of the chorus, easing up on the thrash as Shark sings of the “uninvited guest” mocking the nobles’ idiotic soiree. The solo follows with just a touch of nuttery and chaos, as if it carries a bit of the sickness itself. It all adds up to one of the most immediate and purely addictive songs on Mystification, which itself makes a very strong claim as being the most immediate and purely addictive Manilla Road album. Absolutely white hot. [ZACH DUVALL]

RETURN OF THE OLD ONES

The fourth song on Out of the Abyss is a bit of anomaly in the midst of so much relentlessly thrashing metal. Though less dense, more diverse, and darker in both tone and theme than the rest of the album, it’s not unique simply by virtue of its contrast with surrounding songs. Plenty of metal bands drop melodious low-key diversions into their albums of heavy fucking metal, usually as an interlude, sometimes as an extended intro to essentially provide the listener some respite. (Heck, Manilla Road does that later on this album.) Rather than offering reprieve, though, “The Return of the Old Ones” blots even the faint slivers of light let through by songs around it. Mark Shelton’s writing is genius in this sense. Where most of the other tracks reflect camp horror in the glint of steel and blood, “The Return of the Old Ones” conjures H.P. Lovecraft’s trademark absence of light.

The combination of a persistent martial snare roll, echoing rounded bass notes, and coiling electric guitar lines come together to paint the landscape black. Shelton’s ritualistic narration builds the tension through a couple verses and choruses until the swell bursts with the incantation’s fulmination of light, Chtulhu’s spectre rising among shadows cast horizon wide. Black fire and electricity that must course through such terrible mystic conflagration is captured beautifully in The Shark’s magical, silvery guitar solo.

Other tracks further the weird tale this song begins, but “The Return of the Old Ones” gets the nod here for remembering and maximizing Manilla Road’s singular, epic strength, all while flexing newfound muscle. [LONE WATIE]

THE DELUGE

So much of the power of Manilla Road is in their ability to write epics that not only unfold an enchanting tale across them, capturing the imagination and transporting their listeners to a time long gone or to far away worlds of myth and legend, but also in that they manage to keep them captivating and enthralling. The eponymous track from 1986’s The Deluge is certainly such an epic, and serves as a centerpiece to the album — the linchpin that holds it all together. In a move that would go on to define the latter era of their career, the song is divided into three specific movements: Three acts to tell the tale of the great flooding of Atlantis, all flawlessly woven together in a tapestry of fluid storytelling in a way that only Manilla Road can deliver.

The first movement, “Eye Of The Sea,” starts with Road’s loftier, quiet stylings, setting the stage of a lost era of magic and mystery. The soft picking of the guitar and intermittent drum play part the clouds of imagination, with Mark Shelton’s signature croon painting the portrait of Atlantis in the mind’s eye of the listener. The seas begin to grow violent as the music bits up, giving way to solid riffing and structure. The flurrying guitar solo that rounds out the movement hits like crashing waves on the shores of the ancient, doomed metropolis.

Shelton’s voice makes a change with the atmosphere on the second movement. Less lofty and packed with much more stone and grit, Shelton’s voice begins to match the immediacy of enraged gods and titans building their wrath against the soon-to-be-lost city. The music, in classic Manilla Road fashion, follows suit, turning up the intensity with the force of a growing storm over violent, destructive seas and powerful, unforgiving tides. The riffs feel nastier, more ominous — the storm only grows as the doomed city cowers beneath the might of immortal forces. The Foxe/Park rhythm combo are in full force, taking control of the flow of the song to match the pacing of the story — a characteristic of Road’s secret weapon when weaving a tale through song. The rains pour down as another signature Shelton solo hits like a torrent of rain and thunder, mercilessly bringing the wrath of Poseidon on the vast island before the third and final movement, “Engulfed Cathedral.”.

The final segment of the song all instrumental, relying on feeling more so than words to unravel the tale of the fabled Atlantis’s demise. For as good as Shelton is at telling stories, it’s really the atmosphere and cohesiveness of the band that make their yarns so cinematic, and the soft acoustic tones of “Engulfed Cathedral” paint a portrait of the aftermath: Silent, dead monuments are buried forever by the wrath of the sea, and an air of peace and mystery closes out the song, leaving the listener to ponder on the lost course of history as the muffled chimes echo to a time that may or may not have ever been. Somehow, Manilla Road always leaves the listener with a sense of wonder, inspiring imaginative thought from their own creative output — a factor that marks the greatness of the band and so well characterized on “The Deluge” that it absolutely deserves its spot on this list. [RYAN TYSINGER]

AVATAR

How remarkable is your band’s overall work when you brainstorm a record as good as Mark of the Beast (originally titled Dreams of Eschaton) and end up scrapping it in favor of a set of entirely new songs that would become 1982’s Metal. In hindsight, the fact that Mark of the Beast remained “lost” for two decades likely adds to its eminence in the modern age, and while we’ll never know how it would’ve been received had it landed after 1980’s Invasion as originally intended, Shelton & crew’s decision to put the record on ice at least seems reasonable because the material admittedly doesn’t feel like it needed to surface from the Manilla Road camp circa 1981. In short, a group of young & loud hitters finding their legs in the hard ’n’ heavy realm very well could have doomed themselves (further) with a sophomore effort that pushed this much relaxed psychedelia. But throw the material into a time capsule and unearth it again in 2002, long after what’s widely considered the band’s classic run that solidified Manilla Road as underground heroes of true epic heavy metal? That’s the sort of extra credit metal fans live and die for, baby. That’s on the level of finding a forgotten Easter egg in the backyard that miraculously contains the lost tapes of Bathory’s Blood On Ice, or King Diamond’s Black Rose rehearsals.

For its part, “Avatar” represents one of six songs on the record that would best be described as “lengthy late-night jams crafted under the influence of copious amounts of dope hoovered from an ornate dragon bong.” Manilla Road was still trying to find their footing as some sort of space metal outfit hawking tunes that found a strange intersection between Uli Roth’s Electric Sun and some of the trippier stretches of Eloy, and “Avatar” hit at the perfect point on the record because it finally delivered some true heft after two largely hushed openers.

The guitar fades in and out at its onset, sounding a bit like something that could’ve fallen off the center-point of “By-Tor and the Snow Dog,” but then “Avatar” quickly hustles into a vigorous strut as Shelton begins barking “Avatar, Avatar / We are waiting / Avatar we are here, for your saving,” followed by the song’s first lengthy solo. The strut continues until the midpoint, where Scott Park’s bass and Rick Fisher’s drums suddenly begin dancing more gingerly, accompanied soon after by the record’s first true right hook just before the 6.5-minute mark. Shelton riffs hard before tearing off a series of wild leads that gives the second half of “Avatar” a frenzied feel of savage battle that’s capped by a monstrous vocal effect that sends the listener spiraling into damnation. Hey, what’s not to love about a classic, nearly lost Manilla Road song that’s equally soused in blood and bong water? [CAPTAIN]

CAGE OF MIRRORS

Although Manilla Road’s earliest efforts are sometimes overlooked in light of how swiftly their craft blasted through the stratosphere with Crystal Logic and beyond, so many of those future triumphs were telegraphed by the signposts of Invasion and Metal. If “Queen of the Black Coast” was an early distillation of Road at their most propulsively rocking, then “Cage of Mirrors” pointed the way to mystical, winding progressive suites like “The Deluge” or “The Ninth Wave.”. (In fact, without the context of the shelved 1981 demos that were eventually released as Mark of the Beast, “Cage of Mirrors” feels like an outlier from this early era, when in fact it merges the more searching, wind-blown traveler vibe with a sturdier riffing core.) 

But even — and maybe especially — at this early stage, there is an irreducible magic to Manilla Road. Even though I don’t share the sentiment, I can understand when people aren’t fans of Manilla Road. Sometimes they don’t like the vocals, or the production is too rough, or whatever the case might be. But when Manilla Road really hits you and resonates in a way where your ribcage vibrates in a sympathetic frequency, it’s pure magic that can’t be defined by its constituent parts. In reality, we’re talking about a few guys from the American Midwest — if you close your eyes, you can probably still see a rehearsal space, cheaply lit and hazed with cigarette smoke. They’ve got day jobs and they’re tuning up where they can find time. 

But “Cage of Mirrors” opens with those chiming harmonics and one of Shark’s purest vocal performances and you’re transported. The song tells its story in words, sure, but you can almost paint the scene with just the sound alone — the plaintive clean chorus, the galloping anticipation of that first riff, the heavy syncopation and the almost death-growl tone that Shark dredges before a maniacal laugh. The recursive structure of the song is a little bit like Rush’s “Xanadu,” but that solo in the middle hits just that exacting balance of workmanlike and dreamlike that Shark seemed to nail so effortlessly. Given where Manilla Road was at this point in their career, “Cage of Mirrors” punches way above its weight and feels like one of those perfect storm moments that a band can spend years chasing.

I only saw Manilla Road live once, when they headlined the Alehorn of Power festival at Reggie’s in Chicago in 2013. Several of your favorite Last Rites knuckleheads had made the trek, and Road’s nearly three-hour set was one of the most joyful, life-affirming performances I’ve ever witnessed. But a personal highlight for me was when they pulled out “Cage of Mirrors,” a song that was then more than 30 years old but could have been made 50 years ago or maybe 100 years in the future. Watching the absolute and almost beatific lightness of Mark Shelton in his element, packed in a sweaty club with dear friends and total strangers, I felt lifted. And that was the true gift of Mark Shelton and Manilla Road: In crafting these perfect heavy metal worlds, he was writing stories we could all tell together. [DAN OBSTKRIEG]

MARCH OF THE GODS

By 2001, Manilla Road had released nine albums (although one wasn’t initially intended as a Road album), somehow forever avoiding true success, and subsequently, they’d been broken up for a decade. Still, it’s hard to keep a good band down, and Manilla Road was more than a good band — they were (and are, even in the Great Beyond) a damned GREAT band.

Reforming the Road with none of his previous compatriots, guitarist / vocalist / songwriter / guru Mark “The Shark” Shelton jumped right back into the deepest parts of the epic metal ocean with Atlantis Rising, a concept album separated into four “books” and comprised of the same fist-in-the-air holy-Hell-is-this-epic-or-what metal greatness that characterized the band’s first go-’round in the 1980s. The second chapter of the third book, the whole of which is titled “Bifrost (The Rainbow Bridge),” “March Of The Gods” is an out-and-out headbanger of a heavy metal track, with several of those sweet sweet Shark solos and an irresistible blend of rolling arpeggios and swaggering chug beneath his signature adenoidal croon. As the final solo builds itself up to the heavens, “March” marches right into a near-thrashing staccato riff, one that certainly could’ve been explored further, and the track’s only fault is that, the fact that, like the path of the band that created it, it ends before I want it to. We were only getting started, guys! Do it again! Do it again! More! More! More! [ANDREW EDMUNDS]

THE PROPHECY

Manilla Road has, maybe more than any band ever, excelled at capturing atmosphere in their music. It’s no mean feat for a band that explores centuries worth of inspiration. “The Prophecy” is an apocalyptic tale of the Cyborg Wars, conveyed so effectively with sounds that are both absolutely heavy metal and “very modern/futuristic” in the 80’s sense. That’s not to say it sounds dated or antique, because it doesn’t; it simply captures the essence of its time wonderfully.

That future-to-past duality is reflected, too, in the structure of “The Prophecy,” very much calling back to Manilla Road’s predominantly epic heavy metal roots, even as its songwriting makes room for those new and modern sounds, courtesy of drummer Randy Foxe on keyboard. It’s probably no accident that the keys are reminiscent of Blue Öyster Cult circa Fire of Unknown Origin and, especially, “Veteran of the Psychic Wars.” Maybe a touch of homage.

The cautionary tale of “The Prophecy” is, of course, a familiar one, concerned with how Humankind seems bent on allowing its destruction at the hands of its own creations. The Terminator might be the most famous iteration and “The Prophecy” captures the emotional essence of that movie so well, as the riffs, accents, and lyrics conjure imagery of barren landscapes, ashen skies, and heavy steps across biological and mechanical detritus. Mark Shelton’s chorus soaring chorus conveys it with vigor and, as always, his shining guitar leads draw the listener in completely to view the devastation from above. [LONE WATIE]

BLOOD EAGLE

Not only does the tremendous organ intro to “Blood Eagle” perhaps preview the Hellwell project that would only see light several years after Voyager, but it also sets a nice liturgical tone that makes good thematic sense. The Christian bishop attempting to convert the Vikings is rather gruesomely tortured and killed, just as the ecclesiastical tootling is surmounted and overmatched by sharp, raw riffing. “Blood Eagle” is built on the model of a sneakily classic Road tune, with each individual section set apart by a clearly delineated riff. The skittering drums of relative whippersnapper Cory Christner (in his early 20s at the time of recording) goose along a rock-solid verse riff, and the intensity of the track stays at a relatively fierce level until the beautiful simplicity of the chorus brings it home. 

And I mean really, just listen to that chorus. Shark’s vocal melody is straight and easy, his guitar is just landing on big open chords, and each line is maybe two or three words. It’s hardly even a traditional chorus, because it repeats the melody pattern twice without any verse in between, but in the context of this brilliant later career concept album, those simple chords ringing out feel like waves crashing across the bow of a longship at dawn. That placidity draped against the squealing crescendo of Shark’s outro guitar solo is yet another demonstration of the seamlessness with which Manilla Road juxtaposes rawness and sophistication, epic melody and gut-punch heft, soaring imagination and a firmly punctuated thought. Imagine playing “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” while standing on hot coals, but now instead of doing that, shut up and listen to Manilla Road. [DAN OBSTKRIEG]

SPIRAL CASTLE

For yours truly, 2002’s Spiral Castle isn’t just one of Manilla Road’s best albums after their 80s heyday, it’s one of their finest albums, period. It was a perfect midpoint between the extra aggression of the preceding Atlantis Rising and the ultimately epic, long jams of the ensuing Gates of Fire. And no song better exemplified this brilliant balance than the towering (nyuk) title track.

After the album intro sets the scene, a thunderclap of rolling drums and foreboding riffs bursts forth, immediately giving the song a sense of tension and suspense. The verse opens up a bit as the vocals weave a tale of magic and wonder and all those various and hybridized mythologies that Shark so loved, smoothly leading into a truly massive chorus. Manilla Road was no stranger to a great, infectious chorus on any of their records, but the chorus of “Spiral Castle” is among their best, with a unified guitar/vocal line that repeatedly lands on the listener, great bass lines for countermelody, and that malevolent touch of extremity when “BLASPHEMY” is hammered down with a near-growl. It’s huge, but no less gigantic than the song’s latter sections, which see thrasher, punchier sections trade off with more melodic passages, all the while the song’s storytelling continues, because this is Manilla Road, after all. And that finish? Hot damn. The mere act of continually slowing the tune to a crawl results in one of the meanest and most brutal passages in the band’s entire catalog.

But we can’t forget the solos, because this is Manilla Road, after all. The first basically acts as the third verse, while the second, longer lead helps the song arrive at that monstrous finish. Most importantly, however, was how Shark’s lead work added as much to the narrative quality of the song as any combination of words. Brain tired of writing lyrics? Let the band’s greatest asset carry the load and create entire worlds. [ZACH DUVALL]

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