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Tags: Black Metal, death metal, Doom Metal, Grindcore, Heavy Metal, Speed Metal, Thrash
From the opening dual guitar harmonies straight out of 1985 that bring to mind the live intro to a Europe or Stryper set, it’s obvious that this album will be more in line with the guitar hero pop-metal of Arch Enemy than anything from Symphonies of Sickness or Reek of Putrefaction.
To some degree, that’s to be expected. Carcass threw in the towel on forward momentum long ago (1991) and have resorted to playing up their namesake for the purpose of phoning in stadium metal for the aesthetically overblown Wacken age, and Surgical Steel is perhaps their most commercially flexible attempt at filtering late model radio format speed metal through a death metal aesthetic filter, where actual death metal technique is limited to tremolo picking, blast beats, and Jeff Walkers vocals.
Carcass joining an elite cadre of financially successful bands by doing so, starting with At the Gates’s Slaughter of the Soul and even Pantera’s Far Beyond Driven. Let me state it again for those who wish to be millionaires: the appearance of being an outsider to a society nearly universally loathed by its inhabitants, with an underhanded delivery of comfortingly familiar derivative works that by their obedience affirm the social order, will always be a financial success. It allows the appearance of rebellion with none of the actual costs. It’s like artistic insurgency tourism.
Surgical Steel ends up being a mix of Swansong‘s Thin Lizzy-isms applied to the framework of songs like “This Mortal Coil” and “Doctrinal Expletives.” These songs have more to do with Mike Amott’s recent Wacken pandering than anything on Heartwork. “A Congealed Clot of Blood” resembles a “revisited”, more uptempo version of Swansong‘s “Don’t Believe a Word” and the last song, brings to mind the best years of Sanctuary with its sentimental melodic guitar intro, or evokes the Overkill ballads “The Years of Decay” and “Soulitude” with its emotional framing and pacing.
Some tracks like “Cadaver Pouch Conveyor System” attempt aggression by utilizing the same speed metal meets extreme music technique as “Carnal Forge” from Heartwork, but with the obvious “money riff” effect of the dual harmony guitar part that is the focus of these songs. The reversion to old lyrical themes (based off the song titles and album artwork) seems like misdirected fan service as these songs would probably win over more people from the Century Media crowd if the lyrics had the same simple “emotional” topics that songs such as “No Love Lost” had.
While this album may appease the simple appetites of those who merrily purchase Arch Enemy and Children of Bodom albums, many songs try to deviate from the verse-chorus stylings with an overloaded, ill-fitting bridge that detract from their simple nature. This divided nature may keep Surgical Steel from being as successful as recent Hypocrisy or Slaughter of the Soul in the arena of stadium faux-death AOR metal for drunken Wacken attendees.
Again, we say: if your heart is no longer in death metal, don’t bother. Start up a project band and transition into progressive rock, classic rock, or whatever it is that actually appeals to you. Explore your new musical pathways. It’s just as much a sell-out to try to “stay true!” when you no longer care as it is to make Justin Bieber-styled pop because you know ten million teeny boppers from the ‘burbs will buy it. Musicians, chase your dreams. We get the best of your talent that way, even if we have to transition genres to appreciate it.
45 CommentsTags: carcass, Grindcore, hard rock, melodic metal, Surgical Steel
The Death Melodies Series (DMS) continues with Russian Romanticist composer Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky.
Mussorgsky was birthed into a wealthy aristocratic family in Russia. He brought ingenuity to the Romantic Period, but he was also an innovator by bringing many Russian nationalist themes and folklore into his compositions. Many of his years were spent as a civil servant, and he had numerous hurdles that hindered many aspects of his life. Some of his works were never finished (presumably due to alcoholism) and many people disregarded Mussorgsky. Others claimed that he had fits of madness before he died.
Aside from his self-destructive nature, Mussorgsky executed some very remarkable works. His Pictures at an Exhibition suite is still prominent today in the classical music scene and it’s been transposed to many renditions on various instruments. One of his most popular pieces, Night on Bald Mountain, has been utilized from Disney’s Fantasia to Marduk’s Glorification of the Black God.
Mussorgsky died right after he turned 42. Though he lived a short life, his innovative Russian flare established himself to become one of the leading figures for later Russian composers to draw influences from. Shostakovich likely gesticulated the most inspiration from Mussorgsky’s works in his late symphonies. Mussorgsky left numerous works unfinished due to his decline in health and alcoholism. Shostakovich took it upon himself to revise some of the incomplete works. Sergei Prokofiev was also influenced by Mussorgsky in some of his operas.
3 CommentsTags: death melodies series, Mussorgsky
Doom/death metal band Triptykon have announced that they have begun working on their next album with a presumed release date sometime in 2014. As of now the new album is still untitled for the public, but a few song titles have been released which fit into the occult theme established by the band’s debut album. Describing the music as epic and diverse, it seems to suggest that the album will have more variation than the relatively straightforward Eparistera Daimones, which suffered from a linear composition that made its songs less interesting than they otherwise could be.
Straddling the boundary between classic metal and modern compositional technique, Triptykon continued the sound that was debuted on Celtic Frost’s Monotheist. Our review found that there were a few intriguing elements present, although subjugated to simplistic verse-chorus repetition. Because of this, the morbid atmosphere that was omnipresent in Hellhammer and early Celtic Frost was lost.
Founder of the band Tom Gabriel Fischer is known for his often unorthodox incorporation of external influences in his music, which have produced some of the best extreme metal albums in the early days of Celtic Frost. If he is able to create an album that successfully merges the underground spirit with focused influences from other spheres, it will assuredly be superior to almost all contemporary releases. However, if concessions are made to modern stylings, it could result in a diluted product, as plagued the releases since Celtic Frost‘s reformation. We strongly hope for the former over the latter.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzaI6jQM0wE
3 CommentsTags: celtic frost, death metal, hellhammer, Speed Metal, tom warrior, tryptikon
Back in the day, we would have called this hardcore. It doesn’t use metal riffs, and unlike metal songs, it doesn’t build an atmosphere of heaviness. It throws out a sense of distraction and then hammers you with it. Not surprisingly, it’s verse-chorus all the way in riff pairs, and the vocalist does that shouted vocal that sounds like a frustrated drunk person trying to explain something.
Much of it is expansive hardcore in the style of later Disfear with some overlap with newer Napalm Death, meaning that the ranting eventually picks up intensity and you get a trudgy-churny part over which there’s meaningful chanting. It isn’t bad at all. However, more than about four minutes of it results in scrambled brains, because it’s essentially about hammering out one message and then looping it.
This might appeal to fans of bands like Tragedy who want poignant moments of voices raised in protest with their riffs. It makes the mistake all modern music does, which is that by turning all the intensity up to eleven, it ends up with an intensity of a constant one as it drones on in the background. All instruments are competent.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUZjvKV14A4
3 CommentsTags: call of the void, Hardcore
UK ritualistic outfit Grave Miasma have debuted a new song ‘Ovation To A Thousand Lost Reveries’ from the upcoming album Odori Sepulcrorum which will be released via Profound Lore Records on September 13th. Many are eager to hear this album since Grave Miasma shares members with the now defunct Cruciamentum.
Originally called Goat Molestor, Grave Miasma create rapt and introspective music by the use of repetition and rather simplistic riffs, but they do so in a way where it becomes meditative. This new track is very reminiscent of previous works by Grave Miasma and appears to have a slicker production than their last two EPs.
https://soundcloud.com/profoundlorerecords/grave-miasma-ovation-to-a
13 CommentsTags: Cruciamentum, Goat Molestor, Grave Miasma
For the past eighteen years, it has been clear that for black metal and death metal to survive, they must do more than imitate the past. In other words, it’s time to get weird. There are many avenues to explore but few trust the audience to understand and so the majority spend their time making fifth-generation copies of bands whose ideas have long been forgotten and who exist now only as aesthetic “brands.”
Witchblood shows us a band attempting to create something new within the weird side of black metal. Hybridized with heavy and power metal, Witchblood fits into that territory inhabited by bands as diverse as Gehenna and Absurd which lets the weird side of metal through. It embraces that which polite society normally finds difficult, which is uninhibited emotion and fascination with the natural, which means this music is less manipulative and more sentimental than the norm. This gives it both a cryptic energy and an endearing personality.
Much like Absurd, parts of this are “immature,” meaning that in their guileless state they lack the focus on surface appearance that we have come to expect, and in their raw exuberance they resemble the musings more of a child than an adult. However, there is nothing uncoordinated about the result. Unlike most bands, Witchblood like to edit their material down to the point where every part serves a role, which means it is slightly more repetitive but the parts work together to produce a gestalt of emotion.
This EP will not be for everyone, in particular the more recent types who like slick alternative rock style “mixed emotions” aesthetic draped over their music, but Witchblood will appeal to those who like a good heavy metal tune with black metal style and power metal energy. Some will find the background vocals, which are either clean or war-whooped in the best primitive style or clean vocals that shadow the rasp and give it fullness, to be disturbing but this reviewer found that after a few listens they integrated well with the sound.
Instrumentally this band acquits itself well despite using relatively simple elements and riffing off known styles from Burzum and Dissection as well as some of the vivid gestures and grandiose ballad-like tendencies of epic heavy metal bands. In particular, drumming echoes the riffing but does so unobtrusively while still providing the emphasis where it is needed. Guitars are often reminiscent of primitive bands like Ungod and Absurd, but just as much at home with Dio-era grandeur.
Witchblood are relative newcomers into a genre overflowing with imitators of the past. This band is trying to keep that spirit, but convey it in a new form, in part by escaping the slickness that becomes easy once a style is well known. In short, it’s a return to the “Wild West” days of black metal before the professionals took over and turned it into the same old thing everyone else is doing. For that reason, this band is worth a first listen, and maybe at that point, the vulnerable and feral sides will make a convincing argument for Witchblood.
Order Witchblood through the Witchblood e-store.
5 CommentsTags: Black Metal, Heavy Metal, witchblood
Thirty years ago, a struggling band from California unleashed their first album and changed the world of heavy metal forever. The genre that they may not have invented but certainly formalized was speed metal, and it represented the start of heavy metal’s journey away from verse-chorus rock into the dual worlds of hardcore punk intensity and progressive rock song structures.
At first, these changes were less obvious. Kill ‘Em All owes a huge debt to the heavy metal that came before it, and embraces many of the conventions of rock music as well, but it funneled them through a singular filter and achieved a uniformity of sound. In addition, this new style crept in with a number of innovations, like the use of introductions and instrumentals to change song structure, that presaged where this new subgenre would go.
From a casual observer’s position, the first Metallica album isn’t that far removed from its predecessors. The dual influences of UK heavy metal and hardcore punk are clear, as is the distinctive feature of speed metal: the muted strum that produces a choppy explosive sound from percussive lead rhythm guitar, allowing the construction of more complex riffs by making the power chord a building block instead of a place where the riff rests, as open chords are in rock.
Kill ‘Em All showed a new blueprint for metal that developed the extremity of Motorhead with the intricate riffery of Judas Priest and other NWOBHM bands, making for a brainy album that relied on speed to cram all of its power into songs of a normal length. In addition, the speed kicked it up to a new level of complexity in riffing. Speed reveals the sparseness of a riff, and so the one- and two-note riffs of the past would seem immensely repetitive at a faster pace. Thus the riff itself grew with speed metal.
Conceptually, metal grew up with Kill ‘Em All as well, at least partly. Yes, there were some embarrassing songs that sounded like West Side Story retrofitted for violent Northern California speed metal gangs. But more importantly, there was an epic view of existence. Songs about fate, about the fall of civilization, and dark lore that reveals the topics feared by daylight conversation all gave the album a weight beyond its (merely) heavy riffs. Like hardcore punk, this was the howling voice of the apocalypse at our door.
One of Metallica’s most important contributions was to liberate the riff from the drums, hence the “lead rhythm guitar” designation that appeared with many speed metal bands. Following the lead of UK crust punk bands like Discharge, Metallica viewed the drums as a background timekeeper which framed the riff loosely rather than accentuated it, and thus the riff could change without the drums changing. This allowed the riff to change more frequently without forcing tempo changes, although the band delighted in abrupt and surprising tempo changes as well.
Speed metal took this pattern and ran with it. While its antecedents are clear, such as the proto-speed metal of Satan/Blitzkrieg and Motorhead, and the fast-fingered intricate melodic riffs of Iron Maiden and Judas Priest, the new speed metal band from California turned up the intensity and pushed aside conventional song structures. This set metal free from the world of rock, and laid the groundwork for the next generation, which would not only inherit the true lawlessness of hardcore punk, but build up complexity to be closer to the world of progressive rock.
13 CommentsTags: kill 'em all, metallica, review, Speed Metal
After years of society looking down its nose at heavy metal, it appears to be showing up in unusual places: high intelligence occupations, health and academia.
Even though metalheads are still a discriminated-against group, with long hair for men, tattoos, loud music, mentions of Satan and chaos magick banned in many workplaces and government offices, the forces of metal are rising worldwide.
Wired reports on an intelligence-research prodigy in China who, after mastering difficult subjects in a fraction of the time it would require even another gifted person, takes the day off to see a “Satanic heavy metal concert.” Then returns to studying intelligence itself.
Over on the Wall Street Journal, Jon Wiederhorn reminds us that “Metal Music Can Be Good For You,” mentioning among other things that metal can “keep fans that have been scarred by trauma feeling alive and surrounded by family” and that “heavy metal has never faded into obscurity.”
All of this follows an article from a few years ago, “Gifted Students Beat The Blues With Heavy Metal”, which revealed how many who society would consider its best and brightest are turning to metal.
At DeathMetal.org, we don’t find this surprising. Metal is more brainy at the compositional level, meaning how the riffs fit together to develop themes, than rock music or even jazz, which tend to be cyclic. It tackles the big subjects that people would rather forget about, and thus attracts the smarter alienated teens who find the lack of order in life to be appalling.
But best of it, it delivers a punch to life. Like spice in food, combat, sky-diving or a new idea, metal brings out the terrifying and empowering all at once, making us view life with new eyes. That could be the healthiest of all.
8 CommentsTags: academia, health, Heavy Metal, intelligence
New England based old-school print zine Codex Obscurum has just announced that their second issue is available for order. For $2 (plus shipping) you can obtain a well-versed printed zine that encompasses many elements of Hessian culture.
Bands covered in issue #2 include Defeated Sanity, Incantation, Forteresse, Morpheus Descends, The Hookers, Ringworm, Goatcraft, October Tide, Morticia and a multitude of others.
Ordering information is located here.
1 CommentTags: codex obscurum
