As metal continues to grow in popularity, outsiders to the genre find it more appealing. They see it as an unknown region, or an exotic culture, and in comparison their lives seem drab. What is it that makes hordes of people headbang to violent and abrasive music?
This was the question the Amarillo Globe News posed to death metal band Abolishment of Flesh and it received an answer it might not have been expecting.
The band painted a picture of death metal different from what is commonly presented in the media:
“There are a lot of different things going on at the same time,” [guitarist] Cazares said. “It’s very comparable to classical music.”
“We have a lot of weird time signatures and different changes like classical music does,” bass player Chuy Camacho said. “There can be three different things going on in the music at the same time.”
In other words, rather than the circular key-centric two-part composition of rock and pop music, death metal uses chromatic scales to develop an internal dialogue and motif evolution through pattern as opposed to harmony alone, such that notes are relevant more to previous notes and riff shapes than they are to a sense of key or rhythm.
In death metal, notes stream forth in multiple tones and directions, creating a tapestry of sound, similar in goal of a symphony: each part is musically literate on its own, yet when put together creates something that transcends each individual instrument.
When musing on why death metal is not popularly regarded as an art form, the band speculated that the genre has been overtaken by bands that have confused aesthetics with actual content:
“We don’t get taken seriously because other bands make a joke out of it — try to get as perverted and as gory as they can,” Camacho said.
Not content with being a sideshow, the band decided to forge ahead and create music with quality control. Playing old-school style death metal with melodic interludes; the band creates a style of music that appeals to both veteran fans of the genre and newcomers that may discover older classics through discovery of the techniques presented.
And the reason the band plays this type of music?
To Cazares, death metal “talks more about what’s real or what’s going on in life.”
Thus the essence of Death metal described: piercing the veil of deception and beholding reality.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BH6MM6EEss
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4rmEp4c1LFc
While I like their mentality, some things are hindering their goals: the deathcore artwork, band name, and the generic song titles which seem like unintentional self parody. The music is also of the overloaded Unique Leader variety crossed with nu Kataklysm melodic bro-deth, like the BROOTaL bands that every local scene seems to have nowadays… It’s sad that death metal went from Morbid Angel (a band on a mission up until 1993) to silly comic book gore and snuff film fetishism for the sake of shock value. Even the bands that might be trying to break free from that like these guys are just making music in this style for the sake of it, contributing nothing over the classics, like how Watain are just as bad as Cradle of Filth (actually worse) but expect golf claps for being stylistically similar and having the same anti-semitic rhetoric as their Norwegian idols. Nice try, but it’s just a fraction of the worth of something old, and means nothing. I hope deathmetal.org adopts nu Kataklysm melodic bro-deth as a genre descriptor for those mellow deth wigger bands.
It is incredible how some “metal” musicians keep believing that what they are playing, belongs to a genre that clearly reached higher quality standards in the olden days, they will never be able to reach! Speaking of the old school, does anybody remember a band named Morta Skuld – Dying Remains I think of 1993?? Was it any good?
Dying Remains is solid mid west death metal. A couple of the songs are really good actually.
Have to say, I’m finding this interesting so far. Cohesive, despite a great deal of variation. Some of it sounds a little cliché, but some of the best DM from the old days was about as cliché as it gets for “dark, scary music”. Needs a “less clean” mix, better drum sound, vocals are pretty fantastic. It’s not A grade, but easily B; not too much of that going around at the moment.