Jack Starr's Guardians of the Flame-Under a Savage Sky
(Crash, 2003)

It makes me laugh when guitar players put their names into the name of the band. You know what else makes me laugh? This god awful cd. The music is boring, the layout is awful, and this is just not something that should still be released in 2003. The cover art seriously looks like a high school art school project that wouldn't even be worthy of a C. I suppose if you thinks leather jackets with tassels are cool you might be able to get into this. If I want to listen to old school melodic metal I'll just stick with Powerslave. Thanks anyways though.

Jasad-Witness of Perfect Torture
(Forever Underground, 2003)

My initial reaction to this was that the band played fairly typical death metal, but after a few more listens I really started to dig the bands New York influenced sound. If you are familiar with death metal at all, you’ll know what I mean. They have the beyond guttural vocals, and the more groove oriented riffing. It brings to mind bands like Suffocation, Internal Bleeding, or possibly even Disfigured. The style really isn’t anything new, but Jasad definitely play the style well enough to be a worth while addition to the scene.

One aspect of the bands sound I find refreshing is that they don’t try to be the most technical band you’ve ever heard. Some of the riffs are downright simple, but I think they have much more impact then say a flashy riff that features 10,000 notes. The riffing does get a bit more complicated when things speed up, but essentially it just means the riffs have more notes then the slower power chord driven riffs. Even the faster riffs remain somewhat simple tremolo picked passages that sometimes bring to mind early Florida death metal. I might be crazy, but a few riffs here and there even remind me of say metal core or possibly hardcore. Especially these days with hardcore becoming heavier, some hardcore bands do essentially sound like death metal bands at times. So I guess saying that they have the odd hardcore sounding riff isn’t as out there as you might initially think.

One aspect of the bands sound that could use a bit of work is vocal diversity. I’m a big fan of the vocalist, but I think a bit of variety could do a lot for the band. They mainly stick to a beyond guttural death growl, that does suit the band but tends to make the songs song similar. They do throw in the odd high vocal shriek, which does help, but I think they need to do this more.

I was actually really impressed with the production of this. A lot of underground releases sound heavy enough, but something is usually lacking. That something is usually the drum sound, Thankfully the drum sound isn’t the weak link here. The drumming sounds very tight, and the snare sound cuts through even during the blasting sections. The guitars sound tremendously heavy, but because of this you don’t hear much bass guitar. You don’t really miss it much though. The band itself is tight and I think this fact really helps the production work. It’s not a big budget production, but the band keeps things together and makes it work for them.

Considering this is this bands pretty much first official release, I definitely expect great things from these guys in the future. This was actually a re-release on Forever Underground, so I think this has been out for quite sometime. Hopefully the band has some new material up their sleeves that we can expect sooner or later.

The Judas Cradle-Too Bad They’re All Dead
(Eulogy, 2004)

It amazes me how far hardcore music has come over the years. I think Converge really opened the doors as far as bringing dissonance and noise into the scene and it has really taken off since then. The scene has become pretty cluttered with imitators, but the gems stand out even more because of this. The Judas Cradle is one of those gems, and Too Bad They’re All Dead is an album so good that it’ll scare the trendy bands back to playing emo in no time.

Two main things come together to create The Judas Cradle sound, heavy riffing and a lot of dissonance. They aren’t without comparison, yet at the same time they are just a little bit different. A lot of bands in this style are opting to show off a Swedish death metal influence, but that really isn’t present here. Instead of cliches, the band writes some amazingly effective and unique riffs. You can definitely say that the band is a combination of metal and hardcore, leaning a bit more towards the metal side of things. They do have the odd part or riff that is more straightforward sounding, but those are few and far between. So this band has a lot going for it, they are heavy, and very interesting.

A lot of bands playing this style can be very jarring. The start and stop nature of the music can just not work if the songwriting isn’t fluid. TJC really doesn’t have this problem. The songs move along and stay fluid. Hell, they even throw in death metal vocals in some parts, and it still works. They seem to know exactly what they want to do, and don’t miss a step along the way.

The production is just a little bit noisy, and it works perfectly for me. The band is tight enough, that they can make the dissonance, and rough mix work for them. A lot of bands fall apart with a production like this, but TJC make it work and it’s pretty much the ideal production for them. I couldn’t imagine a band as noisy and chaotic as this having a polished production.

In a scene cluttered with metalcore bands it would seem that it might be tough to stand out, but it’s not as hard as you’d think. All bands have to do is write interesting music and not follow the current trends of the scene. It’s as easy as that, and The Judas Cradle easily manages to do this on their new album. Check it out!