Guest article by Svennerick
Released in August of 1996, Monstrosity’s second effort Millennium is an album I personally hold in very high regards, considering I nearly spent eight months listening to it multiple times a day. This is an addictive album and each new listen made it clearer why this album stands head and shoulders above anything released under the term “technical death metal.”
9 CommentsTags: analysis, death metal, millenium, monstrosity, Technical Death Metal
guest article by Svennerick
A fan favourite and the band’s third offering Path Of The Weakening whichalso the first record released through the band’s own label which showed the comeback of former drummer Joey Heaslet and the inclusion of second guitarist, Jim Tkacz completing the line-up and giving the band an even more thicker and dense sound.
6 CommentsTags: analysis, death metal, deeds of flesh, path of the weakening, unique leader records
For many bands, summer is the perfect time to record music and to rehearse for live concerts in a boiling garage or studio. The festival season and the holidays allow many musicians to take time off to focus on implementing new songs to their set list or to push their capabilities as players. Where most players seek to play more technically dexterous music, a few friends of mine wanted to master a song that was simultaneously simple yet physically exhausting to play. Nihilist and Sodom both fit the bill perfectly but we would settle on “Sentenced to Death” for its brief periods of respite between the bursts of rapid picking. Though we thought of this song as being a basic and minimalistic slice of powerful metal, after our wrists and arms had been decimated completely, we came to realize that the true power of this song is not the constant madness but the final flurry that manages to go even beyond the insanity before it.
2 CommentsTags: analysis, brief analysis, climax, Nihilist, sentenced to death
Let us momentarily forget the ridiculous circus act that surrounds the legacy of Mayhem at this time and focus on what earned the band all the praise they deserve. “Life Eternal” provides a particularly interesting example composition because it consists of a collaboration between multiple musicians during the long creative process that led to the release of the album. Featuring the final lyrics Dead ever wrote as a parting gift and some incredible ideas from Varg Vikernes and a large number of ideas from so many other musicians, it encapsulates the original vision that the Norwegian Black metal originally possessed in its purest form.
3 CommentsTags: analysis, attila csihar, Blackthorn, classic, de mysteriis dom sathanas, Dead, Euronymous, legendary, life eternal, mayhem, varg vikernes
Master on their seminal record On the Seventh Day God Created… Master operated on the principle of taking one idea and pounding it into the listener’s brain as much as possible without droning on and maintaining some form of forward movement. Paul Speckmann’s riffs are simple and straightforward but there was always something there that pushed them above the hordes of bands making minimalistic Hardcore influenced Death metal. The first actual riff of the first song “What Kind of God” is a perfect example of what made Master deceptively unique at the riff level.
Tags: analysis, classic, death metal, master, on the seventh day god created master, paul speckmann, what kind of god
This is a song called “A Dark Path” from the nature documentary Det Frysende Nordariket, perhaps one of the highest forms of art that used drums and electric guitars:
No CommentsTags: analysis, Black Metal, ildjarn, Morklat Sti, nidhogg
“Neptune Towers” is a song from Darkthrone’s death metal album, Soulside Journey. In this song the artist’s goal is to paint an alien landscape and tell a story, by intertwining riffs and lyrics until they reach an eldritch keyboard climax, which leaves the listener with a sense of awe for the unknown.
19 CommentsTags: analysis, Black Metal, darkthrone, music theory
The first riff off “Golgotha” is a fitting introduction to the madness of the early composition of Incantation. It is abrasively confrontational yet more detailed than what its immediacy initially hints at- although the listener is confronted with the familiarity of power chord accents and tremolo picked notes, the arrangement presents an inversion of death metal tropes that echoes the blasphemous lyrical content of the band. (more…)
2 CommentsTags: analysis, golgotha, incantation, onward to golgotha
[Sections of this article by Jerry Hauppa].
The Finnish scene has spawned an impressive number of death metal giants, possibly the strongest overall scene with no band searching for shallow fame or popularity and each band exploring their own sound in complete artistic integrity and more often than not achieving powerful results. Though all these bands have captured the hearts and the imaginations of Hessians everywhere, one four-piece has managed to completely change the face of death metal. Releasing one album that elevated metal into being recognized as an intellectual genre in the eyes of the mainstream, so much so that the mainstream metal media fled from this album as no one could commercialize and democratize what was being played here, Demilich were unfairly pushed back into the underground when they deserved adoration from the masses.
14 CommentsTags: analysis, analysis article, death metal, Demilich, Finnish Death Metal, Finnish death metal was the pinnacle of metal, hessians, legends, music theory, nespithe, odd time signatures
Hailing from Finland and one of the leaders of the short lived Finnish scene that delivered some of the greatest music to ever grace the twentieth century and that genuinely scared most “metalheads” as this was truly an intellectual movement that retained the essence of metal while completely deviating from the norm musically. It is very hard to regroup these bands into a specific style but the closest connection between them is their ability to complete deform common scales and patterns with strategically chromatic notes.
Demigod had a strong understanding of how to make songs with a limited set of complex ideas and how to convey themes of apocalypse and human decay and the role a strong individual within that apocalypse. “As I Behold I Despise” is the first track after the intro and sets the frame of mind of what’s to come after through it’s use of a recursive melody that is always changing, blistering tremolo riffs and hyper active drums that don’t steal attention but empower the guitars.
36 CommentsTags: analysis, As I Behold I despise, death metal, demigod, Finnish Death Metal, minor harmonic, music theory, The Slumber of Sullen Eyes
