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Thou Shell of Death – Sepulchral Silence

by Brett Stevens on January 3, 2015

Resembling a collision between space-ambient music, doom metal and black metal, Thou Shell of Death creates slow-paced doom metal with the atmosphere of black metal bands — a more melancholic, brooding and existentially nihilistic outlook — but like past doom metal greats Winter, the lead instrument here may well be the keyboards, which in reverb-heavy waves lace melody through crashing guitar chords which gives them both context and foreshadows development. The ethereal and spectral sound of the keyboards conveys simultaneously an otherworldly removal and a soaring sense of possibility, which temples the normal self-indulgence of doom metal into an exploration of wonder in the darkened halls of a fallen world.

Guitars on Sepulchral Silence intelligently vary texture in the background under the keyboards which are more clearly heard both through being louder in the mix and being a clearer sound, which makes their orientation as lead intelligence. The musical role of guitar in this context is to set a basic progression in the background which the keyboards riff against in order to produce a sense of convergence, as if actors were in harmony with their background and role rather than opposed. Often mid-paced, guitars use a variety of technique including fast downstroking and tremolo but just as often fall back to the Black Sabbath/Winter styled power chords played open, or strummed once and allowed to resonate. Behind them drums lag comfortably and minimally, removing what might have been a distraction to a role as timekeeper plus a sound of inexorable time that affirms emptiness. Each progression stands distinct and keyboards take advantage of this to set up a mood that, like ambient music even of the discotheque variety, resonates around the listener while vocals are demoted to speech filling in the gaps with a narrative to center the song. Over this, heavily reverbed vocals hang like shrouds and flags hanging torn above ruins, battered by the winds of history.

Avoiding the dual traps of becoming essentially slowed-down hard rock or slowed-down death metal, Thou Shell of Death renovates funeral doom music with a new variety of emotions and technique that avoids the pitfall of this music, which is that it is often tedious both from its slowness and the resulting relative invariance of its riff texture. While riffs are relatively few compared to death metal in these songs, as in black metal songs, each serves a purpose and riffs tend to change with lyrical progress, creating the sense of a morbid storybook tale narrated by a demon rather than a rock song over which someone is ad libbing Tolkien. From this basic approach, Sepulchral Silence makes a dense liquid atmosphere that provides all of the dread and despair of doom metal but with the adventurous spirit of black metal and the hope of discovery that pervades electronic music, creating a new voice for funeral doom.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8DhkroX9Uw

10 Comments

Tags: death metal, funeral doom, thou shell of death

Hippies fail at metal because metal hates hippies

by Cory Van der Pol on December 30, 2014

Hippies can’t play metal. Black Sabbath kicked off the metal movement because they wanted to make dark rock in contrast to the “peace, love and happiness” movement that had swept rock music into conformity. In this they joined other acts, like The Doors and Jethro Tull, who warned that good intentions would not save the world.

Since the 1990s, hippies are no longer the opposition to our evil conservative overlords… hippies are the Establishment, and they have become just as conservative and evil as anything before, except that now that have a mantle of moral superiority to use as a weapon like grandmothers use guilt. Not only have the hippies aged into their 60s, but they have adopted the view that they are right and anyone who deviates must be quashed. So much for the summer of love.

For that reason it’s natural that much as metal fought the suburban mom censors and Christian fundamentalists back in the 1980s, from the 1990s onward it has been fighting hippie fundamentalists who believe that peace, love, inclusiveness, happiness and political correctness are the only topics one can sing about, and if not, one is the enemy. This follows the path other ideological fanatics took, as in the Soviet Union, where their revolution for equality ended in mass executions.

This is a turf war. Hippies have wanted to take over metal since we challenged them (and their insipid rock) in the 1960s. They took over hardcore in the 1980s and songs went from rants about the imminent decline of our society to cute ditties about how the singer is outraged that people are not more accepting of everyone and everything. They transferred all that boring late hardcore into metal and threw some metal and jazz riffs on the top and called it a new genre, “modern metal.” The problem with it is that it is boring. Every single band of this type is random because the message it endorses is the anti-message: stand for nothing except going along with the hippies. This means writing transparent songs about SJW-topics that never really go anywhere since they all have the same meaning, “join the revolution!”

If you listen to enough modern metal, you will notice a pattern emerges. On the surface, this music is diverse and exciting. Jazz riffs, metal riffs, punk riffs and indie rock tropes compete for surface space. But then if you look at the heart of it, these songs really do not have much going for them. There is no melody or theme uniting them, just a loop of verse-chorus to which the band tacks on the randomness. This is because these are not songs about anything but are new and not very exciting ways of saying the exact same thing over and over again. Like a loudspeaker blaring in Moscow square, SJW-metal repeats the same propaganda in lockstep in hopes of reducing your brain to sludge so you go along with it. There is a reason it is all boring, and it relates to the purpose behind the music. Just like pop is annoying because its only purpose is to be catchy and vapid, SJW-metal is boring because its only purpose is to bleat propaganda while trying to be “unique” by making new surface variations of the same tired 1960s-1980s rock.

When hippies invaded rock, they destroyed it. When they invaded punk, they neutered it. If they successfully invade heavy metal, they will turn the last comfort of the rebellious soul into the dogma of the boring 1960s revolutionary left. SJWs are zombies who preach the same stuff that baby boomers were wailing on about in the 1960s, forgetting that all that stuff got debunked when the USSR fell in ruins and we got to see the SJW paradise: everyone was equal, and anyone who disagreed got shot, so no one did much of anything and it all fell apart. Hippies would bring us to the same end. They are essentially apologists for the decay of our society. Where metalheads want to look at reality and come up with solutions, hippies want us to space out with happy feelings and ignore the fact that we are in free fall as a society and soon to bottom out. This is why industry and government eventually embraced hippies: they do not threaten the power structure. Metal does, and that is why today’s hippies are trying to invade it, and why we must refute, resist and reject them.

35 Comments

Tags: gamergate, hippies, metalgate

Sadistic Metal Reviews 12-27-14

by Brett Stevens on December 27, 2014

Nothing is less metal than accepting everyone and everything. Metal discriminates. Fundamentally, we recognize that most people have their head in their clouds and like craven mice prefer comforting illusions to even only moderately disturbing truths. In fact, over 90% of everything is simply disorganized garbage made by distracted mice. For this reason, we unleash our cruelty and separate the music from the squeaking with Sadistic Metal Reviews…

Arkham – “Demo 2014”

It may become necessary to invent a genre for this style because it shows up frequently. It might be called “narrative speed metal” for music that adds heavy metal and death metal into speed metal but fundamentally follows the vocal line for song development, as if narrated as background action by the lyrics. The dominant influence on Arkham seems to be Iron Maiden, whose harmonized riffing and song structures bleed through, but the band has chosen a death metal vocal and a basic speed metal verse-chorus approach with introductory riffs leading to change in the verse riff for each section of the song. Good riffs, and good sense of melody, but this band ends up being too linear in narrative and the chaotic vocals interrupt their melodic songwriting.

Bloodscribe – Prologue to the Apocalypse

Fairly standard brutal percussive death metal in the post-Internal Bleeding style that is essentially deathcore but with more internal coherence through simplicity. The problem with this genre is that, like Cannibal Corpse and the post-Suffocation clones that inspired it, it requires reducing itself to a catchy guttural vocal phrase and distracting riffs with lots of squeaks and squeals but very little put together into tremolo or complex textures. The result is that this is the musical equivalent of elevator music, just a lot more intense sonically and with far better technique. It misses (however) the mind-blowing aspects of death metal and replaces them with the toe-tapping, head-bouncing and brick-eating mental state of listening to someone force a jackhammer around a sewer line.

Gnosis – The Third-Eye Gate

This band of some local repute comes to us playing the style that some call shuffle metal. In this genre, the vocalist chants and the drums race to catch up while guitars strobe a two chord riff in the background. It has the gratifying tremolo sound of early Florida death metal but the vocal dominance inevitably makes this combination sing-song and thus the foreboding sense comes apart, replaced by the feeling that one is in a local pub, drinking a warm brew, listening to the local band whose songs are as familiar as backyard dirt at this point and while improving, never seem to get good. Interesting ideas appear on this album but never develop because they are too busy keeping the chanty choruses going for the Budweiser drinkers who are wondering if they should pass out or vomit first. If this band wanted to get good, they would lose the vocal hook and replace it with monotone until the guitars sounded good, then re-write vocals to fit the guitars.

Nameless One – Thousand Memories and Nameless Sword

Essentially Iron Maiden styled heavy metal with death metal vocals and riffs thrown in for emphasis, Nameless One achieve a reasonable fusion of the genres but cannot hide the sickly sweet pop music underlying their Iron Maiden tribute composition. It is catchy and elegant in the way Iron Maiden is, but everything wraps up too nicely and the result is a sense of listening to one of those pop bands that pop up and vanish overnight in the dance music community. All instruments are executed with aplomb and solos are highly professional, and no song drops into lower-quality riffs, suggesting these guys have good quality control. Riffs are cut from archetypes, and the fusion is a little goofy, but the real sin here is making Iron Maiden into a candy pop band and thus making it as saccharine form of the irritation of nails on a chalk board.

Winds of Genocide – Usurping the Throne of Disease

This album is hilarious. Imagine taking a standard hard rock album and trying to do it in the style of Blasphemy (yes, the Ross Bay one). Then add vocals which linger past the phrase or lead the vocals much like a pop band, and allow individual musicians to show off in the process. The result is unintentionally comedic as it sounds like Hollywood hired a bunch of Charles Bronson style tough guys to make Poison relevant again. In an attempt to hide the roots of this music, the band play fast and loud and layer it in vocals of several types, including the electronically processed chant and the barking chihuahua howl. For comedy’s sake they throw in citations to Sarcofago, Von and other ultra-basic bands, but no experienced listener will be able to get past the hard rock progressions and bouncy glam metal riffs even if played in detuned, double BOSS HM2 distortion’d power chords. Do not listen when stoned, as you might have a laugh attack.

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Tags: #yolo, arkham, bloodscribe, death metal, gnosis, lol, nameless one, sadistic metal reviews, winds of genocide

The Best Underground Metal of 2014

by Brett Stevens on December 26, 2014

William Burroughs often wrote about the “edge,” or the liminal threshold between states. The last real edge year for underground metal was 2009 when strong contenders and new voices united to defend extreme metal against the onslaught of imitators making Potemkin village metal from hipster flair and lite-jazz fireworks but underneath it, nothing but disorganized songwriting and an absence of something to express. As the underground has come back with a vengeance, it has begun to displace the imitators because their music simply does not measure up. This has created a backlash as the hipsters defend their territory with guilt, ostentation, pretense and surface-level novelty. On the other hand, the underground has produced some strong contenders. And so we move forward through the past to the future, remembering that what is true is eternal, and trends, novelties, fads, hipsters and other transient moments pass quickly away…
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Tags: best of, Black Metal, blaspherian, blood urn, cenotaph, conquering dystopia, dead congregation, death metal, Demilich, desecresy, enthroned, entrench, Godless Arrogance, heresiarch, kever, massacra, nausea, nunslaughter, oppression, personal device, ripper, sammath, sorcier des glaces, varathron, witchblood, woodtemple

Atomic Aggressor – Sights of Suffering

by David Rosenberg on December 26, 2014

Calling a band “technical” — not to be confused with musicianship as popular circles frequently do — creates general indifference among those accustomed to seeing this term used as a selling point. The industry generally uses the term for bands that cannot compose meaningful songs and so encrust them in adornments of musical acrobatics, creating artistic Potemkin villages which offer a cornucopia of musical fireworks on the surface but emptiness beneath. Many believe that musicality is only valid if the artist consciously intended to give the music a certain technical quality. This could not be further from the truth.

The best music has often comes from technically competent artists, but this does not mean that their music is guided by a handbook of rules, but the other way around: they use technical flair to elaborate on the ideas that motivate their music. When an musician has a superior talent for organizing notes into melodies, aligning melodies into harmonies and building sections that flow and speak to one another as seemingly essential parts of a whole, this process can be reverse-engineered by a clever and knowledgeable analyst. But like software reverse engineering itself, we only arrive at technical explanations about the originating commands that give the result its nature, not the programmer’s feelings, train of thought or the content they hope to communicate through their art.

Morbid Angel Altars of Madness is lauded as as a young genius’ masterpiece born out of raging emotion and unprecedented innovation in the then-young genre of death metal. Only new or superficial fans of the genre are oblivious to the achievements of this album that go well beyond mere historical relevance. Whether or not Trey Azagthoth planned each twist with the implied theoretical knowledge behind them is not important, although we can assume he may not have because such fervor as these pieces present is only possible coming from the deepest well of human emotion. Yet scrutinizing of them at several levels reveal logical explanations for the impact, drive and fluid development that they showcase.

As a short example we may take a look at “Chapel of Ghouls”. The song itself can be explained as using E major as its main or home key. As in classical music it ventures into the parallel minor and uses off-key passing tones for color. The most important of this is the fact that the guitars in the recording are tuned in E-flat standard tuning, which means that the repetitive muted strumming of the open low string consists of strumming the D (enharmonic equivalent of E flat) note, the seventh in the scale of E major. This gives the chugs a malevolent and dissonant feel. Another thing that should be mentioned is that the first two riff clusters in Chapel of Ghouls are quite unstable, each being in period form (antecedent and consequent phrases which mirror each other, but only the second one resolving). These riffs do not resolve convincingly (they do not land on either the tonic or the dominant when the consequent cadences), giving these both a satisfying feel and a need to continue and be completely resolved which appears to the listener as a will forward instead of a complete thought. This resolution is achieved on the third riff which finally leads to the tonic, but does not rest there, avoiding the typical full-stop feeling by switching into the relative minor (thereby using a flattened third and sixth which sound like off-key passing tones in the context of the major setting) and syncopating the rhythm while an atonal solo blazes above. And so the song is carried on with the mark of genius that cannot be now denied even by those who do not share a personal preference for the song. The songs in this album are not even remotely atonal or even overall dissonant; they make heavy use of the latter with striking effect while the atonality is reserved for solos which mark peaks and tornadoes of raw emotion that are never out of place here and which seem to be born out of the depths of this music.

Atomic Aggressor Sights of Suffering presents us with something that would be best described as a tribute to Altars of Madness-era Morbid Angel. But unlike Morbid Angel, Atomic Aggressor’s songs do not show Azagthoth’s structural cleverness and talent for directing and channeling emotion unavoidably towards strategic points in the song where powerful emotion surges. In fact, it is because this band is bent on sounding like early Morbid Angel that they are completely oblivious to the subtlety of the original composition and thus just manage to place riff after riff which sound like a more retro (sounding a little on the speed metal side at times) version of who they are trying to imitate. The vocals make this intention to imitate even more palpable not only in terms of the style of the growls but the way certain passages are emphasized or rounded off by grunts which in this far weaker music only manage to sound comical, especially if one is familiar with the original band. There is not much to say about this album because it is no more and no less than a bland, third-rate imitation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_Lq2WEqj1o

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Tags: atomic aggressor, death metal, morbid angel

Interview with Jerry Warden of the Heavy Metal Hall of Fame

by Brett Stevens on December 22, 2014

We last talked to Jerry Warden when he announced his intention to create a Heavy Metal Hall of Fame in Arlington, Texas. He took a few moments to grant us an interview and reveal the plan, along with details about his past band Warlock and Texas metal.

You founded Warlock with your brother and two members of what would eventually be Rigor Mortis. What did Warlock sound like? Why do you think it achieved such legendary status in the Texas metal scene?

Originally, we were clueless kids/young men with a love for metal. We played cover songs of the NWOBHM bands and other heavy fare of the time. We didn’t write originals until Rick began to blossom as a song writer.

Recently, members of Warlock have restored the band and plan to release material from the demos. What can you tell us about this?

We played our reunion show at Diamond Jim’s Saloon in Arlington on Sat., Aug. 2 of this year and play on NYE at The Boiler Room in Deep Ellum. We combined the 1986 recording with one song from the 1985 recording and Kerry Crafton mastered the final product.

Do you think Warlock will write and release new material?

We have completed two new songs, “Rubber Bullets” and “Devil Dance” and will continue to write and rehearse for the foreseeable future. “Walking Plague” was recorded by Gammacide but was written by Warlock and we never recorded the song. We intend to record “Walking Plague” and several new songs next year for a 2015 release.

After Warlock, members went on to Rigor Mortis and Gammacide, which were bands from the newer style of metal at the time. How do you think these bands influenced Texas metal? Was their style a natural outgrowth of where Warlock had been heading?

“Walking Plague” and “Gutter Rats” were Warlock songs. Gammacide was a direct outgrowth of Warlock whereas Casey and Harden met Mike and he took them down a different metal path.

Do you think it’s possible to be a metalhead for your whole life and never get bored? Should metal be designed for people beyond their teenage and early 20s years?

Fortunately, I’m a simpleton, a meat and potatoes metalhead. Some mention the word shallow and I’ve been accused by more than one person of failing to “grow up” but I still love metal music. I listen to the hard rock of my youth to the current sounds of Ancient Instinct by Primordius and a whole helluva lot in the middle. I love the lifestyle, too. I get excited for the first cold night of each Fall to wear my leather jacket. Metal music has grown from a community to a family with many positive results. You see a growing number of benefit shows each year for different brothers and sisters but metal continues to provide an edge for the old and clueless as well as the young and clueless.

Your newest project is a “Heavy Metal Hall of Fame.” What gave you the idea for this? Why now?

The Heavy Metal Hall of Fame (MHOF) is overdue at this point. The idea originated from the lack of respect shown to metal music by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (RHOF) but, as our community or family evolves, we need a place of our own regardless of any outside factors including the RHOF.

How do you intend to get funding for the “Heavy Metal Hall of Fame”? Will it be a physical museum that charges admission? What are you going to put in the gift shop?

Our major form of funding will derive from grants. We will have a brick and mortar version of the Hall in Arlington, Texas. We should have the grant money in place to lease a building next year. Within 5 to 10 years, we should have the money to construct our own building.

What bands do you think were essential components of the Texas metal scene? Did they all get discovered and accepted, like Pantera and others did?

You’ve gotta begin at the beginning with Warlock, Pantera, Rigor Mortis, Helstar, Watchtower and Militia but gotta mention dead horse, Gammacide, Rotting Corpse, Arcane, Morbid Scream, Absu, Blaspherian, HOD, Shawn Whitaker, SA Slayer, Solitude, Aska, Primordius, etc. The list of bands who were and are essential components of the Texas metal scene should never end.

With Warlock returning and the Heavy Metal Hall of Fame, do you see yourself re-living your youth, or simply doing things you wanted to do the first time? Was there some moment in the past where things did not work out, that you’ve now managed to get past?

The Heavy Metal HOF is a natural progression for me in life. Rick Perry left Warbeast and asked me to reform Warlock with him. Rick Perry defined heavy guitar in the D/FW Metalplex as well as around Texas and the rest of the world. I am honored and very fortunate to share the same work space as Rick and very lucky to share a band with Clay McCarty & Randy Cooke.

Who do you feel is the audience for the Heavy Metal Hall of Fame, or the typical person you imagine will visit, and what do you think it will be like for them? How would it have felt to a 16 year old version of yourself?

I believe metal music transcends the generations and expect to see metalheads of all ages at the Hall. I believe we still have the same excitement within us as the 16 year old metalhead. Unfortunately, in a lot of cases, as adults, we’ve learned to contain our excitement.

Heavy Metal Hall of Fame website

7 Comments

Tags: gammacide, heavy metal hall of fame, jerry warden, rigor mortis, warlock

Stargazer – A Merging to the Boundless

by David Rosenberg on December 20, 2014

One of the great divides in metal music separates those who approach album making as holistic artworks in the tradition of European classical music, and those who view an album as a collection of songs in the tradition of old and new popular musics. If one takes the former route a certain artistic liberty is acquired that allows the artist to leave songs that occur in the middle of the album open to the possibility of continuation through incomplete conclusions.

Great Death Metal albums with work-oriented organizations like At the Gates The Red in the Sky is Ours and Morbid Angel Blessed are the Sick strategically position songs early in the album to serve as introductions to the album as a whole. An excellent and illustrative example outside metal is Ludwig van Beethoven‘s String Quartet Opus 132. Conceptual works also require a strong topical orientation, often including different styles or even wholly different genres which can be united under a topic that is not only general (music has no direct mappings to our mundane world) but also specific (music can evoke precise moods and auras that some might say lie in the world of ideal forms) and clear (so that it is apparent to the listener). Undefeated masterworks in this area are Johann Sebastian Bach‘s Mass in B Minor and Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis. This can be seen in the barely satisfactory conceptual realization of the otherwise great and inspiring The Voice of Steel by Nokturnal Mortum, more effectively (and miraculously, given the wildly different genres associated) solidified in Peste Noire’s L’Ordure Ã l’Etat Pur and more recently in the young Colombian effort of a more poetic nature and epic proportions Nadia by Cóndor.

If a band chooses the more simple song-collection method, it must again abide certain rules in order to maintain any semblance of reason because proper music, inspired, must go through the filters of reason to attain their greatest expression. These are born out of the whole of the mind, not just uncontrolled emotion, but rather harnessed emotion. Songs must be self-sufficient. Each song must be brought to satisfactory conclusion by both harmonic and rhythmic means appropriate for the nature of the song and of proportionate dimensions in relation to the rest of the song so that it wraps up the musical content as the ending of an essay brings the topic to a rational resolve. The song must have a parallel relation to that of the holistic conceptual artwork. The simplest way of attaining this independence is by simple Rondo form, or popular verse-chorus song as Iron Maiden does in unforgettable albums such as Powerslave or Slayer in South of Heaven. Epic Power Metal sometimes chooses to borrow a little of the concept-album emphasis of the former approach and effectively come to one type of middle-road arrangement; a good example of this is Rhapsody’s Power of the Dragonflame.

Despite all their technical competence, like many other modern metal bands StarGazer takes neither of these paths and instead attempts to aggregate random elements without linear order. Stylistically within the metal universe, A Merging to the Boundless draws from the old school technical death metal such as Atheist (especially in the way the bass is handled within the jazz-metal framework, although they let it get out of hand into more explicitly jazz-like outbursts) and pre-Covenant Morbid Angel (a stark reference to Morbid Angel’s Brainstorm can be found in the fourth track of this album, Merging to the Boundless). Under the guise of Avant Garde, which is essentially a claimed right to disavow any of the conventions of the genres from which they derive their music, StarGazer use these genres as a container for unrelated, distracted riffing.

What this and other modern bands fail to realize is that certain conventions are in place as essential part of the genre and are inextricably related to the aesthetics that superficially define it, and when you forcefully rip the latter from the former, you end up with a non-functional husk that can only serve as wallpaper. StarGazer still shows much more local-level coherence and sense than most in its neighborhood and certain structuralist conventions of old school death metal are followed, such as the use of a motif to unite a song, although this occurs only in the first two tracks with looser instantiations in other tracks. The band can be credited with generally being able to fuse influences into the the particular Avant-Garde sound they want to reflect, even if to a connoisseur of the genre the influences are a little too obvious, with the jazz and post rock limbs sticking clearly out amidst the clear and separate death metal ones like a Frankenstein monster whose stitches are clearly visible.

The other major genre that surfaces in this album is a form of lite jazz that results from bringing jazz into post-rock/metal. This is unified under the pretense of making progressive music. This progressive element is sometimes pulled out with a hint of the old (late sixties and early seventies, peaking in bands from England) real prog-rock art of smooth, logical transitions and clear progression (as in track five, “The Great Equalizer”) at least in some stretches of the songs. Unlike the old prog-rock art and the classical music it emulates, StarGazer does not make a clear enough division of main and subsidiary material and thus it sometimes feel like it is lost and wandering in its own compositions. “The Great Equalizer” stacks random ideas and unnecessary out-of-hand variations within the post-rock-sludge territory in lieu of composition, joining a long line of poorly realized music that purports to be progressive. A Merging to the Boundless crosses the line into pure jazz with metal overtones in sections of tracks (“Old Tea” features soloing jazz bass), and in this same thought goes beyond that and into post-rock ambiance which consists of strumming or picking chords once and again. In this same spirit the opening of “An Earth Rides its Endless Carous” is very reminiscent of Animals as Leaders in its plain and unrefined yet very affected obvious use of scales and arpeggios in a way that barely describes theme and melody but rather just runs up and down like a kid playing on a flight of stairs. In the last three songs, the more prog-attempted side of the album are rather inconclusive and feel overextended arising from what I can only judge is sloppy high-level design. After the fifth track, a return to simple, late Morbid Angel-style Death Metal with a pseudo prog twist brought on by interpolating Sinister-style riffs feels like going back to something that was already said in the album. If “Ride the Everglade of Reogniroro” were arranged before “The Great Equilizer,” it would probably only sound slightly redundant with what came before. I have this same impression of the last (poor-prog) track, “Incense and Aeolian Chaos,” that makes use Animals as Leaders plainspoken use of scale that morphs into old-styled prog/tech death metal that is wordy (faster notes) yet not more dense in content.

In the end analysis, A Merging to the Boundless wanders everywhere and thus goes nowhere. Songs suffer from clever low-level (local) arrangement and poor high-level (long distance relations and overall progression) design, which results in their structure being entirely cyclic or not having a clear direction in the long run and being inconclusive. Cyclic songs have rather forced endings while the more prog-oriented ones just dissipate into nothingness. This last thing feels as if someone takes you to a walk in the forest, strays from the past and just disappears, leaving you in the middle of the forest with no purpose or direction.

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Tags: jazz metal, stargazer

Pact – The Infernal Hierarchies, Penetrating the Threshold of Night

by Brett Stevens on December 19, 2014

When black metal first hit the big time, my first thought was that the music industry was going to do to death metal and black metal what it did to hardcore music. When I spoke this out loud, people laughed it off, thinking that nothing that close to their hearts could change. Pact proves me right to such a degree that I doubt these people will even talk to me today.

Simply put, this album reduces black/death metal to formula in the late hardcore punk style, after the music industry came in and sanitized its opinions and enforced institutional-style songwriting. It got “professional.” And here we have a band which writes like a cross between later Gorgoroth, later Mayhem and early Impaled Nazarene. Pact carefully edits its material so that no extra riffs clog this album and each riff is roughly the same quality, which is fairly high but not exceptional. The problem is that all songs are template-cut just like the pop stuff you hear on the radio. Once you have heard five minutes of The Infernal Hierarchies, Penetrating the Threshold of Night, you have effectively heard the whole thing.

Pact like modern metal style vocals but write songs like a more literate hardcore band, using verse-chorus pairs to lead into a bridge that returns to the dominant theme. They vary up the riffing somewhat by using longer riffs and contrapositing them with variations on themes, but essentially this album pounds out the same circular formula per song. Tempi do not vary greatly nor do the changes between them differ, which results in the feeling of being trapped in a procedure like a doctor’s office or traffic court. While there are a few moments of insight on this album, as a whole it serves as a standardization of black metal to the point where it is interchangeable and thus is easily forgotten even while you are listening to it.

2 Comments

Tags: black 'n roll, pact

Neopera – Destined Ways

by Cory Van der Pol on December 10, 2014

I’ll let you in on a dark secret from music reviewers: sometimes we write about stuff that is fun to write about even if it will quickly slip under the foamy surf of history. Neopera is one of these bands which is proficient in a terrible cheesy style but whose presence evokes so many observations on metal and society that it cannot be passed up. It is not an easy bash like the phenomenally boring Abysmal Lord, nor a making fun of chronic idiots like a Pantera or Meshuggah review would be, but an insight into human thinking about the uses for music and what it says about us.
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Tags: neoclassical, neopera, power metal

Christmas shopping for metalheads

by Brett Stevens on December 9, 2014

Every now and then we have discussion threads here for the community to express their thoughts. As we approach the end of 2014, many of us are busy with last-minute shopping for our friends, many of who are metalheads.

What are the essential albums of 2014? What about other recent (last five years) albums that have stuck with you and make you want to listen repeatedly? Or even metal memorabilia, paraphrenalia and other useful gifts for metalheads.

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Tags: 2014, discussion

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