Spiritual Productions - Sampler 95
Review: Like an early Open Source project, this compilation was put together by "the fans" or rather a group of bands who wanted to help promote each other. It was presented very solemnly to relatively few since they found no reason to market themselves outside of the same thousand people who showed up to all of their shows anyway, but in the intervening years nostalgia and epistemological confusion has resulted in a need to "rediscover roots" and has sent many people scampering after this compilation. This compilation shows you that as dangerous as closed-source labels can be, oftentimes fans/bands have the same motivation despite being "undergwound," and thus the same developmentally challenged results. Highlights: Resuscitator, Lepra.
1. Ritual - Alone
2. Ritual - Greying Wasteland
3. Sepsism - Sadistically Mangled and Devoured
4. Sepsism - Sodomizing the Exhumed 
5. Resuscitator - Resucitator
6. Resuscitator - Black Mass
7. Mummified - Slabs of Embryonic Remains
8. Mummified - Meathack
9. Lepra - Por la Señal
10. Lepra - Leprosos Satanicos
11. Forgoten - Hopeless
12. Forgoten - Tranquil Silence
Length: 44:06
1. Ritual - Alone: American bands come at a disadvantage because universally they are masters of aesthetic and not content, since America is based on the ideal that every idea is as good as each other. Consequently, this band produced pasta salad style black metal -- throw in every known working item and cover it in poignantly bittersweet sauce. They have clearly studied their Infernum, Emperor and Darkthrone, but the result is a collection of riffs with enough relation to one another to form songs but not enough to express anything significant.
2. Ritual - Greying Wasteland: This sentimental track resembles something Throne of Ahaz would put together except it sucks. See above, and add "minor key drone" and "tedious heavy metal stencil transitions" to the list of complaints. The nostaglia freaks and bedroom black metal clones all love this band because it affirms the idea that you can be both mediocre and significant. Unless you're president of the USA, that is probably not true. While black metal bands in Europe made majestic brilliant music and burned churches, in the USA they made it into a "black hardcore" product and spraypainted on churches. Verdict: FAILURE.
3. Sepsism - Sadistically Mangled and Devoured: The obligatory $5 goregrind intro of screams and gunshots launches into this track reminiscent of older Carcass -- crashing lengthy descending chord progressions -- and Terrorizer. For the kind of basic appreciation to which it appeals, this track is optimal but there is little of unique expression here and thus it has no lasting power.
4. Sepsism - Sodomizing the Exhumed: Who couldn't love this title? Regrettably, it does not inspire any sense of what anal violation of the dead must be like (and quite frankly, we should probably be thankful for this) but is archetypal deathgrind. Call it "Sodomizing the E-string" and it will be apt. Again, not bad; not enduring, either.
5. Resuscitator - Resuscitator: If Angelcorpse had opted for atmosphere instead of purely raw aggression, it would sound like Resuscitator, which is simple black/death metal with melodic accents like successive triplets on the melodic minor scale used to transit between its pulsing violent riffs. Its defect its a tendency to rely on staggered expectation/pause structures, but it is minimized thankfully by the flow of powerful continuous riffs.
6. Resuscitator - Black Mass: Sometimes this band resembles a hybrid between Fallen Christ and later Varathron, and this is one such track. Inherently melodic but like Sarcofago avoiding ballad inclinations by constantly shifting direction, often along deliberately incoherent tempo changes that make sense only when the new riff can be assimilated in the context of its commentary on the old. Some aspects of the song sound unfinished, but on the whole this is quality metal that invokes a heritage from NWOBHM to necrotic black metal.
7. Mummified - Slabs of Embryonic Remains: Florida style death metal without a tendency to reach any point of clear expression, Mummified plod along repeated obvious patterns and then break into speed metal-style choruses. Nothing is incompetent but the sum of its coming together is not impressive. Are the remnants of embryos large enough to constitute "slabs," or does this title refer to mortuary tables? These and other more pressing questions need answering before this band continues its career.
8. Mummified - Meathack: It isn't terrible as music but when there is a lack of compelling content, the tendentious failings of its method attract center stage and make it unlistenable. This sounds like Massacre without a clear attack of a topic, and the result is a lot of sound and fury that becomes indistinguishable because of a lack of landmarks like artistic meaning. Hence, droning irritation. Why you would listen to this when there are plenty of unoiled air conditioners, lawnmowers with loose bolts, and cars with broken fanbelts to hear is beyond us.
9. Lepra - Por la Señal: Do not go to Lepra with high aspirations of lofty subtle art. No, gentle listener, go expecting gritty functional blasting deathgrind, much as one dances to Strauss but contemplates Beethoven. It's gory, Satanic, mean, vicious, simplistic and thoroughly enjoyable. Driven by percussion and augmented by ripping fast riffs which conclude into slamming patterns that pulse with tremelo waves like the later work of Napalm Death, Lepra captures foreboding and the energy of lynch mobs but little else. For that it is a massive success.
10. Lepra - Leprosos Satanicos: Probably the best single track that Lepra recorded, "Satanic Lepers" illustrates everything about underground metal that the mainstream world feared as well as everything underground metal loathed in the mainstream "culture" of the industrialized West. Trudging with the cadence of murderers approaching helpless prey and then exploding into fluid riffs with the burgeoning energy of axe murders, this track scratches the deathgrind itch more effectively than whole albums of the stuff from other sources.
11. Forgoten - Hopeless: At the time this compilation was released, people looked at this band and thought, "Were they sniffing too much glue in glass to know how to spell 'Forgotten,' correctly, or that 'Forgotten' is a tediously self-pitying clich&ecaute; of a band name?" No one knew the answers then and no one ever will because this band disappeared from mainstream view like an anvil dropped into open ocean. They attempted a style which presages that of Summoning, the keyboard song made of lead rhythm piano and background lush synthesizer, and make some quality decisions: there is no percussion. Songs keep energy high. They do not break aesthetic. Still, the patterns are basic and do not convey any sense of music beyond the present time.
12. Forgoten - Tranquil Silence: Arguably the better of these two 'Forgoten' tracks, this tracks familiar ground and familiar patterns without generating any impact in atmosphere. It manages that kind of background which works well in shops selling pyramidal crystals or books about witchcraft, but generates very little desire to hear it again. Startlingly similar to a track from Endura's "Great God Pan," this is a competent beginning that never went anywhere because of its lack of presentation dynamics.