Mix together the early CIRCLE JERKS, early BLACK FLAG, MDC, MINOR THREAT, SSD, TERVEET K�DET, and GANG GREEN, and you have something approximating these DIRTY ROTTEN IMBECILES (so-called by their parents). What can I say–this is manic, intense, tight thrash with great lyrics, and I can’t wait till these Houston boys unleash themselves upon the rest of us deprived people. 22 songs.
-Tim Yohannan (from Maximum Rocknroll #5, March/April 1983)
Dynamic crossover killers Birth A.D. will enter Pyramid Sound on January 3rd to record the highly anticipated full-length follow up to their critically acclaimed ‘Stillbirth Of A Nation’ EP. Titled ‘I Blame You’, the album will be engineered and produced by Alex Perialas (SOD, Testament, Overkill, Carnivore, Nuclear Assault).
“We chose Alex not only because he presided over many releases that allowed Birth A.D. to exist,” explains vocalist/bassist Jeff Tandy, “but also he is still a commando producer of the highest order. He is very hands-on, and sometimes his enthusiasm exceeds our own. With his direction the new album will be amazing no matter what!” The album will be recorded, mixed and mastered in the space of 12 days. ‘I Blame You’ will also feature a guest appearance by Rotting Christ front man Saki Tolis. “Sakis has already been a strong supporter of the band,” says Tandy. “The fact that he offered to appear on the new album is a huge honor. He knows his metal, so we couldn’t ask for a better endorsement.” Birth A.D. is currently seeking label support so they can cause problems worldwide! – Pure Grain Audio
For more information, please visit the Birth A.D. Facehugger page.
No Comments“Styles” are divisions of a subgenre not pronounced enough to warrant a new subgenre. “Sounds” are aesthetic variants of a subgenre. Just as “doom metal” means music that is either heavy metal or death metal played slowly with morbid/gothic surfacing, “sounds” differentiate groups of similar musical approach from each other. The evolution of “sounds” can be viewed as a hierarchy of specialized technique and aesthetic within a genre, the technique creating an effect that reveals the intent of the creators as communicated to the listener.
Rhythm |
Melody |
Aesthetic |
Structure |
Vocals |
Heavy Metal |
Ambient/Prog |
Punk |
Death |
Black |
Heavy MetalSpeed Metal |
Ambient |
Punk/HardcoreThrashGrindcore |
Death Metal |
Black Metal |
You can understand the styles of heavy metal by looking at the musical techniques and theory used, the aeshetic created, and the patterns of underlying structure pursued (as you can do in differentiated not just genres but types of music). Styles of death metal, black metal, heavy metal and crossover metal divide into “containers” for stylistic and compositional tendencies which reveal the interpretative structures in the music evoking the larger meta-perception or “life philosophy” beneath.
Aesthetic — or styles, arrangement, and production decisions — “works” where it supports the internal compositional structures of whatever music it encloses. Technique and production and performance come together to produce an aesthetic, which matches a compositional style, which in turn reflects the ideas that inspired the artist to communicate with his or her audience.
Heavy metal, in general, is music of loud, intense, nihilistic, feral, atavistic sound that reduces the individual and places them in a context of history where they are nothing (some would call this realism or nihilism). Accepting the reaction of despair to the violence and paranoia and insanity of human world living in denial of fear/death, and turning it into a living, willful, and distinctive nihilism that affirms nothingness as a gateway into more profound realms of thought — this is the goal of heavy metal, and it has many voices, or styles.
By playing off of internal rhythms, metal bands achieve syncopation — the inversion of stress in a passage. Normally strong beats are weak and the weak are strong; this effect is often achieved through polyrhythmic overlay by double-bass in death metal bands or by the chaotic, threshing blast beat of blackmetal drummers.
The variation enables an excited internal sub-rhythm to drive the song, as many bands do with double bass drums, letting snare and high hat/cymbal disassociate for key structural textures.
Using multiple rhythms to enhance layering effects bands create multiple dimensions of rhythmic space, using a normally linear framework in new shapes and often long or indeterminate phrases. This can occur in the dominant rhythmic instrument (guitars) or the background rhythm (drums/bass).
Some bands have taken this to extremes of chaos piling into itself, revealing an inner consistency and beauty, where others have interpreted this in the way of more contemporary ambient composers and have layered counterpoint or complementary rhythms in complex neo-electronic compositions.
Explosive or definitive notes in a phrase are accentuated by percussion in drums or stringed instrument. Most often in guitars this occurs in the bands who muffle chords and strum staccato or interplay phrasing for conclusive effect, more than open-ended styles.
Often bands give texture to rhythms by playing multiple levels of rhythm. For example, a guitar changing chords has a dominant rhythm in the beats on which the change occurs, but the chords themselves have a layer of rhythm in the speed with which they are strummed, or in death metal technique, at which their two most essential notes are varied through strumming or hammering. Even further, often the strumming itself has an independent texture which moves with the composition as a whole.
“Normal” melodies are used by older styles of heavy metal and sometimes by progressive bands integrating a jazz or rock influence. They are built around the scales used by these forms of music historically and in present essence, and as such are more easily recognized by listeners familiar with more mainstream music.
Using dissonant alignment of notes in melodies produces a mournful yet technical sound, so many bands use this technique in both melodic and harmonic construction.
Atonal arrangements of notes produce bizarre and perverse melodies, causing instigation of uprising in the mentality of the listener. The “not tonal” nature of this etymology comes from the lack of a fixed scale, or use of an cycling scale of arbitrary tones.
Most metal musicians use this style of composition in conjunction with chromatic scales, dynamically acquiring tone centers through counterpoint and experimenting with classical music theory in key-less anti-melodic architectures.
In the style of classical composers from years past augmented with an focus geared more toward an attention span “in the now,” metal bands often use modal layers to create songs.
These layers, each forming a portion of the main melody in the song which changes over time to narrate song development, create a resonant harmony which the composer can change to develop the complex matrix of emotions required to manipulate atmospheric mood.
This style easily succumbs to being only technique, but is useful for developing a language of melody in which harmony serves a subordinate role.
Classical harmonic formations stay within the same key and manipulate different registers of mode or tone. The chromatic scales and intricate arpeggio formations of death and black metal lay their ancestry here and develop into a more direct sense of musical motion.
The freedom and complexity of jazz harmonics attracted many metal composers, who have worked in that area to create bizarre and startling freaks of brutality.
Oftentimes rock-n-roll influences creep into metal bands and are easily identified by their influence on the dominant rhythms, and by the more mainstream tonal ideas of the pieces. Since rock is essentially blues filtered through the cowboy hobo country music eyepiece, these bands often bear a lot in common with jazz-influence acts.
Most rock songs come of the verse-chorus tradition and consequently so does unstudied death and black metal, as well as most grindcore. The tedium of this technique is sometimes temporarily alleviated by adding another structure or riff pattern on top of the double elements of cycle but even this is transparent.
When many riffs are joined to form a progression of ideas not as much concerned with creating a piece but a sequence of moods a narrative composition occurs; others call this “riff salad” or “grab-bag metal.”
Music created with massive conceptions in mind often builds entirely unconventional structures to serve the individualized needs of each song. At this level of composition, nothing is as fits the norm as each piece has an entirely custom use in unique and intricate compositions where details matter.
Like rock and blues before it, people sing these. With melodic voices and enunciation of words. Though sometimes it seems bizarre now, most people like ALL of their entertainment to sound this way.
Hardcore punk brought us angry shouting for vocals and it re-appears from time to time in death and black metal but is limited by the clarity and monotone of vocal it produces through uniform emphasis.
The majority of modern metal works utilize this style, yet it arose from crossover music like grindcore after being inspired by the grand old growler of metal, Lemmy Kilmeister of Motorhead, whose membership in both heavy metal and punk communities affirms his historical importance.
Metal originally adopted the gravely cigarette-burnt and alcohol-eroded voice of punk rock’s more deested vocalists, favoring its obscurity and the difficulty of marketing such an indistinct image in the world of concrete images concealing nebulous actualities and negligible rewards.
By reducing timbre from absolute tone to gritty, naturalistic, distortion and shearing melody to textural variance only, this style de-emphasizes vocals while making their presence fit into the texture of the music, allowing more dynamic variation in composition.
A more fragile sound, more like a warning than the guttural vocals of death metal, this high pitched muffled shriek is distorted so that it sounds like warnings from the dead.
Taking over from Black Sabbath when too much Led Zeppelin clonage invaded the airwaves, NWOBHM bands used more punkish riffing with more precise, technological structures in phrasing. The imagination ran wild and fantasy/mideval concepts in lyrics developed here.
As Sabbath was slow, the doom metal genre demanded slower and more dramatically manic depressive songwriting. These bands bridge power chords across glacial rhythm for atmospheric impact. Often accompanied by drugs, esp. marijuana.
Probed right after NWOBHM made its appearance, narrative bands strung together collages of riff and transition to make unfolding retellings of experience. This style is eternal and re-emerges every generation.
Viewed by many as the nadir of metal, stadium metal is influenced by post-progressive rock atmospheric bands who used instrumentalism and pure pop hook to make sentimental but explosive songs. In metal this translates to an epic ballad flavor to everything. Once again, an eternal style which recurs with each new cycle of metal.
Punk is simplified 1950s rock voiced in power chords and sequenced to a pulsing basic rhythm. Vocals and aesthetic emphasized dirt and unsteadiness, and disregard of musicality freed bands from the form and compositional dynamic of rock music. Often bouncy or humorous, punk music moves with a friendly but simple motion.
Anthemic workingclass punk with often abrasive sounds mixed with guitar work reminiscent of surf bands from the generation before, Oi came into its own as its own influence in the next generation of hardcore.
Building tension through emphasis on melodic notes within otherwise rigid progressions, a subset of the hardcore community made music with constant unchanging percussion and fluidly shifting riffs.
The earliest hardcore to secede from normalcy became truly a handful of power chords grinding against one another in conflicted progressions and interrupted rhythm. This music is essentially similar to grindcore after the first generation.
The major innovation of speed metal was the muffled, explosive strumming of power chords to produce a sound of impact and resurrect the power of rhythm guitar in rock music.
Bands like Prong produced the first hypnotic rhythm “mellow” metal which while violent in methods of creation produced an atmosphere of calm and allowed emotional aspects of the art within to emerge.
Some bands aspired to the fantasy- and progressive-inspired works of NWOBHM and toward that aim produced neoclassical and often lengthy works. The most commonly known example of this is Metallica’s “Orion.”
From the 1970s progressive bands metalheads began making larger structures and wider gains in technique in the rendering of intricate but impact-oriented music. While power chord riffing remains predominant, many progressive metal bands moved beyond the accepted “progressive” sound and created theoretically literate avantgarde works.
Misnamed speed/death metal hybrid bands were called “thrash metal” because of their violent and self-conflicted music, aggressive attitudes and thrash-based ideological assertions. The origin of the term “thrash metal” is European big corporate media magazines trying to sell speed metal as something more extreme than what it was.
A style that emerged as the speed metal genre was dying, power metal is speed metal riffing played either in an epic heavy metal or tuffguy pseudo-death metal style.
One branch of thrash reveals more of its punk influence, and in bands like MDC or COC expressed itself with loosely hardcore songs played quickly with a metal influence in phrasing, but in punk song structures and major keys.
The other half of the thrash tree demonstrates a more metallic approach and is a proto-death-metal hybrid subgenre, found most clearly in the early works of Cryptic Slaughter and the later works of DRI.
Open intervals and precise furiously fast structures distinguish this variant. Bands like Repulsion and Terrorizer defined this style.
The schizophrenic out of time rhythms and blurry, organic, lavaging rush of this style produced disorientation and loss of individual characteristics in the rising phenomena of chaos.
Loosely derived from Discharge, this genre worked melodic hardcore into a blurring ripple of speed and fury that unleashed itself in short bursts of anger.
In the style of the mighty Assück, these bands created pounding furious rhythms from even intervals of the fretboard, roaring forth in some complexity but mostly disassociative, violent, random, disorienting music.
From the pure origins of death metal, the faster styles took after bands like Slayer, early Sepultura and Massacra in making architectures of intricate rhythm and melodic construction.
Derived from the slamming, explosive street-level speed metal of Exodus or Exhorder, percussive death metal evolved from the New York Death Metal and Tampa Death Metal sounds to become a generic style of impact-oriented, explosive muffled strum death metal.
“Hate” is mastery of this style.
Explosively percussive and equal parts speed metal and angst-ridden New York Hardcore (NYHC), this music flew from the depths with guttural vocals, edgy rhythm riffing and essaylike song structures. In two styles, one of which is more percussive than its longer phrased variant.
Some of the most “heavy metal” of the death metal movement, the Florida bands mated bold rhythm to the pulsing rhythm of early percussive death metal and created the most defiant, monstrously simple and direct metal of the era.
The first major evolution of theory occurred within the Swedish Death Metal movement, where Sunlight Studios/Thomas Skogsberg(tm) fuzztone production and longer phrases contributed to a melodicity fully evolving with At the Gates.
Continuing the progressive tradition in metal, the progressive death bands adhered to a style which was part rock with jazz and classical influences, and part the wily fingered “technical” death metal of a previous generation.
Jazz/death metal hybrid.
Later albums: jazz/metal.
Harmonically rich, offtime rhythms.
Became highly technical.
Innovators/technicalists.
Technicalists and romantic artists.
Used violin and lead diminishing melody guitar work.
A stylistic hybrid, deathgrind is death metal using the simpler song structures and rhythmic expectancy riffing of grindgore. So far, nothing of stature has emerged from this style.
This term is marketing slang for retro bands making faster speed metal music using death metal picking technique and vocals.
From Göthenberg, Sweden, came a series of bands emulating At the Gates by making technical, jazz-and-rock influenced death metal. This only became a problem after “Slaughter of the Soul,” when At the Gates sent out the word to become commercial rock music hidden within death metal stylings.
Pre-At the Gates.
Template for this style.
Black metal that is heavy metal derived from this death metal style.
The moribund, self-pitying and sentimental style of doom metal has emerged in both heavy metal and death metal genres, where it is essentially the same music played with an emphasis on slow chord changes and resonant, recursive resolutions.
Chaotic and nihilistic blasts of short information in three-note riffs founded this style, which through reduction of assumed musicality focused on the information of its communication.
Early experiments in structuralism allowed melody to serve as a fundamental principle and therefore emphasized use of the melodic sound in riff construction and chord voicing.
Some relapsed to a former style and made melodic stadium metal of NWOBHM era with black metal vocals and technique.
For the few who sought more extremity a style of grinding metal with nihilistic clipped emanations of information in abrupt explosions of riff was created, with variants moving closer to grindcore or pure unleashed melodicity.
Descended from the devotees of Bathory “Blood, Fire, Death,” this genre works folk song nationalism and epic narrative of multi-generational movements on the level of a people, creating symbolic black metal with lengthy melodies.
Minimalism taken to the furthest extreme hybridized with metal produced an electronic music influenced genre which favored unchanging simple beats (similar to Discharge) under shifting melodic context- and lexically-sensitive phrase evolution.
“Transylvanian Hunger” is the best of this style.
Ultra-minimalist.
“Pure Holocaust” is a related idea.
Focuses on matching rhythm to expectation of a tone and then wearing it out, like the tedium of living in a dying society, anticipating radical change.
The music of Kraftwerk and its descendants, this is long melody evolving over a complex beat structure, often without human vocals.
Emphatic and pulsating dance music that was a fundamental influence on developing techno and industrial genres, EBM sounds like what Nine Inch Nails would be if executed by Godflesh or Beherit.
Influenced by throwbacks to mideval and music from before recorded history, ritual ambient uses simple melodic patterns in evolution and a primal sense of rhythm to emphasize its constructs.
Somewhat of a summary of the genre as a whole excluding most popular music influences from EBM, neoclassical ambient/industrial uses technological instrumentation and song structure to emphasize classical influences in melodic construction.
No CommentsI’ve just completed reading the 2011 “best of” lists from a number of popular websites. The results are predictably dismal. Are these people incompetent or just deaf?
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Tags: 2011, abhor, amebix, apocalypse command, beherit, best of, Black Metal, blaspherian, blotted science, cianide, Cruciamentum, death metal, death strike, deceased, Esoteric, gridlink, heresiarch, morbus 666, nunslaughter, Obsequiae, primordial, rudra, sorcier des glaces, ungod, vallenfyre, war master
THIS IS A PRE-ORDER. ALL ITEMS ORDERED WITH THIS ITEM WILL SHIP ON/AROUND FEBRUARY 1, 2012.
Timeghoul – Complete Discography CD
For the first time ever on CD Dark Descent Records proudly presents the complete discography from the legendary Science Fiction / Fantasy Death Metal TIMEGHOUL (USA). Born in the Midwest United States in 1987, Doom’s Lyre remained relatively quiet, recording no material before changing their name. In 1991, Doom’s Lyre, now renamed Timeghoul, set out by releasing two demos; 1992’s Tumultuous Travelings and 1994’s Panaramic Twilight.
Largely ignored and mostly forgotten, these recordings did not receive the recognition they deserved until years later. Timeghoul’s eclectic and complex style of US death metal started to gain momentum within the underground as overlooked and classic material.
Prepare for one of the most unique and complex death metal offerings the early 90’s had to offer.
Mark Riddick’s fantastic original tri-panel artwork covers this fitting six-panel digipak with matte finish. Additionally, this digipak comes with a six-page folder with lyrics and additional notes. This is a one-time limited edition pressing. Get your copy before it’s too late!
ALSO, AVAILABLE AND SHIPPING JAN 2, 2012:
Horrendous – The Chills CD
Horrendous’ 2010 demo titled “Sweet Blasphemies” was merely a brief showcasing of this band’s tremendous potential. In addition to the CD-r version of the demo, two separate 200 copy pro tape pressings were made and sold; first via a cooperation with Dark Descent and Skeleton Plague then later through Dark Descent Records.
Horrendous’ debut full-length titled “The Chills” is a full-on assault of the aural senses. Horrendous mixes HM-2 sound with unique melody and solos creating memorable and terrific song-writing . This is no “retro” band but a band that has clearly created a nine-song death metal masterpiece which ends with the epic nine-minute closer “The Eye of Madness.”
Do not mistake this band for a clone of Entombed, Autopsy or Incantation. Doing this would be a great disservice to a masterful album and you would obviously miss out on what will be one of 2012’s best death metal albums, hands down.
Cover art by Raul Gonzalez (Morbus Chron, Deceased, etc.) adorns this eight page booklet.
DISTRO UPDATES:
Cianide – Hell’s Rebirth Digipak CD
Cultes Des Ghoules – Spectres over Transylvania CD (Restock)
Decrepitaph – Conjuring Chaos MCD (Restock)
Fidei Defensor – Cognoscenti CD
Galdr – Galdr CD
Omision – In the Shadow of the Cross CD
Shemhamforash – Spintriam Satyriazis (Phallus Prestige) CD
Shemhamforash- Luciferi Omnis Ysighda…CD
Spectral Mortuary – Total Depravity CD (Restock)
The Cleansing – Feeding the Inevitable CD (Restock)
Turbocharged – AntiXtian CD
Warfield – Trivmvirat CD
Weltmacht – The Call to Battle CD
Dead To This World- First Strike for Spiritual Renewance (Color)
Hacavitz – Hacavitz 7″ EP
Mpire of Evil – Creatures of the Black LP
Sabbat – Sabbatrinity LP
Questions – darkdescentrecords@gmaiil.com
www.darkdescentrecords.com
Thanks!
Matt
Dark Descent Records
PO Box 18056
Colorado Springs, CO 80935
USA
Timeghoul – Complete Discography Digipak CD
$11.00
After hardcore made music harder and faster, speed metal upgraded heavy metal by mixing hardcore speed and aggression with the architectural riffs of NWOBHM, and downgraded the reliance on pentatonic scales in favor of minor-key complex riffing. The technique that defines speed metal is the muted strum, where the palm of the strumming hands rests on the strings, making a short percussive blast of distortion instead of a ringing chord. As a result, speed metal sounded like the machines of the 1980s: blasting like factories, rattling like tank treads and chattering like computers and their printers.
House recommendations: Metallica and Prong.
Whenever NPR gets involved, you know you’re listening to state-sponsored propaganda. They also tend to favor any topic that humbles the strong and caters to the weak of spirit.
NPR’s favorite “metal” albums of 2011
Other than a few honorable mentions, there are no metal albums here. Only the indie, post-rock, punk, sludge, emo and shoegaze mixture that is popularly infused with a few metallish riffs to become the non-mainstream form of nu-metal.
6 Comments
ASPHYX – Unveil cover artwork for new studio album; Announce release dates for “Deathhammer”;
Confirmed to play ExtremeFest and Obscene Extreme Festival in 2012!
Following up on the extreme success of their latest studio album release “Death…The Brutal Way” and its “Live Death Doom” DVD/Live-CD successor, Dutch Doom Death Metal legends ASPHYX have now finished work on their newest studio album effort, programmatically entitled “Deathhammer”. A release date of February 27th, 2012 (Europe) and February 28th, 2012 (North America) via Century Media Records has now been confirmed too.
The time has now come to unveil the stunning artwork for “Deathhammer”, crafted by longtime parther in designs, Axel Hermann (http://www.axel-illustrator.de/). Hermann has not only worked on all of the early ASPHYX artworks and most recently on their “Live Death Doom” release, but is also responsible for many of the classic Century Media artworks by bands like Morgoth, Unleashed, Samael or Grave. Here is how both parties comment on their newest co-operation:
“ASPHYX and Axel Hermann is a fusion that has always functioned perfectly…from the days of ‘The Rack’ back in 1991, ‘til ‘Deathhammer’ in 2012. Like others such as Dan Swanö, Axel may be considered as an external member of the band and when we asked him to do the ‘Deathhammer’ cover – and as usual we would leave him free in his expression – we were very pleased to hear he was willing to take it on.
…And the man has exceeded himself! To the perfect death metal album comes the perfect cover that still leaves enough to everyone’s imagination. We hope he is as proud as we are on the final result. It seems all falls into place for this deathdozer of an album. I guess Axel can expect an offer from Le Louvre any time now.”
Martin van Drunen / ASPHYX
“A cover is the visual extension of an album that translates music and emotional intentions (or should I say aggression) into a clear statement of what to expect before taking the record off the shelf. In seldom cases you’re ending up with two perfect sides of the same coin. With ASPHYX and myself it has always and luckily been that case. And I am really proud of that! Show ’em Death and hit them with a hammer…visually and musically! Guess, we flipped the coin once more!?”
Axel Hermann
Recorded at The Mörser Studio as well as at Harrow Studio with their longtime engineer Harry Wijering, “Deathhammer” was mixed and mastered in Sweden by Dan Swanö, who previously worked with the band on “Death…The Brutal Way” as well as on the “Live Death Doom” release.
Prior to the upcoming album’s release date, ASPHYX will still perform a very special “full album setlist” concert at this year’s Eindhoven Metal Meeting on December 16th, at the Effenaar club in Eindhoven, The Netherlands, where the band will be playing their complete “The Rack” album for its 20th anniversary of release. Additionally, ASPHYX have already been confirmed for the 2012 editions of the ExtremeFest, July 5th to 7th in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, as well as the coming edition of the legendary Obscene Extreme festival in Czech Republic on July 14th. Here are all the band’s upcoming confirmed shows:
ASPHYX live:
16.12.2011 Eindhoven Metal Meeting – Eindhoven (The Netherlands) * Special 20 years “The Rack” show!
05. – 07.07.2012 ExtremeFest Deutschland – Hünxe (Germany) http://www.extremefest.eu/
05. – 07.07.2012 ExtremeFest Österreich – Salzburg (Austria) http://www.extremefest.eu/
05. – 07.07.2012 ExtremeFest Schweiz – TBA (Switzerland) – http://www.extremefest.eu/
14.07.2012 Obscene Extreme Festival – Trutnov (Czech Republic) http://www.obsceneextreme.cz/
Tags: asphyx
Vallenfyre – Desecration
If you can imagine a cross between newer Bolt Thrower, old Paradise Lost and recent Fleshcrawl, you would have a good basis for the rock from which Vallenfyre carve their death metal hybrid. They use the Swedish buzzsaw guitars and the kind of melodic hooks that would make Watain proud in that these riffs are simple and hard to get out of your head, but then use a layered style of riff and response that comes straight from old Paradise Lost, with fewer of the heavy metal touches. If this EP gets its pop influence from anywhere, it would be Brit electro. The riffs are reasonable, and while sparse in the longer song constructions, the band’s habit of treating them as phrases and thus giving them multiple endpoints creates a sombre and contemplative atmosphere. Looking forward to seeing what the full length will bring.
Pestilence – Doctrine
Attempting to keep up with the times, Pestilence make a Meshuggah-style version of a deathcore album and add in their trademark ecclectic tone-twisting jazz leads. As if thinking that fans now must be blockheads to like such music, Pestilence deliberately dumb down the music with lots of chanting verses and repetitive, ultra-simple riffs based on old heavy metal tonal patterns. They vary these up with breakdowns and interludes, using abundant percussive strumming to shake two chords into forty seconds of constant texture variation. This is well-executed and unlike their previous album, does not feel off-the-cuff; attention has been paid to making these songs flow well and stay together. However, like most djent and textural music, it’s almost binary and thus is exhausting from a mental perspective. If you can imagine Celtic Frost Monotheist combined with Meshuggah’s None and Coroner’s Grin, you have a good idea of what Pestilence is doing these days. As an improvement over the past, Doctrine gives me hope, but I still think these guys are best when making complex, twisted, ingenious old school death metal.
Antidote – Thou Shalt Not Kill
NYHC came in on the punk scale halfway to thrash, being very much based in the more extreme school of UK hardcore. This album of short, straight-up, anthemic songs belts out a paean to working class existence in New York by combining the catchy choruses of punk with the fast, nearly technical riffs of later UKHC. Vocals are eerily similar to what Kurt Brecht did in the same year with DRI, a youthful voice shouting itself breathless and yet managing to capture cadence and through it, the hook of the chorus. Guitars are minimal but pick more challenging rhythms in order to underscore the chorus and its lead-up in the fast ranted verse lyrics, giving these songs like early speed metal an insanely infectious quality that borders on frustration with how the message bores into the brain. This is almost like the Circle Jerks sped up 4x with the middle class faux angst translated into rage at the three-block area surrounding the squat.
Atman – Like Pure Unawaited Magic
This CD would stand a chance if it weren’t so goofy. The intrusion of operatic vocals at random times with maximum pretense and minimal musicality pretty much kills its chances of ever having people want to listen to it, but underneath it are good, simple minor key melodic riffs like early Abigor or Emperor simplified. Huge parts of this CD feel pasted together, as if the artist kept creating as many different elements as possible to extend a song, and many of the melodic riffs are too similar in structure for this to really take the top shelf, but it has moments that match the intensity described by the title.
Evil – Pagan Fury 1994-1996
Probably the only band that can compete with Ildjarn for turning the obvious into the profound, Evil are high-speed pneumatic drums with a languid bass following searingly distorted, simple riffs that rise into sublime three-note melodies. While this is well executed, this is all they have to offer; if you like Ildjarn and Blood, you’ll like this because it sounds like a cross between the two. Songs generally feature two grindcore riffs and a melodic black metal riff to unite them, which produces a sense of high energy potential flowing into a melancholic panorama that encompasses the moods previous.
Aosoth – III
The only underground trend to counter metalcore can probably be blamed on Thorns and the emergence of the 7-string guitar. In this style, open chords or oddball movable chords are strummed in quick sweeps to produce a wash of sonic possibility; this can give great power to a quality song, like the “sonic cathedral” approach of some classical composers, but with a directionless series of riffs it falls apart like later Mayhem. Aosoth strides the line, sometimes sounding like Portal or Molested in the harmonic possibilities unveiled, and other times sounding like an avantgarde acoustic band that somehow got the wrong guitar rig. The tempos and riff styles are compelling but songs often do not pick a direction other than restating their theme, which leaves us stranded in the sonic wash between what could be and what is.
Denial Fiend – They Rise
These guys have a unique intepretation of old school death metal. Imagine proto-death like early Master, but instead of faster tremolo riffs, the kind of muted strum chugging that distinguished bands like Exodus predominates during verses. A Misfits influence rides the vocals and the hookish rhythms of the choruses, but otherwise this is 100% straight-ahead metal. Like many of the caveman bands from the past, no silly punches are pulled here and it is refreshingly free of ornamentation and other artifice for the sake of disguising its basic simplicity. Percussion keeps energy high by creating a forward momentum that catches itself in tidy pockets that drive it forward like tempo changes; vocals are a hoarse yell with the riot delivery of Demolition Hammer or Exhorder.
Nunslaughter – Demoslaughter
This primitive, rhythmic metal is hard to justify as anything but five-note modal stripes bent into song through riffcraft, but for the old school primal style this band is at the top of the curve. Vocal rhythms and the ratio of riff rhythms used in transition resemble Deicide; some riff patterns approximate early Death; many of the more sing-song riffs evoke early Mayhem. Nunslaughter on some level understand the “soul” of death metal, in which a riff puzzle constantly expands in context like a winding journey that descends into profundity. Nunslaughter, despite having many holdover elements from early punk and radio-friendly heavy metal, understand this essence of underground metal. The result is primitive, at types awkward, but represents a surge of energy toward expressing an idea of such magnitude that among the 56 tracks offered here, much as on other micro-omnibus albums like Impulse to Destroy, Expositions Prophylaxe and From Enslavement to Obliteration, a complete vision of humanity and where it stands regarding its ultimate purpose is expressed.
Shrinebuilder – Shrinebuilder
To kill a darling, raise the knife above your head; there is no point pretending contrition or doubt. While sludge and stoner doom metal are the darlings of the industry at this point because they appeal to legions of new fans bleeding over from rock, they are not the heir to the throne of metal. In fact, they are taking it in the opposite direction back down the evolutionary ladder, a man devolving to chimpanzee to mouse. Since the inception of metal, industry has sought in vain for a way to adopt the rebellious image of metal and slap it on music basically indistinguishable from other rock; this way, they maximize profit by using interchangeable parts for the music and handling the “genre” through studio fakery. This album could easily be a U2 album. It is three-riff rock music, with one each for verse and chorus and one for the bridge or jam interlude, and as a result it relies heavily on repetition and basic harmony through which a “melody” (fragment of melodic scale + pentatonics) rambles. If you can imagine early Crowbar and later Eyehategod mixed up with some Sonic Youth or Nirvana, that roughly describes what you get here. It probably helps to be stoned so you have a short memory and cannot notice how repetitive this album is.
NYC Mayhem – Discography
It is not difficult to see why metalheads loved this band. Like Agnostic Front and the Cro-Mags, these guys are a hardcore band that shied away from the simplified rock songs of most punk bands and instead went for metal-like riffs, thrash tempos and a brutally post-human view of the world. Riffs are phrasal and have actual shape, unlike hardcore riffs which were boxier; there are plenty of moments that resemble Slayer or Destruction. These alternate with punk-style riffs returning to a single chord for stability instead of remaining open-ended or slammingly conclusive. Vocals fit the hardcore style of a masculine shout without the bassy tone of later voices. Song composition is closest to early COC, with an effort made to distinguish each song by use of varied structure and introductions, interludes and unique changes in tempo. They write great riffs, but never manage to keep momentum in each song, which causes a process of acceleration followed by breakdown that is somewhat exhausting to the listener. The decrepit garage production merges sounds together into an organic whole, showing us a window into history with grit on the edges.
Calciferum – The Beast Inside
Inside of this old school styled album lurks a new school sensibility: a random collection of riffs, vocals taking over from guitars as the primary instrument, bouncy rhythms and a theatrical sensibility imposed on top of the music not emanating from it. It is tempting to like this, but it’s too linear and too random at the same time. Underneath the slamming exterior is a good sense of binary pop, but its vocabulary is limited, which creates the effect of a listener thrown into a washing machine on spin cycle, ratcheted back and forth by a relentless and circular process.
Anu – Opus Funaerum
The intro to this album captures a vision of chaos rising from order that exists only in one other art form, which is structured noise music from Japan. What follows is pleasant black metal that sounds like Kvist and Gorgoroth had a baby. The band tend to make good use of the harmonic minor scale to achieve a lasting atmosphere, and write some pleasant basic riffs. The problem is that atmosphere is all that is offered here, and it is very 1994ish, right before black metal jumped the shark, meaning that there’s no exceptional direction. If you want competent and pleasant music that does not distinguish itself particularly, this will be OK, but this musical elitist requires more.
Agalloch – Marrow of the Spirit
Do you remember positive jazz and lite rock from the 1980s? Hopefully not: it was the crossover between Muzak, or elevator music, and the new jazz fusion and adult rock categories. Industry needed music that it could play in communal areas and not offend anyone, so they took the soul-searching out of jazz and rock and came up with two super-consonant, super-upbeat and uplifting formats that they then used to beat the heart out of us. Post-rock is the new positive jazz (Kenny G) and lite rock (Michael Bolton). However, in order to cater to a new generation of self-pity, the lords of industry have made this both minor-key and self-reflexively super-balanced, so it’s like uplifting music that tells you it’s not your fault and watches Napoleon Dynamite with you. It is impossible to distinguish post-rock from the audience who listen to it, who are indie-rockers and hipsters, or those who have found no meaning in life so they focus on themselves, and accessorizing their personalities with beaucoup “ironic,” “unique” and “different” things. Industry encourages them because they are perfect consumers who will quietly work as web designers their whole lives, stay single and keep buying entertainment products, and despite all their grumbling are only too happy to report to work. Agalloch make an interesting meshing of textures and styles in Marrow of the Spirit, and there are no musical grounds for criticism. Artistically, for all its attempts to be different, the underlying songwriting is more like regular indie rock music and so while it’s “unusual” for metal, it’s actually the usual thing when you look at music as a whole. Summary: Agalloch make great rock music and should drop the metal pretense and just get bigger than Dave Matthews, because their current style panders to insincere people and those so clueless they think novelty in style is more important than clarity and meaning in content.
Triptykon – Eparistera Daimones
Tom G. Warrior, although an artist of great talent, gets sidetracked into trying to “stay current.” This happened to Celtic Frost in the late 1980s, and it now happens with Triptykon, which tries hard to be modern metal with touches of Rammstein and Marilyn Manson yet keeping the underground honest morbidity. This impossible task results in Triptykon dumbing down their music through repetition and really obvious, repetitive choruses that rant out memes in raw form and pound them into our heads. Songwriting is good although directionless because all else has been shoved aside to keep those “catchy” ranty choruses, and some interesting melodies come of this, but I don’t want to listen to it. It’s annoying and reduces consciousness to a background hum because it’s so loud and repetitive. What we loved from Celtic Frost was the atmosphere; Triptykon is the anti-atmosphere. It’s too bad because if Tom G. looked honestly in the mirror, he’d see that he is loved for the quality and content of his music and not its style, so he should get more honest with the style even if it seems 20-30 years out of date. Who cares what the trends are? In three years they’ll be gone along with this album, and in 30 years kids will still be learning to play “Triumph of Death.”
Abraxas – Damnation
Nothing wrong with this band — standard late-model death metal, like Vader crossed with Devourment. Not bad but nothing particularly exciting. Overuse of “intensity” makes this monolithic, like reading a page of zeroes. Like the band named Damnation, it hammers too hard to achieve any kind of variation in which a story or drama could play out, and so the result is like Napalm Death’s “Scum” if the songs had been five minutes instead of ten seconds, and rigid instead of sloppy. Nothing is done wrong here but the whole does not add up to much of enduring power.
Decrepit Birth – Polarity
Someone crossed Cynic’s Focus, Death’s Human and modern technical death metal to get a fruity sounding progressive band embedded in the midst of blast and breakdown. Individual parts are great, the whole is hilarious and absurdly unclear on any kind of direction. In fact, it reminds me of modern society: the salesperson goes through the list and ticks off all that is required, and then it gets passed to the factory floor, where they bolt everything together and hope it flies. The result here is really goofy and entirely misses the grandeur and imagination of metal. Flee.
Bahimiron – Rebel Hymns of Left-Handed Terror
Against all odds, this band have reinvented themselves with a new sound. This new styling works because the band have both stripped-down what they do and focused on making every bit count. The songwriting sounds hasty but as if a very deliberate focus were placed behind each piece, so that the band knew what they needed and fought until they found it, even if it went rather quickly. Combining the Demoncy “Joined in Darkness” cum Profanatica “Profanatitas de Domonatia” sound of fuzzy, foreboding, inverse-march riffs with the remnants of the original Gorgoroth-inspired sound that propelled this band into focus, albeit with bits of the Southern style (Down, Eyehategod) and classic death metal mixed in, the new Bahimiron makes fast songs in the style of hardcore punk but gives them a uniquely metal vibe. They aim at being incomplete; the songs themselves are complete, but the emotional concept they express is one of partial completion. Plenty of speed and power in these riffs; no particularly groundbreaking variations occur, and the noisy lead guitar (Watain “Rabid Death’s Curse” style) creates no enduring atmosphere. Even the EP itself tapers off, bringing in a few speed metal riffs and even modern metal influences toward the end (blame Krieg’s latest) but the riffs wrap up in hard-hitting songs that are not scattered random thoughts and as a result, create a memorable listen. Glad to see these guys returning on a high note.
22 CommentsTags: abraxas, Agalloch, antidote, anu, aosoth, atman, bahimiron, calciferum, decrepit birth, denial fiend, evil, nunslaughter, nyc mayhem, pestilence, sadistic metal reviews, shrinebuilder, triptykon, vallenfyre
One of our users, Devolved, has launched his own radio show called Are You Morbid? It’s old school underground metal (OSUM) with dark ambient. He will be on again tonight. We recorded the show last week, but this week, we need some help. Can any of you record this live stream from 6-8 PM PST tonight?
Here are some basic instructions. All you need to do is
This will record whatever is playing on your computer. Save the file as an MP3 and upload.
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