Abigail & Fornication - Drink Beer. Listen Hell Metal! EP (2011)

Of Engrish and the damage done! Drink Beer. Listen Hell Metal! is one of the latest in Abigail's nigh on endless parade of limited press split recordings, this time paired with the Canadian newcomers Fornication who appreciate a similar taste in sluts, blackened speed thrash and spent kidneys. As is usual with this sort of thing, the focus is strictly on the collector/consumer who views this band's output (and that of countrymen Sabbat, etc) as a paragon of rarity and long-term value. With just over 10 minutes of content, there's hardly even an impetus to break out the gramophone, but what the hell, right? Abigail and Fornication are cool bands, and whoever their cover model was this time out seems...rather agreeable.

You get two tracks by Abigail, one of which is a rehearsal recording of "I Am Holocaust" from their 2005 album Ultimate Unholy Death. Even in such a crude capture, I actually found that particular track more entertaining than either of the others on the split, with its burning and dirty speed metal aesthetics and Yasuyuki Suzuki's splattered vocals, but it's one that the Abigail fan will have already known and in no way better than the finalized studio alternative. Their new contribution, "Nocturnal War" takes more of a straight black metal approach with a lot of tremolo/blasting, and until the thick, distorted bass ruptures of the Hellhammer inspired bridge and the wild, rocking lead I admit that I was mildly bored with it. Fornication's anthem "Fornicator" is a predictable, messy but fun hybrid of speed/punk metal with black rasped vox that accelerates into blasting territory before the verse, with a thrash bridge breakdown, but the riff didn't really catch me, and the production was mediocre raw.

At any rate, these two bands are a good match for one another stylistically, I just wish they had brought more of their 'A' game and perhaps given us 6-8 songs of better quality. As it stands, I could not muster any real enthusiasm for this split outside of the smutty, sexy cover and another in Abigail's canon of smile inducing titles. Both bands are fun, but I'd urge you to check out their better studio works, like Abigail's Forever Street Metal Bitch or Sweet Baby Metal Slut, or that compilation of demos that Fornication released last year. This split itself serves as little more than an obscurity for the collectors to pin onto their collection like butterfly wings. But, hey, tracking down a copy might afford the bands a pack of smokes.

Verdict: Fail [4/10]

http://www.myspace.com/666abigail
http://www.myspace.com/fornicationofgod

Midnight & Abigail - Farewell to Metal Slut EP (2010)

Midnight and Abigail are both good bands, and their pairing on this 7" is only natural, especially seeing how they just got off a tour in Japan together. This is a limited run, of course, with a US pressing and a separate pressing that was available only on their tour, so it's obviously intended for the most hardcore collectors of the bands' material, in particular Abigail, who like their countrymen Sabbat, participate in a great many of these releases. I may be a huge flag waver for digital music distribution, but its cool that we have such a vinyl culture surviving today, and it's not like anyone is being charged an arm or a leg for most of them.

Unfortunately, a lot of these 7" splits are often too skimpy to take seriously, and Farewell to Metal Slut does suffer from the symptom of useless indulgence. There are only two tracks on the EP, one from each band, and neither is an original studio track. Having Midnight and Abigail team up for a 7" of new material, perhaps 2-3 songs each, would have been well worth the investment, but that is not the case here. Abigail's contribution is a live cut of "Teen Age Metal Fuck" from their recent Sweet Baby Metal Slut LP. That was a fantastic album, and it sounds pretty good in the live setting, though the actual recording is pretty lo-fi. Just another reason to get jealous that I haven't seen the band! Midnight offer up a cover of Quiet Riot's "Slick Black Cadillac", from the 1979 album Quiet Riot II. It's a cool choice of cover, and the band give it a blackened edge, making it the perfect counterpart for Abigail's sound in general (at least for the past decade).

Indeed, there is nothing offensive about either track on the 7", only that it ends there. For collectors, this is just another piece of rare plastic and a sleeve to put in their bin, or on display. For an avid music hunter, it's just 8 minutes with a smile and a wink from two bad ass bands, and the money would probably be better invested in Midnight's Farewell to Hell EP, or any of the Abigail full-length records. So unless you sport an erection for rare collectibles that you can show off in a few decades, to the few hundred other people in the world that really care, I would not go out of my way to acquire this.

Verdict: Fail [3.5/10]

http://www.myspace.com/athenarsmidnight

Abigail - Descending from a Blackend Sky EP (1993)

There will come a day when the nuclear rain will descend from the blackend sky, and all Hell will break loose as the feeble liberal government loses control of the riotous masses, who will force disorder on the streets of our bombed out capitals and decaying infrastructure. The meek and the cowardly will be slaughtered as they beg for scraps of food, and the strong will use whatever skills and weapons are available to them to survive. Spiked bats, cut off leather gloves, brass knuckles, rusted muscle cars with big engines, mutants, Satan, prostitutes, football uniforms as armor, whiskey, cocaine just to get through the day, cockroaches, succubi, land mines, cultists, laced marijuana, syringes, psycho killers whipping chains about from the backs of motorbikes, cardinals and popes wielding sidearms, the return of the mother fucking cowboy.

What does any of this have to do with Abigail? Well, I decree that Abigail shall be the soundtrack for such a glorious future, as we throw all other musical recordings (except Metalucifer and maybe Roy Orbison) onto the slag heaps as a sacrifice to our survival. All you need is Yasuyuki Suzuki, a double barreled shotgun and some ammo, and an old vintage booby rag or sexy set of playing cards for your back pocket and you have all the non-injected, non-inhaled, and non-drunken tools for survival. What will be first in my playlist? Well, it's highly likely I will start at the top, with Abigail's debut EP Descending from a Blackend Sky, 16 minutes of the most hilarious evil in my entire collection.

Oddly, this is not the same Abigail you will be accustomed to if your experience includes only the band's legendary street metal pimping aka Sweet Baby Metal Slut or Forever Street Metal Bitch. No, this is more in line with the diabolical black metal of the band's roots, a ghastly communion of Bathory, Celtic Frost and Mayhem with only a trace of the band's filth thrash metal revival peeking through the pecker-pole. It's entirely heinous and primitive and god damn if it isn't one of the best things I've heard in my life. This is largely the work of Yasuyuki Suzuki, spewing caustic lines over the din of raging, rugged blast beats and riffs that could behead French nobility without even drawing the rope.

The chaos ensues with "Swing Your Hammer", which despite the clearly metal title, is a resonant ambient track of swelling synthesizer cheese that would barely be worthy of some cheap George Romero knockoff zombie horror film in the 80s that took itself far too seriously. And despite the absurdity, I absolutely love it! "The Lord of Satan" then flies in on his pitchfork to remind you that this is Abigail, and you'd only escaped an asskicking for a moment while your punishment was being discussed by those below. Grinding riffs, with only the barest trace of melody and a total primal heavy metal overtone. Thick, pumping bass that sounds like a marching band of chainsaw wielding mutants. Some of the most wretched snarling this side of countrymen Sabbat. Queue "Mephistopheles", which rocks with about an impressive array of riffing as a coked up, punker washout, the most generic riff in history. And yet, the rough shod atmosphere allows it to succeed despite itself, with fantastic lyrical fortitude!

There is not border in hell
We are going to found in hell
Confusion of people and fallen in hell
Exceed of Satan, marvelous evil!

"Descending from a Blackend Sky" is another synthesizer trip, this time even more amazing than "Swing Your Hammer", with a very Metroid-esque, slowed arpeggio sequence that is joined by several layered backing lines and some electronic percussion. What this is doing on an Abigail release I have no fucking idea, but the thought that Yasuyuki Suzuki might have the synth chops to rival Tangerine Dream is rather impressive, if this is actually him. But where this would normally be an outro for a release like this, it is followed by the barbaric "Count Barbatos", a searing yet refreshing hellish wind that blasts across your brow as you are sent hurling through the exit to the war theater. Again, exceedingly simplistic, and breaks into a very doom-like pace later in the track which later cycles back to a blast.

A killer, fundamental atmosphere and an inescapable charm make this one of the best of the early Abigail catalog, even if it doesn't possess the same level of hilarity as the band's future records. Some might denounce it on principle, as you could probably teach monkeys or rabbits to play this music with a few bananas or carrots and a week's worth of patience. But to quote an Australian comedian, 'Harden the fuck up!' The air sirens are screaming and the bombs are about to drop. What better to arm yourself with? What ungodly noise have the Japanese wrought upon us this time?

The masters have arrived.

Verdict: Epic Win [10/10] (you're my pride in hell)

Abigail & Vorkuta - Speed Metal Motherfuckers EP (2007)

I am a cursed man, cursed to enjoy just about anything a Japanese band like Sabbat, Metalucifer or Abigail involves itself in. If that means I need to dig through a slew of short run live recordings and rare split releases with the seedier bands from around the world, then so be it. But here on the Speed Metal Motherfuckers 7" from Necromancer Records (aka Speed Metal Motherfuckerzz if you have access to the cassette version on Hammer of Damnation), your favorite Engrish butchers may have just met their match in Hungary's Vorkuta, a prolific group featuring current and former members of bands like Witchcraft, Dög, and Drünken Bastards.

Vorkuta take the first two tracks, and they honestly don't sound like a far cry from Dög, as both bands basically channel Hellhammer and early Celtic Frost into an even more disgusting and degrading black mass. "At the Threshold of Hell" seems like it might have fallen off the back of Morbid Tales, a shriveled tumor, except for the faster segments which bound along like jackrabbits thrashing about beneath a buzzsaw. "Helldrinkerz" is even sicker, with an infusion of grind and punk ballast that writhes beneath the blacker, alcohol seared throat like a lizard with its tail severed. I am only familiar with the one Vorkuta full-length Into the Chasms of Lunacy, which I seem to recall as rather average, but if this split is any indication, they may have more to offer than initially thought.

Abigail's half begins with the venomous, filthy barrage that is "Satanik Lust", and you'll know quickly that this is one of the band's more 'serious' songs, where they sound more like a phalanx of hellish mercenaries hungry for slaughter than their usual bitch-flaunting street metal selves. As far as I'm concerned, they're sexy either way, and this track is no exception if you like dirt in your wounds, plain and simple execution and utter hostility. They've also included a live track "Rocking Metal Motherfuckers" which sounds as if it's being taped from the bathroom of the bar, Yasuyuki's vocals probably driving out half the poor souls that thought they would just show up for some beer and conversation, not realizing that the Devil's own drug dealers were going to be present. It sounds like a wonderful mess, but sadly it's the least interesting song on the split.

I've railed on an off about EPs, collectible releases and the like, and how they're generally a waste of your time and spending. In a perfect world, I'd rather have a CD available to be which collected all this detritus. But if you're going to take the plunge, I insist you purchase any Abigail split or vinyl you come across, if only because the band's DIY mentality and wise choice of scumbag cohorts is just too endearing to resist. Vorkuta prove themselves worthy here, but I would have preferred another Abigail track to the junky live (though it brings back a lot of memories of gigs I've played at or watched.)

Verdict: Indifference [6.5/10]

http://vorkuta.uw.hu/index.html

Abigail & Evil - Raw Black Thrashing Madness EP (2009)

Though their best work tends to appear on their full length albums, where you get more than a mouthful of Abigail's metal load, this is a band who thrives off the many split releases they issue with cult bands the world over, and Raw Black Thrashing Madness, a limited edition 7" released through Genocide Aesthetics, features another of their kickass, liquid hot speed metal tracks smothered in pumping bass rhythms and Suzuki's insanely vile lyrical spew.

"Hammer of Damnation" is truly one of the best tunes I've ever heard from the band, 3:30 of just about everything I admire in the metal genre, a sheer kick to the crotch with no apologies left. As far as I know, you can only get it on this release...an even more convincing case that the band needs to release a new collection with all of this non-album material. Their companions in sin this time out are Evil from Brazil, who perform a ricord of raw, aggressive blackened speed "Iron Tyranny" which matches up pretty well with the Japanese mavens. The riffs are simple, wearing punk influences with pride, and the vocalist Warlord has a great, spiteful echo to his rasp. Like Abigail, this is a prolific band who exists primarily on split releases, of which there are over a dozen by this point.

The value here is more for the vinyl collector than anyone else, but Abigail fans will die for "Hammer of Damnation" and Evil is no slouch in the sack. Fist pumping, spikes and leather for just under 9 minutes, perfect for cocaine highballs and cigarettes and loathing.

Verdict: Win [7.5/10]

http://www.myspace.com/666abigail
http://www.thepaganfront.com/evil/

Abigail & Chainsaw Carnage - Satan Plays Speed Metal EP (2009)

The best split releases are those which offer you new material from both (or more) of the bands involved, and Satan Plays Speed Metal delivers this much at least. The only problem here is that you get two excellent Abigail tracks, which sound like the Ramones jamming with Sabbat, and then two tracks from a San Diego band called Chainsaw Carnage who play death metal which sounds as if it were recorded in a garage...

No, not truly speed metal, but raw old fucking death metal with a heavy influence from Slayer. The style does not offend me, but the riffs aren't worthy enough to forgive the band's nostalgic, messy barebones structure. "Chapel of Dead Angels" and "Consumed by Black Flames" are not tracks I will be return to, though I definitely wouldn't mind checking out the band if they took their retro splatter into a proper recording, it could very well kick ass. But I remember making garage tapes of my old improvisational death metal band in 1990 that sounded better than this.

So we are left here with only one option, to doubly enjoy the hilarious and awesome offerings of Japan's Abigail. "Satanik Demon Master" sounds like the fucking Ramones until Yasuyuki Suzuki starts laying down the constipated metal law, his vicious and unforgettable vocals. The track operates on a standard 4 chord progression that only changes up for the chorus and a steaming old schol metal riff at the one minut emark. "Satan Plays Speed Metal" is a mite faster and more deadly, but still carries forth that foul punk aesthetic, ala the Misfits or Ramones, and dowsed in the hilarious lyrical vitriol.

To my knowledge, the Abigail tracks are not available elsewhere, so this is worth having just for those (or wait for a possible compilation). Though the tracks aren't all that similar to the band's recent and brilliant Sweet Baby Metal Slut, I am hoping the scum will continue along this route for their next full-length. An entire album of this style would have girls dripping all across the past three decades, and myself as well.

Verdict: Indifference [6.5/10] (the Abigail half of the split is a 9/10)

http://www.myspace.com/666abigail
http://chainsawcarnage9.webs.com/

Abigail - Sweet Baby Metal Slut (2009)

Abigail is another of those veteran Engrish metal bands that we love to hate and hate to love (similar to Metalucifer), but if you can look past the smutty album covers, song titles and appreciation for...well, the female form, Sweet Baby Metal Slut is honestly a pretty kickass metal album, with a grit to it that very few can muster while simultaneously writing kickass, hook-laden tracks. In fact, were it not for Yasuyuki's craven black snarls over the music, this album would truly belong in the early 80s with then-emerging Motorhead and Venom.

Seriously. I am not kidding when I tell you that this is the best Abigail full-length yet, and only their fourth (most of their extensive discography consists of live records and split releases). Each of the 10 tracks here is a serious ass kicking, from the burning punk/speed-inspired riffing to the wild, old school leads and the bite and bark of Yasuyuki's filthy vocals. "Metal Evil Metal" opens with a classic, bluesy riff that instantly had me, as visions of 70s and 80s hard rock and NWOBHM began dancing through my skull. All you need is a good pickup truck, a denim jacket adorned with patches, a few beers, a good warm woman and this fucking song to experience the full range of what life has to offer.

After the metal war, the world is so still
No poser is living after kill
Over the burning hell life will go on
Blazing up to the sky
Once you stop pressing 'repeat' for this track, you'll enjoy the bruising "Metal Bitch Inferno" and the southern grooves of "Satanic Hell Slut". There is a grungy, punk abandon to "Sweet Bloody Cunt" and the driving, titillating "Tokyo Pussy Girl", and the show does not stop here. "Teenage Metal Fuck", "Wild Fire Metal Bitch" and "Final Metal Attack" are all INTENSE. Any one of these tracks could serve as the life anthem for anyone I have ever considered a hero in this world. The final track "Sexual Metal Holocaust" is an excellent thrasher certain to level back alley bars and clubs all over Nippon.

Yeah metal bitch come on
I saw you dancin on down the line
Your so nasty and metal bitch
Metal baby that's all night with me
Sexual metal holocaust
Beer! Metal! Sex!
Sexual metal holocaust
Fuck me metal bitch

As you can probably tell, the misogyny of the lyrics is quite intentional in that fun, 'take this seriously and you're a goddamned fool' way. The music itself is raw, there is no better band of this style to street fight to, especially with broken bottles, chains, 2' x 4's and whatever else you can scrape up from the nearest dumpster. There is no shortage of testosterone on Sweet Baby Metal Slut, and the album is so goddamn good that it surpasses 'classics' like Forever Street Metal Bitch and Lust and Intercourse. This is pretty much the apex of what Abigail has set forth to accomplish in this twisted world, where innocence is but a myth. Do not pass this record by.

Verdict: Epic Win [9/10] (dance on pentagram queens of metal bitch)