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Exterminator > Total Extermination > Reviews
Exterminator - Total Extermination

Anal Fodder - 1%

psychoticnicholai, July 12th, 2017
Written based on this version: 1987, 12" vinyl, Bemol (Limited edition)

Let's be real, the only reason Total Extermination gets any attention is the swastika on the cover art. This is attention whoring in the simplest and least creative way I can think of. Using shocking symbolism to get attention is nothing new or even all that rare. What is truly despicable is using a symbol of one of the shittiest ideologies ever conceived to market some of the shittiest metal ever conceived. This is bottom of the barrel bullshit with no redeeming musical qualities at all, EVERYTHING is terrible. A dumb Nazi symbol on the art was all it took to get people questioning what all the fuss was about with one of the most effortless pieces of music out there. There are shitty black metal demos out there that sound better than, and display more talent than this. Total Extermination is one of the worst metal albums ever.

The sound of Total Extermination is positively abysmal. Even by the standards of crude 80's demos, these production values are extremely bad. Whoever sang for this sounds like he's yelling inside of a bathroom, and you can hardly understand anything he says with all the echoing. Not that you would be able to understand what he says even if he wasn't drunkenly pretending to be a demon while sitting in a bathtub. The lyrics are all grammatically fucked up gibberish that barely resembles English. The guitar performance is also completely devoid of skill. If there are any riffs of note on here, they all get turned into the same static-y rumble that drones along through this entire album thanks to the rhythm-less bass overpowering the guitar all the time and turning the music into the audio equivalent of a shit-flavored Slurpee. Any time something stands out from the boring audio slurry, it always sounds bad. The solos are just the guitarist randomly fingering all the high strings with no coherence in the slightest. In fact, that sums up the entire instrumental mentality on here. Just go wild and hope everything works! They don't even try to stick to anything resembling a rhythm, none of them. This is anti-music simply because Exterminator don't even try. It's just the same, monotonous, non-musical, incoherent, barely audible rectal fodder for almost half an hour straight.

Everything about this is cheap. Bathroom production values, terrible mixing, no effort in playing, and cheap shock-based attention whoring with the swastika on the front. What's funny is that the only references to Nazis or the Holocaust are just some sparse name checks in two songs and some vague mentions of Nazism on the last track. They don't do anything with it. They don't condemn it, nor do they go the idiotic route and glorify it, they don't even talk about it. So the swastika on the front cover is a 100% pointless "look at me" stunt. If not for that very symbol on the front of this album, Total Extermination would just be lumped in with the hundreds of other good-for-nothing black/thrash metal demos languishing in obscurity. The only things unique about this album is how shitty everything sounds to the point where almost nothing is distinguishable, and the cover art; which looks like a rejected box cover for an early Wolfenstein game.

UNDERRATED AND OVERLOOKED HOLY GRAIL - 100%

forgetRoco, March 11th, 2011

I have known of the existence of EXTERMINATOR only lately, despite the fact that I am one of the lucky ones who enjoyed the Brazilian golden years of death metal (1986-1987) back in their present time and not later. My best youth memories are having been growing up listening to old VULCANO, MUTILATOR, CHAKAL, SEPULTURA, MX, HOLOCAUSTO, EXTERMINIO, SARCOFAGO and many more the whole day in a walkman, disliking school. There was no internet and through many years of high density tape-trading I later discovered that there were many more Brazilian bands of high rank, with the help of Brazilian tape-traders like Wilhelm Hansen of MEDECINE DEATH and of course I collected all original LPs I could. But never have I read even once the name EXTERMINATOR in any list, be it Brazilian or not, although any possible underground band was featured, if deathrash, heavy metal or punk. Thus, having seen the LP many times on e-bay at high price, I thought to myself "this can't sound as good as it's expensive, because I never heard of them before". Later again, I found again that LP on e-bay, but at a real affordable, nice price. So I decided to read the reviews on metal archives. The average note of 36% made me think "maybe this is not bad at all after all", being used to the fact that "black" means "white" or "peace" means "war". But when I read all those reviews tearing to pieces that totally unknown LP and only release of an even more obscure band, I became enthousiastic and immediately purchased it without having ever listened to it before.

Today, I luckily hold that precious gem, that stone from Lucifer's crown, that spear of Longinus, piece of forgotten history and holy grail in my mortal hands. I expected to hear loud dictatorial vocals "à la" Angel from VULCANO and this is truly the case, but where are the "wasp's nest" inaudible, distant guitars? The production is more than honest considering the time and country, much more powerful than VULCANO's "Bloody Vengeance" (my all-time favourite album despite average sound quality and creaks), the sound is clear and one can distinguish easily any instrument unless having shit in one's ears. Solos seem indeed random played, but it sounds wild and serves well the purposes of the global sound. Like on "Bloody Vengeance" (to compare what can be compared, because I don't see the point in comparing it to METALLICA's "Load"), truly the music is not square and professional at all, but maybe life in Brazil is not easy like in Western countries and does not allow people to rehearse every day like in Scandinavia. So, here and there a note occurs too soon or a cymbal too late but this may be the rough reflection of a spontaneous and brutal life. The high mortality in those bands is not due to suicide like in rich countries. COGUMELO Records did not release 180 gram or more heavy vinyl. Nothing can be perfect in some circumstances and our funerals won't be rehearsed or repeated until success if failed. On the other hand, what lacks in many technically ready, proper recorded bands, is the atmosphere, passion and hellish feelings! Those main ingredients of a perfect album which could be summed up as "inspiration", well they are all here, in that magic "Total Extermination" album. If I had known this back in 1987, I would enjoy it even more today, but I love it like we were back in those days. It has not lost its looks, and deserves its place on the pantheon of Belo Horizonte black or death or thrash metal, which were by then one and the same genre. The lyrics? A Brazilian speaks not as good English as a German, so the lyrics look funny of course, but is this important? SARCOFAGO would not do better and have nevertheless so-called cult status. I wish EXTERMINATOR to stay out of that cult trend and remain in the shadows of the Prince, and it is not to give them justice that I give them a 100% note, for there is no justice, but because there is nothing bad to say about it. And finally, the cover and layout, which is the last thing relevant to me, as it is nothing more than a container, is brilliant! A very inspired, brutal drawing, that fits well the music inside. I promise I am not a band member and am not familiar with any haha, I'm from France. But some people really should not write about recordings they can not understand. This is my only and last one-time review, because I felt something opposed had to be said here...don't put down a scene that has been and will ever remain the most raw and brutal ever!

Grandmother's corpse just took a shit on MY grave - 73%

Sigillum_Dei_Ameth, October 10th, 2009

9 songs, twenty nine minutes and forty four seconds and a sound production that makes dogs go "What The Fuck?"

Exterminator was another band from the 80's that came out of nowhere, gain notoriety in the underground(I guess) and then went back into obscurity. A lot of bands did this and still do today, but Exterminator left it's two cents on the meeting board table with their 1987 LP "Total Extermination". Oh and it's not for anything having to do with music. At all. In fact you can't even fucking HEAR the music. This LP is notorious for if not bad, THE worst sound production of all time. And I'm not making this up because I haven't heard every demo, EP, and LP in the land of all that is Metal, but I've heard piss-poor jobs at sound production like Sodom's "Obsessed By Cruelty" for example. This LP makes that album's sound production sound like Metallica's "Load" for fuck's sake. I don't think I can make this any clearer and don't need to further speak of the matter.

Well, I would like to mention something about the music but in my case, I have to turn the volume up on my nice Sony stereo with the 3 extra sub-woofers just to hear something that resembles a guitar riff. Oh, I guess it's your typical Black/Thrash from Brazil and I can even hear some Possessed "Seven Churches" and Slayer's "Hell Awaits" more mid-tempo riffs, but it's nothing to write home about. You can hear the guitar solos more so than the riffs which are nothing more than an extra bit of white noise added. The vocalist sounds like he studied Vulcano's Angel from "Bloody Vengeance" very well and that's one of the things that helps give the album a passing grade. Drummer? He should sue Lars Ulrich for ripping his style off for "St. Anger". Yep. CANG-CLANG-CLANG-CLANG-PSHHH-tinfoil fucking drumming where the bass drums and everything else sound like wet cardboard boxes. That's really about the only you hear music-wise is the vocals and the entire wall of muddy-distortion that completely drowns everything out. Songs all sound the same.

Artwork and lyrics are always big point makers in my book and yet if Exterminator are not know for their music and golden sound, we have some of the worst broken English lyrics of all time. More so than Sarcofago, Sodom, or any international band that picked up an English dictionary and tried to teach themselves. here's a few passages of pure blissful poetry this album contains;

"Now I'm here, and stick up the Hell
You don't believe that I'm crazy now
You cannot see, the evil in me?

You wanna see me in the cross paining
You wanna hard me in the Hell screaming
You take in my wounds and I cry angry" - taken from the song "Nightmare"

or how about this little diddy?

"Hitler, Himmler, Mengele and Belzebu
Turn you up my slaves in the Hell

Now you loock at the dream
You don't can believe
It's a nightmare, oh well

Now heard a spooky scream
It's a horrid scream
In the middle, from Hell" - taken from the song "Voyage To Hell"

Trust me, I wanted to post every lyrics from the LP, but standards won't have me do so. You get the idea. Also when not talking about Hell or Satan, it mentions lyrical references to Nazis. Much like their buddies in the band Holocausto who used Nazi-themes and went all-out for the shock value with "Campo De Exterminio", Exterminator uses it for shock as well but it just comes across as fucking stupid. There's nothing shocking about their usage of a swastika on the front cover of their album. Speaking of which the album's front cover is actually pretty cool. It's simplistic in a while/black drawing of some steroid-using executioner with a skull face waiting to do nasty things to a woman in a dungeon. Although crudely drawn, it does grab your attention. Maybe they wanted to see the theme of Sodom's "In The Sign of Evil" elaborated into something more sinister and twisted. Who knows. Picasso they are not, but it still works in an amateur way.

On the flipside of the sordid mess this LP is, it's....enjoyable in a nostalgic way in order to find the most crappiest/extreme/evil/brutal/whatever band out there. And trust me it's brutal to the ears because you'll end up torturing them by not having any music to listen to. This album is the equivalent to watching the movie "Troll 2". It's so fucking terrible it's enjoyable.

Sound production - Minus 40 points
Riffs - Minus 5 points but plus 5 because you can hear the solos
Vocals - Plus 10 points
Lyrics - Plus 5
Artwork - Plus 3

80's Brazilian, lo-fi extreme metal series: 2 - 5%

Byrgan, December 23rd, 2008

-Not talked about musically for a reason-

Simply put, Exterminator play lo-fi death-thrash. That, in itself, is one thing if the music is able to counter the effects. Yet, in their case, it is along the lines of a sound-fortress; hidden too well, too isolated to penetrate outside forces to even make a difference. Twenty years later and ticking, it should hardly matter to them or anyone else for that matter. Their release of Total Extermination finds itself at such a bad recording quality, it would be like wearing ear plugs, with a mattress against the door, while trying to listen to a band playing three rooms over with all of the doors shut, and that's not even an exaggeration. No stereo system, no matter how elaborate, could fully save this one. The production is beyond waking dreams, and more into a sound engineer's endless nightmare. The vocals are the loudest white noise escaping this past haunted album. Underneath of the music it is a real chore to decipher. No cereal box decrypters could manage to break this code, or if it did it would look be like trying to read a partial phrase on Wheel of Fortune, except from far away, and with lemon juice sprayed into your eyes to enact a blurry realism. Like an unfun game that has an unfair sting to it.

Fortunately, I downloaded 2 different versions off of some nice Brazilian fellows—since a physical copy is extremely rare—but unfortunately, both times the production is nearly identical in the fact that both are distant and blended sounding. I also initially gave a listen to a few downloaded tracks a few years ago, along with the same results. I eventually listened to the free stream of Total Extermination on the web site Vibrations of Doom, which in most cases diminishes the sound purposely, but in this case it actually sounds better. Saving the hiss for that authentic sound from LP transferring I got—to make available for downloading—making it worse. Although, the ending result makes you wonder if it was transferred on a Fisher-Price machine or recorded with a pocket tape recorder, from the pocket. But apparently, this is what it sounds like in true form.

I can see Total Extermination being a misunderstanding. Where you see the appropriation of 'full length album.' This is more at a wolfish demo quality, passing itself off in sheep's clothing with a full track listing. The music is the equivalent of loud vocals, with a wasps' nest underneath, buzzing and madder than hell. You might think it disappointing to see an album with such a cool name and a death-thrash labeling coming from Brazil in '87 and learn of not being able to fully hear it. But this distant train-wreck quality is fairly primitive as well musically. The guitars, from its buzzing racket, sound like they use enough palm mutes to fill caves and trenches with a danger, that even native animals that formerly habitated just steer clear. At points a solo can be heard more distinctively, which uses whichever sound comes from his guitar, and is ear-troubling, head-exploding to hearing-aid wearers. Most of the solos are complete randomness, using whichever notes his fingers can get to first. Neither matching the timing of the rhythm and sometimes coming in a second too late. The vocals use a heavy and deep onrush of growls. Standing ahead of the pack of death metal bands that would later emerge more fruitlessly, but not being able to accept any awards with much merit. He changes between using them in a fast and slow context. One song, he might sound more demonic and on another more like a warning, growling—earthly, yet shunned—animal. With massive amounts of delay on a few tracks as well. In the booklet I've perused, it lists Tom Stock as guitar/vocals and also Krueger as bass/vocals. Although, I'm not sure if they have a back-up/lead set-up or if they alternate between lead vocals. The drums are worse off than the guitars at points. The cymbals are usually how you can tell that they are even there sometimes. He sets the pace at some slower, medium and, of course, faster beats. During the slower sections, the vocals are typically more extended sounding. Overall, the music sounds sloppy and like they were first time song writers, with the enthusiasm for bigger-and-better things. Or were hoping—with fingers tightly poised and crossed—for a plain better album, and just couldn't wait.

Exterminator and also early Holocausto, from a likewise Belo Horizonte, would use Nazi-shock images to go with their over-the-top music. In the booklet they use a Voivod type of hand-written lyrical sheet and also acknowledgements. Stockmeier even dedicated the album to relatives while attaching the 's' rune as adopted in the elite SS. I found this humorous and quite involved actually—even though other bands have used it in separate contexts and were harmless—in envisioning their shocking approach of the 3rd Reich. The 3 members have little hand-drawn logos by their names too. Stock has a swastika, Krueger has an inverted cross and the drummer (Executor) has a pitch-fork. While all three are different, they encompass a sensationalist view point that I think sums up the album's extremities quite picturesquely.

Exterminator's Total Extermination blends the words full length factually, into practically a demo or promo-rehearsal sounding region. Hearing their name in whispered 80's Brazilian death-thrash circles might only be that they are from that period alone. Or wanting to back-trace the bassist Krueger from his later band Sextrash isn't really worth it. Musically speaking, this is usually why some bands get talked about a lot, and others not very much, which sometimes isn't the case, and you might find a lost gem. Also, looking at the front cover art, which might be perceived as an extreme, against-the-grain and cult-status gem just waiting to be opened up and listened to. Although, I have to admit their cover looks cool and catches the eye. But presented inside, it is because the song-writing and actual music is beyond listenability, and the only thing making it stand apart is that it came out in '87. But was rightfully pushed aside by better sounding bands. (Next review: Genocidio - Genocidio)

Total Crap - 29%

Human666, May 3rd, 2007

This album has one of the worst productions I've ever heard. The vocals are too much loud, they sounds inconsonant and fog on the rest of the instruments. The guitar sounds fragile and blends with the drums, it's sounds like it was played with low volume and high distortion gain which makes it sounds obscure and you miss a lot from the riffs. The drums sounds alright but there isn't anything interesting with the drumming, it sounds pretty monotonous and repetitive. The vocals sounds like a foggy growl and they doesn't bring much with them.

The riffing is bad, pretty bad. It sounds like random power chords here and there which doesn't make sense at all, the lead guitar is absolutely crap, it just support the riffs when it has to, only to waste some time and to change a bit the usual tiresomeness, with another tiresomeness.

The overall feel of this album, is that it doesn't has any feel. They kinda tried to be extreme and evil but all they succeed in was to write one track, and repeat in 9 different formulas which sounds almost the same. It isn't intense even a bit, it just drags for 29 hollow minutes which sounds the same in each second in each song. Just avoid this one.