Death Strike – Fuckin’ Death (Re-Issue)

Like a glass-bottomed boat sailing over the submerged remains of an ancient city, this re-issue lets us voyeurs peer into the past of death metal. Master/Deathstrike/Abomination represented one wing of the early hybrids, sounding more like the aggressive uptempo hardcore of the early 1980s as crossed with the attitude that had been consisten in metal since its earliest days.

To wit: a straightforward absence of quirky changes, an emphasis on cadence instead of alternating syncopation, a historical view of the world that subsumed politics to a whole view of the human experience, and songs made by fitting riffs together in an internal dialogue that not only kept the song coherent but propelled it forward. These distinguish Death Strike as well, which packs them into punch songs of high-intensity fast tremolo punk riffs.

Our original review of this Death Strike masterpiece still stands. Like its associated band Master, Death Strike represents an early form of death metal that was nearly contemporaneous with Slayer-influenced bands like Sepultura and Possessed, as well as European-style proto-death/proto-black bands like Bathory, Hellhammer and Slayer. All of these re-interpreted punk hardcore in metal a different way than thrash (DRI) had done, and as a result, achieved a unique sound that was later highly influential to scenes as diverse as Sweden and New York.

The re-issue is beautiful. Quality pressing, good photos, elegant disc. The inclusion of demo tracks is always dubious, since you get more primitive versions of what you just heard, providing only academic interest; it’s better to release a historical issue like Immolation did. However, in this case, the rehearsal of “Pay to Die” is truly worth hearing to see how far this band came in the early 1980s.

Seeing this classic ride again in general availability is a sight for sore eyes for any true old school metal fan. If you want to know the origins of this music, pick up this CD and explore the first releases of the other bands mentioned above. While the know-nothing music press trumpets Venom, it’s good to see that contemporary acts were exploring other avenues for metal with the power of hardcore punk, and from this fertile ferment, death metal was born.

• Death Strike – Fuckin’ Death ($10, Dark Descent)

IXXI – Assorted Armament

The way modernity destroys you is entry through the back door (hehe). While you’re watching for the enemy at the gates, someone sidles up to you with a mild proposition and you OK it. In the process, you’ve admitted the basic ideas of your enemy and those then grow inside of you.

IXXI is one such fifth column. Like a cross between Rammstein, Die Apokalyptischen Reiter and Ministry with an emphasis on black metal stylings and more organic percussion, this band seems extreme but in fact is a domesticated version of the feral emotions that metal unleashes. This is tamed; it panders to you, repeats itself, has jazzy interludes and rides the offbeat like a rock band. This is entertainment, not subversion.

The result is that you can listen to this whole thing and tune in for the death metal and black metal riffs in it and not notice how it quickly detours to hardcore riffing and then some funky, hooky, cheesy and quirky rock-n-roll tricked out in powerchords. Nothing here is badly done, and it’s catchier than most, but it has nothing to offer.

I am a nihilist; I believe nothing is inherent, not even nothingness. It all arose as a result of the logical composition of the universe.

I am also fond of many of the people in this universe, and am aware that others hate me. I understand. Nothing I do is without purpose and I do not compromise my principles.

Part of that is the old saw: the best reviewer is a friendless hermit.

You want to help people you like; what if you don’t like their music? Or what if you like their music, and they don’t like you?

The answer is that such things are irrelevant.

Harkonin – Ghanima

This is the first album to get everything right but be all wrong. Harkonin just broke up, probably from the huge amount of hope invested in this CD. After all, they did all of the parts right — riffs, rhythms, production, songs that fit together at the right paces, on top of every development in metal, good vocals, excellent playing — but when they put those together, the result was less than the sum of its parts.

Like a rock record, this album comes across as disorganized, mainly because it attempts to hit us with contrasts between unrelated elements instead of seemingly unrelated elements that resolve to complementary pieces which cooperate like partners in a conversation to tell a story. It’s amazing that this is the case, given how much proficiency is shown. It as if confidence in their own tastes in metal held these guys back. That, the aforementioned “modern metal” style disorganization, and boring melodies that result from trying to keep it short and hookish and playing it too conservative.

Mixed elements of black metal, death metal, speed metal and even power metal comprise this CD. The problem is that they change within songs without any clear roadmap, so what results is the sensation of random pieces thrown together into carnival music, trying to shock us with how radically different each part is and as a result, creating a norm of differentness in which some kind of developing consistency would be the only shocker. The case is not song structures being constructed to fit a song, but archetypes modified to be distinctive from one another and their origins. As a result, form and content are confused. It is as if the band is trying to use form to substitute for content, but the result is not songs that are “about” a certain kind of impression, but a general song theory adapted to fit whatever topic is assigned.

It’s a heartbreaker to hear this one. It is fundamentally not interesting. It’s not boring, in that there are frequent changes. It’s not bad as in incompetent; in fact, it’s so super-competent that had it been interesting, this would have been an A-level album and a new classic. But it’s not about anything. It centers only on the idea of tweaking appearance to create a pattern, but that pattern gestures at nothing else, and descends even if in negative impression from an archetype, which leads to this album not distinguishing itself and so remaining a pile of high-quality parts that never gels into a whole.

Harkonin Facebook

Black Lake Fest VI
3 Locations – 3 Weekends – 3 Headliner
The 6th Edition of Black Lake Fest will grow up and go with a different approach.
3 different locations, 3 different kind of black metal, 3 different dates.
3 headliners: Necros Christos, Lifelover, Dornenrech.
All in October. All in Lumbardia / Italy
Part 1
1st October, Carlito’s Way – Retorbido (PV)
Necros Christos + Mortuary Drape + Abysmal Grief + Black Oath + guests
Part 2
15th October, Shelter Live – Lipomo (CO)
Lifelover + Hypothermia + guest
Part 3
31st October, Decimo Secolo – Brescia (BS)
Dornenreich + Agrypnie + (EchO) + Sedna + guest
Info & Presales

www.eyecarver.com
eyecarver@gmail.com

Looks like someone is making a history of Brokeback Island UK speed metal (sometimes miscalled “thrash”):

Welcome to the website of A History of a Time To Come – the story of UK thrash, a documentary telling the tale of british thrash metal through the ages, from the early 80s to the present day.

The film aims to fill in the blanks in the history of the genre, where those bands who were once so popular, have faded from memory.

Check out the film:

• A History of a Time to Come website
• A History of a Time to Come on Facebook

Could be interesting:

Gabby Riches, a master’s student in the faculty of physical education, is writing her thesis on mosh pits for a degree in recreation and leisure studies.

Riches, 25, has been a heavy metal fan since she was 15. During her undergraduate degree, she decided to combine her hobby and her studies and asked one of her professors if she could do a paper on metal music and immigrant integration.

Her professor liked it, so she did another paper on women’s experiences in heavy metal. She realized she was interested in music fans, so that led her to study mosh pits for her graduate degree. Riches also runs a student group called Heavy Metal on Campus.

Moshing started in the early 1980s in the American hard core punk scene. A band called Bad Brains used to yell at their audience to “mash it up.”

“But the singer had a thick Jamaican accent, so people heard ‘mash’ as ‘mosh,’” said Riches. – Edmonton Journal

A use for academics and English-speaking Canada in the same post. Awesome.

Is metal noise?

I guess you could argue(and maybe win) that the music I listen to is noise..but at least it isn’t filth disguised as good- wholesome- music- for- the- whole- family. It tells you it is bad (but you just have to love the guitar work and the little complexities of the music). – /fag

At least it’s not the illusion of happy oblivion at the expense of truth. Indeed.

Ever notice the parallels?

Metal, like extreme politics, can too often focus on what it hates and not enough on what it loves/desires/creates.

Metal is war… this compounds the problem… war needs warm bodies and enemies.

But metal is not whining. It is not victimhood. It is the bold pulse of the blood of a fighter.

Not the plaintive lament of someone using rights, social approval, etc. for justification.

Miskatonic University

Etexts for the occultist or metalhead looking for lyrics. FWIW FTW FYI etc

Metal is caught between the leaders and the hamsters.

Every time the leaders come up with something good, the hamsters clone it to death and make it meaningless.

Black Sabbath, 1970… followed by a string of real AOR-styled bullshit heavy metal.

NWOBHM, 1976… followed by a string of cheesy imitators peaking in hair metal.

Metallica, 1983… followed by a string of clones.

Death metal, 1989… followed by a horde of horrible clones.

Black metal, 1992… and we all know what happened.

Everything since has been clone. Why? Metal’s image is so powerful, sometimes we get hung up on it. Trying to re-live the past.

Behemoth frontman Nergal has been found innocent of charges relating to tearing a Bible on stage in his native Poland.

The nation has strict laws against offending religious feelings and Nergal, real name Adam Darski, was charged following a concert in Gdynia in 2007 after he called the Catholic Church “the most murderous cult on the planet” then referred to the Bible as “a book of lies” before tearing pages out of a copy. – Rock News Desk

When Slayer busted out Satanic lyrics in the 1980s, they were taking the cue from Angel Witch, Judas Priest, and Black Sabbath and making mythologies of the world’s end. They were revealing our inner bankruptcy and what we should be paying attention to, but instead of ranting out details like angry leftist punk bands (all leftists are delusional: anarchists, communists, democrats, socialists, libertarians, communitarians, and even apolitical humanists; humans are NOT more important than nature or the order of the cosmos) they looked at the big picture.

Now it has been cloned to death. It went from mythology to orthodoxy during the last days of black metal, and now it’s as Politically Correct as saying “but democracy will cure them” whenever you read about a revolution. It’s overdone. If you want to fight Christianity, this is not the way. If you want to find a better life, this isn’t helping. All you’re doing is becoming caricatures of yourselves.

What made metal great wasn’t its destruction of idols, but the thinking outside of the box, looking for adventure beyond the safety zone of human-centric thinking — whatever form that took, whether populist Christianity, fear of Satanists, democracy, socialism, being nice to people, comforting aesthetics, whatever.

If you want your genre back, stop aping the past. Put what it had — a mythology of greatness, heroism, adventure and amorality — to good use. Embrace nihilism. The human drama doesn’t matter. The ongoing drama of life moving from primitive origins to future possibilities, even if those contain orders “of the past,” is. Allahu ackbar!