Vallenfyre - Fear Those Who Fear Him (2017)

With A Fragile King, Gregor Mackintosh and company really seemed to be onto something, a blend of Swedish old school death metal with his melancholic Paradise Lost style guitar lines mixed in, but they seemed to slightly mutate away from that for the underwhelming sophomore Splinters. That record had a dirtier mix courtesy of Converge's Kurt Ballou, similar to other bands he had worked with (Trap Them, Black Breath, All Pigs Must Die, etc), and while that might have given it a little more savagery and street cred, it was the music itself which was increasingly lackluster and ultimately unmemorable. Three years later they would return to Kurt to record Fear Those Who Fear Him, an album which barks up much the same tree, but reaches an even lower branch.

This album definitely plays up the most of the three to its Swedish influences, and sadly becomes a pretty faceless affair at a time when there are just so many B- and C-tier acts who have oversaturated the niche to the degree it almost doesn't feel that heavy anymore. Sure, I'm an eternal advocate for the style, but it relies so heavily on atmosphere and QUALITY riff writing, which so many lack, and I find that a good number of the tracks here are just punctual, boring bursts of energy which have no redeeming riffs whatsoever. I feel as if the band could have just written 20 of these tunes and put out a deathgrind album for Nasum fans, only not remotely as good. For these sorts of 2-minute numbers, it doesn't seem like much effort was put into the guitars at all, just falling back on the production and tone for all its CRUSHING HEAVINESS which would mean a whole lot more to me if it was done by delivering some decent music. Cuts like "Kill All Your Masters" and "Nihilist" don't capitalize on anything but the barking vocals and d-beat fused aggression, maybe you'll get a wiry, spastic little lead but that's about all the surprise you can expect.

Where this album slows down a bit, as in "An Apathetic Grave" or "The Merciless Tide", and Gregor gets more into his doom comfort zone, is where I was able to wrench out any enjoyment of the sound. Not because these are exceptional tunes, but once in a while you got an attempt at one of those sad melodies, and the tone of the guitars is more of a benefit to those dreary chords. Mid-paced rockers like "Amongst the Filth" are also slightly better than the blitz tracks, but I'll maintain that I can't recall a single memorable rhythm guitar track through the entire album at any pace, just a whole lot of 'get it done' stuff that could be churned out almost instantaneously by musicians like this with little preparation. The drums sound heavy as hell, the whole album does, and you might get a little death metal break which feels so raw and old school and evil, but then the next tune will be some rubbish that wasn't even worth putting on tape. I'd say there's a passable 15 minute EP here, built largely of the longer doom tunes, which is unfortunately mired in mediocrity, and a production aesthetic which serves the aforementioned acts a lot better than it serves Vallenfyre. I don't imagine the band itself was much interested since they dissolved not long after this one dropped.

Verdict: Indifference [5.75/10]

Darxon - Killed in Action (1984)

An album like Killed in Action is always an interesting one to approach because it's a veritable dead end...a black hole on the heavy metal landscape. Sure, the Germans would go on to produce another couple albums and an EP, and various members through its  active years would move on to other groups like Bonfire or U.D.O., but you just never hear anyone talking about Darxon at all. Heck, I've even had conversations specifically about unknown Teutonic traditional metal of the 80s and this group wasn't brought up. After spinning the album for myself, I think it's reasonable, as these guys were certainly not achieving anything that wasn't already available in spades by the middle of the decade in which it was released, just total straightforward heavy metal, molded almost entirely from its influences without a ton of personality of its own. I don't even know where the name came from, it sounds like some 8-bit import arcade shoot 'em up from Japan, or some generic evil wizard from a failed fantasy novel around the same era.

But none of that is to say Killed in Action is all that bad for an obscure debut. It gets the job done as long as you're expectations are little more than a standard set of energetic, rocking riffs that carefully straddle the border between cheesy hair metal and bad ass street chops. Vocalist Massimo de Matteis, who was with the group through all their recorded output (as far as I can tell), had a mildly distinct voice which felt like a fusion between the Scorpions' Klaus Meine and some of David Coverdale's higher pitched, emotive crooning, with a bit of an earlier Biff Byford Saxon attitude. Lots of blues in his intonations, not without some flaws but definitely putting some effort in. The guitars are super basic amalgamations of 70s Judas Priest, some Accept and maybe even a little old Van Halen for good measure, but almost unanimously lacking in the catchy department unless you're a true die hard who simply finds comfort and enjoyment out of this style. Admittedly, I do sometimes fall into that category...as much as I hoo and ha about progression and uniqueness, I've still got a steel heart for this sort of thing and did not much mind my listens through the record so that I could talk about it.

Rhythm-wise, there's not much to brag about the merely adequate bass lines and beats, they don't generate a lot of power other than keeping time and filling out the bottom end of the mix just enough so that you'll notice it's all happening. The leads on the album are also pretty barebones and not quite different than what you'd find on a lot of throwaway glam metal albums around the same time. I did notice that whenever Darxon tried to get heavier, or a little faster, they seemed like they could have been more exciting, for instance the closer "Stormbringer" with its vintage Saxon vibe; but then the band always seemed to check itself and ensure that what they were playing was fairly inoffensive, standard fare that might make it onto the radio. I'll give a few extra points for having tracks called "Simile of Evil" and "Holy Macho" (what?!?), and some sort of Yeti or Wendigo thing scowling at me from the cover, but Killed in Action is appreciably average by every sort of metric I can apply to it. That said, if you DO scour the backwaters of metal history for low-rent heavy metal I don't think this would take a piss in your ears, it's at least got the fundamentals down. I don't know if this is around in any official format today, it was released several times on vinyl but other than that you might need to grab a download or a bootleg.

Verdict: Indifference [6/10]

Prong - Cleansing (1994)

I don't think you could listen through albums like Beg to Differ and Prove You Wrong and NOT think Tommy Victor had a fascination with industrial or electronic music. While those were organic thrash manifestations for the most part, there was clearly an undercurrent of clinical, machine-like riffing, beats and production which made an album like Cleansing almost inevitable. But it's not until this 1994 effort that Prong embarked on a more even split between its thrashing roots and the electronic experimentation; I'm of course excluding the remix EP from a couple years prior which was an abomination. What I'm most impressed with, is that rather than merely aping the flavors of the day, such as Ministry, who were enjoying massive success due to Psalm 69 and steady touring, they made something of their own out of this stylistic crossbreeding. Not to say that there aren't a couple riffs here, as in "Whose Fist is This Anyway?", which Alain Jourgensen might have penned himself, but this one manages to stand out and even outlive a lot of other US industrial rock bands why fell by the wayside somewhere around the late 90s when emo and nu-metal started to bifurcate their projected audiences.

What really surprises me is just how laid back this record is. Similar to Beg to Differ it's exceedingly simple and subliminal in how it's constructed. While there are programmed beats occasionally, they were still leaning on Ted Parsons for the actual drumming, and he sets up a well-produced set of grooves here that give all the guitars, samples, and pluggy little bass-lines room to work upon the listener's expectations. The rhythm guitars are extremely minimal patterns, but even where they feel familiar there is something refreshing about how they serve the overall aesthetic of the album. The tone is punchy and processed, but works equally well whether Victor is cycling through some of his basic palm mutings or the more expressive, dissonant, often warm open chords that are used to detail out some of the verses and choruses. Tracks like "Another Worldly Device" and "Cut-Rate" are still heavily rooted in the thrash we'd come to expect, but the band really stretches itself out with things like the funky guitar line in "Broken Peace" or "Not of This Earth", which twists a riff similar to "Hell If I Could" from Prove You Wrong into something that almost sounds like a darker Jane's Addiction. Another interesting piece was "Home Rule" which reminded me a lot of Voivod with its jarring, wonderful chord progressions and the swerving bass grooves.

Of course, this is all brought into the Prong stable by Tommy Victor's blunt voice, which connects this all to their greater body of work, and fits in really well with the mechanistic blueprints whether he's going straight at the mic or putting a little industrial filtering on their. What further thrusts this into that genre is the liberal use of sampling that sits just behind the main instruments and vocals, almost as if its afraid to truly intrude, but loud enough to matter when categorizing Cleansing. There are political/authoritarian rants, crowd chants, and machine noises in there, all adding to the sonic palette without detracting or distracting. I can't actually pick out a weak track in the bunch...perhaps there are a couple overly repetitive passages on the album, or a few groove metal licks that are a little too generic in retrospect, but this one manages to fill out nearly an entire hour and maintain its consistency and immersion, all the way to the catchy but mellowed thrashing throughout "Test". I've mentioned that the album felt 'laid back' to me, but I don't want that to imply that it lacks energy; it's aggression is simply focused on the robotic nature of its rhythms, the tautness of the lower end guitars that is counterbalanced by the delicious processed open chords which appear later.

Even within this small microcosm of Prong's sound there is a good dynamic balance which leaves me with a fulfilling impression for one of my favorite albums in their whole 30+ year history. This was also the hottest I think the band had ever been thanks largely to the MTV video rotation for "Snap Your Fingers, Snap Your Neck", which was also lampooned on Beavis & Butt-head. And deservedly so...this was a still a band hungry to explore what it could achieve, never balking at stretching its parameters and as a result we've got about a decade of quality albums which build upon their predecessors in interesting ways. For me, the streak didn't end here.

Verdict: Win [8.75/10] (all the spaces between bleed)

https://prongmusic.com/

Prong - Whose Fist is This Anyway? EP (1992)

This EP always struck me as a rather strange, unfortunate sort of experiment, the main reasons being that 1) the track "Whose Fist is This Anyway?" isn't even present, though it would appear a couple years later on the Cleansing album. I suppose they could have just thought it was a clever title and then one that deserved to be used for more than just a largely throwaway label-filler release like this one, but in retrospect anyone encountering that album first would probably be confused when they were tracking this down from the limited catalog Prong had available at the time. 2) I just don't think industrial/dance remixes of tracks off Prove You Wrong was bound to work out all that well, and this sort of thing could have waited, again for Cleansing, of which the material feels a lot more adjacent to being techno-fied, industrialized and otherwise fucked with.

What's more, this is just bad...this is possibly the worst release in the entire Prong discography. The electro mixes are almost all awful, with few changes other than clanging and banging and annoyance that people would have only thought made for good industrial music in the early 90s. Okay, to be fair, sometimes they did, but the strength of Prong is the riffs, vocals and energy and it just doesn't benefit a track like "Prove You Wrong" or "Hell If I Could" to be fragmented off and repurposed like this. The latter is particularly bad, a series of boring beats and bass-lines that suddenly morphs into the proper guitar riffs and some heavily filtered vocals. Granted, that vocal effect might have been cool in the original tune, but here it just feels like a bunch of buttons are being pressed, and that's one of the critical flaws...'What would this part sound like if we added this effect?' is fun for dicking around in the studio with your buds, but later turning it into a commercial release in some wishful attempt to align with the KDMFMs and Ministry's of the world just isn't effective here. And ALL the alternate mixes of their original songs here are laughable at best, like the miserable 'Safety Mix' of "Irrelevant Thoughts", a song I happened to like a lot. And there are TWO mixes of "Prove You Wrong" which both suck...

Interestingly, they also remix their Stranglers' cover "Get a Grip (On Yourself)" so now it sounds like total nonsense, and then they add a cover of The Music Machine's "Talk Talk", which might be the best tune on here only by the process of elimination, but is otherwise mediocre enough that I'm happy they didn't soil Prove You Wrong by including it. They turn the song into a bouncing bore that doesn't do much justice to the original and certainly isn't interesting in context to the great material I enjoyed from Prong throughout the 90s. So basically this entire release is useless musically, a waste of 26 minutes. The cover image is kind of interesting, I like how they split the 'prong' icon into the three circles, but that's the most memorable thing about it. I enjoy the first five Prong albums a lot but this was a very unfortunate misstep which at one point had me dreading what might come after Prove You Wrong. Luckily, that turned out a LOT fucking better than I thought.

Verdict: Fail [2.25/10]

https://prongmusic.com/

Prong - Prove You Wrong (1991)

Prove You Wrong is one of those really unique records of that early 90s period which I didn't take to at first, apart from a couple tracks, but later started to grow on me (like Kreator's Renewal), to the extent that now I put it on almost the same level as Beg to Differ, which was an album that a lot more thrashers I know paid attention to. I encountered a nearly unanimous disregard or disappointment towards this one composed to the two albums sandwiching it, probably because the sophomore was their big label debut right, in before the thrash genre started to wane, and Cleansing was carried on the success of "Snap Your Fingers, Snap Your Neck". At any rate, this one actually sounds better to me now then when I first heard it, so whatever production choices were made have really stood the test of time, whereas Beg to Differ does seem a little less potent mix-wise than I remembered in my youth, not that it really dulls the music, but Prove You Wrong is louder, bolder, and more organic.

This is also a very transitional record, with feelers to both the band's thrash past, and the industrial, alternative and groove metal that would dominate the remainder of their 90s output. Hell, even the cover here, with its great sculptures of the band's iconography, reminded me a lot of what a lot of alt rock/Lollapalooza types were using back in these days. Troy Gregory of Flotsam & Jetsam stepped in to replace the departing Mike Kirkland, and while it might not be a prevailing opinion, I thought Troy's tone here hit a little harder...the bass lines were always fairly thick, but here they're quite corpulent and it stands out more. In fact, the production on the bass is one of my favorite elements to this one, it's perfect. The drums and some of the rhythm guitar riffing patterns here aren't a far cry from Beg to Differ, with a focus on very simplistic, memorable, mechanical progressions. There is no lacking for energy, with the opening volley of the tribal, pounding "Irrelevant Thoughts" and the more traditional thrashing of the excellent "Unconditional". Victor was continuing to grow more confident in his vocal abilities, so the slightly higher pitched lines from the prior album were growing even more developed and melodic when he'd hit a chorus here, and his presence is pretty seamless whether the trio was thrashing out hard or experimenting more with the title track, which has almost as much in common with a band like Primus as Prong.

As great as "Unconditional" is, most of my favorites on this one come in the middle; "Hell If I Could" with its eerie, dissonant verse riffing and fat bass lines during the choppy chorus; and "Torn Between" with that amazing groove riff. "Brainwave" is another highly, one of the more taut thrashing bits and one that might have fit the most with the material off the first two full-lengths. The later chunk of the album remains solid but it doesn't quite live up to some of the material before it, despite their honest attempt at a cover of The Stranglers' "Get a Grip (On Yourself)". There are no bad tracks, but had it ended with "Brainwave" or the instrumental "Territorial Rites" it would feel more consistent overall, and this is why I hold a fraction below Beg to Differ even though there are aspects of this disc that are much stronger. I have to say I find this underrated, I know I've seen people complain that it was too groovy, almost a proto form of nu-metal in places, or that the album feels rushed, but apart from 7-8 minutes of bloat I just can't agree with that. It's another unique, forward-thinking effort. Prong could have written a grunge album or started crossing over into death metal like a lot of other thrash bands of the era, but instead did something altogether different, and this wasn't at all the last time.

Verdict: Win [8/10] (uninvited with open arms)

https://prongmusic.com/

Prong - Beg to Differ (1990)

If Force Fed had a vibe that channeled the filth, detritus, and decay of dense urban existence, on a street or subterranean level, then Beg to Differ was quite the opposite, with a polished, corporate, clinical feel to it that was quite a slap in the face when I first heard it. Not to say that the two albums don't share the same thrashing DNA, but apart from the few connecting tissues like Tommy Victor's vocals and a few of the guitar patterns with his patented pinch and squeal, they could have been two different bands and I would have been none the wiser. This was yet another example of how Prong really felt out its first decade with some steady shifts in style and production, while somehow maintaining its core attitude; a band that was able to modernize itself through changing times without in my opinion really dumbing itself down too much...unless you thought it was all dumb to begin with, then touche.

Guided by its iconic Pushead image, this record marked the band's major label signing to Epic, which likely had something to do with the cleaning up of their sound. This one's slick and accessible, rather than rollicking in the grating, grimy crunch and atmosphere of its predecessor. I reckon this was considered a bit of a 'thinking man's' thrash album at the time, at least among other fans I knew, not because it was highly technical or challenging, but because it honed in on a stricter sense of groove and rhythm, almost subliminal patterns emerging through the compartmental thrashing in tunes like the title track, and its extremely simple but effective riffing; the mellow chugs of "Your Fear" which lift into that great little guitar lick behind Tommy's vocals in the verses; the great "Intermenstrual, D.S.B" which at times reminded me the most of an instrumental that would have fit right in with Force Fed if only it were noisier; or the almost mantra-inducing creep of "Prime Cut", which is one of my favorite tracks in the band's catalog. In addition to his really interesting guitars, Victor also expands himself here as a vocalist with some more subdued whispers, a slightly more melodic tint to his inflection, although there are plenty of the good old grunts here to maintain the aggression.

There are still some fist-pumping thrash anthems here, like the opener "For Dear Life", but even there this new direction is apparent in some of the vocalizations and rhythmic choices. The other 2/3rds of the tiro, Kirkland and Parsons, sounded great here also, again...not too flashily proficient, but the solid bass tone and almost tribal fills and rhythms make the perfect accompaniment to the thin punch of the guitar tone and the bluntness of the vocals. A couple of transitions here or there feel a bit jarring and just seem like a rush to get a new riff going, but honestly the whole album is consistent in that there's rarely a track where some progression didn't get my lustrous teenage locks flailing around in the air, and I still feel the push and pull of its mechanisms in follically challenged geezerhood. The lyrics and minimalist but insightful, often abstracting away from their subject matter where other Eastern Seaboard thrashers of this age were hitting things right on the nose (you don't accuse Nuclear Assault or Overkill of any subtlety). In truth Beg to Differ is just as distinct as the debut, if not quite as excellent, and it's still a great example of a band trying to write its own language out of a musical trend; not to the extent of a Voivod, but certainly in that ballpark of distinctiveness. It's also the establishing shot for their more mechanical albums to come through the 90s.

Verdict: Win [8.25/10] (be true to our grudges)

https://prongmusic.com/

The Scintilla Project - The Hybrid (2014)

The Hybrid is one of those 'music inspired by the motion picture' albums which was meant to accompany a film without actually featuring music from the film. The film went under the same title, although it was also known as Scintilla, a sci-fi horror flick that I've actually seen before, but remember little about, apart from the alien hybrids having these really freaky eyes that gave me at least one nightmare not long after viewing it. So it's possible a track or two from this might have popped up in the movie and I can't remember. at any rate, why I'm writing about this is because the spearheads behind this were drummer Lionel Hicks, prolific drummer and the producer on the film, and none other than Biff Byford, the mighty vocalist of legends Saxon, and I whom I believe was at some time a resident in Huddersfield, where the film was shot. They're joined by a host of other British veterans like Gizz Butt of the English Dogs and producer/Sabbat-slinger Andy Sneap, to name a couple.

I was kind of crossing my fingers for some of epic spin on the Saxon sound, and though I'm not always satisfied with the results, that's exactly what this is, an album that transports Byford's blue collar, distinct presence onto the bridge of a rock opera-like vessel, where he capably takes the helm. No big surprise, since his vocal style has always translated well to whatever minor mutations his mainstay has made throughout their extensive career...the AOR sounds they strove for in the 80s, or the more power metal leanings the band has taken on for several of their records in the last couple decades. At times I was reminded of something like Ayreon, only without the large cast of singers. Mid paced crunchy metal anthems dressed up by a lot of orchestration and proggy synthesizers that help elevate the album towards the higher concepts of its subject matter. I guess if you can imagine Biff fronting a group like Celesty or Vanden Plas, you're in the right ballpark. There are a couple notably heavier moments where the guitars get a little more intense, but most of the chords and chugging patterns here exist largely to thrust the orchestrated momentum forward and create a foundation for his voice, which is easily the star of the show.

I wasn't even aware that Biff was a big sci-fi fan, although I know there have been a few tunes in his repertoire (like "Metalhead") which played with such subjects; but I'm glad he is, because he does sound quite fantastic here like he usually does, with a lot of great sustained lines and more melody inherent to his grainy, unique pitch than one might think. A track like "Angels" uses his voice as well as anything I've ever heard, sounding awesome against the beats and symphonics. John (Yannis) K of Biomechanical and Balance of Power performs the synths and keeps quite busy here; they're well integrated in the mix and applied with taste, even when they're almost completely carrying the music as they do in "Some Nightmare", one of the most glorious tracks of the lot, he manages not to overdo it, and when the lead guitars slice in they take over as they should. The production is totally pro here, highly polished without leeching away the power from the metal instruments at the core. There is one Saxon tune present, "No Rest for the Wicked" from Call to Arms, all synthed out here so that it fits in with the rest of the material.

It's a solid record, provided you don't mind hearing one of the NWOBHM's brightest singing on an album that is more dramatic, grandiose and accessible than those of his mainstay. It's almost a shame that we're unlikely to ever get more of this, or that it seemed to turn out a mere vanity project that didn't make many ripples, even among the Saxon fanbase. A few tunes are blander than others, and when it comes to guitar riffs, there aren't many that stand out, since they're generally so basic and foundational. Also, the feel of these tunes doesn't quite reflect the sci-fi/horror vibe of the film as much as the lyrics might, but that's just a matter of my own interpretation.

Verdict: Win [7.5/10]

Massemord - Ekstremist EP (2020)

A lot of the details for this new Ekstremist EP from the Massemord international lineup seem familiar from the previous album Luciferi Imperium. Cool looking guy on the black & white cover wielding a firearm, this time a different firearm, against a woodland backdrop, potentially from the same photo shoot, but at a different angle. It makes sense, since this is included with that. And I believe the musical content of this six-track recording mirrors that sense of marginal departure from what came directly before it. This is barking up the exact same true, pure Scandinavian black metal assault with few bells and whistles, excess atmospheric dressings or any real sense of identity that you might be able to pick out of a lineup with so many similar releases across the last 25-30 years that you've been enjoying (or not enjoying the style).

But once more, I didn't care about any of that as I was getting my face hammered in by the material. Ekstremist, as its title might imply, is more intense than its predecessor, with a faster double header to open the album in "Behead the Prophet" and "Enslaved by Darkness". The material here still reminds me of Carpathian Forest, whether its blasting away, or especially the potent mid-paced numbers like the early verses of "The Chosen Ones", but the majority of the EP is fast and loud and a lot of fun, in particular "Ekstremist" with its thrashy, evil breakdown, impulsive, mean rhythm guitars, and a great lead section, not to mention gruesome rasped mentions of "Satan...." which will have you smiling ear to wicked ear and trying to keep your serpent tongue from lolling out of your mouth. It's all mixed loudly and brashly and doesn't give a damn, and in my opinion the experience is better for it.

The only downside is that the last two tracks are demo versions of pieces off the previous album, "Serpent" and "Chaos Within You", and for me this felt like a bit of filler, as they don't noticeably enhance the quality of the demo overall and seem a little redundant despite the differences in their production. Not a big deal, especially if you're getting it all in the same package anyway, but I did think the first four tunes were superior and gave me a much harder kick in the nethers. Overall, what I said about Luciferi Imperium still applies...if you haven't had enough of the originators in this style, if you can pull your attention away from the various progressions and evolutions that other artists have undergone, or if you think all of that should be melted to slag anyway, then there might be a place for nowadays Massemord in your collection. I think there's room for it all, and I think the energy and passion these guys obviously have for such a straightforward style shines through.

Verdict: Win [7.25/10]

https://officialmassemord.bandcamp.com/

Massemord - Luciferi Imperium (2019)

Initially, the Norwegian Massemord wasn't a band I spent much time hunting down, partially because of their general obscurity and probably also because I was more enamored with what I had heard of the Polish band with the same name. Through the years, as I've gone back to revisit their backlog, I've grown to appreciate a few of their records, particularly the 2003 full-length debut Skogen kaller; some well-written, appreciably enough atmospheric black metal. A couple countries and lineups later, the group is still out there, ready to make whatever statement a black metal band can with a cool pic of a battle jacketed hesher in a humble amount of corpse paint and a pistol pointed straight in your fucking face.

And I have to say, the charms and wiles of Luciferi Imperium are just as direct...slower to mid paced black metal which is just as true to its own history as it is to a lot of what some purists demand from the genre, with few to no outside influences or cross-pollination. Sometime's that enough, and as I crank up the album though my PC speakers, the mix of melancholic and evil chord patterns and the raw, wartorn rasp of Sicarius help carry this one towards appreciation. There's little sense of nuance or surprised through any of the tracks, nor are there any sorts of riffs that you won't have heard a thousand times in the past if you've ever deep-dived into this genre, but the album is dynamic and humble enough that I didn't really feel the loss. The beats can get a little brazen and loud, like some of the percussive breaks in "Inri", but the rest of the mix is level and effective at making you feel like you're being stalked through the woodland by such a maniac. I especially like the vocals on this, the slightly sloppy syllabic delivery really drives the whole thing home as a love letter to its medium.

I've probably got hundreds or thousands of these mid-list black metal records lying around in my CD piles or promo folders, but there's just something timeless about the style, that when performed to a degree of competence, doesn't fail me. There were stretches of the album where it felt too creatively dry to hold my attention, but then I readjusted expectations and got drawn back into its riff patterns. The album doesn't really ever threaten to bore you since it's barely over a half-hour in length. If I were to make a more specific comparison, it reminds me of Carpathian Forest circa 1998-2003, but not quite as memorable in either the guitars, drums or vocal departments. It's definitely better than a couple of the other Massemord records in the past, though I think the debut still has the most appeal. Those who aren't already settled in with their old 90s black metal records from this scene might at least catch a whiff of semi-stale nostalgia, burning wood for the past when music like this was considered dangerous and exciting...although the compositions themselves aren't terribly so.

Verdict: Win [7/10]

https://officialmassemord.bandcamp.com/

Prong - Peel Sessions EP (1989)

Once upon a time, The Peel Sessions was like an MTV Unplugged, only for cool people, featuring cooler bands, and not unplugged. John Peel was an eclectic English radio host who would promote all manner of underground musical genres by having bands perform a quartet of tracks live on the air, and a good number of these were turned into commercial products. This has actually become quite a popular premise in the age of YouTube, with several radio channels or online shows hosting lots of varied bands in comfortable little studio settings and giving fans a free, concise show. Back in the early extreme metal scene, names like Carcass, Bolt Thrower, Napalm Death and Extreme Noise Terror were part of this, and the Peel Sessions arguably helped grind and deathgrind reach some of its highest visibility...or audibility ever, during the late 80s and 90s. Prong was an interesting case as one of the few US bands to be broadcast, naturally it tended towards the British bands who were more local to the radio channel itself.

The trio's choices leaned heavily on Force Fed, their most recent album at that time, with "Decay" and "Senseless Abuse" represented, while Primitive Origins is present through "In My Veins". The final selection was pretty interesting, "Defiant", which would be the B-side on the "For Dear Life" single to promote the forthcoming Beg to Differ. It's a passable tune, one can see why it wasn't rhythmically interesting enough to make the album itself, but what really surprises me the most is how it sort of set the tone for all the material here, which comes off cleaner and tighter than you'd expect from the band's first two official releases. On the one hand, it shows Tommy Victor and crew were quite proficient and professional in the live arena even at this point, and on the other that the direction of their material would be using a punchier, more polished guitar tone. Although the songs sound fine in this context, I do admit that they lost a bit of their edge and volatility for me, but then again live sounds offer differ for many bands; there's simply a small chance that you'll always be able to reproduce the studio conditions in either a live venue or live broadcast.

I do think the bass line suffer here a little, drowned out by the snap of the drums, that pugilistic guitar tone and the Victor's McGruff the Crime Dog vocals, but otherwise it all sounds pretty smooth, the playing nearly perfect to the studio recordings. I doubt I'd ever go to grab this when I prefer the more uncouth Force Fed versions of the songs, but it's cool to hear "Defiant" as I have never owned the single it appeared on. This is another of those releases which has been out of print now for going on 30 years, and so today it serves largely as a collector's item and tribute to Peel's legacy of having on great bands which he saw something in, many of which have gone on to steady or illustrious careers despite having little to no coverage in more mainstream access media outside their genres. It was a little more exciting when it came out, I remember grabbing all the cassette versions of these when I could find them, but few of them had anything I didn't already own from the bands on their albums.

Verdict: Indifference [5.75/10]

https://prongmusic.com/