Americans will get the chance to witness one of the greatest and most innovative death metal bands performing live this year when Finland’s Demilich hits the U.S.A. for a brief run through the eastern states. (more…)
7 CommentsTags: death metal, Demilich, Finnish Death Metal, good news, live music, tours
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
A trio of Australian PhD researchers recently shared the results of an ambitious case study on death metal listeners. The project, titled “Who Enjoys Listening to Violent Music and Why?” (Thompson et al., 2018), aimed to determine if there were personality differences in fans who enjoyed death metal and if lyrical content that involved inducing harm or death to individuals had any effect on the listener’s experience. Examined were possible differences in emotional stimuli between death metal fans and non fans, genders, and participants who either were or weren’t given a lyric sheet. The publication indicates findings similar to earlier studies that measured emotional reaction of music and personality bias as stated:
20 CommentsThese findings are consistent with evidence that personality mediates preferences for music (Rentfrow & Gosling, 2003; Vuoskoski & Eerola, 2011a, 2011b) and that, conversely, music preferences communicate information about one’s personality (Rentfrow & Gosling, 2006). Rentfrow and Gosling (2003) examined the structure of music preferences, as well as the association between personality and music preferences. They used exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis to reveal that music preferences revolved around four major types of music: Reflective and complex (classical, jazz, blues); intense and rebellious (alternative, rock, heavy metal), upbeat and conventional (country, pop, religious), and energetic and rhythmic (hip-hop, rap, soul, funk, electronic, dance). Preferences were also dependent on personality variables. For example, people who preferred intense and rebellious music – including heavy metal – tended to be open to new experiences, considered themselves to be intelligent and athletic, and showed no signs of neuroticism or disagreeableness.
Tags: cannibal corpse, clinical research, cryptopsy, death metal, emotion, empathy, entombed, hellhammer, intelligence, morbid angel, music, psychology, Researchgate, William Forde Thompson
Some bands gained prominence because of their influence on other musicians but were given less credit by fans years later because they no longer had current releases. The Dutch death metal assault Sinister crafted three albums of great influence but then faded away in the mid-1990s, leading to fewer people mentioning their place in the death metal canon.
19 CommentsTags: Brutal Death Metal, death metal, Melodic Death Metal, sinister, the netherlands
You know your nation has reached peak sadism when kids are using the shooting deaths of their classmates to catapult themselves into celebrity stardom. That means the time has come for frequent, merciless, rapid fire sadistic metal reviews.
BUCKLE UP, BECAUSE THE RIDE NEVER ENDS
21 CommentsTags: Bal-Sagoth, between the buried and me, BTTBAM, cradle of filth, dead kids, death metal, dimmu borgir, djent, Grindcore, Jinjer, king crimson, metal, metalcore, Nightwish, Old Man's Child, sadism, sadistic metal reviews, school shootings, sentenced, smr, the black dahlia murder, toilet grindcore
These dudes are from New Zealand. Cross A Perfect Circle with Vader, Fear Factory, and Immolation and you get Ulcerate. Taking a listen to this band, I want to thank your country for Dead Alive, but cannot help but think this album begins with an instant headache. I love the mid range DM vocals, and feel that they are really strong. The guitar comes across as missing something. At the 3:37 mark the guitar starts coming through with some darker, catchier moments. I cannot help but think the drums are a bit over-processed, and are being a bit overplayed. The snare sounds cool, but the double kicks are a bit distracting. To its credit, these songs are unpredictable. However, they could use more of a hook. There is a bit of a 90s industrial thing hidden in there, along with a little bit of Immolation off-balanced riffs. You have to listen real hard to hear it, but it sounds like bass distortion with a pick on the low end, adding some gnarleyness.
11 CommentsTags: A Perfect Cricle, death metal, fear factory, immolation, modern death metal, ulcerate, vader
Sometimes in between quests for the perfect transcendent meal, you wind up in the drive-thru. There’s nothing wrong with that- not every action in life has to be one of self-discovery or grandiose vision- sometimes you just want to destroy yourself as a brief respite from analytical or introspective journeys, which actually provides a contrast that truly showcases the merit in the pursuit of depth but also gives an objective worth to consumables that are designed with much less substance in mind. There is a place for what is now known as “slam” in the death metal pantheon, and as with any subgenre of course the progenitors are the best examples of it, as prior to its neanderthalic fall from grace it started as marriage of the percussive elements of Suffocation with the over-the-top imagery of gore-focused grind bands while limiting the use of humanistic elements like melody and cyclical structure. This is a more than valid metal style as it does actually transcend a known formula through divorcing it from song archetypes and instead celebrates an ignorance that is mirrored perfectly in masochistic savagery. Given that is is more rhythmically focused than previous death metal styles is it natural that it would meet its downfall by travelling down an insultingly urban path that betrays the savagery it had once wielded, but it is still worth revisiting a few choice releases to analyze what may unfortunately be the last true movement in a dying genre at the turn of the century.
10 CommentsTags: Brutal Death Metal, cenotaph, death metal, disgorge, Exuviate, Gore, internal bleeding, Mortal Decay, slam
Never has there been a word in metal as misunderstood as atonal, allowing all kinds of ridiculous claims since most individuals confuse atonality with dissonance and chromatism.
There are two ways to define atonality, one being the complete lack of tonal character and being reduced to noise like some of Kerry King’s solos or the works of Merzbow. The other definition that interests us here is the complete lack of functional harmony. In simpler terms that implies not having the root note that commands a certain melody. Without a root note, the notes in an atonal melody are not connected by scales, modes or chords.
22 CommentsTags: atonality, chromatism, death metal, demigod, Demilich, mayhem, metal, morbid angel, music theory, sepultura, slayer, suffocation, wagner
Death Metal Underground’s wise founder Brett Stevens posted a thoughtful article last weekend about the duality of exterior and interior being. It describes how in these modern times we’re seeing an illusion of non-conformity that masks the conformity of thought and nature within. This is an effective tactic of those in power be they media, silicon valley, deep state, or (in the case of metal) record executives and journalists: get people to look different, but think the same. This also masterfully articulates why metal is at its lowest creative point in the entire history of its existence: fans and musicians alike have accepted conformity of thought and sound through satisfaction with mere non-conformist aesthetics and culture. And the only way to escape this rut is to violently rebel against everything we have been conditioned to believe is “metal” and “metal culture.”
35 CommentsTags: brett stevens, conformity, death, death metal, destruction, Deus Vult, future of metal, Gen-Z, Generation Z, hessian, metal, metal culture, non-conformity, ozzy osbourne, rebellion, Romanticism, tattoos, Templar, Western Culture
Since other media outlets are weighing in on the recent debate on crisis actors being used to push gun control in the wake of mass shootings, let’s see what DMU readers think! Vote in the comments section below:
(a) crisis actor
(b) shooting survivor
(c) where is the metal?
(d) DMU IS DEAD AND THE EDITOR IS A FALSE WAHHH MUAH HESSIANS WAHHHHH MUAH PHILOSOPHY WAHHHHH
34 CommentsTags: CNN, conspiracy theory, crisis actor, David Hogg, death, death metal, fake news, mass shooting
