The Sights of Horror, A Taste of Blood, The Howls of the Damned: Inhaling the Stench of Revulsion

Normally, when I'm working on a video, I listen to the record that I'm pulling the song from while I'm doing the cut, maybe in with a couple others if it's a long cut.  For SH126, that wasn't going to fly; this was a 60-plus-block cut, each of those blocks taking at least one play of ...Seventh Day..., and if you need a way to go spare in a hurry, listening to the same record 60 times in a row is a great way to do it.  That the video is the way it is is due mostly to the idea and the application in the edit phase, but it's also due to the stack of records I had up while doing the cut that produced the source pool.  This is what I was on while working on this one.

Suffocation - Effigy of the Forgotten
While more brutal and slammier than Master, Suffocation's big-team debut is still from the same general era, and is a nice tight package of devastation that keeps the blasts pumping without interruption.  This is mainly why this one is in the stack rather than Breeding...; the covers of both are still essential to the period aesthetic.

Broken Hope - Swamped In Gore
Broken Hope - In The Bowels of Repugnance
I have the Metal Blade anniversary reissue of these two records, both of which should be considered essential.  Swamped... is a little tighter, with fewer acoustic-guitar interludes, but ...Bowels... hits harder when it's not being period-arty.  I don't have any of Blood's takes on contemporary grindcore to work with, but it's always something that comes to mind from Broken Hope in this era; same general feel, same zeitgeist.  THE! HEAD! OF! A! DEAD! CAT!

Bolt Thrower - War Master
Speaking of grind, this is almost definitely going to be my go-to grind-death record in the future.  I really ought to have more Bolt Thrower (see Morbid Angel for similar regrets); this probably matches in better than any other band with the actual video-source track.

Master - On the Seventh Day God Created...
A record I fell in love with in college and still go back to; for the video I was limiting myself to just the original disc, but I currently own the reissue with two live sets on the bonus disc, and if there's anything better than classic Master, it's live classic Master, provided you can't get live Master at close range, as I've been privileged enough to on a couple occasions.

Morbid Angel - Altars of Madness
I called out the similarities between Dan Seagrave's essential cover to this one and some Kujaku-oh direction while working on the video; more important is the large number of killer tracks on this.  I'm not likely to do another Morbid Angel video after SH102, but someone who has not done their Morbid Angel video might have better luck than me with "Maze of Torment" and something (or several somethings) from this era of anime.

Death - Spiritual Healing
Heavier than the first two albums and not as progressive as the brown period stuff that comes after it, this is the sweet spot of Death for a video like this, and it gets me to actually listen to this record more...because I prefer the thrashy lunacy of the early stuff and the locked-in technicality of late Death to it.  Go fig.  Still classic.

Devastation - Idolatry
A practically forgotten late brutal thrash metal record, this is another one special-ordered on good memories from the college radio station.  If you listen to a lot of Dark Angel, Kreator, early Death, and classic Pestilence, you will probably dig it as well.

Bolt Thrower - Mercenary
In the middle of the cut I had a Saturday spare and found this one again at Armageddon Shop Boston.  It's just as masterful as back when I didn't steal it from the radio station in college fifteen years ago.  Completely essential, no question.

Gorgoroth - Pentagram
Other black metal records flitted in and out of the lineup (shouts to Mayhem and Inquisition), but this one, a tight and primitive 30 minutes, stayed in due to retaining enough dirt to connect it back to the Master feel and getting over quickly enough to avoid getting up its own ass.

Hail of Bullets - On Divine Winds
A semi-concession to modernity, but with a committedly old-school sound to hook back in to the purpose of guiding the cut.  Also, this is fucking Martin van Drunen, and my Pestilence discs are not mastered in a way to match in with the feel that I was going for.  If I had bothered to buy the first God Among Insects record back when that was current, it would probably be in this stack as well.

Morbid Angel - Covenant
If I owned Blessed..., it would be in here too, but I'm a fucking false and don't.  Something to fix; in the meantime, this is "Blood on my Hands" and "God of Emptiness", the latter of which was a serious backup candidate for this video all the way through.  Think SH126 fails it?  Grab this one and show me what you can do with late-Shouwa/early-Heisei.

Paganizer - Basic Instructions For Dying
Raw Swedish thrash-death in the vein of Dismember, but without the "holy shit fuckin Dismember" dimension to make me jump up and put body parts through the walls.  I had the privilege of seeing these dudes at Party.San some years back, and try to keep that spirit of stripped-down aggro alive when I'm cutting to their tracks.

Sodom - Agent Orange
Of course, if we're talking brutal thrash, there's a Sodom representative.  I'm solidly on Team Kreator still, but listening to Kreator for me demands full attention; Sodom lets me concentrate on the video while delivering more grimy brutality, which was what was needed for this cut.