Ego-Death in Death Metal
You will find no shortage of praise for the experience of “ego-death.” The self-haters, both megalomaniac and neurotic in the mediocrity they recognize in themselves, like it because Buddhists like it and self-destructive, self-pitying people love anything foreign.
22 CommentsTags: death metal, Deicide, ego-death
Deicide At Their Fiery Best
Live in London on December 17, 1992, Deicide bashed out a heck of a show which reveals their original interpretation of the material on Legion and their re-assessment of their first album, namely by playing the former faster by a shade and adding textural complexity to the latter.
8 CommentsTags: death metal, Deicide
Introduction to the Art of the Sequence – “Satan Spawn the Caco-Daemon”
Legion has always been described as being pure rhythmic intensity exemplified within Death metal. While that assertion is true, it remains a deviation to what Deicide truly accomplished in their prime. The use of non-diatonic sequences that were’t bound by conventional notions of melody but rather a combination of chromaticism and atonality where each note was chosen individually for a specific function not held down by any scale or mode.
19 CommentsTags: after the burial, Deicide, Legion, pi, satan spawn caco daemon, sequences
Imprecation – Damnatio ad Bestias (2019)
Imprecation return six years after their great release Satanae Tenebris Infinita with Damnatio ad Bestias which refers to a Roman game that consisted of allowing beasts to kill various criminals. Here it possibly refers to the various Christian martyrs that were killed this way and possibly a reference to the Morbid Angel song “The Lion’s Den” which deals with the exact same topic. Here the band are aware of the success of their previous record and attempt to replicate but with a slightly modern touch that takes away from the immersion yet remains an enjoyable listen that pushes certain previous ideas to their limit.
8 CommentsTags: Covenant, damnatio ad bestias, death metal, Deicide, imprecation, jeff tandy, morbid angel, Satanae Tenebris Infinita
Cult of the Horns – Chapter I – Domination
Cult of the Horns are a French one man band from Bordeaux with one full length released to this day. The band’s aesthetic is that of the typical NWN “goat-something” band but beyond the corpse paint and cheesy titles lies an honest combination of Death and Black metal which unique band member Mephisto makes an honest attempting at fusing both genres and though this record fails at times, there are a lot of interesting particularities, making this an above average listen.
1 CommentTags: Belphegor, Black Metal, Chapter I - Domination, Cult of the Horns, death metal, Death/Black, Deicide, morbid angel, Norwegian Black Metal
Forces of Satan Stumble
The consensus seems to be that Christ does not belong in metal. Well, neither does Satan. Rigid patterns of thought are not conductive to the creation of transcendental metal music. The failure of NSBM stems from the rigid ideology into which the music was forced like a Procrustean bed. The two Christian metal bands worth a shit have been covered on this site: Paramaecium and Antestor. The only NSBM bands that are not terrible are the bands, like Graveland, that preceeded the creation of the subgenre and were only lumped in with the scene later… Gontyna Kry seems to be the sole exception to NSBM sucking.
44 CommentsTags: Anto Levey, behemoth, beta males, Church of Satan, dark funeral, Deicide, ghost, gorgoroth, homosexuality, marduk, mayhem, mercyful fate, morbid angel, nunslaughter, Satanism, satyricon, watain
The Most Popular Death Metal Bands- Who is #1?
Who is the most popular death metal band?
It’s one of those esoteric questions that wanders in and out of the mind without a quick Google search to offer a definite solution. But today it dawned on me that if I don’t try to find an answer, it’s unlikely any one else will do a decent job at doing so. And given the fact that deathmetal.org is the number one site that comes up when you Google “death metal news,” I believe we have a journalistic duty to present the world with this information.
Since where to draw the line on what’s “true” death metal or not is a matter of opinion moreso than concrete fact, I determined that anything labeled “death metal” would be fair game whether it truly was a pure death metal band or not. Therefore I’d consider melodic death metal, black metal, and even deathcore in an effort to find who had conquered the greater sphere of death metal.
Unfortunately, the Nielsen record sale tracking data is not public and often does not identify how well an album has sold for many years after its release. Thus, I determined that the most accurate metric for mining this data would be to measure by Facebook likes. Yes, I know it’s not an exact science- many fans aren’t on Facebook, and many people click a band’s like button without really listening to them. But still, it was as good as I would ever get to finding who the most popular band in the greater bounds of “death metal” truly was.
I expected to see the favorites of the 90’s metal press and MTVX dominate- Cannibal Corpse, Morbid Angel, Decide, Death, and probably In Flames take the number 1 spot. Imagine my shock, that only one of these bands even cracked the top 5! I had always heard about Morbid Angel and Deicide had the highest album sales, but it appears neither band has been able to conquer the internet age.
So again, this list was populated within very forgiving boundaries (bands loosely considered death metal, whether or not I believed them to be), and the best metric I could come up with. Also, DO NOT FUCKING EVEN THINK OF CONFUSING THIS AS BEING A LIST OF THE BEST DEATH METAL- IT IS QUITE THE OPPOSITE!!! And finally, if there are any bands you think I missed please let me know in the comments below and I will gladly do a live update and give you credit- maybe.
Without further ado, here is – for the first time in history – a list of the most popular bands that people considered to be death metal, and an explanation to why I would endure the immense visceral hatred for even considering them:
44 CommentsTags: At the Gates, behemoth, biggest death metal, biggest death metal bands, cannibal corpse, carcass, death metal, Deicide, Facebook likes, in flames, mainstream death metal, metal, morbid angel, most popular death metal, most popular death metal bands, opeth, suffocation, The Black Dahila Murder, who are the most popular death metal bands
Analysis of Death Metal Vocalists
Guttural vocals are the only true vocal innovation in metal as other singing styles are derived from other genres. The growed vocal technique is a combination of multiple frequencies and is harmonically too rich to be treated in the same way as more tonal styles. Since they are different to all that came before them they must be analyzed differently. And as metal continues to be penetrated by the mainstream it is important to understand what should be expected from a vocalist and what each one brings to the table since as humans we are inclined to judge vocals first.
In the spirit of understanding the wide variety that the technique has to offer, take a look at some of the more interesting and/or well known vocalists that death metal has given us throughout the years:
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Tags: Alexander Krull, Atrocity, craig pillard, cryptopsy, Dead, death growl, death metal, death metal vocals, Deicide, disma, Glen Benton, gutterals, incantation, jeff becerra, Killjoy, Mike DiSalvo, morbid, necrophagia, Phil Bozeman, possessed, vocals, whitechapel
A Quarter-Century of Legion
Article contributed to Death Metal Underground by Alan Nestorius.
Legion, Deicide‘s second and best album, turned twenty-five this year. Legion is the among the most aggressive metal albums of all time. Deicide went directly from the horse power of Deicide to jet engines on Legion. This served to emphasize their style of twin tripleted and tremolo picked chromatic riffs linearly progressed forward to machine gun percussion.
45 CommentsTags: anniversary, article, death metal, Deicide, Legion, world war ii
