One of the paradoxes of heavy metal emerges from the fact that small European nations like Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Texas produce disproportionate amounts of quality heavy metal. It offends our egalitarian sensibility which says that all people are the same, and local scenes are luck only.
64 CommentsTags: avicii, folk melody, folk music, melodic metal, Sweden, tradition
Yesterday, we gave you the 10 most popular death metal bands of all time. Now one by one they will face public execution as we absolutely massacre their most recent release. No mercy will be shown- orders are to kill everything that moves.
Did you fucking soy metal nu males really think they would get off easy? This is Death Metal Underground- the most savage music site on the internet! Death to soy metal, death to sellouts, burn and die all falses! Mayhem- war- sadism- brutalization! No death metal band should have 1 million Facebook likes! No death metal band should be on Facebook at all! Pussies! Behead the corpses, throw them into the streets- the Templar way!
16 CommentsTags: Arch Enemy, behemoth, cannibal corpse, cradle of filth, facebook, fake death metal, homosexuality, in flames, mainstream metal, opeth, pop culture, popular music, sadistic metal reviews, sepultura, smr, suicide silence, the black dahlia murder, UnderOath
Who is the most popular death metal band?
It’s one of those esoteric questions that wanders in and out of the mind without a quick Google search to offer a definite solution. But today it dawned on me that if I don’t try to find an answer, it’s unlikely any one else will do a decent job at doing so. And given the fact that deathmetal.org is the number one site that comes up when you Google “death metal news,” I believe we have a journalistic duty to present the world with this information.
Since where to draw the line on what’s “true” death metal or not is a matter of opinion moreso than concrete fact, I determined that anything labeled “death metal” would be fair game whether it truly was a pure death metal band or not. Therefore I’d consider melodic death metal, black metal, and even deathcore in an effort to find who had conquered the greater sphere of death metal.
Unfortunately, the Nielsen record sale tracking data is not public and often does not identify how well an album has sold for many years after its release. Thus, I determined that the most accurate metric for mining this data would be to measure by Facebook likes. Yes, I know it’s not an exact science- many fans aren’t on Facebook, and many people click a band’s like button without really listening to them. But still, it was as good as I would ever get to finding who the most popular band in the greater bounds of “death metal” truly was.
I expected to see the favorites of the 90’s metal press and MTVX dominate- Cannibal Corpse, Morbid Angel, Decide, Death, and probably In Flames take the number 1 spot. Imagine my shock, that only one of these bands even cracked the top 5! I had always heard about Morbid Angel and Deicide had the highest album sales, but it appears neither band has been able to conquer the internet age.
So again, this list was populated within very forgiving boundaries (bands loosely considered death metal, whether or not I believed them to be), and the best metric I could come up with. Also, DO NOT FUCKING EVEN THINK OF CONFUSING THIS AS BEING A LIST OF THE BEST DEATH METAL- IT IS QUITE THE OPPOSITE!!! And finally, if there are any bands you think I missed please let me know in the comments below and I will gladly do a live update and give you credit- maybe.
Without further ado, here is – for the first time in history – a list of the most popular bands that people considered to be death metal, and an explanation to why I would endure the immense visceral hatred for even considering them:
44 CommentsTags: At the Gates, behemoth, biggest death metal, biggest death metal bands, cannibal corpse, carcass, death metal, Deicide, Facebook likes, in flames, mainstream death metal, metal, morbid angel, most popular death metal, most popular death metal bands, opeth, suffocation, The Black Dahila Murder, who are the most popular death metal bands
When I was a child, I lived near a park that was awesome because two-thirds of it was just natural woods, and the rest was a lake and a small lawn area. You went there to fish or walk in the woods, and you had a good time because you were not in a human space, but a natural one.
22 CommentsTags: assimilation, metal, neutering, sjws, the guardian
In post black metal, we saw riffs being declared null and void in favor of atmosphere. Gone were the melodic harmonies of Iron Maiden and Dissection, the savage atonal decimation of Morbid Angel and Blasphemy, and the memorable rhythm and lead guitarwork of Slayer and Death. All this came in favor of completely forgettable riffs and songs in favor of an overall spacey “transcendental” experience. Aesthetically, post metal was the reflection of progressive societal values of the 2010s- the emassculation of men (all musicians were Nu Males), artwork made by douche bag art degree scumbags that live in ghettos, and tame, timid, “spiritual but not religious” lyrics that had not a shred of aggression or danger.
It didn’t have to be like this. There could have been ways for bands to experiment with post rock/shoegaze elements and still maintain the foundation of a metal presentation, maintain metal aesthetics, and have attitude or edge. But not a single band- NOT A SINGLE ONE- was capable of doing so, proving that the accusations of these bands/musicians not being metal were to be fully valid and accurate.
This is the absolute end of post black metal before it circles the drain of a shit-stained toilet and is flushed to the bowels of irrelevancy. A finally eulogy to a genre that never should have happened. The musicians will bleed out their parents money and then become homeless, get aids from a bad batch of heroin, and die a miserable death in an alleyway gutter where they should have been left to rot at birth.
20 CommentsTags: Agalloch, Alcest, Blink-182, Caina, deafheaven, failed careers, failure, hipsters, Krallice, krieg, metal-archives, nu males, pop punk, post-black metal, sadistic metal reviews, screamo, smr, soy metal, soyboys, terrible music
Subversive transsexual metal band Peosphoros recently baited a trap with its provocative Milo Yiannopoulos style mixture of unconventional sexuality, grinding noise, and ideological taboo.
6 CommentsTags: absurd, child porn, christian fisting, g.g. allin, impaled nazarene, milo yiannopoulos, Nazism, Peosphoros, Satan, transsexualism
[The epic continues! Read part I of Johan’s journey here and listen for yourself via this playlist]
While working with what was intended to be the second part of a tripartite article series covering the history and general properties of the power metal subgenre, it soon became clear that a sufficiently thorough treatment of the subject would require more space and time than what was originally intended. This insight subsequently led to the conclusion that individual parts needed to be subdivided and portioned out in order to not grow out of proportion. The initial plan to present the material into three consecutive parts has thus been revised.
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Tags: Adramelch, death metal compilation, Europeon power metal, Final Prophecy, helloween, history of metal, Introduction to Power Metal, judas priest, Mephisto, metal academia, power metal, Running Wild, Scanner, Thunder Way
Once upon a time, musicians needed to have a fat budget for a decent studio recording (and therefore, a record label to front the bill on the onset). But even with one, many extreme metal recordings in the 80’s, 90’s and 2000’s still sounded like complete ass. Even insanely popular death metal bands like Cryptopsy, who have sold over half a million records, have had albums with production so shitty that I can’t hear most of the riffs. Aside from a few innovators, most audio engineers (back when it was possible to make a career out of it), simply did not know how to record and produce metal.
However the industry has changed mightily over the last 15 years or so, and in today’s music world the phrase “everybody’s an engineer” is deeply rooted in truth. Whereas high end recording software was once closely guarded and outrageously priced, the freedom of file sharing as put many high end tools in the hands of the public at no cost and without the need for professional training to use. No longer do you have to shell out $10,000 for an album that sounds like it was recorded in the prior decade, nor do you need take out a ludicrous college loan for audio engineering school. Instead, all you need to do is make a few quick downloads to successfully arm yourself for a quality recording (assuming, of course, you have done your homework in practicing your instruments and listening).
This change in landscape greatly benefits the type of music personalities we saw in Darkthrone, Burzum, and Graveland- top-tier musicians more concerned with their art and ideology than pandering to a room of idiots via live performances (yes, I know Graveland and Darkthrone both played live: it was only at microfractions of their careers). And given that lefties are regulating and policing which bands are allowed to play live shows, there’s all the more reason for defiant metal musicians and bands to forgo live performances and focus their energies on quality studio recordings. With narcissism, attention seeking, and fan expectations removed, the opportunity for quality recordings to flourish is undoubtedly more abundant.
It is an honor and privilege to present to you, the readers of this infamous site, the favorite battle-tested software and tools from a road-tested veteran who began a career in metal when freeware first became widespread some 15 years ago:
25 CommentsTags: Audio Engineering, burzum, darkthrone, DAW, death metal, Digital Audio Workstation, EZDrummer, freeware, graveland, Guitar Rig, Izotope, mastering, metal, metal recording software, metal software, Midi, Mike Kyre, MikeMetal, one man bands, Pirate Bay, pirating, Reason, recording, remasters, software, Tabs
Few things in life are more masculine than Castlevania. In fact, the New York Times bestselling book The Alphabet of Manliness includes on its short list of “definitive winners in history” the likes of Castlevania 1-4 and Symphony of the Night. Castlevania is also the most metal non-metal piece of Western creativity outside of Lord of the Rings. I mean shit, you’re out crusading and fucking up demons and monsters on behalf of the church, shoving crucifixes up asses and drowning degeneracy in holy water. It’s exactly the kind of shit that true metalhead Hessians and Templars should be doing to SJW the soy metal mutants infesting the underground in incredibly large numbers (who can be open-endedly interpreted to be the grotesque villains of Castlevania lore). DEUS VULT- butcher and savage them all! Even those who think video games are gay (most of them are) can appreciate how based Castlevania is.
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Tags: 8-bit black metal, Deus Vult, heterosexuality, instrumental metal, masculinity, metal, power metal, Templar, the crusades, video games
Metal is facing a decisive moment in time. As a genre and an entire sub culture, it’s threatened with a massive flux of outsider interest into what was once an isolated community forged in passion. Metal was a cause for tight bonds among like minded disillusioned youth that wanted nothing to do with the status quo, a lawless free for all where no ideology or point of view was too extreme. Thus grew a voice to rally against the farce of mainstream politics, social acceptability, resolute contentment with mundane lifestyles and herd mentality. Though acts like Black Sabbath and Iron Maiden were to find great success within the public large, they laid the groundwork for that rebel yell that gave the disgruntled youth the foundations for connecting with others so disconnected. And with such a ground roots movement that metal was, true artists and musicians who may have never have been given an opportunity to rise otherwise were now rising and exponentially so. Quickly NWOBHM became speed metal became death metal became black metal. Then, as with all great explosive cultural movements, metal began losing its traction and sight of its original goals of fighting against the mainstream culture of quantity over quality. But it is now that we see its greatest threat in its acceptance by the masses. Now it is being taken for a boutique exotic exploration into what most really don’t want to explore: cold unforgiving reality.
9 CommentsTags: death metal, Deus Vult, extreme metal, funderground, lifestyle, metal, metal culture, polarization
