Introductory post / Abhorer (Sin) - "Rumpus of the Undead"

Welcome to Voices from the Graves, which is intended to be primarily a repository for my music reviews. Every couple of years I'll decide to write reviews, and usually end up getting bored of them. When I revisit them years later, I always end up feeling embarrassed at the poor writing quality and asinine observations, so hopefully with this blog I won't fall into that particular trap. But only time will tell. The scope of these reviews will focus mostly on obscure metal, punk and hardcore, especially those with particularly raw, noisy and dirty sound qualities. Reviews on here will tend to me my favorite recordings which I've been familiar with for some time, so I would not expect too many negative reviews to appear here.

I do not plan to post mp3 files on here of the material I'm reviewing. People today are too lazy to actually check shit out for themselves, even with the convenience of peer-to-peer file sharing. If you're using the same internet that I am, I presume that you should be able to open up Soulseek and download any of the stuff mentioned here for yourself.

I also do not plan to post any of these reviews to metal-archives or other type sites. These reviews may not necessarily be confined to just heavy metal, so I feel that would be too limiting. Plus a lot of people that use that site are total idiots who have shitty taste in music.

With all that boring nonsense out of the way, let me get to the first recording that I will discuss on this blog:

Abhorer (Sin) - "Rumpus of the Undead" demo tape, 1989

A general rule of thumb when it comes to death/black metal, especially during the second wave explosion of 1987 - 1992 or so, is the shittier the country, the better the metal. Singapore is absolutely no exception. While having one of the most authoritarian governments in the world who actively repress art, subversive or not, had a thriving death/black metal scene in the late 80s/early 90s. One part about playing this kind of music is that singing about Satan, cemeteries, corpses, witchcraft and the like is rather abstract and fantastical, opposed to the direct protest and idealism of the contemporary hardcore and punk scenes. Still, even in a place like Singapore it takes a hell of a lot of balls to play this kind of music and at times feels a lot more sincere as a result then its first world counterparts. Not to say that places like United States or Western Europe didn't have a great scene for this kind of stuff, but the Singapore bands tended to play only raw uncompromisingly harsh music which was never meant to be anything but for underground diehards only.

While Abhorer were not the first band to play this kind of music in Singapore, they played a much more stripped down and brutal form of music than their elder countrymen Nuctemeron were doing at the time. One interesting point to note about the Singapore scene is that it largely morphed out of nowhere in the late 80s. Malaysia had a sizeable heavy metal/hard rock scene in the early - mid 80s, but the presence of these bands were largely absent from Singapore, aside from one band Rusty Blade. Rusty Blade's first release is from 1987 which was fairly late in the decade; by this time death, black and thrash metal scenes were well developed all over the globe, and this was and only one year before Nuctemeron would cut their first death/thrash demo tape. "Rumpus of the Undead" is arguably the most influential Singapore recording, and in my opinion certainly the best. While the full length "Zygotical Sabbatory Unabapt" would give them international recognition, the band never sounded better than they did on this demo tape.

The cover is pretty much perfect for this recording. A hand drawn monochromatic image of a satanic priest rising from the grave, where one of the headstones reads "RIP JESUS CHRIST", hands poised to either cast some kind of evil spell, or just from rigor mortis in true hopping vampire style. Its difficult to tell with Eastern countries sometimes. The logo is engulfed in flames, features multiple upside down cross and a pentagram. In other words, fucking perfect.

Musically the four songs (+ intro of noises, wind, growling, etc) are just as primitive and crude. Each song contains a handful of basic riffs, that are almost punk like in construction. A good point of reference would be perhaps the Sodom demos or Hellhammer's faster tracks, but with a more dissonant approach to the songwriting. The production is extremely dirty and raw, and the guitars just sound so vile. The drumming is sloppy yet unrelenting and the vocals are an inhuman howl which pushes the recording even more over the top. They are probably the best part about the demo, and its a shame that they were toned down a bit for future recordings. The dissonant qualities of the riffs combined with the sloppy drumming give this a real chaotic feel, one of those super energetic recordings that feels like its going to burst at any moment. Even though there have been faster bands, even for 1989, few bands were able to capture this level of raw intensity. No doubt people that care about silly things like "technical proficiency" will hate this, but people that care about such nonsense will probably do best to hit the back button on their browser. Death metal is supposed to exude a certain atmosphere, and this nails it right on the head, something that modern sterile tech-death bands like Necrophagist completely miss. This is death metal how it was meant to be played, completely raw, unfettered, and uncompromising.

This recording was reissued several times over the years, first as a split LP with the Japanese death metal band Necrophile with their recording "Deride the Remedied", a classic in its own right. The two recordings play well off one of another. The second reissue came in the form of the Xtreem Music CD "Unholy Blasphemer", which compiles this demo, the Upheaval of Blasphemy 7", and the "Zygotical Sabbatory Unabapt" LP - essentially everything the band had recorded. This is by far the easiest version of the demo to track down, and while the packaging on the CD isn't the best, it gets the job done of making the best Southeast Asian recording widely available to the public.