Our minds quickly forget the vapidity of the 1990s amongst the greatest that some bands managed to achieve. In particular, its hangover from the 1980s was so unmemorable that the mind gratefully forgets it. That hangover was the attempt by industry and musicians to cash in on the notoriety of metal and the accessibility of rock by hybridizing the two.
In particular, this appealed to record execs. Why? They were all Baby Boomers. Their world defined itself through a search for the next Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin or Pink Floyd. As a result they found death metal to be totally alien, black metal to be unlistenable, and even most punk to be incomprehensible. Why don’t they just throw in a flute solo?
Straight in the middle of this process Massacra release Sick in 1994. Everything about it screams middle-90s when computer technology hit the point where you really could do just about anything from a desktop, but not quite do it well. Thus everything hit the page in bold colors, funky font tricks, and so on. Looking back, it resembles the 1980s teased hair and bright colored clothing: technological convenience. Similarly, the style of speed metal erupting with Pantera represented technological convenience.
Recording studios finally grokked how to record heavy guitar sounds so that the precision of the muted palm technique could be heard, which encouraged bands to divide aggressive rhythms with internal syncopation and expanding recursion, so that one rhythm broke down into several internal rhythms all of which outlined a “bounce” or offbeat rhythm based on slightly delayed expectation. This mixed funk (arguably the roots of rap), rock and metal into an abomination uniquely suited for dumb obedient tools of the system who wanted to blow off some steam before another shift and another six-pack of watery beer.
Sick represents a higher intelligence approach to this tradition and cites freely from the speed metal world, including the album that almost every intelligent metalhead had in the early 1990s, Prong’s Beg to Differ (which along with Exhorder and Vio-Lence influenced the Pantera sound). The band make conscious attempts to be avant-garde, most of which consist piledriver series of riffs ending in non-distorted semi-classical passages. If you wondered, however, where Meshuggah got their sound starting at this time, Sick seems to be the place. The same polyrhythms, the same use of groove between aggressive passages. Sick came out in May, and None (the first EP where Meshuggah demonstrated its modern technique) in November. Even the production has similar coloring, but this tells you all you need to know the sound here: based on expectation, like dogs chasing laser pointers, lots of bounce, basically rock structures subdivided by a proliferation of related riffs using the same concepts.
Most modern metalheads will experience embarrassment upon hearing this record. Like most fads, the bounce-metal fad experienced only very narrow relevance within a certain time period, and now sounds dated and awkward. Worse still is that a band like Massacra, no matter what their record label thinks, possesses too much talent to successfully chase a trend. What you get instead is something split between the music that they are good at making, and the music that industry wishes they would make (rewarmed Hendrix and Zeppelin, themselves rewarmed blues, itself rewarmed country music, that in turn rewarmed European folk music).
The tragedy is that much of the innovation that late 1990s bands relied upon in connecting together musical passages of this nature came from Sick or the prior release. American fans may forget how influential Massacra was (and is) in Europe, and how many American musicians heard it even when fans couldn’t find it in stores or on MTV (then an important method for mainstream fans of finding metal). Among the riffs that our minds skip over because we have heard the archetype so many times, great riffs populate this album at a 1:3 ratio to the rest. Some of the soloing contains concepts we have not yet heard metal elaborate on, and clearly someone thought hard about how to structure these songs. Musicians might keep Sick around as part of their book of tricks.
As far as a listening experience goes, Sick falls short in the range somewhere between “fru-fru” and “embarrassing.” Most metalheads would not want to be caught dead listening to this album, which sounds like the underground finally adopting how the mainstream saw metal (i.e. angry groovy drunken rock ‘n roll). The irony of course is brutal. By the time 1994 rolled around, Shark Records had fixed its US distribution problems and was able to get a record into just about every store. This meant that American metalheads who had heard tape-traders raving about Massacra for years finally got a chance to buy some and found this turd of an album belching in their faces. This, and the thin production on the first two Massacra albums which bothered American metalheads more than Europeans who liked the mids-centric feel of Bathory’s Blood, Fire, Death, relegated Massacra to a ring outside the inner circle of famous underground metal bands. Hopefully that will change someday, but not through Sick it would seem.
What is best? To crush your enemies, to see them driven before you and to hear the lamentation of the women. – Conan
For many years, this site and its writers have demonstrated a preference for the music and philosophy of Averse Sefira. Among other bands who rise above the heap, Averse Sefira may not be as well known or easily grasped, but their music possesses an enduring power of being both relevant and metaphorical enough to stimulate our sense of fantasy and longing for meaning in the emptiness of existence. We were fortunate to get a few minutes with Wrath of Averse Sefira back in 2011 before the band imploded and the previous version of this site transitioned to the present.
We very much agree with Conan’s apt description of what is best in life. Do you? What indeed is best in life?
Martial spirit is indeed something that should be preserved. Robert E. Howard knew this. Many people don’t realize he was and old-school pig-iron body builder who participated in bare-knuckle “tough man” competitions in the years leading to his death. Freedom is best in life, however you achieve it. Money and Molotovs are both acceptable methods.
Averse Sefira has been eerily quiet for some time. What prompted this cease-fire? When can we expect a new offensive from Averse Sefira?
The simplest reason is because album five refuses to emerge and in the meantime we may have inadvertently blown out the Eastern candle (to paraphrase another grand cabal from our region) when we stumbled on the path circa 2009. There are components of the next album ready to go, but the spirit must be with us.
Many fans are anticipating the re-release of “Blasphomet Sin Abset” at some point, is this a realistic expectation? Why or why not?
Are they really? Nobody has spoken to me about it in a long time. Given all the re-releases out there, it seems like it might be overdue. I think it’s just a question of pursuing it. Some label would make it possible, I’m sure.
Take us briefly through your life’s musical journey. Were either of you classically trained as a child? Musically, what were some of your early favorites? What music did you enjoy early on, but later grew out of?
I took piano lessons and later guitar. I liked Alice Cooper and bombastic classical music, circa 3 years of age. From there, whatever was on the radio was ok, though I didn’t really like anything that wasn’t in minor key. By age twelve I liked Iron Maiden, Metallica, Slayer, and I was actually a big Anthrax fan, chiefly because of their guitar tone (wasn’t that why anyone liked them? SOD proved to be the superior version). I don’t like Anthrax anymore, or Metallica past the first four.
What music/artists currently peak your interest? What musicians’ works (metal or not) do you consider to be timeless? Out of these, which ones have been the most influential on your work in Averse Sefira, if any?
Immolation still satisfies, and their work has always been very important to AVRS. Voivod’s classic era is immortal, as are the first three Immortal albums. Slayer is forever great, though there is no Slayer imprint upon our work.
How much of your work is the result of conscious deliberation and how much is spontaneous inspiration? How, if at all, has your approach changed over the years?
I think the first two releases were very much “on rails” in that we planned the songs and then effectively refused to deviate on the way to their final form. The next two captured our spirit better in that they were planned but then left to many changes and ideas as we assembled them. There are whole songs from Tetragrammatical Astygmata and Advent Parallax that were effectively born in the studio, so there’s the yin and yang of it in a nutshell.
What sets metal apart structurally and melodically from other forms of music?
Metal at its best is like classical, where it rises within a theme and culminates in movements. Most music is designed for rapid consumption so it is repetitive and point-to-point. Metal can’t always be explained, sometimes you just have to be there.
Do you see any antecedents for or parallels with black metal outside the immediate genre?
Yes, see above.
In your 2008 interview with “A Year at the Wheel,” you proclaimed emphatically that Christianity is the source of all the modern West’s problems. Would you care to elaborate?
I would say it’s the more universal and categorical attitude, because people who don’t consider themselves Christians still let asinine Christian ideas dictate their lives. Why is suicide illegal? Why can’t a bachelor be President? Why must we be merciful to the less fortunate? Where else does any of this come from? And I wouldn’t extol Christian ravages from a Nietzschean perspective, but perhaps a masochistic one. Catholics know all about it.
Metal at its best is like classical, where it rises within a theme and culminates in movements.
Does the Divine exist? If so, how do you define it and how does it differ from the concept of God? Do you make a distinction between the two?
This probably won’t illuminate much, but I don’t believe in God (YHWH), and yet I am divinely protected. What does that tell you?
What is the difference between spirituality and religion?
Spirituality is about looking within to find strength and meaning. Organized religion, or at least the Abrahamic ones, look outside the self and request guidance from external and ultimately arbitrary sources. The only consciousness one can truly rely upon is his own. Without spirituality, there would be no great deeds, and very little in the way of art or grandeur. The problem is Christianity is that it de-emphasizes actually spirituality in the name of a lot of unreasonable rules and rote behavior.
Are there any legitimate paths of enlightenment open to man? What would it mean for a man to be enlightened?
To me, the simplest path is to not spend time wondering about the meaning of life but instead to get on with living it. When I want things to happen, I set my mind to what it would take and do it. As of now, I have achieved virtually everything I ever wanted to do with my music career (except opening for Slayer). Read books, talk through your ideas with the intelligent and like-minded, and devote your life to something, however insignificant. In the end, we all pave our own roads.
Has man’s pursuit of God helped or hindered his understanding of himself, the world, the cosmos, reality?
It depends on which god and the motivations to seek it. As a personal quest, there is arguable merit. As a rule of law, it has kept the world in the dark ages on so many levels.
Is there TRUTH? Can revelation be a genuine source of truth or knowledge? Must man rely solely on Reason and his rational faculties to discover truth?
Truth is always relative, and revelations can indeed be truths to the recipient. Truth is one part emotion, one part reason, assuming we’re not discussing something like physics. We make truths based on the evidence before us and how it makes us feel. When emotion trumps reason is when things go wrong.
What is the significance of ancient Greek maxim Gnothi Seauton (“Know Thyself”)? Why does its significance appear lost on modern man?
The West in particular is characterized by low self-esteem, mainly because we’ve allowed other forces to make us feel lesser. Most Americans are unbelievably insecure, which is why we can’t ever have realistic conversations about maintaining standards or upholding merit-based advancement. We’re too busy shirking, shifting blame, and being envious of everyone around us who is doing even slightly better to spend any time “knowing thyselves”.
Has modern science been a boon or a curse for modern man?
It has been a boon to man and a curse for every other living thing on this planet. We live too long, for one thing. We should level the playing field again and let the hardiest among us prevail. No more cancer treatments, no more heart surgeries. Sure, the life expectancy would drop to 45 again (and that might include me), but we’d end up with a lot more Thomas Jeffersons for our trouble.
What are your thoughts on evolution? In what way has evolution facilitated worldwide overpopulation by associating success and the entire meaning of life with breeding and survival?
This dovetails with the above response. Evolution has, in many instances, been halted by Judeo-Christian values and abuse of scientific apparatus. What do we need with babies who are born five months premature? They aren’t supposed to make it. That’s not evolution, that’s regression. We’ve halted as a species since the industrial revolution, and now comes the grievous cascade.
Your lyrics seem to be largely inspired by the symbolism found in various forms of esoteric spirituality such as Q’uaballah Mythology and the Occult. Is this a matter of practice for you, or is it merely a subject of interest? If you do practice, how does the experience impact your approach to song-writing, if at all?
I use a mixed system, with Hermeticism being a central pillar. It has steered much of our work and decisions that the band has made over the years. Much like John Dee and Edward Kelley, Sanguine and I needed each other to channel and apply these transmissions. He has withdrawn for the time being, and unfortunately it has also made me more estranged from these workings.
What are you currently reading, if anything? What books have peaked your interest the most lately?
I read lots of James Ellroy. He’s nuts, and his style of prose is sharp and caustic. I keep re-reading I Am Legend by Richard Matheson, Heart of Darkess by Joseph Conrad (of course) and Grendel by John Gardner. A psychologist might suggest my reading habits reveal a combative attitude towards the world, and he’d be right.
Art is what you create when nobody is looking. Entertainment is designed to please a perceived audience and sell a product in the process.
What differentiates art from entertainment? How would you characterize Averse Sefira and why? Is art necessarily good and entertainment necessarily bad, or vice versa?
Art is what you create when nobody is looking. Entertainment is designed to please a perceived audience and sell a product in the process. Averse Sefira is art, simply because we made it the way we wanted when nobody cared and continued to do so even when that changed. We could have made much stupider music and been far more popular for it, but that wasn’t our mission. Not all art is good, and not all entertainment is bad, but mistaking one for the other is detrimental.
What is the relationship between an individuals essential being and there decision to listen to and/or play a certain type of music?
I find that most people who are drawn to metal and remain so throughout their lives are those who are fascinated by the unknowable. They also tend to feel like most everyone around them are liars or idiots, and metal is (under ideal circumstances) an avenue that circumvents that way of being. Take the work of Dio, for example – tastes aside, nobody could say that his music wasn’t earnest and heroic. That to me typifies the spirit that allows metal to triumph. I have no idea what makes people listen to other genres, and I don’t care.
What characterizes a Hessian as opposed to a metalhead? Is there a natural hierarchy among the metal community and what defines each caste?
Hessians integrate metal into their lives permanently. They make choices about jobs, significant others, and their trajectories based on their passion for the music and its tenants. Metal culture is fan culture, which means it is superficial and transient. There’s nothing wrong with that, as music in particular needs a supplementary audience outside its core devotees to thrive. Also, all Hessians start out as metalheads, so it is incumbent on we veterans to cultivate and encourage a legitimate interest among them.
As for a hierarchy, it’s the standard seniority that comes with the length of participation. The only real difference between old guard and new guard people is time and persistence.
Is Hessian culture relevant? What does the future hold for Hessiandom and through what channels will the spirit of Hessiandom manifest itself in the future? How would you like to see it manifest itself?
Metal is a demonstrably global phenomenon, and I think it says a lot that you could put Hessians from America and Iran in the same room and their impression of metal and what it means to them would be very similar. I experience this all the time, and it is validating to be part of something that transcends fixed cultural boundaries. With all that in mind, I feel like we need to unite more as a proper cultural movement under one flag, so to speak. I’m not talking about a bunch of whining and demands for special treatment, but it would be nice to be protected under the same laws that everyone else enjoys and not have to cut our hair just to get a job.
Is extreme metal a symptom of or antidote to the decadence of modernity? An antidote to its poison?
Extreme metal in its purest and most meaningful form is perhaps a reflection of modernity’s shortcomings, but it also a reaction to it. It seems like many Hessians feel like they were born in the wrong era. We don’t like the pithy and puritanical methods of modern society, and in many ways Hessianism hearkens back to a warrior code. Let’s put it this way, if Hessians ran things, trial lawyers would probably no longer exist.
To what extent is Hessian art a surrogate for more intense experiences currently unavailable to man?
As I said, Hessianism is a bid to recapture a simpler and more decisive age. Our world today is shaped by shadow agendas with a veneer of hurt feelings. That’s lame and pathetic, and anyone with a sharp mind and a bright spirit is going regard it as a joke. Modern society is so fixed on egalitarianism that we are denied the opportunity to be who we are, and that goes for gender, race, or personal calling. Hessianism calls bullshit on all of that and says, “This is who we are, no apologies”.
What is the future of Hessian music? Do you foresee any major breakthroughs or developments in extreme metal music theory? What developments would you like to see?
The musical cycles will likely be internal, as I’m not convinced we’re going to innovate past the proven forms. That’s fine with me, as usually “experimenting” leads to abominations like nu-metal, industrial metal, rap metal, or metalcore variants. Traditional heavy metal, along with death, black, and thrash, are all we really need.
Among the Hessian community there seems to be a developing interest in the ideas and writings of authors such as Rene Guenon and Julius Evola. Do you find this surprising?
Martial thinking is part of what propels metal, so seeing writers like Evola cited is no surprise. I haven’t read Guenon, but I like Evola. His ideas are rousing, even out of the context of his era. The sad thing is that writing like his seems like fantasy fiction when compared to what I see when looking out the window. We have gotten so far from Traditionalist ideas that it would take a global war to have any prayer of resurrecting them. For help or hinder, it’s useful for anyone, particularly Hessians, to read unvarnished and unblinking indictments of how mankind continues to fail itself. The hindrance will come from the transient crowd who doesn’t like difficult ideas.
Modern society is so fixed on egalitarianism that we are denied the opportunity to be who we are, and that goes for gender, race, or personal calling.
What is the degree of your involvement in politics? Do you identify at all with the modern approach to the Left/Right dichotomy?
In terms of American politics, the Right is a bunch of uptight, self-righteous Christians, and the Left are exactly the same but pretend they aren’t. I have no need for either. Money is the only real political force in this nation. I don’t vote, and I have no political affiliation.
Most western societies seem oblivious to the fact that their liberal ideology and liberal immigration policies are contradictory. Why is this?
Maybe it is because Western governments are, at this point in history, run much like corporations. Corporations care about headcount first and foremost when it comes to the drones who run daily operations, and it seems like America is adopting this method. I hear theories that the state of our immigration policy is designed to cultivate more voters by leveraging their agendas and making a lot of grandiose promises. It seems hard to argue, because the people of this country certainly don’t benefit. Moreover, just about everything our leaders say on the subject don’t seem to match the reality of the situation at all. And hey, if all these people with divergent creeds are forced upon each other, we’ll be too busy struggling on a person-to-person level to ever stand up to the ones who keep making it possible. Then again, we still technically have the right to vote every last one of those idiots out of office, and nobody seems to be doing that either.
American ambient-metal band Empire Auriga’s second album Ascending the Solar Throne expands the style pioneered by Burzum through the “Decrepitude” I& II tracks from “anti-black metal” album Filosofem. Ascending the Solar Throne comprises songs that are cold, distant, and simplistic. These spacious compositions rely on the repetition of arpeggiated guitars providing a base for reverb-drenched and piercing treble guitars to shine through, along with an anguished yet faint vocal accompaniment. Although the band forgoes the use of percussion entirely, tempi are regular and recursive song segments are identifiable. Synths or heavy guitar effects lightly sprinkle the mix almost as decoration, enhancing the presentation of the album but not interfering with its texture.
Expressing the desolation of technological existence, Empire Auriga weaves a journey through an inner experience of an individual separated from the external world of perception through pain, before coming to rest in a more peaceful place. Gradually moving from aggressive and dissonant chords in the beginning towards a calmer and safer mild major key conclusion, Ascending the Solar Throne is unfortunately unable to complete the journey which is hinted at in the opening tracks. Instead of turning the nihilism present into existential achievement, the album instead retreats into the safe and vacuous womb which afflicts most post-modern music.
Rather than confronting the question of one’s existence directly, as Filosofem did so elegantly, the choice instead is made to ignore it. This disappointment aside, Ascending the Solar Throne is an interesting album which attempts something rare in contemporary music: an artistic voyage. For that reason, it deserves consideration and acknowledgment where it succeeds, but ultimately the listener will be left slightly hollow and bereft.
Ascending the Solar Throne will be released on August 19th via Moribund Records.
Anyone who lived as a metal fan in the 1970s and 1980s remembers The Line: some bands were rock enough to make it into the newspaper, others were “too metal.” Major newspapers never covered Slayer, rarely covered Metallica, and generally drew The Line at anything heavier than Guns ‘n Roses. Thus even major bands like AC/DC got cut out of the mix.
No more. As the image above illustrates, the front page of goody-two-shoes news network CNN shows us the latest about the AC/DC 40th Anniversary Tour. Even the biggest megaphone for mainstream news which spends most of its time nagging us about our bad habits or flashing sensationalistic messages of world decay finally acknowledges heavy metal. In the 1980s, this would have been unthinkable. And yet, now we’re here.
What’s behind metal’s legitimization? It’s not so underground anymore, being one of the bigger non-rock/pop genres. It’s also not so extreme, since rap opened up the lyrical gates to violence, lust and obscenity and nu-metal got radio accustomed to heavy crunch (and lyrics about parental neglect). But most importantly, metal is now an industry. With enough consistent fans and labels behind it, and those labels having found a way to “metalize” or “metal-flavor” just about anything (indie, rock, jazz, blues, industrial), metal now provides one of the pillars of the entertainment industry.
Even more, heavy metal is now a recognized part of our culture. Rap music represents a certain kind of rebellion or a certain kind ofirony. Heavy metal raises the flag for a certain kind of rebellion that is both cluelessly adolescent and “old soul” world-weary and informed. It’s a feeling we all have, and its appeal seems to be increasing.
As part of an ongoing revolution, Puerto Rico launches a quality metal band every few months. In this case, Dementium — featuring Organic Infest bassist/composer Jose “Chewy” Correa on bass — create a fertile mix of styles from the late 1980s, mixing majority speed metal material with death metal influences. However, the core of this album breathes the more intense varieties of speed metal like came from Exodus, Kreator and Destruction.
Using the tried-and-true German formula of fast verse riffs with periodic melodic insertions balanced against slower choruses full of rhythmic hook, Dementium stack riffs against one another in songs that generally conform to a verse/chorus structure. However, these solid constructions detour into related riff clusters like a person lapsing into daydream, and these variations prove to be varied and to enhance the mood. This kicks the band out of the strident chanting repetition that killed many of these bands.
Although the style comes from the past, a number of updates shine through. For example, percussion fits more into the later Metallica pattern of sparse but energy-inducing rolling beats. Riffs take advice from later death metal and Correa’s melodic bass underscores the compositions like a cross between Sadus and Iron Maiden. Vocals mix the Kreator shriek and the Sodom chant with the bouncy energy of later Exodus. It provokes a desire to see the style grow with this promising new band.
Former thrash band Corrosion of Conformity will release their latest album on June 24th via Candlelight Records.
Entitled IX (it would appear the band scrapped the earlier title, Corinthians) the album sees COC continuing their recent pattern of mixing rock with a non-threatening and reduced version of their punk trajectory. Hook-driven riffs array to complement the sing-along nature of the vocal tracks. When vocals cease, guitar riffs pick up the sugar-candy melodic impulse and continue it onwards, with easy post-Sabbath riffing and bland solos which quickly fade from memory into the formless void. Simplistic in its catchiness, this album bears some semblance to Cathedral’s final album in that it represents a band stripped of impetus, creating entertainment as opposed to art. Although the talent and skill of the members involved still leaks through, thus lending the album more credence than many of its contemporaries, and probably earning them well-deserved financial success and recognition, nothing can save the lack of purpose to this album.
Corrosion of Conformity, along with DRI and Cryptic Slaughter, helped construct the genre known as thrash, which brought the epic quality of metal together with the topical focus of punk in a high-energy cocktail that inspired a strong reaction from an alienated generation. Although it was not simple protest music, the heroic looking-forward present in thrash stands in contrast to its anger and regret in an organic circle of experience, which is particularly stark when returning from the obscene vapidity present on album IX.
Neoambient gains another stronghold. This genre — constructed of film soundtracks, Dead Can Dance style medievalism, neofolk and dark ambient with some structural ideas from black metal — rose out of the ashes of black metal, with bands like Beherit, Neptune Towers (Darkthrone), Lord Wind (Graveland), Danzig (Black Aria) and Burzum leading. On The Ways of Yore, Burzum integrates organic sounds like vocals and guitar into the cosmic ambient that defined the last album, Sôl austan, Mâni vestan.
The Ways of Yore creates within the same spectrum of music stretching between Dead Can Dance and Tangerine Dream that marked the previous album but with even more of an ambient feel. Songs rely on repetitive patterns with layers of instrumentation and song structures that shift to develop melody or make dramatic contrast enhance the imitation of their subjects. As in ancient Greek drama, poetry and music merge with sole musician Varg Vikernes‘ spoken and sung vocals guiding the progress of keyboard-sample-based music. Melodies refer to each other across the length of the album through similarity and evoke themes from past albums, culminating in “Emptiness” which previously made itself known as “Tomhet” on Hvis Lyset Tar Oss, the album that ended black metal by raising the bar above what others could imitate.
Somber moods prevail throughout this work which mixes melancholy with a sense of reverence for the past. Hearing Varg sing and develop harmonies with his voice shows room for expansion by this creative musician who previously let the guitars do the talking. Guitars show up on later tracks, distorted in the shuddering but mid-tone texture that gave Filosofem its otherworldly sound. Even though songs begin with simple note clusters, they expand to full melodies which match to a cadence and regulate atmosphere. The result demands attention through its conquest of empty space with the barest of sounds but over time reaches an intensity of expectation that resembles a ritual.
What makes people love neoambient is that it obliterates the pace of modernity and replaces it with a reverent, transcendental atmosphere. Burzum takes an approach that aims at a sound older than medieval, a primeval cave-dwelling primitivism that strips away the pretenses of developed culture. Its striking Nordic imagery, including songs to Odinn and Freyja, add to this mystery and the Burzum mythos as a whole. Escaping black metal, while controversial, granted Vikernes a chance to explore the development of melody in silence, and the result serves to expand atmosphere beyond our age to something that is both ancient and futuristic.
What are Sadistic Metal Reviews? We enforce the reality the metal community runs in fear from: music can be judged objectively, but most people “prefer” junk. They want their music to make them look cool to their nitwit social groups, so they deliberately select moron music. Falses, don’t entry!
Triptykon – Melana Chasmata
You do not hire the Navy SEALs to remove your fire ant infestation. Similarly, there is no point telling Tom G. Warrior to “make an album like all those other ones.” It’s the wrong tool for the job. This album is atrocious because it relies on very familiar and predictable ideas with no density, and then Warrior tries to shoehorn some depth into it but achieves on oil on water effect, like someone trying to layer Beethoven over Pantera. The result just dumb and painful. Run like hell.
Lacuna Coil – Broken Crown Halo
This isn’t even metal. It’s the same smarmy cheesy shit that they sing in lounges for drunk bluehairs in Vegas, but they shifted from open chords to power chords. There isn’t even any particular focus on riffs here, just some blithe chord progressions shifting in the background while the vocals take it. But even worse, the music is entirely predictable. This is different from being “basic” in that it’s not derived from simplicity, but a generic version of the same stuff everyone else does. But that “everyone else” aren’t metal bands, and these entryists are trying to sneak that moronic garbage in through the back door.
Aborted – The Necrotic Manifesto
People are not bands. Bands are (composed of) people, but are not people. Even a band with good people in it can end up making music as interesting as poured concrete. “Oooh, look how flat it is!” But that’s kind of the problem here: Aborted is flat. It’s straight-ahead pounding death metal/grind hybrid that tends to like one- and two-chord riffs that shape themselves around a basic rhythm. Songs tend toward straight-ahead structures as well. The whole thing feels mentally hasty, like they aimed for a simple goal and then did one take and called it good enough. The highly compressed production just makes it excruciating to hear.
Kill Devil Hill – Revolution Rise
Some bands you don’t want to be noticed listening to lest people think you’re an imbecile. Kill Devil Hill is warmed over 1980s Sunset Strip glam “metal” (i.e.: hard rock) with some alternative rock stylings and occasional Rob Zombie infusions. That’s it, and the style tells you the content. In addition to mind-numbing repetition, like all rock music this dunce material focuses on the vocalist and some imagined fantasy mystical “power” to very cheesy vocals emphasizing very obvious emotions. It’s like watching Shakespeare done by a troupe of brain injury patients. Even the attempts to be “edgy” by working in oddball found sounds and minor techno influences falls flat because the whole package is so blindingly obvious and equally as plainly designed for thumb-suckers.
Blood Eagle – Kill Your Tyrants
At least this has some balls, but metal needs both a warlike outlook and an interesting musical development. The latter is where Blood Eagle falls down: too much downstrumming, repetitive riff forms, repetitive song forms and reliance and skull-shakingly basic rhythms that involve a slamming conclusion makes this music no fun to listen to. It is like hearing a constant pounding with Pantera-style angry ranting in a death metal vocal over the top, but the plot rarely changes. When the band gives itself a little room for melody, as in the end of “Serpent Thoughts,” we see how much better this could have been. Instead it sounds like road rage stuck on repeat on a forgotten late night TV channel.
Eyehategod – Eyehategod
The New Orleans hit factory just keeps cranking them out. WAIT — that’s not what you want to hear about underground metal. Could the writer be implying that this trivial drivel is actually just pop music? Yes, yes he is. Eyehategod started out with a slow punk/grind mix that was boring but kind of aggressive. Then they made it with great production for Dopesick, which was a mildly interesting record. Since then, they’ve gotten closer to the hipster zone. Eyehategod makes me feel like I’ve stepped back into the early 1980s. Punk had just lost direction and every band was recycling old ideas or trying to be “different” with tricks that amounted to little more than stunts. The emptiness was staring us in the face, and no one was talking about it. This album is stereotypical hollow man hardcore with a bit of southern fried bullshit and a couple metal riffs. Why not just go listen to the failed albums by burnt-out and aged punk bands, because they at least have more consistent. This is just an odds ‘n’ ends drawer with a high production budget. You can sniff out the hollowness by how many times they hit you over the head with their image, working in every southern trailer failure term they can, and then performing their party act of ranting vocals over hard rock riffs. It breathes staleness and marketing like a home remortgaging plan.
Day of Doom – The Gates of Hell
Metal bands should know by now to avoid the formula where the entire song is based around a vocal cadence, with guitars trying for a really basic pattern the vocals can play off of, and drums in perpetual fill mode. This means that the simplistic plodding patterns of vocals define everything else, which means everything else clusters around the lowest common denominator, and you end up with music whose sole (no pun intended) purposes is to make you tap your feet and wave your head to an undulating rhythm. This works great if you’re a sea anemone, but not so good for anything else. Day of Doom is one of those slow-strobing-strum bands that clearly intends for the whole audience to bounce at the same time in trope, but forgets that this is mindlessly boring when you’re not in a concert setting. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with these guys, but what they’re trying to do is wrong (as in unrealistic and stupid).
On Top – Top to Bottom
Mixed hardrock/punk, On Top has a clever name but otherwise is exactly as predictable as you might imagine. Lots of bouncy riffs, melodic choruses, angry vocals that specialize in repetitive tropes. If you derive a lot of value from doing the same thing others are doing at the same time, this might be your thing. It’s super-catchy like Biohazard or Pantera were, with plenty of syncopation in vocal rhythms to give them some kick, and songs even develop one level past pure circularity. It basically sounds like something you would expect the rebellious character to listen to in a movie as he drinks his whisky and drives fast. Other than this one-dimensionality, this is one of the few things in this review batch with any musicality. It’s just applied in such a way that people who aren’t drunk and sixteen will rapidly tire of.
Howls of Ebb – Vigils of the 3rd Eye
Howls of Ebb adopt an interesting strategy, which is to hide a Maudlin of the Well style quasi-prog in the midst of a dirty modern heavy metal band. At its core, this is heavy metal of the late 1980s variety, but this is carefully concealed under fast death metal riffs and whispered vocals which expand into dissonant chording and riff salads of the post-jazz-fusion era. The catchiness of the basic heavy metal riffing and the tendency to use tempo changes which fit in that model remain, but the weirdness accentuates it. If you can image Powermad adopting a bit of grunge and progressive metal, then slowing down half of its parts in a melodic jazzy style reminiscent of Absu crossed with Maudlin of the Well, you have the basic idea. The result is not only not bad but stands up to repeated listens. It will probably stay B-ranked in that its compositions make sense on a musical level but convey little else, and often the riff salads meander off-course enough to leave an impression but not a clear one. Still, this is more thoughtful than almost all of the metal at this commercial level and while it’s not underground, it’s much preferred to the usual tripe.
Personal Device – Microorganismos del Mal
First there was the faux 80s crossover thrash revival with party retro-thrash bands like Toxic Holocaust and Municipal Waste, then bands like Birth A.D. bounced back with actual thrash and reformed the genre. Now Personal Device take it a step both further and in a different direction by being a classic hardcore band that informs itself with early speed metal like the first Metallica and Nuclear Assault albums. The result is bouncy fast and precise punk like Ratos de Porao or even middle-period Bad Brains that is thoroughly enjoyable with riff breaks that resemble “The Four Horsemen” or maybe even “Live, Suffer, Die.” Their guitars are remarkably precise which creates an unusual sound for punk that by making it mechanistic makes it seem more inexorable than like protest music, and the result is a more testosterone-fueled and warlike approach. Mix that with the surging chord changes of speed metal and the fast repetitive chanted choruses from thrash, and you have a high-energy band. Its flaws are that experienced listeners may find this a bit too transparent, and that many of its rhythms are similar, but the band has administered its style with an editor’s red pen handy, cutting out any lesser parts, which gives it more staying power than all but a few albums in this stylistic range. This was a pleasant surprise to find in the review pile.
The second of May makes many of us uneasy because we remember the death of Jeff Hanneman, composer and architect of the Slayer approach to mythological alienation. The world isn’t the same without him, and many of us felt like we had lost a parent, since when adults refuse to grow up and speak honestly about life, children have to turn to other sources of information. Hanneman made sense of the modern world, no matter how apocalyptic the outlook ultimately turned out to be.
We are fortunate to get a few words in with D.X. Ferris, author of the books Slayer’s Reign in Blood (33 1/3) and Slayer 66 2/3: The Jeff & Dave Years. A Metal Band Biography. Ferris has spent the last several years writing about Slayer and understands the importance of this historic act not just to metal, but to the society around us all. Read on for the inner truths of writing about Slayer on this day we commemorate Hanneman’s life.
You’ve written two books on Slayer. What’s your relationship to Slayer? When did it begin?
My life is very clearly divided into Before Slayer and Since Slayer. I tell the story in my first book: Over the years, I had edged toward metal. I thought Metallica was as hard & heavy as it got. Then I read a review of Hell Awaits, and the review talked it up like a thrash masterpiece. So bought it. The first time I played it, it started with that big three-minute slow intro. I thought I had bought a bad album based on a bad review. But then the track kicked into the thrash part, and it was the universe cracked and a new dimension opened. And almost 30 years later, here I am, talking about Slayer.
Over the ’90s, I wasn’t as into metal as I was and am, but Slayer always stayed with me. My college notebooks are filled with Slayer lyrics and pentagrams. After college, when I’d sit in meetings, I looked like I was taking notes, but half the time, I was sketching Slayer logos — that’s one of the reasons why the new paperback looks like it does.
And the older I get, the more the band means to me. I think it’s curious how people get old and forget about metal. When you’re younger, metal is great music for when you’re pissed off. But when you get older and you have to deal with questionable coworkers and pinhead middle managers, that’s when you really need angry music. Slayer is always here for you!
How did you become a writer?
Writing is my one rare ability. I have tried doing literally everything else I though I could do: being a businessman in a suit, bartending, entering a doctoral program for corporate communication. Writing just keeps dragging me back to it. I wrote for school newspapers. I used the school newspaper as an outlet for record reviews. And gradually parlayed those clips into paying gigs as a writer.
Are you a metal fan “in general,” a Slayer fan or a writer who found this topic intriguing?
I primarily identify as A Metal Guy. I love a lot of other music. In high school, I was deeply into hardcore and punk, too. But I had long hair and the metal outfit: denim and some leather. In the picture I sent, that’s my same Anthrax back-patch from high school. The last three albums I bought were Triptykon, Behemoth, and High School Musical 2. Hey, I have kids. I could have scored free promo copies, but those dudes deserve my money.
What do you think is Slayer’s cultural impact?
Great question. Early in the book, I say “This is Slayer’s world, and we’re just living in it.” Look around is: The Twilight series is a phenomenon. It’s about vampires. There are four vampire shows in primetime TV — well, three now that NBC canceled Dracula. Walking Dead is the most popular TV show with young audiences. Game of Thrones is the most popular HBO show since The Sopranos, and it is metal as hell. In fact, I write weekly Heavy Metal Reviews of it for a website called Diffuser.fm, where I evaluate how metal the episode was. Since the days of Hell Awaits, long hair, violence, the undead, and the supernatural have saturated society. And that’s just the fantasy aspect, not to mention the fact that we’ve been at war over a decade.
Can you trace all that directly to Slayer? Maybe not. But they sure were ahead of the curve.
Your first Slayer-themed book appears to be Slayer’s Reign in Blood (33 1/3). What can you tell us about this book, and how did you end up being the one to write it?
I was a fan of the series. Each book is by a different author, writing about a single classic album, from the Beach Boys to the Beastie Boys. And something about it just called me and made me think “Go write a Slayer book for it.” I would have liked to write the Beastie Boys one, but Dan LeRoy beat me to it. When I looked down the list, I saw there was no metal in the series. So I pitched Reign. I knew it was a stretch. But, one, I thought there should be some metal. Two, if you look at the people who made the record, the album is an intriguing nexus in the history of rock: It was produced by Rick Rubin, who was known strictly as a rap guy at the time. It was his first rock record. And he would go on to work with about 10% of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee groups. Engineer Andy Wallace mixed everybody, basically, from Nirvana to Guns ‘N Roses. It was released on the rap label Def Jam. So it was the perfect metal choice, because the album reaches beyond metal.
Did writing this book change how you viewed Slayer?
It did. With pretty much any group, when you really dig into the credits and start crunching numbers, you realize that your impressions of the band aren’t necessarily right. Like, there are a lot of Who fans who assume Roger Daltrey wrote the words, because he’s the singer. I thought I knew a lot about the band, but it was really interesting to see how the leadership roles changed over the years, and how the artistic division of labor changed over time. And with the splits between Dave Lombardo and the band… Well, when I started the second book, I was partial to one side of the division. And when I was done, I had switched sides.
Last year, you unveiled Slayer 66 2/3: The Jeff & Dave Years. A Metal Band Biography. This looks to be more of a historical book. How did you come up with material, and what’s in it?
It’s a combination of new research, material that was breaking news at the time, and great stuff that wouldn’t fit in the first book: They wanted 25,000 words, I wrote 67,000, and they took 42,000. The new book is 110,000 words, with 59 chapters, 33 photos, 3 indexes (2 in the paperback), and 400 footnotes. Its full title is Slayer 66 & 2/3: The Jeff & Dave Years, A Metal Band Biography. From Birth to Reborn, Including Slaytanic Profiles, a New History of the Thrash Kings’ Early Days, Reign in Blood Tours, a European Invasion, the Palladium Riot, the Seat Cushion Chaos Concert, the Whole Diabolical Discography, Newly Unearthed Details From Dave Lombardo’s Turbulent History With the Band, Artwork and Some Photos You’ve Probably Never Seen Before, Jeff Hanneman’s Hard Times, the Big Four’s Big Year, Lombardo’s Final Exit, the Top 11 Hanneman Tributes, the Mosh Memorial Service, Untold Stories, Updates, Relevant Digressions, and More Scenes From the Abyss.
What prompted you to write a second book on Slayer?
Lombardo left the band for the third, and finally final, time in February 2013. Well, he didn’t exactly leave. But he was gone. It was a fresh shock in the metal world. And it should have been. But Slayer fans who knew history knew he had left twice before. So I decided I would write a short e-book about his trouble with the band: He was never in step with the rest of them. The first time he quit was during the Reign in Blood tour. And their relationship never recovered.
I figured it would be a 12,000-word e-book. I wanted to have it out by the end of April. All spring long, I kept getting sick. If I wasn’t sick, one of my kids was. I just couldn’t get the book done. April ended, the book wasn’t out, and I was pissed. Furious. May 1, I was fuckin’ pissed. May 2, I was even more furious. Then the evening of May 2, word breaks that Jeff Hanneman died. And there I was, with a Slayer book halfway written. So for the rest of the year, as the story unfolded, it grew from a little project to a full-on rock biography. One thing after another stopped me from getting it done, and every time, the delays helped, until at the very end, famous metal photographer and musician Harald O found some amazing photos that he had totally forgotten about. And that’s where the cover came from.
What’s an interesting Slayer fact most people don’t know?
Man… They just split with Rick Rubin after almost 30 years. And they were his only client from the 1980s. I don’t know how many younger metal fans realize how influential Dave Lombardo was for all metal percussion. He gets respect in the metal world, but rock fans don’t realize he’s one of the all-time great drummers. When Lars Ulrich was sick and Lombardo played two songs with Metallica, Ulrich was actually nervous. He said something like, “You try sitting in a hospital bed while Dave Lombardo is playing with your band.”
Writing the second book, though, the biggest thing I learned was how little Slayer has toured over the years. I mean, they’re a regular presence on the touring world. But the South of Heaven tour was something like, if I remember right, 60 shows. They took a lot of time off.
Do you write on other things besides Slayer? If so, what and where do we find them? If anonymously, can you tell us why?
I transitioned from music writing to news journalism a few years back, and I won some awards for journalism. But lately, I mostly teach college. I write some popular-culture stuff for Diffuser and The AV Club. And I’m working on a couple non-fiction projects I can’t talk about yet; one is a collaboration, so it’s not mine to talk about. I write a terrible webcomic called Suburban Metal Dad that’s not as autobiographical as you’d think, for a website called Popdose.
International Day of Slayer organizers Dag Hansen and Jim Tate are great! Hansen is among the people I interviewed for the book. I just heard on the radio that today is actually the International Day of Prayer, which was the original inspiration for International Day of Slayer. Last year, I thought it was really something when Kerry King took time to acknowledge Slayer Day and talk about Jeff’s absence. As I discuss in the book, I think it’s about as emotional as we’ve ever seen him in public.
What do you think Slayer’s lasting influence on metal has been?
Like I said, Lombardo practically invented modern metal drumming. They’ve been the standard-bearers for thrash. Metallica are huge, but Slayer has been the Big Four band that stayed true to their original sound and style. They never tried to cash in or cross over. They’re the gold standard for a credible long-term metal career.
The most recent album from Unleashed, Odalheim, is simultaneously the best and worst of days for this band. On the plus side, Unleashed have improved at editing down their material so it all flows smoothly and doesn’t ramble. On the downside, the band have adopted a style that is equal parts Dissection and The Haunted, which makes for an almost satisfying heavy metal experience ruined by kiddie rock band style antics on the level of nu-metal.
Let us be honest: djent is nu-metal for people who like jazz fusion. It’s slightly more subtle. The djent influence filtered into metal through The Haunted after At the Gates (just down the street from Meshuggah, who are the progenitors of djent). When metalcore came about with The Haunted, it wrapped djent, math rock, and melodic speed metal into one package. The result is a binary rotation between some really excellent heavy metal riffing with melody and the kind of bouncy daycare-sensibility music that made speed metal get dumb and wrecked death metal wherever it appeared.
People who need lots of internal rhythm of a similar sort to keep their interest are dumb. This is why we laugh at bands who overplay their drums in an attempt to conceal basically boring songs. If it sucks, just add lots of internal syncopation and delay your final beats just a sixteenth past audience expectation. It’s like Pavlovian terriers watching the mailman arrive. This part of this album is dumb. There is no other word for it, thus this is the best term: dumb. Repetition disguised as surprise. Only for idiots.
Odalheim is thus the album we wish Unleashed had made years ago. Tight, efficient and beautiful. If Shadows in the Deep had been more balanced, it might rise to this level of clean impact; if Where No Life Dwells had this amount of melody, we might find it mesmerizing. However, the glitch is that this album is barely death metal, but more like a mix between melodic heavy metal and bounce-metal, itself a proxy for nu-metal.
Albums like Odalheim are why black metal railed against trends: no mosh, no core, no fun, no trends. Odalheim obediently chases the late black metal trend, the melodicy heavy metal trend, the metalcore trend and the djent trend. These musicians do a great job of linking them all together, but the end result is like soup made by tossing every ingredient in your fridge into a pot of boiling water: muddled, disgusting.
That means that, while I can admire aspects of this album, I never want to hear it again. The dumb parts drown out the melodic material and the lack of definitive style obliterates its efficiency. There is almost nothing communicated here, only a background mood composed of beauty and bounce. It repeats itself. Nothing changes. Like heat death in a crowded room, Odalheim slowly dominates by repetition. And then? And then there is no will to resist. Nor to enjoy.
