Sadistic reviews by Linus Douglas.

Sadly apart from Sammath, some other Dutch metal, and reissues, Hammerheart Records appears to publish many moronic releases produced by poor excuses for neurons in hopes of flooding shelves like every other larger metal label.

Brutal Unrest – Trinitas (2017)
Brutal Unrest seems to be playing some kind of death metal sound-alike genre, and it feels as if one is listening to a sterile, computer-generated stream of notes and grooves from an input of metal tropes. It is strange to find Latin World Music rhythms mixed with soft technical blast beats and perhaps triggered drums. It is difficult to say how or why, but the vocals manage to make this album even worse and more generic than the music on its own would already be.

Veredict: Normies Trying to Play Death Metal and Failing
Replace with: Martyr – Extracting the Core (2001)

Funeral Twilight – Dreaming Dead (2017)
This is a very modern album that starts of sounding like later Morbid Angel, with all the tropes and none of the originality. Then it surprises the listener by becoming thrashy melodeaf, and then go Jeff Loomis on the solos. Is there any originality here, though? The singer sounds like a ballsier Chuck Schuldiner who has actually learned to growl, but still sounds rather undecided in his sexual orientation. Funeral Twilight try hard to mix it up and provide variety from generic and mediocre pieces, and the end result is precisely that.

Veredict: Metalcore Guitar Hero Playing Morbid Angel Imitations
Replace with: Morbid Angel – Gateways to Annihilation (2000)

Cirith Gorgor – Bi Den Dode Hant (2017)
Purposely indecipherable names coupled with Pirates of the Caribbean black and white cartoon cover art is not an indicator of a band that has a clear idea of what it wants to do, and this is simply confirmed by listening to the strange Black Dahlia Murder indistinct imitation. Songs here are made up of blurry black-death riffs, a total lack of musical themes and compositions without an actual narrative curve. The band is so bankrupt that when they do come up with something different, it feels awkward, tongue-in-cheek and, frankly speaking, stupid.

Veredict: Runner Ups for Boringest Black Death Scam Band
Replace with: Obituary – Cause of Death (1990)

Mourners Lament – We All Be Given (2017)
Mourners Lament appear to be trying to play doom metal, but the boring kind for fat guys. You know? The kind with synths and girls making appearances, but it tries to be more epic somehow, without this attempt actually materializing very well in the music. A string of chug-chug riffs dots the landscape, and some minor attempts at melodic build ups kind of give the impression that this band may deserve a chance. The reliance on simple certain rhythmic breaks, which are almost like metalcore breakdowns, is the final straw…

Veredict: Modernized Macho-Man Disturbed
Replace with: Sceptic Flesh – Esoptron (1995)

The Monolith Deathcult – Versus 1 (2017)
What the fuck is this? Can a band truly be so generic that they break the barrier of genericness to the opposite extreme of avant-garde self-ridicule? The Monolith Deathcult certainly make this appear moe than plausible and they do not seem to shy away from making complete asses of themselves. The music itself varies between different sort of death and black metals but used with the inconsistency of hipster grindcorish attempts, blended with pop modern metal, mallcore, I suppose. Does Hammerheart Records even listening to the bullshit they are publishing? Is there no filter? No, as artfats will buy it anyway.

Veredict: Self-Debasing Stupidity for Tim Burp-tone Movies
Replace with: Black Sabbath – Master of Reality (1972)

Dead Head – Swine Plague (2017)
Seriously, what the fuck? If the “cover artwork” does not convince you this is completely retarded, then the first minute off the first song should. What kind of imbecile even makes this sort of thrashy generic riff-fest sound so happy and idiotic? Is this the legacy of Lamb of God? Stomp this to death, decapitate the perpetrators. Even better, use it to screen fast-food greased brains: whoever appears to enjoy this to any degree gets a bullet to the head and their bodies mushed into hamburger meat to sell on the dark web.

Veredict: Florida Wind-Fan-Propelled Boat Metalcore
Replace with: Master – An Epiphany of Hate (2016)

Ereb Altor – Ulfven (2017)
Sing along homoerotic, spacy tunes a la later indie Amorphis used and abused, played in repeat for melodic metal cosplayers to have something to pretend to like in order to validate their status as metalheads. The main attraction here are obviously the opera-like Nordic vocals, but the money-making strategy is finalized with a guitar soloist executing what can only be described as sequined glam wank.

Veredict: Viking Fruitiness for Pirates of the Caribbean Cosplayers
Replace with: Amorphis – The Karelian Isthmus (1992)

Exoskelett – Collected Bones (2017)
Groovy, sort of angry, but all around likable. This makes me feel like a badass without the danger involved. It feels like the kind of miserable crap that Canadians would listen to while discussing ethnic historical marxo justice and history re-shaping and falsification that justifies the destruction of the European by out-breeding. You hear some punk filtered and made more “interesting”. Corners are smoothed and made easy to listen to by flattening and normalizing.

Veredict: WhatsHisFace Normalizing Marx-Death-by-Boredome
Replace with: Voivod – Dimension Hatröss (1988)

Tags: 2017, brutal unrest, cirith gorgor, dead head, ereb altor, exoskelett, funeral twilight, hammerheart, hammerheart records, metalcore, mourners lament, sadistic metal reviews, stinking shit, the monolith deathcult, trinitas