A long-standing – if rarely applied – rule of my record shopping exploits is that any record featuring a picture of some Space Marines or other Warhammer type fantasy battle characters on the front will be automatically purchased. (Yeah, I know, keep me away from those Bolt Thrower reissues…)

In part, this is a childhood nostalgia thing (just leave it, please), but at same time I have faith that any heavy music (and it WILL be heavy music, let’s face it) that seeks to evoke the spirit of… this sort of thing… is liable to be pretty cool. (Yeah, those Bolt Thrower reissues.)

As such, the beautiful rendering of some copyright-skirting DEFINITELY NOT Chaos Marines on the front of this 2012 release from Swedish/Hungarian band Megatomb (you’ll need one of those after a Megadeth, presumably..?) made it a no-brainer.

With only six song titles listed, I was hoping Megatomb might be a doom band, but no dice. Turns out this is actually a 45rpm 12” EP kind of deal. Bah!

In the great crap-shoot of contemporary metal sub-genres, I’d probably peg these guys as blackened thrash, with touch of death on the side. Which I suppose makes them yet another nice example of the boundary-blurring “bit of everything” / “it’s just METAL, FFS” approach that has become increasingly widespread amongst metal bands in recent years, and that, from my POV at least, seems like a very positive development vis-a-vis making the genre more fun and accessible to outsiders.

Specifically, things here lean toward entry level teen thrash riffs abetted by down-tuned/compressed DM low-end, drums that alternate between aspirant blast-beats and leaden, ‘ominous’ breakdowns, and, most prominently, BM style “vokills” executed in that “sneering troll-vampire ranting in his slime cave beneath the ice” type manner that can’t help but sound at least a little bit ridiculous when – as here – it is combined with music anything less than monumentally intense and terrifying.

If Megatomb’s name and artwork betrays the band’s almost heroic disinterest in innovation, a quick scan of their lyrics sheet seals the deal, confirming that the interests of “Kobra” (vokills), “Skull” (guitar), “Kommando” (bass & vokills) and “Fist” (drums) lie entirely in offering a comforting, paint-by-numbers reiteration of extreme metal’s founding aesthetic principles. (Song titles: ‘Dealing With The Cross’, ‘Forbidden Altar’, ‘Nuclear Violence’.) Drop the needle on side A and you'll even hear a “bring out yr dead” type atmospheric intro with half-speed triad riffs and a big, tolling bell; cozy as a teapot on a doily, so far as this genre’s concerned.

Vocals (sorry, voKILLS) are far too dominant in the mix for my taste, but the guitar sound is still suitably thick n’ gnarled, with the bass in particular sounding in-the-red filthy during the chord riffing segments (which certainly puts a nix on the ‘80s nostalgia angle). In fact, the whole thing benefits from a great, raw, black-paint-peeling-from-rehearsal-room-walls kind of sound, which blends in well with the kind of four-beers-in, punk-spirited mid-fi attack that I tend to like from my thrash/death/black/whatever.

The main problem here is probably the drumming, which sounds uncertainly executed (by metal standards), and often gets a bit lost in the mix, preventing the band from ever really hitting a solid groove and leaving us kinda floundering where we should be headbanging. Nonetheless though, this is jolly good, spirited stuff and it gets better as it goes along. If for some unaccountable reason you’re forced to choose in fact, side B is definitely the one to go for here.

The way that the pummelling bass drum intro on ‘Dealing With the Cross’ gradually speeds up is awesome – in fact, both this song and the following ‘Forbidden Altar’ have a dementedly enthusiastic, clod-hopping brilliance to them that I really enjoyed. Sounding like the likely results of a “learn to be Slayer in a day” masterclass designed to keep delinquent teens off the street, these tunes ace it on sheer enthusiasm alone. Reading the lyrics sheet along with them meanwhile is a Venom-level hoot (“Darkness and evil and power from hell / twisting the flesh! / Beasts of death feast tonight / revel in doom!”), and old Mr Kobra’s “Cor, I’m knackered” retching type noises at the end (and frequently the start) of each track are hilarious, particularly given the extent to which they’re boosted into the foreground.

Sadly, a quick internet search tends to suggest that Megatomb have not been very active subsequent to the release of this record in 2013. Perhaps a legal team jointly representing Dave Mustaine and Games Workshop caught up with them and had a quick word…?

Nonetheless, ‘Louder Than a Thousand Deaths’ at least exists, and, though it will change NOT A SINGLE THING about your life, beliefs, or tastes, if you like metal and you like pictures of space marines, it will make a fine addition to your home. It’s a whole bunch of fun to listen to, it looks great and the printed sleeve & vinyl pressing from UK based label Me Saco Un Ojo is of an admirably high quality.

‘Louder Than a Thousand Deaths’ by Megatomb gets a THUMBS UP. 

 

Labels: EP reviews, Megatomb, METAL, old LPs