Terminus 37 - Altered Dead, Stargazer, Anal Stabwound, Tau Cross

On this august 37th episode of Terminus, we bring you one of our most eclectic lineups in a long while, including not one, but two, or maybe even three death metal bands -- depending on how you count.

The Death Metal Guy leads off with a flattening second record from Altered Dead, who immediately join Pneuma Hagion and Sepulchral Curse in the Terminus pantheon of "OSDM-type stuff that's actually original and really good." Altered draw on some of the same core influences as P.H. - American stuff from the early 90s - but deliver an entirely different synthesis. What is it? Listen and find out....

The Black Metal Guy follows with the long-awaited return of Stargazer,  known for their highly melodic, prog-tending variant of Australian war metal. But how, The Death Metal Guy asks, does this have anything to do with Bestial Warlust or Destroyer 666?? A fair question. The astral exploration has wandered a little far from home base.

Kicking off the second half, The Death Metal Guy tears into the relatively pristine flesh of 2021 with his first brutal death metal record of the year. Anal Stabwound has a brutal name and a brutaller backstory, but what's brutalest about this one man army is his sophisticated approach to composition - all in the service of savagery.

To close out, The Black Metal Guy takes us back in time to a November 2020 release that flew totally under his radar -- Tau Cross' third album, Messengers of Deception. It's a bit of an outlier on an extreme metal show, because it's in many ways a heavy rock album. But it's rock as written by Rob Miller, who helped invent extreme metal in his 80s crust punk band Amebix. Rest assured, the same ragged roar and apocalyptic vision are at work here.

 

00:00 - Introductory bullshitting / quick Terminus news / rundown of bands and labels

11:17 - Altered Dead - Returned to Life (Memento Mori)*

54:03 - Stargazer - Psychic Secretions (Nuclear War Now!)

01:52:19 - Interlude - Vintersorg - "Dopt I en Jokelsjo," fr. Solens Rotter (Napalm Records / Irond Records / Scarecrow Records / Somber Music)

01:58:33 - Anal Stabwound - The Visceral Sovereign (Inherited Suffering Records)

02:33:57 - Tau Cross - Messengers of Deception (Heretical Music, distributed by Easy Action Records)

03:29:15 - Outro - Amebix - “The Power Remains,” fr. Monolith (Heavy Metal Records, 1987). There’s an official Bandcamp, run by Stig I believe, where you can buy a remaster of Monolith, and original versions of the rest of the discography.

*CORRECTION: TDMG accidentally refers to Memento Mori as an Italian label. Memento Mori is from Spain.

 

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