### Thanatos: Angelic encounters

#### 23/01/09 || Daemonomania

The experience of owning a CD may be slipping away from us. Just as fewer and fewer people will ever pull a vinyl record out of a sleeve and hear the first strains of music when the needle hits the groove, so too will the days when fans violently tore off the plastic and obnoxious security sticker to get at the precious contents of a digipack be mere memories. So it goes.

Still, let me awaken a little nostalgia in you by describing the wonderful manner by which I came to enjoy the music of Thanatos. I arranged a trade with a lurker on the GD forums from Turkey, and after roughly a week of anticipation a package encrusted with Mustafa Kemal Ataturk stamps arrived. In case you didn’t know, Kemal was the man. Look him up. After removing the careful wrapping job, I was happy to find a pretty well drawn cover with lots of shiny silver stuff embossed in the artwork.

Upon opening the cover of the digipack, I was greeted with some rad pictures of a rack-tastic angel suffering as she is skewered nude, on a stake, with one leg ripped off. Hmmm, I wonder if this album will contain any gospel elements? While perusing the booklet and enjoying the Monstrosity shirt of a particular Thanatosian individual, the title track fires up in my CD player. After a noisy intro built into the first track (no fucking “XVI” here) the sweet sounds of muscular, aggressive death-thrash come pouring out of my pimpin’ Onkyo speakers.

So as I continued to browse the booklet, chuckling at lyrics like…

The sound of your spine being broken by my hands Makes me so hard this erection can’t be ignored Feel my maggot-infested cock between your legs I pull out, I cum blood in your dismembered face

…I can’t help but notice that the first Dutch extreme metal band (that’s right!) have learned how to kick about 9,000 types of ass over the course of their long career. One song after the next has something that gives me an erection that can’t be ignored. Not a maggot-infested erection, mind you, but still un-ignorable. They combine death metal sporting a dominating thrash influence with doom passages, and when you add the primarily raspy vocals into the mix fellow windmill-loving metallers Asphyx come immediately to mind. And the production is perfection – no clicks and clacks and no muffling. That’s about all you can ask for in death metal.

Let’s talk about a few songs, though all of them are good. “In utter darkness,” featuring guest vocals from an ex-member of Vital Remains, is tremendously awesome. Spot on vocals, fantastic tempo changes that end up in a spiraling vortex of slow doom. “Sincere chainsaw salvation” is a winner as well – brutal and fast as fuck. I can’t help but notice, at this point, that in the CD tray itself there’s a picture of an angel laying on her stomach, looking seductive, with a “come hither and taste my heavenly bearded clam” look on her face. Cheers to you, Thanatos.

More highlights. “The Howling,” if compared to the Howling films, is like the first one and definitely NOT like the craptastic installment where they’re in that castle. “Gods of War” features gunshot noises, and that is a guaranteed A+ from me. While they will never top the sampled gunshots as a drum fill moment from “Bullets are mine,” still a commendable use of cap-bustin’ goodness. “The devil’s concubine” has an interesting song structure, a number of well-done transitions, and a catchy chorus. I’m now reading the back of the booklet, where they thank about two billion ‘zines, labels, bands, and random Dutch people. Some might say these “thanks” sections in a booklet are a bit indulgent, but I find it’s a good way to dig out recommendations and gain a more encyclopedic knowledge of the genre at hand.

Two more highlights – “Speed kills,” the first song Thanatos wrote way back in the day, starts out with an Araya scream and tears right into some vintage thrash with speed, solos, and slayage aplenty. If this was the first song your band wrote, you knew right away your band was gonna be awesome. Last but not least, album closer “Thou shalt rot” has an atmospheric intro followed by more of the same high-caliber death-thrashing you’ve come to expect from this fearsome crew. So you can say I enjoyed the shit out of “Angelic encounters”. Then I downloaded the album, put it on my MP3 player, and listened to it on the way to work.

Lo and behold, all of a sudden the production sounded kinda shitty, bringing the whole Thanatos experience down a notch. But I guess that’s the price you pay for a portable music collection. Still, I can’t help but wonder if we’re losing something in the digital revolution – not just sound quality, but the connection that comes with the anticipation of getting a piece of music, the laughs that come with reading some bad lyrics and looking at ugly dude photos/odd drawn demonic torture porn, or feeling awesome to know that you have stuff from a large percentage of the bands that the artists thank in the back of the booklet.

Oh well. Thanatos is a death metal version of sphincter shreddage incarnate, so whatever means you use to check them out please do so immediately. You’ll be cumming blood in your own dismembered face before you know it.

8 fathers of modern Turkey and kings of Dutch death out of 10.

- Information
- Released: 2000
- Label: Hammerheart
- Website: www.thanatos.info
- Band
- Stephan Gebedi: vocals, guitars
- Paul Baayens: guitars
- Yuri Rinkel: drums
- Marco De Bruin: bass, guitars

- Tracklist
- 01. Angelic Encounters
- 02. In Utter Darkness
- 03. Sincere Chainsaw Salvation
- 04. Infuriated
- 05. The Howling
- 06. Gods of War
- 07. The Devil’s Concubine
- 08. Speed Kills
- 09. Thou Shalt Rot
- 10. Corpsegrinder (bonus Massacre cover)