Cut Into Pieces

Vengeance Rising
Once Dead
1990

Vengeance Rising were one of the few Christian death metal bands back in the late 80s/early 90s. This is their second album, and I enjoy it immensely. The unusual subject matter really adds to the charm. Roger Martinez's vocals fall into one of my favorite styles for this kind of music, the strained rasp (as compared to the high- or low-growl). Think of Martin Van Drunen of Pestilence/Asphyx/Hail of Bullets and you get the idea. Musically, VR is pretty standard thrashy death metal of the time, but that's not a bad thing by any means.

It's interesting to note that after finding themselves in massive debt, the band split. Martinez reformed with new guys, put out a few more records, and eventually turned his back on Christianity and his earlier evangelical work. As a result, the later Vengeance Rising records feature more traditional satanic and athiest death metal topics, and for some reason his voice moved into that lower growly register. At some point the rest of the band reformed with a different singer, calling themselves Once Dead since Martinez owned the name Vengeance Rising. It's all very convoluted.

Regardless, this is a killer record.

Once Dead

Night of the Swords

The Crown
The Burning
1995

I recently found out that The Crown, one of my favorite Swedish death metal bands, has reformed. They have a new singer, but I'm actually cool with that, because my favorite album of theirs is Crowned in Terror, which features Thomas Lindberg (At The Gates, Disfear, etc) on vocals instead of Johan Lindstrand, who was the band's usual vocalist. They even rerecorded the album w/ Lindstrand on vocals once he rejoined, but that version and the album the did after that just don't have the same oomph the earlier stuff had, in my humble opinion. Lindstrand's post-The Crown band, One Man Army and the Undead Quartet suffers from both a stupid name and boring music.

So anyway, I'm pretty jazzed about a new album from The Crown, and the new vocalist, Jonas Stålhammar of God Macabre, sounds great to me. You can hear samples on their website.

I figured this news was good enough reason to post the band's debut from way back in 1995 when they were called Crown of Thorns. After two albums, another band with the same name got ill about it and our Crown of Thorns lost the thumb war or whatever they used to settle the situation, and thus renamed themselves The Crown.

The Burning

Gorehog

Broken Hope
Swamped in Gore
1991

Last weekend I attended the Scion Rock Festival in Atlanta. As the evening was winding down, I found myself watching Cryptopsy play. A deep sense of boredom set in as I watched their swashbuckling bassist and mall-core guitarist playing loopy technical death-core whatever they are now. I found myself longing for some good old fashioned gore-obsessed death metal. The kind Chicago's Broken Hope played.

Swamped in Gore