Interview with Remains

by Brett Stevens on April 4, 2013

remains-of_deathA promising recent entry into the old school death metal world is a new band from Mexico named Remains.

We recently had a chance to hear and review their most recent EP, …Of Death, which is available for free download on the band’s Facebook homepage.

Burly, basic, and uncompromisingly fit together like ancient stonework in the war room of occult martial artists, the old school death metal of Remains is casually minimalistic but smoothly fit together into a series of visions of dark passages through life. Instrumentalism is good, composition is promising, and we’d like to hear more from this band.

Luckily, we were able to catch these up-and-coming metal wizards for a brief interview…

Hail Remains!

First of all, thank you to the support to our band; we are very happy to know that the EP has been well received.

Now, the questions…

Can you give us a brief history of the band? How did you start, how did you meet, how long have you been a band and what other projects do you have?

Miguel, Emmanuel and Leonardo knew each other because they are studying at the same university. On the other hand, Edoardo and Miguel know each other because they were in an old project some time ago.

Remains was originally proposed by Miguel and the project was born at the beginning of 2011 with a different line-up, but it wasn’t until of the middle of 2012 that it stopped being a project and became a band. With the present lineup Remains recorded the demo “The True Essence” and then in 2013 the EP …Of Death.

About other projects… Leonardo and Miguel have a melodic death metal project called “Fractal Entropy.” Emmanuel plays in two more bands which are “Sinister Mind” (black metal) and “The Light Of Dark” (brutal death metal) and Edoardo has a black metal project named “Fog of Chasm.”

This is a two-part question: (a) what bands influenced you most in your composition and songwriting; and (b) what bands do you think you sound like, even if you think you sound a little bit like more than one band?

a – Death Metal in general, bands like: Grave, Carnage, Dismember, Autopsy, Edge Of Sanity, Vomitory, etc.

b – Maybe something of Grave and Edge of Sanity, you know… old school bands, someone said that Remains sounds a little bit like Master.

Why did you decide to make old school death metal in a time when most of metal has gone on to newer styles, or just given up and become nu-metal?

The principal idea has been never been fashion; we don’t try to follow every new tendency. In my own opinion (Miguel) I grew listening to death metal because of my father (Miguel Angeles – Darkcreed, Pyphomhertum, Foeticide) I mean … death metal is my forte.

So… Remains was born as a tribute to the bands that gave origin to the Death Metal.

Do you think there is a metal “sound” for Mexico? How do you think of yourselves in the lineage of bands such as Cenotaph, Transmetal, Mortuary, Toxodeth and Xibalba?

Maybe there are features which distinguish a Mexican band from others, but is difficult to say that there’s a pure Mexican sound. Those bands are the best we have had in Mexico and we would like to continue that lineage and not lose it with the birth of new bands and styles.

We believe we can do something so the scene grows and doesn’t forget with the passage of time.

You decided to release your first EP, “…Of Death,” online as MP3 files in a downloadable zip archive. What made you decide to do this? How do you think it will help you? Are you worried that people will just pirate the MP3s and not buy the EP? Do you think musicians can make money even if they give away their MP3s? Does it matter?

The idea of the band has never been to get money. When we put out the EP we decided that it would be in the free MP3 format because someone who really likes what he hears will go looking for the CD or tape. (Now we do not have a label) If you want to buy or download our music… whatever, you are listening us and… that’s good for us.

What’s next on your agenda? Are you going to write more material, go on tour, or do something else?

Right now we are working in our first LP and we hope it will be ready in September of this year (of course, when we finish it, we would like that you listen to it).

These songs (on “…Of Death”) are well put-together, where every riff has its place and they fit together well. How did you compose these songs? Did you spend a lot of time after you wrote them, going over them to get the details right and make sure all the riffs fit together?

Every song came to its moment. When Miguel composes a song he always has a clear idea of what he is looking for in every riff and the way to adjust and mix them; then, every member of the group put their personal stamp on Miguel’s composition. We don’t spend too much time in details; if something doesn’t work, it stays out.

What do you think are the origins of death metal? Is it still relevant as a style of music today? What do you think motivates people to want to enjoy and eventually create death metal?

Since the metal was born, the trend always has been to be more aggressive. Bands like Possessed or Mantas gave us the guideline for this style; it continues being relevant since more bands of Death Metal are born every day, maybe what motivates people to listen to it is the aggression, the force that has death metal’s song as well as the theme of the lyrics of every band or the technique that is necessary to make it possible.

If someone wanted to hear some death metal bands from 2013, what newer bands would you recommend to them?

From México you have to listen to “Demonic Manifestation” and “Elemental Extinction”.

Maybe not bands but releases of Lie in ruins, Corpsessed, Massacre, Entrails, Hail Of bullets, Necronomicon and/or Carcass.

“…Of Death” has a very professional sound. How did you record this album, and how long did it take from songwriting to finished product?

It was recorded in MAT STUDIO under Miguel’s production, trying to respect the sound of the old school keeping the essence of the aforetime recordings. It took us approximately 4 or 5 months in total.

    Remains

  • Miguel Angel – Voice & Guitars
  • Leonardo Valdez – Guitars
  • Emmanuel Guerrero – Bass
  • Edoardo Gascon – Drums

Thanks for the support, Death Metal!!!

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Death Metal Underground podcast 04-03-13

by Brett Stevens on April 3, 2013

death_metal_underground-podcastDeathMetal.org continues its exploration of radio with a podcast of death metal, dark ambient and fragments of literature. This format allows all of us to see the music we enjoy in the context of the ideas which inspired it.

Clandestine DJ Rob Jones brings you the esoteric undercurrents of doom metal, death metal and black metal in a show that also exports its philosophical examinations of life, existence and nothingness.

This niche radio show exists to glorify the best of metal, with an emphasis on newer material but not a limitation of it, which means that you will often hear new possibilities in the past as well as the present.

If you miss the days when death metal was a Wild West that kept itself weird, paranoid and uncivilized, you will appreciate this detour outside of acceptable society into the thoughts most people fear in the small hours of the night.

The playlist for this week’s show is:

  • Necrophobic – The Nocturnal Silence
  • Extracts from The Hollow Men by T.S. Eliot (read by Eliot himself)
  • A Transilvanian Funeral – Cold Blood and Darkness
  • Sergei Prokofiev – Night (from Scythian Suite)


Metal music has from its very beginning existed as music outside the normal narrative of popular culture. Refusing to conform to the saccharine hippy outlook of 60s rock, or later the cheap sloganeering of punk, it existed even outside of the officially sanctioned definitions of ‘outsider’ music. It eschewed both post-modern self-irony and the pre-packaged emotions of pop to create a music that was both assertive and esoteric at the same time.

Peak metal genres, death and black metal, essentially grew up in a parallel cultural atmosphere to what was gracing the covers of Rolling Stone and NME magazines or playing on MTV – a culture that only made sense to the initiated and the dedicated, and spoke a language of death, danger and intolerance for the posers who would water down metal’s intensity.

Metal first came in from this wilderness as music that was only an echo of its surface sound. Bands playing loud, distorted guitar rock with a stand-offish attitude were taken up by the media and the public as relatively accessible versions of what had previously been denied either by them or to them by Darwinian means. It had little of the substance of metal but claimed its name.

Metal had been co-opted by people who had neither the heart nor the stomach to understand it, who parodied its most obvious components and fed back into the general perception of what metal was without any idea of what it had been up to that point. Shortly, bands who had been underground stalwarts were picked up by major labels looking for the next profitable act, and together duly proceeded to water down their sound to fit more closely the rock paradigm that suited the market and reinforced the conception of metal created by the co-opters.

Where metal had once ignored how people dismissed it as mindless brutish music, to privately develop its own distinct and even elegant musical language, it now embraced its stereotype, and turned into an angry flavour of the same musical clichés all pop music is based on. Where once it dismissed the crowd, it now was overwhelmed by it.

Whilst its popularity may have soared, hollowed out, the quality of metal went into a nearly two decade-long decline.

  • Dead Congregation – Martyrdom
  • Supuration – Consumate
  • Cosmic Atrophy – Shattering of Terrestrial Reality


Perhaps as an inevitable consequence of generational power shifts, academia is now taking seriously this music that two and three decades ago a diffuse bunch of young people held out to insist was both unique and powerful. Metal seems to be once again coming in from its wilderness, this time however it is being assessed on its own terms. Rather than sanitising or absorbing it into the broader cultural milieu, people from outside of metal are trying to understand it, and discovering the surprising quality of work that can be discovered when one scratches beneath the mainstream-encrusted surface.

It perhaps says something for the morbidity of metal art that it has become a sort of study piece – a museum-worthy curio to sit around chin-scratching and taking notes on. Near-extinct – or, at least, no longer threatening.

The new-found seriousness about metal may prove to be a healthy dose of self-confidence for a much misunderstood genre, too long equated with aggro-rock and/or blamed for any number of society’s problems. Yet still, it remains to be seen whether metal will be creatively spurred by this new-found level of acceptance and recapture anything like the long-gone glory days of the genre.

The dry, sanitary air of academia may not suit it as much as an atmosphere of evaporated sweat, grave miasma and dried blood. For as strong as metal is artistically, it is nonetheless still an art that emphasises outward action over introversion. The capricious nature of inspiration means that art is something that must be lived, not theorised and examined in microscopic detail. Sometimes this means that inspiration comes once in one big unself-conscious outpouring, and then afterwards simply never surfaces again.

  • Candlemass – A Sorcerer’s Pledge
  • Disma – Lost in the Burial Fog

DOWNLOAD

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Killing Joke – MMXII

by Brett Stevens on April 2, 2013

killing_joke-mmxiiStaying true to roots is difficult because as time goes on and learning increases, one must necessarily spread wings and soar to more ambitious ground. Killing Joke do both on MMXII, an album that showcases the style of their first album as interpreted through a more modern style and revisiting their influences.

Categorizing Killing Joke has never been easy. They sound like they should be an electronic music band, with spacious beats and future pop song structures, but then they add in guitar which sounds like a lighter version of Amebix, and a distinctly sweet-sour male vocal that gives the music an expansive mood and lightens the sometimes intense distortion on the guitars. They augment this with atmospheric keyboards and a throbbing, pulsing aggro-pop bass groove.

On MMXII, the band get closer to their roots in early electro and British techno pop, using melody to lead the otherwise unstoppable fusion of industrial, pop, punk and rock that they wrap into a final product that is both passionate and furious. While this is no way a metal band, Killing Joke has influenced a good many metal bands because it shares a similar mood: mythological, metaphorical, distanced from the human and yet emotional in the sense of someone watching a lovely mountainside burn in a drought.

As fierce critics of the modern life and its favorite crutches, Killing Joke also have a mood that is more punk than the most righteously self-proclaimed punk. This gives the music a surging quality, between a contemplative Britpop melancholy and harmony, and a driving rage during which the vocals distort to the edge of black or death metal territory. The result is an enclosing wall of sound that catches the listener in its emotion.

MMXII presents an amazingly consistent package. While songs are generally verse-chorus with strategic breaks, and cycle around to circular structures that repeat with changes, they are not consistent and each one has a different set of moods. Like actors playing a role in the drama of the album, each seems like a shard of the glass face reflecting the true experience of this album, which is both elaborate and brilliantly compelling.

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Monsterworks – Album of Man

by Brett Stevens on April 1, 2013

monsterworks-album_of_manThe job of a reviewer is to describe music, not judge it. Assessment ultimately becomes obvious from the context of expectation created by the reviewer which shows where all things must fit in the bigger pattern.

Monsterworks resembles a mixture of things and prefers to stay that way. The majority of the structural parts of songs are like Led Zeppelin mixed with Southern Rock and early doom metal, using metalcore style rasp vocals, so that most of what you hear is very guitar-rock styled heavy metal. This is a welcome change from the less organic metalcore of late.

If you like guitar playing that is bluesy, varied and emotional, this album will pique your interest. While the vocals rant, guitars hit all the right rhythms and then work in leads with the fills, slowly building up intensity until the song explodes in sound. If you can imagine Led Zeppelin and Ion Dissonance collaborating on a stoner doom album, this might be about it.

Monsterworks create very much in the 1970s style, and yet with its vocals and aesthetics, very much in the 2010s style as well. The result is both deeply engaged and like newer metal hybrids, incessant in its peak intensity, which can make it meld together indistinctly. It often detours into “different” arenas, like progressive rock, tech-deth, and straight up hardcore, as if a variety show.

Album of Man reforms the anti-technical side of post-metal and metalcore however by using the guitar as a voice of its own, and breaking up the strident extremity with old fashioned instrumentalism. This both brings rock and metal back to their core and renews the intensity of the vocals. By doing so, it takes newer metal to a better place and makes for a more satisfying listen.

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A Short History of Underground Punk and Metal Music

by Brett Stevens on April 1, 2013

the_ancient_history_of_heavy_metalWe can only know the present by knowing the past. In the case of heavy metal, it is a murky past obscured by both the grandiose rockstar dreams of individuals and the manipulative fingers of a voracious industry.

Metal arose through a complicated narrative worthy of a lost empire, and by knowing this history, we can know more of the music we enjoy today.

Specifically of interest are a number of threads that interweave throughout the history of the genre, both as outside influences and later as internal habits, which influence its twisting path from something a lot like rock to a genre entirely separate.

This story then is a tale of how many became one, or how they found something in common among themselves, and how it has taken years of creative people hammering on the parts to meld them into one single thing, known as heavy metal.

However, no one really likes a lengthy essay. Instead, here’s metal’s history the best way it can be experienced: by listening to it.

1968-1970 — the origins

Three threads ran alongside each other: punk, proto-metal and progressive rock. All three are on the edge of being metal, since the type of progressive rock in question is raw and disturbing and not of the “everybody be happy love friends” hippie style. This is music that thinks our society is disturbed, and that therefore many of the values we reject are worth a closer look. Some is fatalist-nihilist, like the self-destructive tendencies of punk, where progressive rock is more clinical, and metal more epic (looking for meaning in the ancients, in nature, the occult and conflict).

Iggy and the Stooges – Raw Power
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6DIIPeUctP4

Black Sabbath – Black Sabbath
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_wnmai0tjI

King Crimson – In the Court of the Crimson King
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H678XUB77OA

1971-1981 — maturation

A lot happened here, but basically, metal became more like its ancestors (hard rock), progressive rock faded out, and punk got more rock-music-like. The punk from this era is more like normal rock music than the outsider stuff it originally was, but also gains some aggression from Motorhead, who may technically be metal but were born of a progressive rock band (Hawkwind) and sounded very punk and inspired the next generation of punks to be louder, lewder, etc.

PUNK

Punk music arose from the earlier work by Iggy and the Stooges, but formalized itself into a pop genre that used guitars more like keyboards than like the guitar fireworks of conventional guitar-intense bands like Cream and The Who.

Ramones – Ramones
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7PEzQQYWag

Misfits – Static Age
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40SM7SpmX1Y

NWOBHM

An exception to the metal of the period was NWOBHM (New Wave of British Heavy Metal). DIY and extreme for the day, it left behind the Led Zeppelin-styled “hard rock” vein of metal and got away from Sabbath’s detuned doom and gloom to make energetic, mythological but also somewhat excited-about-life metal.

Motorhead – Motorhead
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xa88CK3DwUo

Satan – Court in the Act
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9cj07nHVWRU

Angel Witch – Angel Witch
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5o-8FVXom8

Iron Maiden – Killers
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YKblxKglTY

Judas Priest – Sin After Sin
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTBZK2-N_Gs

1982-1987 — the peak

Punk got its act together, in part inspired by the more commercial bands like Ramones and Sex Pistols. This is where hardcore punk really happened. That in turn spurred a revolution because music had finally left rock behind, and by mating the nihilistic (no inherent rules) composition of punk with the longer-phrase riffs of metal (derived from horror movie soundtracks), the riff styles of death metal and black metal were born, and the progressive song structures of speed metal evolved. At the same time, essentialist movements in punk hybrids (thrash) and metal (doom) emerged, sending many back to the roots of these subgenres.

HARDCORE PUNK

Discharge – Hear Nothing, See Nothing, Say Nothing
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3DmSbqmJaig

The Exploited – Death Before Dishonour

Amebix – Arise!

A second generation arose in the USA (all of the above bands are UK):

Cro – Mags – The Age of Quarrel
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUSzM9GB9s4

Black Flag – Damaged
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=61q-yAtU5-E

Minor Threat – Discography
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAEzAjFZPys

1983 — the big branching: speed, thrash and death/black

1983 is a crucial year, and so it gets its own entry. Metal and punk cross-influenced each other. The result was a lot more metal. If you’re familiar with nu-metal or more radio style metal, start with speed metal, as it’s the most like really violent rock music with influences from progressive rock in song structure. If you like messy punk (!!!) try some thrash. And if you’ve already given your soul to Satan, try death/black. With death/black, there’s also some influences from progressive rock, although they’re balanced with punk technique which makes for a chaotic spawn.

SPEED METAL

Speed metal took the complex song forms of progressive rock, the muted-strum guitar riffing of the NWOBHM bands like Blitzkrieg, and added to it the high energy of punk hardcore and came up with songs that kept getting faster and faster. This shocked people of the day, and was the primary reason speed metal bands were different from the NWOBHM that came before them, hence it was dubbed “speed metal.”

Metallica – Kill ‘Em All

Nuclear Assault – Game Over
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KrG8vQEVYwo

Megadeth – Rust in Peace
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4l9WbnqFSw8

Testament – The New Order
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VqE3wz1J1ik

THRASH

Thrash is a hybrid genre that takes punk songs and puts metal riffs in them. Its name arises from “thrasher,” or skater, and those were the people who embraced this style of music that was more extreme than metal or hardcore at the time. While it leans toward punk, it used metal riffs, and wrote short songs that in the punk style lambasted society but in the metal style tended to mythologize the resulting conflict.

DRI – Dirty Rotten LP
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6XteJQhpc4

Cryptic Slaughter – Convicted
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=323jnOT-SSo

Corrosion of Conformity – Animosity
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBkB5vEP8mM

GRINDCORE

Like thrash, this was a hybrid of metal and punk that leaned toward the punk side for song structures, and the metal side for riffs.

Napalm Death – Scum
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hs_9Lx8F6Sw

Terrorizer – World Downfall
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSLzeoVkkBw

Repulsion – Horrified
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjRr3JG6A38

Carcass – Reek of Putrefaction
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jz3l-5X4jLM

PROTO-DEATH/BLACK METAL

In 1983, these bands contributed just about equally to the new sound. In the largest part inspired by NWOBHM like Venom and Motorhead filtered through aggro-hardcore like GBH and Discharge, the unholy triad invented underground metal to come.

Bathory – The Return
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1xAVpAPHehc

Hellhammer – Apocalyptic Raids
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zQCBAzM8ck

Slayer – Show No Mercy
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_X5nW4A3II

DEATH METAL

Once proto-death/black metal had occurred, people began to expand on the formula. One side decided to make it more technical, and riffy, and taking after Hellhammer’s “Triumph of Death” and the increasingly mind-bending riffing of Slayer, made it use mazes of mostly chromatic phrasal riffs. On the other side, some wanted to preserve the atmosphere of the simpler songs that Bathory and Hellhammer had to offer, but injected melody and loosened up the drums to keep it from being as clear and rigid as death metal. While that latter group went off to figure out black metal, the death metal team experienced a boom of creativity and excess during 1985-1995.

Possessed – Seven Churches
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MdXBJL6rMxY

Sepultura – Morbid Visions/Bestial Devastation
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=brf71GAwavU

Necrovore – Divus Te Mortuus
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R09JrN9aiso

Morbid Angel – Abominations of Desolation
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zCP-No1DcQI

PROTO-BLACK METAL

While death metal was just starting up, other bands were trying to figure out how to make melodic ambient metal, structured equally after early melodic metal and free-floating songs like Slayer’s “Necrophiliac.” The result had chaotic drums, deliberately bad sound quality to avoid becoming a trend or something which could be imitated, and high shrieking vocals to death metal’s guttural growl. Taking a cue from Bathory, Slayer and Hellhammer, it also embraced the occult and esoteric and rejected conventional social norms and religions.

Sarcofago – INRI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_27DRSCB6M

Blasphemy – Fallen Angel of Doom
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZA8q8jga5xo

Merciless – The Awakening

BLACK METAL

As black metal matured, it moved into Norway, possibly inspired by the previous generation of melodic Swedish death metal bands who used high sustain through heavy distortion to make melodic songs which featured less constant riff-changing than the bigger bands from overseas.

Immortal – Diabolical Full Moon Mysticism

Mayhem – De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas

Darkthrone – Under a Funeral Moon
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h08zTR0F-qQ

Burzum – Burzum
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICNIRMH-8jA

Emperor – Wrath of the Tyrant

Gorgoroth – Pentagram
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHfgXh1506Q

Enslaved – Vikinglgr Veldi

This is just the beginning; there’s a lot more after this in all of the genres, which kept developing in their own ways. This is only an introduction to the history of it all, and is not designed to be comprehensive…

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Interview with Satan

by Brett Stevens on March 31, 2013

satan-band_photo

Satan‘s Life Sentence is going to hit a lot of best of lists for this year because it is the root of the most lastingly popular metal genre ever created.

In the early 1980s, speed metal bands like Metallica popularized the style, but acknowledged their debt to NWOBHM including Motorhead, Diamond Head and Blitzkrieg. These bands were from the far side of NWOBHM as it incorporated more punk influences and as a way of differentiating itself from the earlier versions, got harder, heavier, riffier and generally more aggressive.

Back in those times, Satan’s Court in the Act was considered one of the fore-runners of speed metal. With the advantage of 30 years of wisdom, Satan re-assembled — now with experience spent in bands like Blitzkrieg and Skyclad — and restored its vision of the past with an album that is harder, faster and heavier than their earlier works.

Life Sentence however also includes the best aspects of NWOBHM, which includes the melodic vocals and melodic guitar-based songwriting, with technical chops that aren’t overstated, and a good sense of developing theme. It makes many of the post-Metallica imitators of speed metal seem like two-note template-based song construction, and shows metal a way to renovate its own flagging fortunes: improve songwriting.

It won’t be hard to convince people to enjoy this album. As we pointed out in our review, it’s a winner with metalheads who like musicality with their speed thrills. We were fortunate to be able to talk with guitarist Steve Ramsey.

Back in the 1980s, when asked about the origins of speed metal (Metallica, Exodus, Anthrax, Testament, Megadeth) many people pointed me toward Court in the Act, and others mentioned the “Into the Fire” demo you released in 1982. What do you think your contributions were toward inventing this new style? Do you think it was widely recognised?

I think on the underground it was recognised that the album had some significance. Unfortunately it didn’t seem so to us at the time, hence the name and direction change. We knew we were pushing boundaries in our own way.

What floors me about Life Sentence is how you mix melodic guitar playing with aggressive and fast riffing. Do you get a lot of comparisons to Judas Priest’s Painkiller? How do you think this album is different from your past works?

We were heavily influenced by early Priest, especially the Unleashed in the East live album and the older material on that album. No one has mentioned this until now. Their earlier material in he seventies was very progressive, unlike some of the stuff that made them popular in the eighties. We tried to create what we think would have been our second album had the lineup stayed in tact. We had a few rules we made and stuck to. For instance, we didn’t think we would have written much in odd time signatures.

The term “power metal” popped up a lot in the late 1990s to refer to bands that were melodic in composition but used the more aggressive riff styles of speed metal and death metal, like Helstar and Stratovarius. However, Satan was doing all of this back in 1982. Do you think the community caught up to you, and do you think that your first album would be received differently today?

If the reaction to the new album is anything to go by then yes, I think the album would have fared better now. Aggressive melodic speed metal is a term that could be used to describe a lot of what we are in to writing and performing as a band.

Life Sentence is a remarkably complete album in that every song seems to fit and there’s not a dull moment. What’s your songwriting and quality control process? How do you start writing a song — with an idea, an image, a riff, a melody, or what? — and how do you determine what goes on the album?

It’s strange really, we didn’t have any left overs. Everything we put together is on the album. Russ is the main writer of the music along with myself, but a lot of the stuff is a collaboration between us and the other members adding their bits and pieces to the general picture and overall performance. It’s a true team effort.

Members have gone on to other bands, including Skyclad which claimed your guitarist and bassist for some time. How is Skyclad different from Satan? It is famous for mixing folk music in with metal. Is this a natural progression from what you did with Satan?

Not at all. That was a concept perceived by our ex-singer Martin and myself. We started off playing a more thrashy form of music and gradually added more of the folk element as we went on. Sabbat were a thrash band that Martin was in previous to Skyclad. His vocal style determined what we were able to do too.

How do you see yourself as different from death metal? In the Metal Forces interview, you say Satan changed the name in part to avoid being seen as being like Venom and Slayer. Musically and artistically, how do you see yourselves as different from these bands? In an interview with Snakepit magazine, you mentioned that Satan chose its path before black metal and death metal. What do you think of these movements which have built on what you’ve created?

When we formed the band Russ and I were 15 and still at school together. We thought Satan was a true heavy metal name for a band and of course we’d come up with a fantastic logo. We were into Black Sabbath but they weren’t branded by their name with everyone thinking they were into the occult or whatever. This happened later to the music scene. In the eighties we had some towns trying to ban us from playing and Christians demonstrating outside shows because of the name. We tired of this and having to explain that we weren’t preachers of evil etc.

I think nowadays it’s taken a little more tongue-in-cheek what a band decides to call itself. I like aggressive music and we write songs about the evil things that happen in the world but we have nothing to do with devil worship and all of that stuff and dont want to be associated with it. The forms black and death metal weren’t the issue, it was the message that some of these bands were tring to deliver. Slayer are one of my favourite bands.

In the German TV interview posted on your website, you mention how metal audiences are too trend-orientated. How do you think this has helped you or hurt you over the years? You mention in the context of Skyclad, that not being popular isn’t a judgment on musical quality. Can you tell us more about this?

This is especially what happens in the UK. The popular press lead the fans into liking the music made by the major labels, and of course those labels are the ones that fund the magazines through advertising. We’ve had situations in the past with press in Germany too where you’ll get an album review but no feature because your label aren’t paying for a big full colour advertisement in that mag. This makes it more difficult to be heard if you’re trying to create someting new on a small independent label. It’s really not the audience’s fault, they get into what they get to hear and that goes for mainstream too. This has changed a lot since I made that statement due to the internet and fans being able to find what they like themselves.

In the Snakepit interview, you say that your first gig involved playing covers by Black Sabbath, Motorhead and the Ramones. How much influence did punk have on your music? Where did the Motorhead influence come in? Was it balanced by another influence, that sounds more like traditional NWOBHM and guitar-oriented rock?

We listened to a lot of punk stuff in the seventies and wanted to involve that raw energy in our music. Motorhead were one of the first metal bands to do that for us. Also we played punk stuff because it was easy to play and people would identify with it at school where our first gig was! We were also listening to Deep Purple, Rainbow, Priest and Rush but couldn’t play that yet. We would play a lot of Priest songs from Unleashed in The East, “Kill the King” by Rainbow, “The Trees” by Rush and others later on in our early days.

How is it that people confuse writing about evil, with suggesting that evil is a good idea? Does this reveal something about them? I’m thinking of your comments (Steve and Graeme) in the German TV interview on the Satan page about how people would boycott Satan without knowing anything about the music.

Yes, it is a little naive. Unfortunately there are people out there who make assumptions without listening. There were bands promoting it through their lyrics too though and that didn’t help with us being called Satan.

In an interview with Metal Forces magazine, you said you wanted to get away from darker themes and “all this black death, killing people and devils. We want to get some life into metal. Music isn’t about death, it’s about life.” — is there a way for bands to be about life even with dark themes, or are the two mutually exclusive? Do you think many metal bands are going about this the wrong way?

I think what I was trying to say was that some bands try to deliver a message through their lyrics and sometimes it’s not good. We certainly did that with Skyclad and still do but Satan was never about that. We want people to enjoy listening to the band and the dark lyrical themes suit the music we make but were not trying to deliver any kind of opinion or message with them. There are also a lot of bands that share the same attitude.

You’ve now played a number of festivals, and come out with what I think will be a strong contender for album of the year, and you’ve got a powerful lineup ready to go. Are you going to tour more, or focus on recording more material?

Thanks for that accolade. Everything is very much up in the air and in the lap of the gods! If you’d asked us a couple of years ago are we going to make an album we probably would have laughed. The interest in what we do is leading us. This album went so well that there have been whispers in the camp about maybe doing another. We take the shows we get offered and we have some good ones coming up.

Thank you very much for the great review Brett. It’s great to know there are people out there who really get what were doing and appreciate it and that really came across when we read it.

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The war on hipsters is accelerating

by Brett Stevens on March 30, 2013

Taylor Swift

Many don’t see this as a metal topic, but as Cianide would say, “Metal never bends!” What does bend, to trends? The hipster and all other people who think a surface-level view of life is important.

A hipster is someone who leverages all aspects of their personality, art and social group for the kind of invisible magic karma points that “popularity” and “notoriety” confer upon the narcissistic personality. Like cultists, hipsters have shattered self-esteem and seek to compensate by knowing things that other people don’t know, specifically traded in artistic and cultural artifacts that are special — like the hipsters themselves — for being unique, odd, “different,” unconventional, distinctive, etc.

Notice what’s missing in there: realistic, accurate, informative and/or useful.

Hipsters originally shunned metal because metal is by nature a warlike genre. We look past the surface level of life’s drama, expressed dually by individual narcissism and social group zombie hive mind thinking, and instead pay attention to the situation beyond the individual. The heavy stuff: war, death, metaphysics, infinity, disease, history, the occult and the esoteric.

In 2008, Adbusters magazine blew the lid off the rising millennial hipster epidemic by proclaiming hipsters the dead end of Western civilization. An excerpt:

Ever since the Allies bombed the Axis into submission, Western civilization has had a succession of counter-culture movements that have energetically challenged the status quo. Each successive decade of the post-war era has seen it smash social standards, riot and fight to revolutionize every aspect of music, art, government and civil society.

But after punk was plasticized and hip hop lost its impetus for social change, all of the formerly dominant streams of “counter-culture” have merged together. Now, one mutating, trans-Atlantic melting pot of styles, tastes and behavior has come to define the generally indefinable idea of the “Hipster.”

An artificial appropriation of different styles from different eras, the hipster represents the end of Western civilization – a culture lost in the superficiality of its past and unable to create any new meaning. Not only is it unsustainable, it is suicidal. While previous youth movements have challenged the dysfunction and decadence of their elders, today we have the “hipster” – a youth subculture that mirrors the doomed shallowness of mainstream society.

Since that time, the hipster epidemic has only become more pervasive. Famous for being ironic, in order to be unconventional and different, hipsters wander through life making art out of garbage, Instagraming their oddball tastes in food, liveblogging their personal drama, treating their children like press agents for themselves, and generally making society more vapid, plastic, superficial, oblivious, trivial and vain.

Luckily, world leaders and authority figures are stepping in to help out.

First, North Korea is helping by threatening immediate war. But this isn’t a war on the USA. It’s a war on hipsters:

Some Texans, however, suggested the path in fact led 95 miles south to Austin, the state’s capital, and speculated that Mr Kim had taken against the liberal enclave’s young “hipster” population.

North Korea probably doesn’t get a lot of US papers. They probably don’t get too many Americans over there who aren’t credulous tourists or formal State Department types. However, they do get the internet. To them, America is an unending stream of Pinterest, Facebook, Reddit and FourSquare. From their point of view, the US = hipsters. So they’re taking out the real hipster capital of this place, and hope that will kill our culture like an ant mound poisoned with cianide.

From a completely different angle, Taylor Swift is mocking hipsters with her new single, including Instagram-style photographs, ironic hipster classes, and bittersweet lyrics that are poignant through indecision. She is hoping to curry her fanbase, composed of legions of young women with disposable income, to wage war on the hipster. This might succeed even better than Kim Jong-un’s nuclear attack.

And covering the domestic front, Boston’s police department are cracking down on hipster house parties featuring boring two-note pop punk bands with ironic themes about getting lost on life’s highway. Apparently, the officers are impersonating trendy hipsters in order to figure out where the hip ones are congregating in suburban houses, where they and their bad bands and PBR make noise until 4 am, prompting not one but many homeowners to open fire with rusty old weapons from the last real war.

While by themselves none of these seem significant, when added up these commonalities point to one thing: a world-wide backlash against the hipster and its superficial, ironic and selfish ways. As the hipster falls, metal rises, so we’re glad to see this development.

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Autopsy to release “The Headless Ritual” in June

by Brett Stevens on March 30, 2013

autopsy-band_photo

According to a post on their Facebook page, California gore-metal morticians Autopsy are entering the studio in early April to record their next full-length. Described as “monstrous brutality” independent of all trends, this album indicate what insiders suggest could be a return to Autopsy’s roots in complex, esoteric death metal.

During the early days of death metal, Autopsy were distinct because of their ability to use multiple tempi per song, to employ harmony and theme, and to use seemingly sloppy, grotesque, overflowing riffs to convey themes of death, suffering and disease. Their career arguably peaked with 1991’s Mental Funeral, an album of many varied songs of different lengths and song structures, presenting a strange landscape for the listener to navigate.

Last year’s Macabre Eternal showed Autopsy returning to the sound of old school death metal and the abrasive aesthetics that came with it, but not quite entering the realm of the weird where obscure song structures and riffs contribute to mood as much as they did on older Autopsy releases. Although that album showed promise, its somewhat consistent approach created a uniform intensity which resulted in much of the content getting lost on some ears.

The Headless Ritual will be recorded at Fantasy Studios under the care of Adam Munoz, with cover art by the widely-acclaimed Joe Petagno. Slated to be released on Peaceville Records sometime in June, the album is the latest chapter in the continuing odyssey of Autopsy and promises a brutal dose of gore, rancidity and internal decay.

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Heavy metal linked with classical music, academia

by Brett Stevens on March 30, 2013

heavy_metal-classical

For many years, metal was viewed as being outside the society which it comments on. Recently, as metal has bent closer toward the mainstream, it has become more accepted, which has led to some metal bands going farther in the direction they were originally going.

As an example, academia shunned metal at the start of the 1990s, but after the work of Deena Weinstein and Robert Walser, began to be taken more seriously. Now, a conference dedicated to heavy metal exists, as does a journal of heavy metal studies. Metal is seeing more acceptance from the world.

In return, metal is starting to give back in a big way. Former Anthrax guitarist, current Red Lamb guitarist and autism awareness activist Dan Spitz will be attending the metal conference to serve as a keynote speaker along with noted academics and journalists who have covered metal. Worldwide attendance will make this a legendary event.

In other news, people are finally making the connection between heavy metal and classical music. As this site has noted for over two decades, metal and classical share many attributes, the most common being a tendency to use phrasal riffs/motifs to create complex narrative song constructions in which each song structure is specific to the material referenced in the song, much like the form of poetry or literature.

Vancouver Symphony Orchestra composer-in-residence Edward Top notes three similarities between metal and classical: both are dedicated to releasing energy, a “shredder” tradition in both and shared enjoyment among musicians, and that both are “outsider” genres to the mainstream, with both coming from camps of people who are probably too smart or too nerdy (I have no idea what he’s talking about) for their own good.

It’s gratifying to see metal get the recognition it has deserved for many years, and for the classical tradition in metal to be acknowledged, at the same time academics are taking metal seriously and digging into its philosophical and social roots. It may turn out that despite years of downturned-mouth condemnation of metal, society is finally taking it seriously and may even learn from what it has revealed.

Photo: Wayne Leidenfrost, Vancouver Sun

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Interview with October Tide

by Brett Stevens on March 29, 2013

october_tide-band_photo

October Tide create their music in the hazy miasma between funeral doom and post-metal, which means searing distorted vocals, layers of blasted guitar sound, and slow percussion mixed into a dreamy veil of sound.

Tunnel of No Light is their latest album, and it goes further into this direction that ever before, combining post-metal style with the clandestine nature of 1980s dark pop, which makes their music full of mystery.

We were lucky enough to get a chance to talk with Robin Bergh, who plays drums in October Tide, about Tunnel of No Light, metal, what’s not metal and the future of metal.

There seem to be both funeral doom and post-metal/post-rock influences in your music. What were your musical influences, and did any lead in this direction?

There have been so many influences through the years. I can only speak for myself but post-rock is a genre that really attracts me as well as the metal from the 90s. I really like old Tiamat, old Paradise lost, Type O Negative, old Amorphis and of couse the old Katatonia stuff. When it comes to “new” music I tend to listen to some of Porcupine Tree’s albums as well as Cult of luna, A swarm of the sun, PG.Lost and Pallbearer. Perhaps you could hear a little bit of everything in Tunnel of No Light.

You have a lush guitar sound that is both ferociously distorted and seems to preserve the internal harmonies of chords instead of blowing it all on crunch. Can you tell us how you got this sound?

I guess this is a typical Fred/Emil question but I know for sure that Fred loves his GT-10. He has been playing around throughout the GT-series since ages so I guess he has found his comfort zone in his gear.

Do you compare your sound to any of the following: Opeth, Cemetary, My Dying Bride or Jesu?

Nopes. We rather try to catch a feeling then a sound. We are not those technical nerds that spends hour after hour and salary after salary to chase a certain sound. We prefer to spend our time, creating a feeling or some kind of atmosphere.

Do you think metalheads have more trouble reaching your music, or do you think a fan of Joy Division or Sisters of Mercy would?

You might have a point. Most of the metal music these days are quite intense and I guess that is what loads of metal heads expect when they hear a new album. Anyhow, we think the other way around which might attract the old Sisters of Mercy fans, but to be honest I don’t think that they have discovered us yet. Most of our fans are still metal heads.

Your members have been active in the Scandinavian metal scene for many years, always in slightly “outside” bands. Is there some difference in approach or philosophy that made you take this path?

We all play just for fun. We don’t really try to make a break or feed our listeners with music that we expect them to like. It is more important for us to play music that WE like to play and to have a good time together. With that strategy you don’t really get as big as “Swedish House Mafia” which is not really our goal either.

Do you think metal is changing to be more like indie rock and post-rock? Did one swallow up the other?

This is a tricky question. It is quite normal that music tend to develop in some directions and it is hard to predict what the next natural step for the future will be. For some years now a lot of bands have been competing with as high BPM as possible and totally insane guitars. I’m quite fed up with that at the moment so I welcome the post-rock direction with open arms. I have a side project myself that is called Aoria and I find it fun to play that kind of music as well.

One of the most amazing things about Tunnel of No Light is that your vocals are among the most savage in the business, but they get laid over these beautiful guitar tracks. What does this represent to you?

Even if you are surrounded by a beautiful atmosphere in a beautiful landscape you could still be very frustrated. I think that might be more usual in our society to day and that is nothing to be ashamed of. Just walk down the street and take a look at the people that you see. I do like the mix of beautiful and frustration.

How would you describe your sound as having changed since Rain Without End?

We have tried to stay as close to the 90s as possible but with some refreshed elements. The vocals are more intense now and perhaps your hair will stand straight backwards when we crank up the guitars. This is the first album that October Tide have ever recorded as a complete band with the intension to perform it live. That might also have affected the outcome.

These songs seem like they arise out of a clash of emotions. How do you compose? Do you start with a feeling, a picture or a story?

That differs from time to time. It could also be a scenario, that very often will give the song a project name. From there on we start to work it until we are satisfied.

How long did it take to write and record Tunnel of No Light? Will you tour the USA and Europe for this album?

The writing process was much longer than the recording process for sure. I think we did spend 5-6 days in the studio to record this album and the writing was done during the summer 2012. Not really sure what the touring plans are at the moment but check out our homepage at www.octobertide.net for the latest updates.

What do you think the next generation of metal will look like?

Rather synthetic than organic, less dynamic and loads of variation. More of everything I guess. Clean vox + growl + female growl + clean female vox perhaps some keyboards, percussion. Guitars and drums faster than machine-guns and everything is tight as a frog’s ass!

frogs_ass

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