(William Smith is the vocalist for Buckshot Facelift and a Long Island band named Artificial Brain that I’ve written about twice — here and here. He also writes a very entertaining blog called Vitos Squid Stop and Death Metal Museum. I asked him around this time last year if he would write something for NCS . . . and he gave us a 2-part list of “anniversary” albums — five albums recorded 10 years and 20 years earlier, respeectively. And this year he’s done it again. In this first part, he discusses some death metal gems from 20 years ago.)

Wow, time flies! I can’t believe another 12 months has passed and I’ve had my head in the thrift store record bins too long to be a credible judge of what came out since last year. Now, I could scrap together a hodgepodge of the random demos and albums I acquired in 2012, but it’s so much more fun to look through my personal vault and bring you all on a trip down memory lane to that most special of years in Death Metal – 1993.

We all know the story – bands such as Deicide, Morbid Angel, Sinister, Death, Carcass, and so on and so on, were proving their mettle in the worldwide markets, and tape trading was still the most viable and pragmatic way to get new music.  Here now, I present to you 5 of my favorite obscure gems that were just bubbling under the surface during this glorious period in Death Metal.

(In all honesty, I was 11 years old in 1993 and got into tape trading about 3 years later – what a poser!). In the (German-translated) words of Mangled Torsos, let’s “hold on the past”… Continue reading »