### Krabathor: Cool mortification

#### 28/11/11 || Habakuk

You know what sucks? Moving to another city small town, you don’t know anybody yet (and nobody’s there because uni hasn’t started yet), autumn is coming and the only way to get Internet is to go to McDonald’s. Okay, it’s not that bad, I wanted to do this, and it’s actually the second time this has happened to me, but the first few days seem to always suck a little. So, you know, I come prepared. I’ve secured myself a case of beer (which is actually quite good here) and I’ve started digging through my hard drive for a bit. There are a few folders that always hold a couple of nice surprises, called “davedeath” or “Trauma” for example – which is music from GD’ers I’ve met and shared music with. Actually I don’t know where the “revenant” folder is, but I guess all of that stuff has made it one step further into my regular folders already? Probably. Anyway, there’s also the more general one called “unlistened”, which holds stuff I just got somewhere (fell off a truck) and never really listened to – but it clogged up my desktop, so I “archived” it. Yeah, I know, never open a “misc” folder, but now, in my not-so-social situation, I happily dig it up again. So, what have we here: “Spiritual Apocalypse”, “Domination”, “Unholy Cult”… Krabathor!

Hasn’t everybody heard that name somewhere before? I have listened to this a couple of times already, and I only remember there was one really good song: “Absence of life”. Wait, is this referring to my social life? And yes, upon revisitation, it still holds up. These Czechs sure knew how to make the mid-tempo triplet riff work in their old school death metal. Unfortunately, the rest was not “hit” material enough to make me copy this into my regular playlist. What put me off especially was the vocalist, not so much because he pronounced a chorus “Faces – Under – Te ice!!”, but rather because of his bellowing style. The music actually leaves a lot less to be desired, and I don’t know, maybe it’s the aforementioned good local beer that makes me indifferent about the vocals and lets me enjoy the whole deal out of a sudden. I mean, Windows tells me I’ve had this since 2004! Fuck!

Okay, so there are three options for you: Either you listen to this once and wait for 7 years, or you just are a little more tolerant than me – or you have a completely different taste when it comes to vocals, and think this is the shit – and then this is actually not bad at all. I don’t know, I have definitely dealt with worse shit myself. Anyway, you’ll get thumpy low-end with snarly bass guitar, lots of double bass accentuations, and a general old school vibe, as things never get faster than your common thrash beat (blasting apparently wasn’t invented yet in Czech Republic – or was it Czechoslovakia at the time?), but mostly stay in a nice, chugging pace. If I were to compare this, I’d probably say it’s like a drastically dumbed-down contemporary (we’re talking ’93) Death meets the bluntness of Thanatos: Realm of Ecstasy meets thrash half-time breaks. The songs are all a bit on the long side, but even if it doesn’t always feel super-engaging, be sure they’ll get back on track with the next riff or so. Like I said though, the one and only standout track here, and it is bad-ass, is “Absence of fucken life” – there also is some remix for it on my “disc” as well that reminds me of the Laibach versions for “Covenant” – it’s okay, but it does sound a bit plasticized, so don’t bother.

So yeah, in closing: we all know old stuff is better than most shit released today, so if you’re looking for a decent death metal snack from the (g)olden times that has the potential to be rediscovered in almost a decade, check it out! I’ll actually transfer it from the “unlistened” folder now…

- Information
- Released: 1993
- Label: Monitor
- Website: www.krabathor.tk
- Band
- Petr Krystof: guitars, vocals
- Bronislav Kovarik: bass, backing vocals
- Martin Mikulec: guitars
- Petr Kopecek: drums

- Tracklist
- 01. Faces under the ice
- 02. In the blazing river
- 03. Evil coroners of mind
- 04. The loop
- 05. Without the following dawn
- 06. Forget the Gods
- 07. Absence of life
- 08. Temporary being of insignificancy
- 09. Absence of life (Absence of mind bonus mix)