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One From The Grave: Descent Into Hell

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 July 19 2010 at 04:08:19 PM



Annihilation must be swift: Destroy without destruction. Cianide. Name caught me. Strange misspell of chemical compound, triple-bonded carbon to nitrogen. Either solid, liquid, or gas. Highly fuckin’ toxic. Seen first in pawnshop CD bin. Cover mishmash Bosch, Goya, Der Hexenhammer. Demons winged, horned. Enslaving mortal horde. Teratoidal Master reclined amongst fleshen bed afire. Sulphur geyser, flames backlighting logo torn from squirrel and cat pelt; letters arachnid, spun of blood and pus. So fuck yes I bought it. A DESCENT INTO HELL the title. Of course. Two tracks in and this is very much not the Death Metal I was particularly used to—sun-choked, Sumerian mythos, gatling drum, whammy bar bukkake, etc.

Cianide irrefragably took Hellhammer as its template (latter incarnation apparently Bolt Thrower x10). Tuned down not to depths unswum, but middle uncomfortably unclassifiable, unquantifiable: Heavy humid breathless air: John Candy, Chris Farley twin ton geists post all-you-can-eat fatback night at Hell’s Sizzler, go knees first upon your shattered ribcage. Broken knee-capped crawling bass. Riffs ooze. Harden. Rest supine. This is the infinitely maligned “Sweet Leaf” bound ‘n’ shackled, prodded with bangstick, pushing dilapidated steamboat loaded down with rotting cadavers over the Andes transmogrified into hell’s deepest cunt o’ fire, a conflagration seen from the farthest recesses of space, brightly burning dead ass star. Slow. Slower. Slowest drums. Bovine ribcages split with rubber hammers. Dumpster sides struck with trashcans more dented than Mike Leigh’s psyche. Mike Perun’s pertussive vox: furcated Everclear spat blasts through TNA mag lit afire. Other times they are pit bulls, starved and struck ferocious, stitched mouth-to-mouth in phlegmatic snarl without cease.

“Crowds of twilight / They blind my sight.” And so it follows, appropriate signifiers: Breakdown and broken, fall and fallen, life and pain, shadows and souls. I smell the shitty pot, the three-dollar sixers. This is a practice space I spent more time in than my own home, my job, my whole fucking life. I know these posters—To Mega Therion’s sling-shot Jesus, Cannibal Corpse drowned in their own hair, Morbid Angel logo ripped ragged from errant paper footballs index-fingered into aether. I know that stack of porn mags—Hustler Halloween special with two leather-gowned witches bound ass-to-ass by headless black broom. (Damned if I didn’t meet the pizza guy at the space’s door, paid for large Hawaiian [extra pineapple] with change.)

Is there a more mid-paced, irrepressibly indifferent tune about zombies than “The Undead March?” Heard this more times in a smoke-choked garage than you. Old Milwaukee tallboys, handle of Heaven Hill, someone’s brought Scotch Guard and requisite gasmask. “Yohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! Yohhhhhhhhh! Rise from the depths! Rise!” The songs plod on, on, impervious to the time they were created in or the years that have transpired since they were laid down on tape. They make good sense only to the toothless brood who’ve worn a pair of jeans until they’ve disintegrated, sunk into street rescued couch, drowning 9-5 sorrows with Old Style and Utz. “Mountains in Thunder,” “Beyond the Fallen Horizon,” “Darkness” manage Chthulu as face-hugging horrorcide, proving—once again—great Death Metal records, like the most egregious handjobs, are impossible to extract from the psyche.

[Stewart Voegtlin]

Cianide
A Descent Into Hell
Bullet Proof/Red Light Records
1994

Comments (2)

  • 24 comments
    Dennis Dread
    11:23 PM on Jul 22, 2010 // reply »
    I LOVE this old gem! I also love the inside band photo where the Cianide dudes exactly replicated the old Venom pose. The Godzilla sample at the end of Mountains in Thunder is also very classy and let's you know where these guys are coming from. Hail Akira Ifukube! Hail Cianide!
  • 40 comments
    The Right Hand Path
    7:27 AM on Sep 08, 2010 // reply »
    Fuck Cianide \M/
 

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