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Metallica brings metal and classical closer together

by Brett Stevens on January 27, 2014

For their performance at the Grammy awards, Metallica paired up with Chinese pianist Lang Lang for a performance of their dramatic protest song “One” originally from …And Justice for All.

According to VH1, the bond was formed in just 45 minutes of practice time the day before the performance. As you can see below, the result was smoothly integrated despite this lack of extensive practice.

Metal and classical share a defining trait in that both use narrative composition, or knitting together riffs to develop a theme over the course of a piece. This is in contrast to pop music, which is essentially binary, formed of a verse-chorus pair and a “contrast” via a bridge or turnaround. Thus Metallica’s knotwork of riffs and Lang Lang’s melodic development through structured composition are entirely compatible.

The question remains whether metal will adopt this outlook as anything other than a surface aesthetic. If it does, expect metal songs to get more densely riffy and longer with contorted structures like progressive rock, which derived its song structuring principles from classical as well.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c58EfMhd2YE

16 Comments

Tags: Classical, Heavy Metal, metallica, Speed Metal

Extreme Noise Terror – A Holocaust in Your Head

by Mike Alexander on January 26, 2014

Avoiding the pitfalls of repetition that normally afflict later punk-derived albums, A Holocaust in Your Head is a fire spitting, unhinged, high speed high intensity crust album. That is, if you ignore the first and last tracks, which are a political statement not a song and an insult track to the band S.O.D., respectively.

Extreme Noise Terror rip thourgh hardcore punk and primordial death metal riffs with reckless abandon. Dual singers give some variety to the vocal patterns. Though the political rhetoric in the lyrics can be tiring on some tracks, the music speaks for itself, portraying something quite like the album title suggests: a droning of madness with explosive texture within suggesting a writhing, disturbed and out of control chain reaction just under the surface.

Admittedly none of the musicians here demonstrate great instrumental prowess, but the sheer force of the music and performance makes this entirely irrelevant. It’s as if these fellows channeled their entire frustrated essences into this album; most punk albums get boring half way through, but by sheer energy alone A Holocaust in Your Head remains intense throughout. For the most part this album uses simple song constructions, but interestingly enough there is deviation from verse-chorus-verse format in some songs, which is rare for punk music.

Bands following and contemporary to this group were heavily influenced by Extreme Noise Terror’s hyper speed crust, which became a primordial influence on the rising grindcore movement. Even years after that genre branching and the death of hardcore, A Holocaust in Your Head remains not just essential listening from a historical perspective, but a thoroughly enjoyable musical experience that reveals a world of insanity lurking all around us still.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLMfoj-DuZU

5 Comments

Tags: crust, drone, extreme noise terror, Grindcore, Hardcore

Heavy Metal and the Communal Experience conference reveals topics

by Jon Wild on January 25, 2014

Last year, we ran an article covering the announcement that the University of Puerto Rico and the Puerto Rico Heavy Metal Studies group will be hosting a day-long conference at the University of Puerto Rico on March 5th. We can now announce that further information has been released, covering what the speakers will be discussing.

Billing itself as a conference focused on contemplation of the social aspect of heavy metal, the conference will discuss areas such as the ethics and politics of heavy metal, judged from a background based in philosophy.

It’s difficult to formulate a judgment on the philosophical orientation of heavy metal as a whole, however what all strands of metal share is a sense of meaning and purpose in something which is outside of what is comfortable to the post-1960’s general populace – this can be considered the “heavy” within the term “heavy metal”. From proto-metal bands such as Black Sabbath scaring hippies with a reminder that getting stoned doesn’t solve humanity’s problems, to the present day; the genre manifests something which is misplaced in time, leading many within the genre to develop in interest in the past, whether that be politically or musically. How this relates to the present is an engaging topic of discussion, if chosen.

Another realm of discussion will focus on the preservation of the history of heavy metal, especially within the medium of visual art. While the music has always taken primary importance, metal has a long tradition of valuing album art, logos, and quality live photos. The conference will ask the audience for participation in a yet-to-be unveiled project for collecting and displaying these resources.

Interestingly, there will also be a “women’s studies” discussion in relation to metal. This is relevant as it represents the inclusion of heavy metal into an already-established field of inquiry, which is respected within the current academic milieu – perhaps indicating that heavy metal is beginning to be viewed as a genre serious enough to be considered for inclusion among other fields, such as theater or literature.

Those interested in keeping up to date with the conference can visit its Facebook page. Niall Scott, a speaker at the event, released a short video detailing the discussion, which can be viewed below.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3DuXY6rSqg

1 Comment

Tags: academia, Heavy Metal, metal academia

Sadistic Metal Reviews 01-24-14

by Staff on January 24, 2014

The Manatee: nature’s most useful animal.

What are Sadistic Metal Reviews? It’s when we decide that good things should happen to good people and bad things should happen to boring music. Most music is either imitating a trend, or totally without purpose or content, and that makes it boring. We can find trends and purposeless noise anywhere, for free. We are cruel to the stupid, and periodically, find something worthwhile to hold up above the river of feces…

Adrenaline Mob – Men of Honor

It’s grandad’s heavy metal, kids, but with a rhythmic kick and Alice in Chains vocals. A Pantera influence in the bouncy riffing represents a modern retrospective on glam and heavy metal from the 1970s. Droning diminished scale choruses and a similar riffs stacked in a way that is both not random and not song development fleshes out the mix. Songwriting emphasizes the Big Pop Industry tendencies toward hooky choruses and distracting, somewhat aggressive verses with emphasis on stitching out the chorus rhythm in as many forms as possible, so in case you missed it the previous sixty times it will pop up again to remind you that you’re listening to “music.” People have made heavy metal version of power pop before (like Yes’ 90125) but they aimed for quality; this aims for conformity with someone snapping their fingers and being ironic behind the scenes. Warmed-over 1970s riffs 1990s influences make this a classic record company attempt to make the present generations worship the cast-offs of the past. Despite attempts to be edgy, this is a museum piece from the Hall of Boredom.

Disfiguring the Goddess – Deprive

There’s no death metal to be found on this supposedly “brutal death metal” release, nor any concept of songwriting. Choppy, percussive riffs are thrown next to nu-mu thudding in random sequences that do nothing but “groove.” It comes off as variations of rhythm guitar picking exercises played on an 8-string guitar and stitched together in ProTools. Like most of these rhythms, it’s only a matter of time before the “out there” becomes the predictable, so there’s no promise in these flights of fancy, only a return to something as mundane as the cycling rhythm of a diesel truck engine with a loose belt. Occasionally, an actual riff gets played for almost three seconds before more inconsequential rhythm chugging comes in to pacify the indie/Hot Topic demographic who use this stuff as a surrogate to nurture relationships with other idiots by sharing an interest in “wacky muzak” that makes them “different and unique”, but under the surface, is Korn with tremolo picking.

Alehammer – Barmageddon

Life is an IQ test. Your choices determine really how smart you are. If you picked this band, you failed. These guys should hang up the electrics, strap on acoustics and do children’s television. This is sing-song music for people without direction in life. Even when I was a clueless 14-year-old buying his first albums with grubby pennies I would not have considered this dung-heap of bad musical stereotypes. It sounds like the kind of stuff that characters at Disneyland would sing, or maybe a bad world music band from the background of a car commercial. It’s catchy vocal rhythms over guitars that basically serve as slaves to pounding out the catchy vocal rhythm, but it’s repetitive catchiness. It’s all hook to the degree that there’s no sweet spot, only cloying repetition. Most bands of this nature are basically bad heavy metal with jingle music at its core. Barmageddon is basically a grindcore take on the kind of simplistic fare that got called “Pirate Metal” recently. I propose a new name: Headshot Metal. If you get caught listening to this, you should be shot through the face with a high-powered rifle. It’s an insult to anyone in the genre who tries to get anything right.

Lamb of God – New American Gospel

Upon viewing this title, the prospective listener might be intrigued to ask “what is this new gospel?” Answer: the gospel of insincere mediocrity. Half-assed guitar riffs combine the worst elements of a moron’s interpretation of hardcore (autistic caveman rhythms) and speed metal (obvious riff sequences) with a fruity veneer of constipated teenager vocals. Tracks start nowhere and lead nowhere, with nothing connecting one moment to the next; a stream of irrelevance. Expect plenty of repetition which Lamb of God, like all metalcore bands, tries to disguise by being as random as possible. You know who else uses that strategy? Nu-metal bands. This is basically a kissing cousin to nu-metal anyway. It’s music designed for distracted teenagers to distract themselves further until it’s time for a lifetime career in something brainless to match their braindead approach to life. How anybody with above a single-digit IQ could enjoy this escapes me. Sadly for all of us, this title is accurate: the future of America is a populace that considers this a valuable piece of music.

Anal Blasphemy / Forbidden Eye – The Perverse Worship of Satanic Sins

Anal blasphemy starts off with three tracks of simple death metal with a strong melodic hook. It is however rather straightforward in structure which leaves creates a sense of uniformity. Riffs are very similar. The final track uses a melodic lead-picked counter-riff which adds some depth but ultimately these songs are one step removed from their beginnings, so despite the compelling rhythm and melodic hooks they might not survive repeated listens. Forbidden Eye produces a more lush approach to melodic metal which is clearly in the droning black metal camp, but avoids the pure sugar-coated repetition common to the Eastern European variant. Its weakness is that there is not much in the way of a unique voice; we’ve heard these tropes before and recognize the song patterns well. If you can imagine a Dawn or Naglfar approach with more intensive drumming that is roughly what you’ll get here, well-executed but undistinctive both melodically and stylistically.

Descend – Wither

The rock ‘n’ roll industry is a successful industry that attracts players who are highly professional. They know what the product is, and how to do do the minimum to achieve it; this practice, otherwise known as shaving margins, is based on the idea that the other guy will cut his costs to the minimum too in order to both lower price to make the product more competitive and maximize his own profit. If two guys make a widget, and one does it for five bucks less, that’s pure profit. In the same way, rock ‘n’ roll is based on fast turnover and following current trends so you can catch the media wave. I hear death metal is big now, like trendy. This album attempts a facial similarity to death metal with the whispery vocals of Unique Leader bands and lots of runaway blast beats followed by metalcore riffs, but after a while, they drop this and out come to the jazzy riffs based on a scale bent to a series of offbeats of offbeats in a complex pattern, and the soft-strummed ballad chord progressions and melodic hooks. The problem is that the guitar rhythms, like those of the vocals in hip-hop, are based on subdividing a rhythm and thus rapidly become highly repetitive, both internally and between songs. The result is that it all all fades into the background, as should this rather unambitious and directionless release.

Reciprocal – New Order of the Ages

A “thinking man” band name written in a sterile font and a “politically informed” album cover. Is this more metalcore in death metal clothing? You bet. While this band is claiming influence from Deeds of Flesh and other Unique Leader bands for legitimacy, this has more in common with Necrophagist or The Black Dahlia Murder. Mechanical groove riffs are “spiced up” with sweep arpeggios and generic Slaughter of the Soul riffs appear over blast beats for the “brutality”. This is boring music with nothing to offer. Perhaps musicians this good need a better concept to work with than shouting out Alex Jones podcasts over Guitar World lessons from metalcore guitarists played at 220 bpm. I couldn’t tell the difference between this album and any other modern tek-deaf release. If these guys were to spend less time on conspiracy websites and more time thinking about why people still turn to their old Morbid Angel and Immolation albums instead of these tek-deaf bands (or how to structure their music to not be a series of discontinuous parts), maybe they could create something useful. Otherwise, this is Origin with propaganda attached looking to steal some time from metal fans while keeping Xanax addled brofist D&B homeys (Rings of Saturn fans) satisfied with more inconsequential ADHD music which will be forgotten a week later.

Caliban – Ghost Empire

Occasionally I’m amazed that something actually got signed because it’s so terrible and then later I see it on the bestseller list. The taste of the herd will never fail to shock and amaze, mainly because what they like is simple: (1) the same old stuff but (2) in some radical new format that’s easy to see through so they can appreciate the sameness of it. Modern society is about anonymity and personal convenience, so why not music that you can project yourself upon, that requires you to know or feel absolutely nothing except the most transient of emotions? Caliban have it for. Ranty Pantera verses over djent-inspired harmonically-immobile riffs lead to sung alt-rock style choruses with lots of hook and lengthy vocalizations, but essentially no melodic development. As a result this is super-repetitive in that its song structure is circular to the point of linearity and the songs at their core consist of two-note clusters in riffs stacked up against four-note chorus vocal lines. Every now and then they get tricky and play rhythm games with riffs that were well-known before Metallica formed. The main factor that kills me is the repetition. It’s as if the whole album is a conspiracy of details designed to hide the fact that it’s basically the words of a drunk, repeating himself unsteadily and then doubling his volume and saying the same thing. This might be good music to listen while doing laundry or some other task that numbs the brain because the effect of this music is to validate tedium, repetition and simplistic pounding. Unless your brain fell out long ago, avoid this reeking turd.

Blutkult – Die letzten deutschen Ritter

I always wondered what would happen to the formal nationalists in metal. We knew that founding bands like Bathory, Darkthrone, Burzum, Mayhem, Immortal, et al were nationalistic in the sense of national pride and perhaps more. But it’s a leap from that to connect with the organized far-right parties and mentality, and for a long time, NSBM seemed like it would remain in that world. Then hipsters started like Arghoslent and Burzum and so now being a Nazi is a “lifestyle choice” like being vegan or buying a Prius… the hardcore nationalist music has changed too, as this album from Blutkult shows us. It’s a three-way split between the old Skrewdriver-styled sentimental punk music, Renaissance Faire styled Celtic-y noodly melodic music, and the droning of punk-influenced black metal such as Absurd. As someone of profoundly anti-racist and egalitarian character, I find this to be alarmingly catchy and emotional. Die letzten deutschen Ritter brings out feelings of hope in me, and I don’t like it. It’s like a surge of elegance and an old world emerging from the ruins of this one. But that makes me uneasy, as do the Wehrmacht soldiers on the cover, the black suns and the vocal samples that sound like the man with the funny moustache himself. Regardless, this is where Graveland and Absurd have been trying to go for years. If they got rid of the stupid spoken intros and just focused on letting the music rip, this might be a really compelling release.

Amoral – Wound Creations

While their current output is being lambasted for being radio friendly rock/metal, this “technical death metal” debut album is given unwarranted praise for being some kind of masterwork. Too bad this is just metalcore. Chugging groove riffs played in mechanical stop-start sequences make room for AOR “extreme” stadium metal melodies like Soilwork, and little else. While the playing is adept, the music is annoying and makes their latest album sound favorable by comparison for being honest commercial radio muzak that’s not congested with unnecessary ornamentation and fake aggression. If Nevermore made a mash up between Soilwork at it’s most commercial and Meshuggah at it’s most mechanical while Chimaira make MTV edits out of the recordings, you might end up with an album like this: sub-par music, but at least they know how to play. Too bad they sound like any other generic metalcore band signed to Century Media circa the 2000s with growl vocals (done in the metalcore faux-aggressive style). A terrible excuse for metal that without a doubt brings great shame to Finland.

2 Comments

Tags: adrenaline mob, alehammer, amoral, Anal Blasphemy, Black Metal, blutkult, caliban, death metal, descend, Disfiguring the Goddess, forbidden eye, Heavy Metal, lamb of god, reciprocal, sadistic metal reviews

Stormbound Books bridges academic and popular writing about metal

by Brett Stevens on January 23, 2014

As people who enjoy heavy metal in all its forms and wish it to succeed, we keep an eye out for upcoming metal journalism and history projects that have a realistic yet spirited portrayal of the art form and its origins. One such project was , written by author Salva Rubio, who has now launched his newest venture, Stormbound Books.

Unlike most metal publishers so far, Stormbound Books aims to bridge the gulf between academic metal writing including histories, and the type of popular metal literature that exists for the music fan whose interest is primarily in the music and not the study of it. Read on for a description of the publisher, its team, and how it plans to conquer the world of metal journalism.

What will Stormbound Books offer that is not currently available to metalheads?

Shortly we will start offering what we call “Blast Reads” (studies longer than articles and shorter than regular books) dealing with specific points such as the influence of Gothic Rock music in Extreme Metal or the presence of Satan in Western culture and its culmination on Extreme Metal. We think that up to now, no other publisher offers these kind of studies on Metal.

On the other hand, we will publish books dealing with larger subjects, and we will offer the English-speaking readers translations such as “Extreme Metal” by Salva Rubio, which has gotten great reviews in the Spanish speaking world, or “Slow Metal”, an study in doom, drone, sludge, etc currently in the works by the same author.

Who do you think are the people who will be interested in your texts?

We think there is a wide array of metalheads that can be interested in our books, starting with the newcomers (we will have some introductory guides for them, such as “Opening the Tomb: An Introduction to Extreme Metal,” “Extreme Metal Appreciation” or “Into the Abyss: Introduction to Death Metal”).

But also, we think experienced metalheads will find studies of their interest, such as the aforementioned “Diabolus in Arte: Satan in Western Culture and Extreme Metal” and other thematic studies currently in the works, such as “The Universe of H.P. Lovecraft in Extreme Metal” and the tentatively called “Battle Cries: War themes in Western Culture and Extreme Metal” which will be finished in the next months. Also, we are very open to the idea of publishing other authors. Check our guidelines and let us know of your projects.

You have an unusual business model involving “giving away” texts and asking people to pay for them later. Can you tell us how this will work?

This is actually a very common strategy in the e-book market: we plan to freely give away some titles to use them as promotion samples and we aim to have interesting “special sales days” in which we will drop the prices and give freebies for a limited time. This is a rather difficult thing to do in the “paper book” industry, but it’s really manageable in the e-book industry.

If you are interested in receiving these freebies and promotions, we sincerely advise you to join our mailing list, since it will be our main tool for communicating them.

Reviewers, bloggers, journalists, etc interested in getting copies for review should contact us here, making sure to tell us which magazines / zines / webzines you write for.

You can find us also in Facebook and Twitter.

What’s the background on Stormbound books’ staff, and how did all of them get involved with metal?

We like to think of ourselves as one of the many small, underground record labels in Metal (only that we will publish books instead of records), created by a musician (writer, in this case) to distribute our own, and others’ material. This is our ethos and of way of working.

Right now, Stormbound Books is comprised of me, Salva Rubio, author of the majority of the books to be published for now. I am into Extreme Metal since the early nineties, I am an Art Historian, I have played in a couple of metal bands and I am the author of the book Metal Extremo: 30 Años de Oscuridad (1981-2011) which is currently running at its 4th Edition in the Spanish speaking world. Should you want to know more about me or the book, check my profile at DeathMetal.Org.

As for my partner, Jimena Díaz Ocón, she is mainly into Black Metal and Industrial and she is a graphic designer, layout artist and website / book programmer, so we are a really small yet complete team.

We are fortunate enough to have an experienced writer such as Brett Stevens from DeathMetal.Org (as you know, “the net’s oldest and longest-running metal site”) taking care of the copy editing and style correction.

Do you think we’re at a turning point for heavy metal texts, such that there’s more interest than say ten years ago?

That is correct, I definitely think there is more interest because most of the texts published until now about Extreme Metal have been written mainly from the journalistic or critical points of view, but there are many cultural fields (literature, aesthetics, philosophy, politics) that can uncover many interesting points in Extreme Metal and Heavy Metal and which fans and readers are willing to discover and discuss. That is our goal.

Salva Rubio: author, screenwriter and metalhead. From his website.

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Tags: extreme metal, metal journalism, metal writing, salva rubio, stormbound books

In defense of elitism

by Cory Van der Pol on January 22, 2014

One good way to make a name as a writer is to disguise a begging the question fallacy as an article. That’s what happened with “Why Are Black Metal Fans Such Elitist Assholes?”, a new piece staining the otherwise semi-respectable site Vice.com.

The article starts like a bad joke: a writer walks into a bar in Brooklyn. He hears people talking about black metal. He suggests Deafheaven and everyone there, including the bartenders, tell him that’s not black metal. He then omits vital information about this bar, knowing that all of us would immediately gang-rush it in support, and goes on a lengthy tirade that uses a logical fallacy. The begging the question fallacy relies on setting up a false association, and then arguing against the object of that association with what it’s associated with. It’s like this: “Knowing the connections between black metal and airborne AIDS, it’s unbelievable to me that anyone would support black metal, unless they really like people writhing in the street from autoimmune diseases on the wind.”

The actual argument in the article is here, six paragraphs down:

There is a level of inherent elitism in every special interest group. It’s just maybe more pronounced and ingrained in something as fringe as black metal is today. This is probably the same way Sex Pistols fans felt when Green Day and the Offspring blew up in the nineties. However, at some point you need to just accept that the thing that you love may get more popular or have elements of it co-opted by other genres—and if you take a step back, that’s part of what makes music or any other art form valuable to the culture. The conflict occurs when you overlook the fact that nothing exists in a vacuum and in order for anything to thrive it has to be identifiable to people on some level, otherwise it’s just an abstract mass floating aimlessly through the conceptual ether.

What he’s done here is cleverly re-define “elitism” to mean fear of other genres using black metal’s technique. However, the example he began the article with is that of other bands pretending to be black metal. Not a single elitist has argued against bands appropriating black metal technique, so long as they do it in their same camp. The point of elitism is to keep out impostors.

Impostors, you say? Yes: genres form because small groups break away from what everyone else is doing. These small groups then do something in an unorthodox way, and it works. The large group, fearing that it has been left behind, then creates a bandwagon effect where they all start imitating the small group. If the small group wishes to survive, it needs to oust the bandwagon-jumpers and keep itself internally consistent.

This is why many groups are elitist and not just in music. They are trying to preserve their way of doing things which is different from what the herd wants to do, while the herd wants to appropriate the mantle of these rebellious groups while continuing — underneath the aesthetic — to do exactly what the herd always does. In this case, they want to dumb down black metal into emo/indie/shoegaze/rock. That’s why people hate Deafheaven.

It’s not popular to defend elitism because elitism itself is under a similar attack. The herd would love to consider themselves elitists, but in the time-honored tradition of morons everywhere, they get it wrong. To them, elitism means finding the most obscure band possible and browbeating the rest of us for not knowing about it. It’s like a shibboleth or entry code to the cool kids group. But that group only appeals to hipsters, and those are actually irrelevant, since they produce nothing except low-run memes for each other.

Actual elitism is defense of the values of a genre. Not any band and definitely not every band can be black metal. However, the anti-elitists would like to argue that just about anything can be black metal by, you know, wishing it so. That amounts to obliteration by assimilation and adulteration, and would terminate the black metal genre. It seems that like this writer, most anti-elitists aren’t actually black metal fans, and what they want isn’t black metal, but the usual music that they like to be labeled as black metal… so they can be elitist (but humble) about it.

31 Comments

Tags: Black Metal, elitism, hipsters, orthodoxy

Dead Infection – A Chapter of Accidents (2002)

by Brett Stevens on January 21, 2014

The simpler the music is, the harder it is to execute in an interesting way. The best of grindcore rises to this challenge by inventing ways of making texture expand upon a simple riff idea. Like grandmasters Carcass before them, Dead Infection use a gurgling bass deluge to convey a hidden complexity.

A Chapter of Accidents benefits from its concept, which is anchored in lyrics, and gives to each song a different set of needs because each is a short narrative or story relating an unfortunate and often miserably ironic incident. This bends the song structure to the story, which consists of a setup, a quandary, a revelation and a conclusion, and thus allows the band to adapt its grinding riffs to a simple but not simplistic process of development. As in most grindcore, the main riff repeats with interruptions; some of these are offsets, which are like counterpoints formed of different shapes or rhythms, but others are deviations to small motifs which represent parts of the story. As a result, most of what you hear when listening to Dead Infection is one powerful, thunderous and bounding riff that breaks for contrary views, thought-detours and development by layering, where drums or guitars either double-time or vary texture to add complexity.

Where Carcass is slower and is based on what sounds like 1930s-1950s music translated into power chords and made ironic with grotesque lyrics, Dead Infection is more like a troupe of mercenaries backpacking through the mountains on their way to set up an assassination or coup in that it is self-contained and for its own purposes only. It sometimes plays with riff motifs from the past, like heavy metal riffs reduced to their simplest essence, but essentially it is its own thing: a vocabulary of grindcore adapted to this type of worldview. Combine that with the vocals that sound like a dog guarding the gates of hell, and you have a formidable but thought-provoking package.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8oASEW0QZlI

4 Comments

Tags: dead infection, Grindcore, narrative, review

Interview with Dom from MetalRecusants.com

by Brett Stevens on January 20, 2014

Photo: Paradise Lost from a MetalRecusants.com article, by Vivien Varga.

Online resources for metal pose a problem. On one hand, smaller entities tend to dry up and blow away as their members move on in life and get tired of paying hosting. On the other, large centralized resources are quickly gamed by industry and dominating by small in-groups. Thus the post-modern metalhead always has an eye out for new resources.

A recent entrant in this field is Metal Recusants, a semi-unorthodox site known for its wise-ass reviews and scathing commentary on the metal scene. We were fortunate to be able to get in some words with Dom, head reviewer and site founder, on his activity and the appeal of Metal Recusants in a time of increasing metal information overload.

What’s a “recusant,” why did you pick the term, and how does it describe what you do?

“Recusant,” similarly to “non-conformist,” is a term taken from English history. Recusants were Catholics in England who did not convert to the new Anglican religion. I thought of this term because I was looking for something similar to non-conformism. As you wrote on your site, metalheads do not conform easily and that is the message I want to pass on with this name. I think it fits in perfectly with our mission to promote less-known “underground” music but also in describing the “underground” way we write in and organise ourselves.

Our aim is to not only feature the most obscure metal band that no one knows about but also to provide a balance of the less-known acts with the better-known ones. Additionally, there are many opinions, different tastes and different writing styles that people have. I aim to highlight this with our site by not having strict writing guidelines. Apart from the way our articles are formatted I do not ask our writers to write in a certain style. I do not want MetalRecusants to become the next fruitless mainstream metal magazine in which you cannot easily tell the difference between reviews apart from the album name and the rating.

In many cases they are all written in the same way, most commonly in the third person the writer distances himself/herself from the music and gives an authoritative opinion of the music… Therefore, I do not ask our writers to write in the first or third person, I do not tell them to write in British or American English, I do not ask them to write “death metal” in capitals or small letters. Moreover, I do not ignore genres or sub-genres which I may not like. For instance, I hate metalcore but you can see that we have featured that sub-genre quite a few times. There is no one single music taste which is superior or better, we all have different styles whether it is the way we write or the music we choose to listen to. No one on this planet is a “metal guru” who tells you what you should listen to. We write our opinions in our own way and we let you decide whether you want to check that band out or ignore it.

“Recusant” is also an obscure term, a word not used in everyday language, and, hence, whether someone remembers the word correctly or not, he or she will remember that that is the site with the weird name – which is actually the majority of people, haha!

Apparently MetalRecusants.com started after you’d been writing other reviews. Where did you write, and what was the reaction?

I did not have any experience writing for other websites or magazines prior to starting this site. I have only been writing personal reviews on my last.fm journal after attending gigs and discovering new music. Therefore, the audience was usually my family and friends as well as the odd last.fm user who would stumble upon my writing. The reaction from my family and friends was great, everyone supported me, especially my parents and siblings. I always have the urge to share the stuff I discover if not by writing articles then by sending out emails or messages. On some occasions some friends and family learnt about new bands through me while on other I was just being a nuisance by filling their inboxes with messages.

Do you consider yourselves “elitists”? What is an elitist? How is that different from a snob, poseur, scenester and hipster?

Not at all. As I mentioned before, even though I am the one taking most of the big decisions for MetalRecusants, I still feature music which I may not like but my writers like and want to write about. Since my aim is to feature all kinds of metal (and non-metal with our “31 Flavors” series) music and I do not decide what music is featured by just looking at how the band dresses or if they are labelled as metalcore or black metal, I can safely say that I do not consider MetalRecusants as elitist.

What is an elitist? In metal, the most common term I came across of an elitist person is someone who listens to only the most obscure underground metal – usually death and black – and hates anything else unless it is an old band which had an impact on the metal scene.

I think elitists have many parallels with snobs, poseurs, scenesters and hipsters. They certainly tend to follow a certain limited type of music while ignoring other types. However, poseurs, snobs, scenesters and hipsters may be doing it more in order to show off and fit into a scene. This happens a lot in metal as well but I think the “elitism”, “hipsterism” and “scenesterism” in metal is much more than just showing off. It is a community in which you share the music you listen to with like-minded people.

That is why going to small club metal shows is my favourite activity because the atmosphere is very intimate and makes you feel like at home. Wherever you may find a metalhead, you straight away have something to talk about – you may not have the same tastes and opinions but who does? Metalheads may seem to be elitist but I think it happens in many cases because they have found what they like, they learnt which labels, magazines and venues they can rely on. They feel comfortable with that and I think that is perfectly healthy as long as you keep your mind open of course and do not start following blindly these institutions – something which unfortunately is happening in metal. Sometimes I think commercialism is taking over and some people are becoming victims of it by following things blindly. Sorry, I am straying away from the main topic so I will just stop here!

Do you treat other genres with the same outlook? Is heavy metal different from other genres, with — dare I say it — heavy metal “exceptionalism” such that it merits different treatment?

I always used to (and still do) compare heavy metal to classical music. I do that because when I was crazily into Iron Maiden at the age of 12-13, I would compare their three guitars and all the layers of their music to an orchestra. Being brought up with a variety of music, going to music school in the afternoons almost every day, caused me to draw parallels with classical music. The more I listened to stuff like Beethoven, Mozart or Chopin (which is playing almost constantly in my parents’ living room), the more I could compare it to metal music. Since this was happening in my early teens, it made me into a kvlt (or elitist) metalhead with easy justifications that metal is the only “just” genre in popular music because it has such serious and historical roots!

You could say I matured a bit now as in the same day you can see me listening to stuff such as Vader, ABBA, Beethoven, The Doors, Pearl Jam or Immortal. Anything goes really. It’s all music in the end. To answer your question, I do not think metal should be treated differently than other genres but I do think it is as much of a serious genre as classical music and it has a rich and fruitful history. Heavy metal is already not treated the same way as all the other genres, therefore, I believe, the greater society should start treating heavy metal seriously and not as just some teenager’s rebellious phase.

Is metal an art form, entertainment, both or does it straddle the line? Is there a difference between Beethoven’s Fifth or “Journey to the End of the Night” and Miley Cyrus (“Bangerz”) or “Game of Thrones”?

In most cases, I see metal more as an art form rather than entertainment. The fact that the majority of metal musicians create the music first for themselves, they make music based on how they are inspired, makes it art. They do not care how it is received by the greater public. If you start caring how your music is received by the average person, then that means you are not creating art anymore, you are trying to sell a product to a certain audience.

Metal is not all about entertaining people, however, metal creates great music to rock out to on a night out, right?! I know this has been talked about in all documentaries and interviews and it sounds like a cliché but the following is true: metal music is always there with you and for you. It can make you smile, laugh, cry, feel depressed or be there just as a great soundtrack to getting drunk (or whatever else you might want to poison yourself with). You can only understand this if you truly get into heavy metal by listening to the albums, reading about the bands’ history and going to the shows.

What do you look for in a band that makes you think favorably of them and possibly write a favorable review? Do you treat demo and first album bands differently from established acts on major labels?

There are various things to look out for but I am always up for surprises. Actually, if I listen to a band expecting something totally different and I end up loving it then we have a winner. Nonetheless, for a band to receive a favourable review from me, the music has to reach out to me emotionally and bring me into a certain state of mind. There is no mathematical equation for this really. Some piece of music can reach out more to you than me or the other way around. And here I am talking about myself – I can’t speak for the other writers on our team. They may disagree with me.

Everyone is treated the same by us. Of course, I love to listen to demos and new bands – recently I discovered Dismemberment and we streamed Thunderwar’s debut EP The Birth of Thunder. Because we receive LOADS of requests every week, we end up picking randomly the music we feature. There is only so much we can do since this is not a full-time job for us. Therefore, I would like to aim this to any bands or record labels which got in touch with us and never heard back or did not see their music on our site: please keep getting in touch with us, maybe in a few months we will feature you.

About how many people come through MetalRecusants every day (or month)? Has this gone up over the past year?

The numbers keep increasing every couple months or so. At the moment we have on average 4,000 unique visitors per month. If I remember correctly, half way through or towards the end of 2012, we had some 1,000 visitors, so yeah, the numbers are going up all the time. It is overwhelming when I think that I had literally zero people coming in when I started this as a blog in 2011. The more writers we got, the more bands we featured then the numbers kept going up.

Can you give us your (Dom) background in writing, music and theory? Does your day job/school overlap with your metal identity and life? Do the people in your daytime world understand your nighttime world (metal) or are the two incompatible?

I was brought up with all kinds of music in my family and I went to music school until the age of 19 where I did music theory, history and learnt to play piano and guitar (both classical and electric). My background in writing? I am a History student at the University of Essex in the UK – and currently as an exchange at Purdue University in Indiana, USA – so I guess I get to do a lot of writing like most students do! I think having this website and being a humanities student benefits me both ways because I am now used to writing all the time but it is also improving my writing style.

So far, I did not have to “sacrifice” my metal way of life for my university studies and social life. On the contrary, I will be writing a dissertation about heavy metal behind the Iron Curtain and I have met some wonderful metal (and non-metal as well) people while at university. At Essex there is a Metal Society of which I was an “executive” last year. We did – and they still keep doing – loads of awesome stuff; from organising simple socials at the bar to hosting our own metal nights on campus. I had an amazing time with those people and I am looking forward to going back in June and seeing all of them again as well as meeting any new faces!

MetalRecusants does not rate (assign a numerical value to) a band. Can you go into depth about why you don’t like this method?

That is correct! So people actually notice this? Haha! I always found album ratings ridiculous and especially the ones with decimal points. I mean, seriously, 98.6% or 5.5/10?! Focus on more how the music on the disc in front of you communicates with you, what do you feel when you listen to it? Does it make you smile, laugh or cry? Be creative, let us know how you feel instead of coming up with a weird ranking table. I actually talked about this with the great guys from Cattle Decapitation, we had some laughs about some of the Metal-Archives reviewers.

Music, in most cases, for me is an art form. I do not understand how I can give a numerical value to an album. An album/band rating is misleading, in my opinion, because if someone sees a 3/10 rating, he or she will most probably disregard that album. That person would not have noticed that there might have been something in that album that he/she might have enjoyed. However, if there is no rating, that person can read a balanced and detailed review of the music and come across elements of the music that he/she might have not learnt by looking at the rating. I just find album ratings to be limiting one’s imagination.

Do you think there’s a hazard to over-simplifying ideas expressed in written form? What makes an effective review/article for you?

It can be a hazard but all you have to do is choose the right words. To be honest, sometimes I can’t be bothered to read through a 1,000 word article. Therefore, it is nice to see articles with embedded music players or videos. We have a rule of at least 300 words per article (excluding news posts) on MR which equates to a longer paragraph, which is not that much. As long as the review/article goes into depth about the aforementioned qualities of the music (that we are told whether the writer felt anything while listening to the music) and also given a brief background about the band’s history then it doesn’t matter whether it is a 300 or 2,000 word article.

Can you give us a bit of background on MetalRecusants, i.e. what year it began, how it has grown, and where it’s going in the future?

I started MetalRecusants in March 2011 during my last year of high school on the small Mediterranean island of Cyprus. I somehow started getting more and more familiar and associated with the Cypriot metal scene. A German black metal band, Ctulu, got in touch with me about playing on the island and doing an interview so I gave them the contact details of all the promoters I knew and also contacted them myself to get them to the island – guess what? They played on the island twice so far and I’m now good friends with them, we keep meeting at Wacken Open Air almost every year. Regarding the interview, I decided – after being convinced by members of Cypriot death metal act Vomitile – to start a blog with my friend from school, Christian, since there were no proper active zines in Cyprus; there was only a forum (Cy-Metal) and zines from Greece, nothing truly Cypriot though. As you can see though, I did not make this site into a site about the Cypriot metal scene; I wanted something more than that, haha! There are many great bands in Cyprus though.

As I wrote before, the site has grown because we kept on writing and writing and getting more contributors. It works on a word of mouth basis really. We write a review, a band shares it on their pages, people like it or dislike it and we get recognised. It is important that bands and record label share these reviews – especially at the early stages.

What does the future hold for us? Well, I want to keep on carrying the flame and continue what we are doing as long as possible. I would like one day to start paying all my writers for their hard work but that’s the future. One thing which will definitely not change is that we will keep on writing honest articles and we will never rate releases!!!

Do you think the metal industry has changed over the past few years? Have any genres waned? What seems to be “happening” now?

I actually ask a similar question in some of my band interviews. I like older bands to compare the times when they were starting out to now. I think I came to an agreement with Jonas Renkse of Katatonia/Bloodbath that the metal scene has become more “professional” over the years, it turned into this proper metal music industry which lost that “underground” spirit which was more evident in the 70s, 80s and 90s. I was not really present in the scene (or alive) back then so I can’t really tell. However, I can agree that the metal industry is “professional” at the moment.

There are more people taking care of the bands’ tours, the record labels, the public relations with the press and promoters. Nowadays if you don’t have a PR, you’re less likely to be recognised outside of your own local scene. There are so many bands nowadays that it is very hard for a band to break through on its own. I don’t think any genres have waned over the past few years. On the contrary, every genre seems to have many bands – whether it is new bands forming or older ones creating new material. How many “comeback” albums did we have in 2013?! I am not the one to follow what is “happening” now and I hate editors or journalists who think they are someone and tell the world what is “in” or “out”. Of course, it is great to tell the world what you think is “in” or “the next big thing” but stating such opinions in an authoritative way is rubbish. Nonetheless, there seems to be some kind of stoner/doom/old-school 70s type of revival with loads of such rock ‘n’ roll bands forming which I don’t mind at all!

Do you use subgenre terms, like “death metal” or “discogrind”? How would these be useful to a metal fan?

I usually use the basic subgenre terms like “death metal”, “thrash metal”, “black metal”, “glam metal” and “doom metal”. I have come across a lot of weird terms like the one you mention “discogrind” or “trance death metal”. These terms might be good sometimes to label some piece of music very briefly and might come handy for a review. I am, however, not a big fan of labelling. I prefer to use the basic terms and if I see that there are other styles in the band’s music then I will point out that it is a mix of thrash and death or doom and black.

Finally, the hardest question of all: what is heavy metal? What makes a band heavy metal? How do we tell the difference between a band that is hard rock, industrial, etc. and heavy metal, death metal, grindcore, etc?

That is a good question and a hard one indeed! I guess it is rather hard to define heavy metal nowadays because of how much the genre has evolved. Everyone likes mixing their metal with everything now; there’s jazz metal, discogrind, trance metal, psychedelic/progressive, operatic, orchestral, there’s literally everything you can imagine. For me, heavy metal is something that really rocks, really moves you and fills you with emotions. I will borrow our writer’s, David Halbe, phrase here: “if something rocks, it rocks!”

In the famous documentary Heavy Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey, Deena Weinstein defined metal with a deep bass, distorted guitars and masculine leather-wearing men. That could have been applied in the 80s but cannot be applied anymore in the 21st Century because the genre has expanded so much musically but also visually – you see a lot of bands not wearing the “traditional” black uniform with band T-shirts but still a lot of these bands do play very good metal. Winterfylleth comes to mind straight away.

If someone wants to learn to tell the difference between traditional heavy metal, death metal, thrash metal, grindcore, black metal and all that, then I would suggest going on a listening history trip back to the late 60s and make your way up through to the early 90s. There you can see the traditional evolution of these sub-genres and learn what are their basic differences and even come up with your own description/formula.

Keith Kahn-Harris, a UK-based academic who writes about metal, has recently opined that there’s a glut of metal and it has become impossible to tell good from crap, thus the genre’s stagnating. Does this type of thinking factor into your reviewing choices at all? What about your purchasing choices?

I actually did not know Keith Kahn-Harris’ work before – although I have seen that book on extreme metal on Amazon somewhere – but I checked it out right now and he does have a lot of interesting things to say. He is right that the scene is overflowing with a crazy amount of bands, especially now with the Internet. But I can’t really compare to how it was before when there was no Internet and your only choice was to copy a tape or trade. I was born into the Internet age and I’m used to having everything ready for immediate download either legally or illegally… I discover most of the bands that I listen to either through the Internet or from relatives/friends. And now thanks to MetalRecusants my e-mail inbox is a never ending discovery lane of new and old bands which is something I’m very lucky to have.

Anyways, to answer your questions, I do not think that it has become impossible to tell good from crap – obviously here everyone has their own definition of “good” and “crap”. You know, I think that the more you learn about the metal scene, the more you research and listen, you find your own personal satisfactory source of new music whether it is a few record labels you trust, a website/blog or a magazine. Metalheads are a very opinionated bunch of people and they can definitely tell what is good or crap for them. So, to give you some definite answer out of this brainstorming session, yes it can be sometime chaotic with the reviewing choices; what to assign to our writers, which band should we focus on more and interview, which show to attend. All of this can get frustrating at times but as I said before we choose what we review randomly; sometime because we like the music from first listen and want to learn more about the bands with interviews and sometimes because we want a bit of a challenge in writing about something new.

As for the purchasing choices, yes, I sometimes do end up having a headache as I want to buy too much stuff. That’s why I limit myself to purchasing music at concerts and record shops. I rarely order online nowadays – maybe if it’s a pre-order which I can’t wait for or if it is something which I know I won’t be able to find at my local record shop or I won’t be able to see the band in concert in the near future. I do not like purchasing digital downloads because it feels like buying air. If I am going to spend money, I’d rather have the whole package.

3 Comments

Tags: metal blogs, metal journalism, metal media, metal recusants

Oration of Disorder reviews 01-19-14

by Staff on January 19, 2014

What’s an oration of disorder? What most people think of as “order” consists in telling other people what they want to hear and then manipulating them. That’s how you sell them products. But the selling of products is the opposite of what art and listeners need, which is a harsh voice to tell us the truth.

Shroud of the Heretic – Revelations in Alchemy

From the latest attempt of the Incantation clone camp comes Shroud of the Heretic with an album that combines a subtle melodic sensibility and the roaring chordstream bassy tremolo riffs that define that style. What is great about this is that it brings out the doom metal aspects of doom-death and is willing to allow the thunder to build and create the sense of sonic tunnel vision that makes this style so crushing. Shroud of the Heretic specialize in letting the music breathe through two riffs in combat from which a third rises, allowing the majority of the song to be taken in the interplay between those two riffs and then connecting them to other possibilities before returning for the descent. Revelations in Alchemy aims more for a doom metal aesthetic than a death metal one, and so benefits from the kind of repetition and churn that would not have worked on an Incantation album. It does not offer the same intensity as the older albums its worships, but it provides an alternative to the modern metal of this time that is well-composed even if not outright thrilling and terrifying. Given that its goal is, like that of most doom metal, to slowly press you into earth with inescapable repetition, Shroud of the Heretic seems to be on a path toward that end.

James Labrie – I Will Not Break

Coming to us from Dream Theater, James Labrie knows his audience likes jazzy heavy metal with a focus on positive themes. It makes sense that Dream Theater’s heritage is half Iron Maiden and half Rush, because they adopt the rhythms and harmonies of the former while using the quasi-prog stylings and outlook of the latter. Labrie continues in this vein but with more of an alternative rock sense of melody, creating something that sounds like a hybrid between Queensryche, Foo Fighters, and the kind of inspirational alt-rock-folk music that makes it into Lifetime Movie Network films at the end, when the girl hooks up with the right boy and apologizes to her mother and maybe even, finds Church (or God if she’s lucky). The result is probably a perfect commercial product in that it makes you feel good, with a “positive message found in the unlikeliest of places” (NPR) just like Rush, but has a basically good rhythm and is melodically compelling enough to hum along. But, like fellow Canadian artist Bryan Adams, Labrie has also indulged in a cheese fest that takes him firmly out of metal and plants him into the category of adult-oriented radio rock for people who want something a little cheerful and a little “edgy.” Thus he has left the hall and entered the suburban living room, while a vacuum runs or taxes are done, and the kids are upstairs listening to Dead Infection.

Asgardsrei – Dark Fears Behind the Door

The distinctive ambient intro that opens this album remains one of the high points. While all of the elements are correct, like many post-genre bands, this is essential a mishmash of styles put into the framework of faster abrupt death metal. Many of the tropes here are familiar from black metal and death metal of the past two decades, but are put into a uniform flow of high-speed tremolo picking. There are some bizarre riffs here, and the band specialize in horror movie-sounding lengthy power chord phrases, but these often seem to lead nowhere. There’s a good aesthetic idea there, but for it to become musical, it must arise from the other riffs. Instead, it’s more like a tour of compartments on a train where each one offers something different but in roughly the same style and so it seems to add up, but ultimately it’s a search for the compartment with the interesting riff and that’s fairly random. As far as style, these guys have a distinctive one that’s all their own, despite being very retro to the point of outright allusion, but because of the way riffs are contexted as part of the overall rhythmic composition nothing stands out as out of place.

Subreality – Endless Horizons

Imagine Blind Illusion, kicked forward a half-generation and thus using deathy vocals over melodic but buoyantly regular speed metal. These six songs were recorded in 1996 and finally released in 2004 but they sound like they’re straight out of the days of later Kreator or any of the death-influenced speed metal of the late 1980s. If you live for 1980s speed metal and like the somewhat shaky instrumentals of the underground, as well as the hangovers from 1970s metal which infest this like a Dave Murray impersonators’ conference, this divergence into metal history might appeal. Rhythmically consistent, Subreality has found a few grooves it likes and stays within them, using the mid-paced beat to hang riffs from like tentpegs holding canvas. Many of these riffs anticipate patterns that Pantera would later use to make its own music, previously a glam hair band with extensive heavy metal stylings, seem more “tough” on its way to discovering bro-core. Like most speed metal that does not take the riff salad approach, this quickly heads toward repetition as a familiar comfort and sing-song choruses outlining the rhythms of the song title. Not only that, but in the worst of the European approaches to speed metal, this is strictly verse-chorus (w/occasional riff detours) music based on the pace of the vocals, so it develops slowly if at all and features heavy repetition. Some have said this is an underground classic. “Classic of what?” I might ask.

Grace Disgraced – Enthrallment Traced

If you combined later Carcass’ Necroticism with later Suffocation, and decided that from modern metal you’d take the twisted riffs that converge on themselves through intricate lead rhythm patterns and discard the true randomness, you might be on a path to Grace Disgraced. Despite its fondness for internally rhyming names, this band makes a noodly type of death metal hybrid that emphasizes a contrast between spidery lead riffs and djent style percussive single-string riff texture. These songs do well once they get started and maintain a solid internal correspondence and tension; the real challenge this band is going to face in the future is figuring out how to make these songs distinctive. Much gets lost in the wash of riffs, blast beats and interludes; without shaping these songs around some distinctive trope, as Suffocation did (but Carcass ultimately did not) they’re going to find themselves getting lost in the background noise. In addition, many of the riff types are highly similar between songs which leads to a further loss of distinctiveness. All instruments are well-played and songs hold together without becoming random although often it’s difficult to discern what they’re trying to say.

Adamus Exul – Arsenic Idols

The black metal that doesn’t sound like “post-metal” (emo, indie, shoegaze, metalcore) fully is generally built on the same model that later Gehenna and Gorgoroth built on, which is the churning sweep riff followed by a fast metal tremolo riff and over the top vocals. Adamus Exul makes a competent bid for this style and generally does it well but adorn it in so many other decorations that it becomes hard to tell where each song is going. In that there’s a revelation; these songs introduce themselves well, and deepen the experience with internal richness, but never manage to pick a place to go. Thus the band uses a lot of radical percussion and decoration to transition out of each song. By the last two tracks on the album, Adamus Exul have almost totally lost concentration and/or their hoard of ideas, and the release trails off into gibberish and leftover speed metal tropes. The first four tracks however show some potential as a musical experience but fall short of exposing themselves to the raw nihilism of black metal, in which they can no longer hide in the world of what is socially valued, but most confront the emptiness of life itself and the need to give it meaning through finding purpose which is not necessarily inherent. That is lost here and so what has promise ends up being an entertaining and aesthetically distracting experience but never leads to any profundity which might give this album staying power, even if it is better in technique and composition than most of what crosses my desk.

Malevolent Supremacy – Malevolent Supremacy

Looking at this title, you might think: middle of the road death metal with deathgrind influences. That indeed describes Malevolent Supremacy, who write songs around the blast-beat buildup and breakaway much as the Skinless-style bands did, but instead of aiming for slouchy brocore grooves, Malevolent Supremacy like high-speed riffs and clattering drums racing to a conclusion. These riffs rip along at the high speeds you might expect from the second Vader album and do fall into grooves, just not the simplistic bouncecore ones favored in fraternity houses and meth dens worldwide. Songs are well staged and unravel with some subtlety. However, this band relies too much on vocals to lead the guitars, which is backwards, and have a tendency to build up perfectly good songs only to extrude them into repetition as a way of preserving whatever mood was created. Too many flourishes on guitar also interrupt what would be, if stripped down and allowed to breathe as themselves, some powerful death metal songs. The frenetic approach rarely works because it smooshes all of that nice death metal textural complexity into a single background drone, which then requires the vocals get dramatic to compensate, but that doesn’t work so perfectly workable song structures get interrupted with “contrast” that amounts to fast breaks and quick turns to evade the attention of the listener. This band has potential but should probably try another tack.

Queen V – The Decade of Queen V

Flopping into the metal pile because guitars are used, Queen V should be filed instead under 1968 style music: brassy female vocalist, ironic songs, lots of hook and some boom. This is music designed for movies in that I can’t imagine anyone sitting down to something this unsubtle and finding meaning in it, but it would be something that a brain-dead leech like a movie producer might use to symbolize a character having a rebellious moment in between blowing her boss and getting mugged by hipsters. The music itself is crass and obvious. It whallops you over the head and howls at you. Nothing in it is poorly-executed, but as a judgment call, it seems to be designed for either people who have trouble digesting five-note runs or who like to play loud music to assert their personalities while they shower, mow lawns, mope over breakups or other drama. That erects a barrier for metal fans who would probably find it unsubtle and repetitive, but this might appeal to people who like Tracy Chapman and Liz Phair and other strong female vocalists with very simplified points to make.

Grave – Endless Procession of Souls

On the surface, this album is like later Fleshcrawl or Dismember works, a big warm hug of fuzzy Swedish distortion and adorably principled misanthropy. It stays within the traditional death metal style, but imports a lot of its song structure and riff from speed metal, which means there’s more chugging and bounce on this one. There’s also too much reliance on vocals leading the rhythm guitar and, while contrast is generally a good thing, too much contrast that is wholly unrelated to what went before and therefore seems more like an unmarked subway stop than a discovery of something sublime and previously obscure. For many who remember the speed metal of the late 1980s, a lot of this will seem paint by number: riff etches out a chord progression, counter-balances it with some unique feature like a melodic hook, and chorus re-hashes what is implied by the riff. Songs rip along and might warm you up on a chilly day for their uptempo but not pointless faster consistency. Like At the Gates Slaughter of the Soul, most songs focus around a family of similar rhythms which gives this album a very consistent feel. Many of the patterns on here show a strong Celtic Frost influence, and there’s nothing wrong with that. As an album, it is not detestable and definitely is better than the majority of stuff out there, but it may lack the clarity and unique articulation that makes people want to throw it on the player in the first place, which is much how I feel toward later Fleshcrawl and Dismember.

Nebiros / Nekromanteion – In Command Tenebrae split 7″

The new black metal underground has mixed the 1980s style of black metal with some of the more punk-influenced elements of death metal, creating a new style that is equal parts Angelcorpse and Venom, Bathory and GBH. Nebiros leads in with a track of fast storming proto-black metal in the Sarcofago style, complete with emulation of the “catch-up” drum fills which filled in the space between uneven length guitar tracks and the drums which were recorded later. This song rips through several quick riffs, then slides into a groove like one that early Samael might have used, before trailing out in a blaze of reprise of earlier riffs. Nekromanteion begins with a more melodic ripping death metal approach, using a grand riff to instill a sense of rhythm that explodes outward in a combination of two riffs, an open percussive riff more like something on a hardcore album, and a Norwegian-style minor key melodic riff. The result cycles after this point before ending in a processional riff that contrasts its initial theme. This goes for a softer approach with more atmosphere than the Nebiros track, which is why the two complement each other well. It’s hard to tell from this limited sample whether these bands are able to develop more material that maintains this level of interest, but for a starting gambit this 7″ shows a lot of what is missing in contemporary metal and two styles that can render it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCH1RKRfp38

4 Comments

Tags: Black Metal, death metal, oration of disorder, Speed Metal

Morfin – Inoculation

by Brett Stevens on January 18, 2014

Morfin emerge from the potent musical texture of the late 1980s and the transitional era between speed metal and death metal where Sepultura, Destruction, Kreator and Sadus ruled the day. This period was known for its tendency to wrap up a diverse influences under a speed/death banner and make music that straddled the genres, which often produced a potent ferment of riffcraft but left songwriting behind as it tried to balance many diverse elements in the same band.

Although the vocals on Inoculation are heavily van Drunen-influenced and often exhibit rhythms found on the first two Pestilence LPs, riffs and their underlying melodic sense are straight out of late speed metal, with a comparison to a more melodic version of Kreator or Arise-era Sepultura being apt. The primary technique in riffcraft is the ability to ride a rhythm established by the vocals, then extrude it to achieve an effect of completeness, and then return to its initial state. This creates riffs with lots of focus on the offbeat and a tendency to wrap up firmly at the end of each phrase. While this is more compelling than your average death metal riffing, it is also less likely to rely on the phrasal riffing that produced the best of the death metal genre.

Fortunately, like transitional bands Dark Angel and Sadus, Morfin uses a great deal of internal riff variation and knits these riffs together to keep a mood rolling. In these riffs, familiar patterns from heavy metal through death metal can be recognized, but ultimately the band will return to the roaring rhythmic hooks that create foot-tappingly powerful choruses. Notable is the ability to use melodic mid-paced riffs to flesh out the second half of a song, creating an intermission and contrast before returning to bouncy mayhem with more of those classic Destruction-era riffs. Like Mortem from Peru, Morfin is not so much a death metal band as it is a retrospective of metal past and present with a focus on energetic, compelling tunes.

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Tags: Black Metal, death metal, morfin

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