Woo-hoo! It’s Metal Month. Again. And that means not one, but four visits to
Now, my luck has been, shall we say, less than salubrious with this section to date, so let’s hope that out of four sessions I can get at least one or two decent bands. But if the Curse of The Batlord doth hold true, I may find nothing but unsigned bands, demos and bands who split up and left nary a musical footprint on yon Web for me to track down. Ah well. Like they say, if you’re not in you can’t win. So let’s dive in.
Well my luck certainly runs true to form, or maybe Batty’s curse is more real than I had thought, as I unearth yet another unsigned band, and a death metal one into the bargain. They hail from la belle France, and call themselves
(Yeah, I thought it was Sepultura too at first. Cue big rush of excitement then a real deflation as the air was let out of my expectations)
Oh my mistake. I should have said they
called themselves Sulphura. cos guess what? They broke up. Yep. And with one EP released in 1995, who’ll bet their beer money that I’ll be able to find anything --- anything --- of them on the net? Nobody? Wise men and women, all of you. Sigh. Let’s go through the motions then…
Spotify: negative. Grooveshark: negative. YouTube: neg --- oh wait. There’s one video. And here it is.
Yeah, they seem multi-talented all right. Mystery why they didn’t conquer the world. Lord almighty! Moving on…
Even better this time!
Not a death metal act, but a grindcore one! And one who are a) unsigned and b) have one demo and one EP to their name. On the plus (?) side, they’re still together, being relatively recent, only formed since 2011. Then again, both their releases came in that year and nothing since, so I’d say finding anything from them will be unlikely.
Hailing from Sweden, they seem to have been in two minds about their debut EP. Should we title it, or shouldn’t we? They decided not to, and so it’s called “Untitled”. Either that, or they’re just lazy or unimaginative bastards. Oh, a hunting we will go, a hunting we will go…
Well, to my everlasting surprise, shock and not a little disappointment, about half of their EP is avaiable on YouTube (thanks a lot, guys!) so I guess this is the one we’re doing. No, there’s nothing running down my leg. Look, I don’t care
what you smell…
Hmm. Are these radioactive mutants? Why are they all green? I thought it was grindcore, not greencore! Oh ho ho ho! A little harmless levity serves to distract from the acrid stench of … look, just leave it ok! I’ll change when I get a chance. Right now it’s time to introduce you to one of my most hated subgenres, despite the fact that I haven’t heard anything from any band other than Napalm Death. Ladies and gentlemen, Trollheart does Grindcore!
Why do I hate it? Well, just look at what Wiki has to say about it:
”Grindcore is characterized by a noise-filled sound that uses heavily distorted, down-tuned guitars, grinding overdriven bass, high speed tempo, blast beats, and vocals which consist of growls and high-pitched shrieks.” Grindcore - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Like, it really sounds like my sort of Metal, don’t it? Look, can’t I just pretend I listened and say it’s crap? No? That’s not in the spirit of Metal Month II, nor indeed the idea behind The Meat Grinder? Who made these stupid rules up? I wanna talk to …. oh. Yeah. Right.
Fine then. Big deep breath and let’s break out the earplugs. But before we dive into the --- ahem! --- music, let’s give you the VS on these guys. Whaddya mean, what are VS? Ain’t ya never watched Miss World? Vital Statistics, man. Vital Statistics.
Band name: Crypt of the Zombilord
Nationality: Swedish
Subgenre: Grindcore (May the Lord have …)
Born: 2011
Status: Active
Albums: Untitled (2011)
Live albums: None
Collections/Anthologies/Boxsets: None
Lineup: Elk (Guitar, vocals)
F
Bergman (Drums)
F
Robban (Bass)
F
(What? No cello or keybaords?)
What else can I tell you about them? Well they certainly have a sense of humour, as this article
INQUISITIVE ELKS Punk, Rock, Metal, Movies, Kvlt, Life.: CRYPT OF THE ZOMBILORD - INTERVIEW,masquerading as an interview, shows. so they’re not up their own arses, which is a good start. However I’m not fooled, and can feel the flesh beginning to crawl off my bones in anticipation of this ordeal. On the plus side for me, all their songs are very short and there are only eight on the EP, five of which I can find. So I guess that’s enough stalling. Hey ho --- let’s go!
Untitled --- Crypt of the Zombilord --- 2011 (Independent)
The album opens with “Okazaka fragments”, which is just short of two minutes. This seems to be about standard length for their tracks. Well it’s fast, blisteringly fast guitar as expected, with the vocal alternating between high-pitched scream and gutteral growl. And it’s over. “Cultural hyphae” is next, and it’s just slightly over two minutes, with a big grindy guitar that takes up more than half of that, then the vocal is again split between agonising screams and a dark rumbling devilish snarl. And it’s over. Next we have “Deception of the scourge”, one and a half minutes and the only footage I could get was live, so it’s even less intelligible than it would be on a studio recording. Nah, it’s just noise to me. Sorry, can’t even make out the vocals if they’re there and the guitar just seems to be cranking the same chords out. See if you can do any better. Here’s the video.
The tasteful acoustic ballad “Government s
hit” is next, and the vocal drops to a low-key … yeah. It’s more of the same. Nobody was fooled by my clever ploy, were they? In reality, it only runs for fifty-three seconds, which is fifty-three seconds too long in my opinion. This really is terrible. I could never get into this. I’d get into death metal before I’d get into this. Hell, I’d get into
black metal before it! Sadly, the next three tracks I can’t find, so we’re left with the closer, “Tombrider” (no, not Tomb Raider!) and it’s live again. Via cameraphone, no less! Ah, wouldn’t matter if it was in 1080 HD, this would still sound
shit. What a mess.
TRACKLISTING
Okazaka fragments
Cultural hyphae
Deception of the scourge
Government s
hit
The lost trailblazers
Filled with spiders
Into the crypt
Tombrider
Well I’m glad CotZ have a sense of humour, because their music sucks. All right, let me just take these stilettos off and remove my false fingernails: there. Bitch mode cancelled. This may be someone’s cup of tea but it ain’t mine. I normally try to say something complimentary or at least not unkind about every band I review, but here I literally can’t say anything. Even death metal has a sort of melody, black has some decent lyrics on occasion. This just has nothing to me: toneless, tuneless guitars and vocals that sound like someone strangling a mongoose.
Other than that it’s fine.
(And that's only because I can't award zero cleaver ratings...)