Agalloch – The Mantle (2002)

by Guest Contributor on May 12, 2016

Agalloch the mantle

This article was contributed to Death Metal Underground by Ludvig Boysen.

A lot of music claims to be metal without actually being metal these days. This music placed on equal footing with the classic metal masterpieces generates hostile reactions. But what if no one claimed that it was metal? How would we think of the music then? Would it be mislabeled good music or mere crap? That is what I try to find out with this review of The Mantle by Agalloch. I had a neutral and open mind while listening to it, not concerning myself with anything but the music itself.

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Sadistic Metal Reviews: Fisting Female-Fronted Pseudo-Metal

by Staff on May 7, 2016

goetz iron hand

Resistance fuels hatred and must be crushed beneath an iron fist.

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The Oath – The Oath (2014)
“Whoa!” – Keanu Reeves. These women are actually fairly attractive! Usually metal girls are fat, under 5’4, and have saggy tits. Or they love Slipknot. I can see why Lee Dorian is dicking the hot one. This at least has riffs even if most of the songs wear out their welcome fairly quickly. There are Cathedral albums more boring than this but most of these songs feel like Motorhead if they smoked dope instead of cranked speed. Motorhead if Motorhead were boring and the songs went on two minutes too long and had random riff salad bridges. If these two would actually get naked on the cover like the real Coven and separated or refined their compositions, maybe this would be more listenable. Hold it is that riff from Bad Company? Who steals riffs from Bad Company? What kind of degenerate does that? If this is among the more listenable grrrl metal…

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Agoraphobic Nosebleed – Arc (2016)
As ridiculous as their band name, Agoraphobic Nosebleed’s 2016 effort is a lazy mixture of stoner rock and deathcore. It consists of interleaved Black Sabbath-core grooves and pointless breakdowns accentuated by a menstruating screamo vocalist. By the very definition of those two genres, the reader should know this is but a string of feel-good moments with absolutely no point whatsoever.

One has to wonder if the band even knows what “agoraphobic” means, given their blatantly idiotic use in their band name. From there, we can easily tell how they would also try to use “fancy vocabs” from the metal terrain without even knowing what they are for, hence the constant groove with no beginning or ending. The meaningless breakdowns that do not necessarily make the stoner rock more bearable, but just emphasize what white trash trailer park music this is. It is an updated distorted-guitar redneck music.

Baroness Purple
Baroness – Purple (2015)
The most generic heavy metal rhythm guitar riffing possible clipped with too much compression and mixed with queer hipster rock for those who question their sexuality. I’m pretty sure the hairy girls in this band are in a polygamous relationship with the dude singing and blow roadies on the side. Kind of like how Carrie Fischer let the crew members of the original Star Wars rip the tape off her tits only with more Hepatitis C positive semen from people who tried intravenous drugs. This album sounds like my local modern rock radio station who plays Bush twice a day. Baroness is the most generic 2003 rock possible only maybe one of these girls’ brothers had Led Zeppelin and Metallica posters in her bedroom. Baroness should go back to VH1. Wait VH1 doesn’t air this crap anymore as even VH1 realized how terrible it is. VH1 is Rock of Love now.

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Wolvserpent – Aporia:Kāla:Ananta (2016)
Who knows why we ever receive these sort of promos that are not remotely metal, though perhaps some suppose there is a connection because the sound and procedure may remind one of the pointlessness of post metal/rock. At the center of Wolvserpent’s music is a violin playing repetitive music while the fringes are filled with synthesizers, bass and some kind of distorted noise to fill the space. I imagine this purports to be ambient, and it evidently takes cues not only from what we know today as classic ambient but from the old, more noise-inclusive and experimental one. At some point during the 40 minutes of this release, towards the approach of its middle section, a growl-screech appears and we become the audience of a post-doom-black nothingness that lasts for about 5 minutes. After this, the music tries to pick up by adding some synths to beef up the emptiness of the lame doom metal writing that approximates what Esoteric do most of the time (waste your time with largely content-less sections while pretending to have an ambient edge). This amounts to little more than piled up noise with some consonance. This melting away proceeds for about 8 more minutes, after which we are introduced to a 4-minute hum. This hum gives then serves as background for some 3 classical string instruments playing repetitive disonant arpeggios for 3 or 4 more minutes until only they remain and the music fades out to the sound of soothing, rolling, waves. Empty and boring. Throw this away

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Cult of Luna & Julie Christmas – Mariner (2016)
Enya songs with randomly inserted post-metalcore sludge bridges. Are those bongos? Is this Arise? Who thought of this? Whoever thought of this should be shot in the back of the head by their local troika, have their children post-nataly aborted, and their women deported to the camps for wives of traitors to the motherland.

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Snake Tongue – Raptor’s Breath (2016)
Random stolen eighties metal riffs made into Entombedcore with gang vocals by Kurt Ballou. I think that’s a woman in the promo picture. Maybe it’s a man who is just confused that his baby dick is a big clitoris. Yeah they can get that big. Haven’t you seen Backdoor to Chyna?
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Necrosic – Putrid Decimation (2016)
These girls imagine what would have happened if in 1990 Autopsy had written songs entirely out of mosh riffs broken up by hardcore and shameless lifts from Slayer’s catalog. The answer is a metal band that would have only have been fit to play pizza parlors filled with 17 year olds too busy playing arcade games to pay attention. Anthrax if Anthrax decided to cash-in on sludge instead of nu-metal in the early 90s.

sacrilege reissue
Sacrilege – Behind the Realms of Madness (1985)
This is the sort of release that exemplifies that some releases were never meant to be heard, not to mention be re-released. To pretend this is some sort of hidden gem is to pander to the clueless audience’s sense of nostalgia in the most dishonest way. Sacrilege never amounted to much as their music was never much. What we hear in hear in Behind the Realms of Madness is the sort of simpleton’s generic metal any angry teenager could be writing and playing in his garage with his friends after huffing glue. Each of these songs is based entirely upon a single riff played ad nauseam while an angry woman shouts about how much she hates her father. There are random supplementary riffs here and there but they are just meant to provide some sense of dynamism to the propulsion of the main riff. The main riffs in every song are generic and almost indistinguishable, the vocals are identical (some angry British woman screaming about how she got fucked over by her dad who wouldn’t pay for her BA in Womyn’s and Sexual Identity Studies), and every single song has the same kind of poser-trudging-accross-the-mall-food-court from Hot Topic vibe about it.

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Sacred Few – Beyond the Walls (1985)
Another mediocre eighties heavy metal album with an annoying vocalist that deserved to be forgotten. Manilla Road this is not; the songwriting is generic, the riffs unoriginal, and the guitar tone too thin. This was only pressed to CD to cash in on idiot hipsters dumb enough to be deluded by Vice into believing that metal needs more dumpy women. I would rather listen to every Motorhead album I don’t remember even exists than this lame woman who drinks too much Budweiser again. This is retro-metal for cuckolded submissive males who think Steve Harris is Pogrom and jerked off to the blonde women in catsuits from The Oath instead of real porn. I’m going to crack open another Coors Banquet and use this CD as a coaster. Wait is the Puerto Rican  guy in the collar her slave?
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Lizzies – Good Luck (2016)
Judas Priest covered by Spanish pre-op transsexuals. Listening to this album makes me want to chop my leg off so my femoral artery will bleed out in three minutes. Two tracks in and I just put on Unleashed in the East instead. Let’s all listen to that classic instead of this crap:

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Analysis of Evoken’s “Omniscient” from Promo 2002

by Guest Contributor on May 4, 2016

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This dissection was contributed to Death Metal Underground by Neil Sigmundsson.

Although the song that is the subject of this article differs considerably in tone from most funeral doom metal, and indeed from most of Evoken’s own work, it utilizes the basic style of that genre: open, sustained, low register power chords played at very slow tempi. In “Omniscient,” clean guitar melodies and synthesizers provide the music with detail, color, and different senses of spaciousness. Layering, interplay between instruments, and timbre play important roles in developing themes and emphasizing different aspects of emotions. The song has no human voice, a feature that facilitates listener immersion and an unharnessed imagination. The structure is simple and linear: A B C D. The four sections are described sequentially below in terms of one interpretation of the piece; this is an attempt to put into words a somewhat vague combination of images, thoughts, feelings, and emotions that occurs when listening to it. If this descriptive method comes across as tedious or unappealing, consider it the shortcoming of the writer and let the music speak for itself.

I. Description

Section A: The introduction revolves around a melody played on clean guitar, the tonality of which gives a vague feeling of uneasiness and of mystery. The technique of sliding into and between notes is used as ornamentation, presumably to make the melody more evocative. The slow tempo lends a sense of low energy, and the synthesizer adds a haziness to the atmosphere. When the electric guitar and percussion enter the song, the resulting sensation is similar to stepping from an inside room, where one can sense the heat outside, into the open air, or of transitioning from the awakening state of half-consciousness to that of complete alertness and awareness. The synthesizer then plays its part an octave higher than before, overpowering like the sharp glare of the sun and evoking an image of barrenness, vastness, and lifelessness. The timbre greatly increases the effect. After the synthesizer descends back to its original register, the theme is fully developed and the scene completely comprehended.

Section B: After a short silence, the music resumes at a crawl, as if an oppressive heat is sapping away all energy. The guitars reach up and play a short sequence with conviction, but fall back down in response to the synthesizer, as if defeated by the overwhelming wretchedness and aridity of existence. The entire pattern temporarily falls to a slightly lower register, conveying a sense of sinking to greater depths, though it musters enough energy to return to its original place. Listening to this section feels like crossing a desert, wondering whether the farther side will ever be reached with so little energy, when suddenly…

Section C: Great vigor and motivation well up from an unknown source, generating forward and upward motion from stagnation. The tempo increases, as does the speed of the drum pattern. The power chords are no longer relegated to the far lowest notes. The synthesizer, which represented the oppressive force, disappears and is replaced by a slowly rising clean guitar pattern. The overall tone here is energetic and anticipatory, and there is a sense of striving and of willpower where previously there was none. However, in the guitars there is a moment that balances this nature with sobriety and gravity, a few slightly dissonant notes that signify that all adversity has not been overcome. Like a reminder of the continued presence of the antagonistic element, this slight dissonance checks the melody, which falls accordingly (though it maintains its pace and energy) and dwells at its lowest point before steadily rising again.

Section D: Section C trails off at its highest stable point, and at this point the music slows down again and “opens up,” signifying that a plateau or a destination has been reached. Indeed, in the final and longest section of the song, a realization occurs. The first hint of this realization is a sequence of four notes played on the keyboard and accompanied by percussion. The “breathy” timbre and relatively low volume give a sense of distance and of large scale. This part evokes the emotions associated with pausing one’s toils, looking up at the clouds, and realizing their beauty. The electric guitars then enter enthusiastically, mimicking the four note pattern with power chords, and the aforementioned keyboard sequence gives way to a second one. This new keyboard part starts with a heart-warming tone that rises slightly and then settles into a sobering note of gravity, though even this last bit of weight and resistance falls away at the end of the sequence.

The full realization is represented by a blissful clean guitar melody that acts as an additional layer atop the second keyboard part and the power chords. The keyboards color the guitar melody in different ways with each note and with swells in volume, highlighting various nuances of the newfound conviction and peace of mind: solace, tranquility, the hugeness of nature and the cosmos and corresponding miniscule stature of man, the passing away of all things, and finally an understanding and acceptance that leads to release from all doubts and worries. The timbre of the synthesizers provides an airy nature to the conclusion of the song, yet this quality is light and fresh and differs greatly from the heavy, burdensome atmosphere of the introduction. The clean guitars eventually stop and the keyboards return to a fuller version of the first hint of the realization, the image that catalyzed the epiphany being revisited in terms of the new insight obtained. The full realization then resumes. By this point, all tension is completely resolved. Additional synthesizer effects give a sense of dissolving and of passing away, and the song begins to fade in volume. The clean guitar ends on an uplifting note.

II. Discussion

In the above description of “Omniscient,” the instruments symbolize different aspects of human experience. The electric guitar and the percussion represent the visceral sensations of the body, the clean guitar the movements of the mind, and the synthesizer the perception of the external environment. The role of the synthesizer in portraying an external oppressive force in sections A and B has already been described: it can be seen as a sort of indifferent but nevertheless harmful natural phenomenon. Of the four parts of the song, section B is the only one with no clean guitar, perhaps symbolizing how during an onerous experience in which the willpower of the mind has been defeated, the focus of consciousness oscillates between the suffering of the body and the alleged cause of that suffering. In section C the synthesizer disappears, but the sobering, slightly dissonant notes in both the clean guitar and the underlying power chords acknowledge that the environment/situation has not changed. Rather, the upwelling of energy from within is so powerful that it dominates the field of perception, as reflected in the dramatic increase in percussion activity. This section can be viewed as finding motivation to fight and overcome an oppositional force.

Section D resolves all conflict and tension in the song, not through external triumph – towards which section C seems directed – but through internal release. Maintaining the established symbolism and looking at the clean guitar parts (and lack thereof) throughout the song, there is a series that outlines a transformation of mind: A mind confused (A) becomes a mind completely defeated (B), which in turn is revitalized and invigorated (C) and finally becomes purified and instilled with confidence and peace (D). Considering the keyboards, as mentioned previously, the role and the qualities of those in section D are significantly different from those in sections A and B. Yet even at the very end of the song, there is still a sobering effect and a sense of gravity in the keyboards; the elation does not go unchecked. As in section C, this is the clue that the external environment has not changed, only the perception of that environment. Thus, the mind has undergone a change and as a result, the perception of life has changed even though life situations have not. Recalling the words of Marcus Aurelius: “Things do not touch the soul, for they are external and remain immovable; but our perturbations come only from the opinion which is within…Take away thy opinion, and then there is taken away the complaint, “I have been harmed.” Take away the complaint, “I have been harmed,” and the harm is taken away.” This is the essence of the realization in “Omniscient”: It is the knowledge that, though we may feel pain and discomfort, and though we may endure hardship, suffering is not inextricably bound up with these experiences. The power that external events claim on personal wellbeing is dictated by the mind and by the will. In this way can man go through life as an invincible force, as a “promontory against which the waves continually break, but it stands firm and tames the fury of the water around it.” With this spirit and conviction does the clean guitar sail calmly over the keyboards in section D, giving a sense of total peace and affirming that everything is alright.

Along with Skepticism – Stormcrowfleet and Monolithe – Monolithe I, “Omniscient” shows that the funeral doom style lends itself naturally to compositions that are not funereal in tone. This style has been used as a means of wallowing and despairing, and it could be argued that despondence, hopelessness, etc. are “heavy” emotions, but the self-obsessed state of depression, being a state of stress and contraction, shrinks the scale of the music to the personal level. This effect is contrary to the “big” sound of the funeral doom style, and to the powerful fighting spirit of metal in general, indicating that perhaps the style is more suitable for large-scale, impersonal topics.

Regarding musical composition, the careful and directed development of a select set of ideas maximizes the evocative quality of music by allowing themes to blossom to their full expressive potential. Furthermore, this increases the coherence of compositions, even when the composer does not intend a specific meaning or message, because new ideas arise only when the old ones are exhausted. Thus, in musical composition, as in life, it is wiser to look to necessity than to extremity. Extremes of technical musicianship, speed, and structural complexity, though sometimes useful, are generally not necessary for metal music to be heavy (in the meaning of bearing existential weight, of having deep content as opposed to shallowness, and of communicating an aspect of reality that transcends the individual). “Omniscient,” in its beautiful simplicity, is evidence in favor of this point. In its logical and complete development, its highly evocative sounds, its clear depiction of an inspiring and uplifting transformation, and the reward and reminder that its conclusion bestow upon the listener, “Omniscient” is a superlative work of art.

Notes:
1. Evoken recorded Promo 2002 “in 1 day on a cheap-o 8 track recorder.” “Omniscient” stands far above the other four songs on the promo, although “Reverie in Tears” is also well composed. Dario Derna, who was the adept drummer of the death metal band Infester, played the keyboards on this release.

2. A rerecorded version of “Omniscient” with lyrics appeared on the 2010 split between Evoken and Beneath the Frozen Soil.

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Beer Metal Label Goes Broke, Starts Ponzi Scheme

by Daniel Maarat on May 4, 2016

witches brew

Blockheaded beer metal label Witches Brew is bankrupt from releasing beer metal and the owner’s bottom feeding A&R at German beer halls and rethrash bands’ MySpace pages. Many record labels are passion projects or Ponzi schemes. Witches Brew is openly the latter now. Their failure proves that experienced Hessians would rather buy actual beer and Obsessed by Cruelty reissues than sub-Little Caesar’s pizza thrash.

State of the Brewery address 2016. Despite having maintained a super positive attitude since our rebirth in 2013, the current state of Witches Brew is that the label is broke/bankrupt. Having invested nearly 90% of my job income into the label and in the end now being in debt over 7000 EUR, reality has hit me that it’s just not possible to keep going at the level I’ve been trying. Especially not in light of the fact that I will be jobless at the end of this month. I took a lot of chances, invested a lot of money in bands that in the end basically used me for a free ride. Disappointed is how I have felt in the last weeks. I’m NOT stopping the label, I’m just downsizing to a handful of bands and releases will be a few a year, because I’ll need to raise the money from sales in order to pay for the releases since my job money won’t be there anymore. I also have to get myself out of the damn debt somehow.

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Sadistic Metal Reviews: Monday Mastications

by Staff on May 2, 2016

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Oh here she comes. Watch out boy she’ll chew you up. She’s a maneater. – Darryl Hall and John Oates, 1982.

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Black Tusk – Pillars of Ash (2016)
A fusion of party rock, screamo, and hardcore punk, Pillars of Ash brings a risible contribution to the rock/punk spectrum that many a beginner is prone to confuse with metal. The relevant question here is whether or not Black Tusk have anything worthwhile to offer to the listener that may not be found in higher quality elsewhere. The answer is a resounding NO. The album plays like a tenuous stream of echoes of 1980s hardcore bands rearranged with Mario Paint.

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Tombs – All Empires Fall (2016)
Tombs is described in some places as black or post metal, and while there is some borrowing from black metal techniques in the use of some blast beats and an imitation of traditional black metal vocals, Tombs isn’t isn’t black metal. The post-metal is correctly applied in that this isn’t much more than a poor excuse for pseudo-ambient experiments with haphazardly connected sections being paraded as composition. There are strong references to doom metal, cheap and stompy heavy rock, with post rock being added as the way to get away with 3rd rate writing. All in all, boring, generic, unfocused, and unoriginal background music. Tombs is lounge music.

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Howls of Ebb – Cursus Impasse: The Pendlomic Vows (2016)
Entirely random pastiche of metal clichés loosely held together by psychedelic interludes and a drunk vocalist feigning faux lunacy. If a blend of Voivod, galloping heavy metal, canned black metal and fuzz drenched noise rock wah wah soloing wasn’t pointless enough, the band commands and impressively dissociated catalog of occult vocabulary to match.

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Nucleus – Sentient (2016)
Nucleus have fun in the studio and they want you, dear listener, to have fun at home with them. If you like Demilich but thought it was too strange, too serious, or too weird to play around your sister then Sentience is the record that delivers all the thrills of Finnish extradimensional insectoid death without danger of unthrashability. All the more perfect for fucking your sister behind the dumpster at the skatepark.

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Candelabrum – Necrotelepathy (2016)
Two twenty minute tracks of spooky landscapes, sad vampire vocals, and canned drum patterns. If the goal was to stride the line between hysterical and uncomfortable, this record is a resounding success. Necrotelepathy is more Vampire Diaries metal.

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Abyssus – Once Entombed (2016)
Another pizza thrash band with a veneer of death metal fronted by a Greek John Tardy fan. The album art and song titles make adequate use of Death Metal Band Generator. Perfect comedy for those Saturday mornings when you are drunk with fellow “scene veterans.”

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Clawhammer Abortion – Slaughter Campaign (2016)
This band took every criticism levied against death metal and wrote an album of it. In order to get through, I turned it into a drinking game: Hear a cliché, drink. The only problem is I passed out drunk after three songs and the Editor took over. He heard so many Sodom breakdowns and generic grindcore riffs that he kicked my ghetto blaster into the campfire. Only the most calcified kidneys and fattiest livers prevail in the Eternal War.

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Sadistic Metal Reviews 3-26-2016

by Staff on March 26, 2016

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Here I go again on my own, down the only road I’ve known. Like a drifter I was born to walk alone. And I’ve made up my mind; I ain’t wasting no more time. – Whitesnake feels appropriate to quote now after listening to this trash.

 

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Tombstalker – Black Crusades (2015)
Using an HM-2 pedal and inserting bluesy leads into your crappy kang punk doesn’t make you Dismember; you’re still shitty d-beat punk. I’d rather truly d-beat the skin off my dick with a potato peeler than listen to you graveyard dwelling junkies. Did you know Three Dog Night had his penis pop from too much sex? How would  they repair that? Would they need to make a new fake one or just do a penis transplant? Would Three Dog Night need one of those robotic implants that bend up like Larry Flynt?

 

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Gluttony / Sordid Flesh split (2016)
Entombed metalcore that borrows from every period of Entombed including the hated Wolverine Blues. Unleashed’s fat, vested ginger corpse is raped too. If you can think of a dumb, bouncy punk riff from 1987, it’s on this split. These guys really need to overdose on fentanyl cut with powdered laundry detergent like crusties usually do. The needle needs to be jabbed directly into their eye; all the other Swedeath veins are necrotic.

 

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Phazm – Scornful of Icons (2016)
Blackened Surgical Steel with metalcore breakdowns and without Bill Steer’s guitar virtuosity. Surgical Steel sounds like the Symphonies of Sickness compared to this deathcore ‘n’ roll. There’s no Holy Wars on this. When’s my punishment due? Do I have to listen to Reinkhaos again?

 

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Graves at Sea – The Curse That Is (2016)
Flannel and gauges sludgy stoner rock for untermenschen who quit heroin in 1998 and now sell classic rock LPs mastered from CDs to fat hipster scum. The CD booklet states that all the band members have hepatitis C and thank the other regulars of their methadone clinic for watching their cats while they shoot up.

 

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Burning Hatred – Carnage (2016)
No. Stop naming albums after the band whose CDs you love so much you fisted them into yourself like James Woods in Videodrome. There is little riff variety here. Why are there deathcore songs in the middle of the Swedish Crustcore? Why is the deathcore the only material that stands out on your album?
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Ice War – Dream Spirit (2016)
My head just hit the desk. Why did someone press this idiot’s demo? I’m too drunk to lift my head off the desk. I must do so. I need to pull my head off the desk. What’s with these standard chord progressions? I must pull my head up. Too much Asbach Uralt. I need to kill this fucker. Why is he so tone deaf? He deserves to die. Another retro metal cash-in, cuckold autist who wants to tie grandmothers up with rusty chains and guitar cables to rape them like the Boston Strangler.
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Ides – Sun of the Serpents Tongue (2016)
Idiot deathdoom of the smoke weed and bash chromatic power cords together at slow tempos variety. The band is too lacking in musicianship to strum them fast enough as needed to play psychedelic rock disguised as Sabbath-worshiping doom metal.

 

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Abyssic – A Winter’s Tale (2016)
Symphonic sludge core rejected X-Files themes. Gillian Anderson is still attractive somehow. Abyssic never was; they are Tori Spelling “metal”.

 

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Prisoner of War – Rot (2016)
Morbid Angel covered by Kiwis with distortion pedals. Sometimes songs are  jammed together as they were too blacked out and forgot which one they were playing.

 

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Gallower – The Witch Hunt is On (2015)
Possessed with zero talent, drunk, and Polish.

 

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Ithaqua – The Black Mass Sabbath Pulse (2016)
Varathron emasculated.

 

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Abhomine – Larval Offal Swine (2016)
Boring war metal from Pete Helmkamp of Revenge. This is Angelcorpse if Angelcorpse had mediocre guitarists instead of only mediocre songwriters. A repetitive, riff salad for Helmkamp to spout off his social Darwinist philosophy. Put on Order from Chaos instead of reminding yourself that Helmkamp lost his marbles just like that retarded guy from Steven Spielberg’s Hook.

 

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Sadistic Metal Reviews 07-26-15

by Staff on July 26, 2015

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More unworthy garbage keeps coming our way, the splatter pattern created after all the filth has hit the surface behind us is put into words in our Sadistic Metal Reviews.

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Reverie – Bliss (2015)

With a band name like Reverie and a seemingly ironic album title like Bliss you might have expected postmodern post-indie shoegaze hipster black metal to roar and pounce at you like an enraged kitten, but luckily, we are met with something at the very least resembling a lion here; pity this one just so happens to not be the king of the jungle.

In homage to the oldest Bathory-tradition, we find Reverie struggling to bring hardcore punk and ominous metal harmonics into a vileful matrimony. Where Reverie, like most other modern exploits of this scheme fail, is in the insistence on very low-brow hooks and plodding “anti-cosmic” disharmonics which only further leads the listener astray from whatever good basic riff the song was initially edified around. Acoustic interludes and vapid diversity in riffs can’t overshadow the monotony that all songs eventually end up in – Imagine a less successful and inspired newer Autopsy, and you’d be close to what the songwriting sounds like for the most part.

There are shining, spirited moments, but if this band is to evolve beyond the hordes of Katharsis-clones, they still have years of sadistic refinement to come.

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Arvas – Black Satanic Mysticism (2015)

If there’s something the modern black metal scene likes to fawn over, it’s music with empty calories -Excellent riffs, delectably prepared into a concoction without any lasting impressions. Black Metal has at this point made it into the realms of nostalgia, and genre-pandering releases such as this one clearly proves this. The music found here clearly harkens back to the glory days of the Norwegian early 90’s, but are so firmly entrenched in their own sentimentality that they miss the original explorative spirit of the genre.

Nothing on here is offensive, as background-music it is highly soothing and comforting for anyone already introduced into the genre, since it is so highly conscious not to disrupt its conventions. If you’re the kind of person that likes Choco Puffs for breakfast rather than a swordfight with your mortal enemy to the death, then this release might just be the one for you.

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Dystopia Nå! – Dweller on the Threshold (2015)

What else does the modern underground cherish? High-functioning blenders. The ingredients aren’t all that important, as long as the blend is interesting and “unique”. Once we taste the results after the blend, we’ll go into denial over its real flavours, and instead gaze at the moon as it reflects our own ego shining bright ëíIím the only one who understands this! This is the new wave!íí

What is Dystopia Nå!? It’s Screamo and Nu-metal of the 2000’s with instrumentation and lacing from De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas. Ironic, depressive quotes rumble through the wall of sound and powerless anguished screams echo through chuggy deathcore breakdowns, but neither of these elements hold any gravitas whatsoever, even for the most unscrupulous of hipsters. Like all other depressive black metal/rock, this is professional duping of young indie girls into the new “edgy” trend. No soothing ëartfulí piano-interludes or post-rock guitars could save this abomination. Avoid.

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Harrow – Fallow Fields (2015)

Some bands don’t even know how to be subtle and mask their blatant source-material. Harrow is a pure rip-off of more successful atmospheric/post-rock black metal bands, and it becomes obvious from the very first seconds of the first track.

If you have heard Agalloch, Kroda and Drudkh, you have heard the instrumental ingredients of this release, but never before has someone managed to achieve this level of tedium in the faux-ambient genre. Pass this one up, and you’ll get some extra time to listen to Hvis Lyset Tar Oss instead.

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Vardan – Between the Fog and Shadows (2015

Droning minor chords for minutes on end, replete with “catchy” piano and synth-“bloops” akin to a new-wave pop band. The dominant theory in our contemporary music scene is that this drivel was conjured up by the evocative gloom of Burzum, but there we must vehemently disagree. This is a spawn of the same old ego that spawned Grateful Dead, Opeth and Liturgy, this time merely slapped unto a production that they think would sell with the lower echelon of the black metal hordes; incapable of distinguishing a duck from an ostrich. It worked ten years ago, and we’re still seeing bands such as Vardan cashing in on the plastic underground credibility to this day.

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Trials – This Ruined World (2015)

The instrumental performance of Pantera amalgamated with metalcore production and composition, sprinkled with the most basic uninspired Metallica-worship gallop and Sepultura breakdown. What do we get? Imagine a cake concocted by a skilled chemist lacking any taste buds. Technically, it’s proficient, but the emperor wears no clothes, and even the most passing glance at this record might confirm this. I’m sure these fellows think their murky, crusty chugs mixed with catchy melodic death metal riffs and pop choruses was a top notch idea to get all the chicks on the beach, but I assure them that for this atrocity they’ll receive only personal embarrassment in the future.

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SoulLine – Welcome My Sun (2015)

At some point in the mid-to-late 90’s, the term melodic death metal, once the moniker used for bands using the death metal labyrinth-riff through leitmotifs of recognizable melodies more so than percussive grounding, became usurped by the most twee of electro-pop bands, grunge-rejects and the burgeoning modern screamo and post-hardcore genres.

The band might define itself as a melodic death metal band, but one would be hard-pressed to find any differences in this material from your typical screamo/crunkcore-band. A band like Attack Attack will have the same moronic, oversimplified Pantera-grooves, monotone, emotionless vocals, random disco drums and pop structures with a slaphappy yet indignant “mad-at-father” choruses. The only differing elements are the chunkier metal production and the fact that there are a few more listless harmonies in the breakdowns. Melodic death metal is a sham, it has nothing to do with death metal, and just about anything labelled this after 1995 is a marketing ploy to get both the listless Cannibal Corpse-fans who will gobble up anything death metal-related for the “br00tal” street cred and the emo kids who’ve had enough of the bullying at school into bands like this in this putrid, yawn-inducing horror of a genre.

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Shrapnel Storm – Mother War (2015)

Looking at this record superficially we see the image of a forsaken mother clutching a decayed baby as though it was all that was left for her in her life. The Apocalypse is raging all around in an urban environment and the future is bleak. This imagery has a striking resemblance to what crust punk constantly portrayed.

This is no accident. One of the bases for the Swedish death metal sound which this Finnish band pursues was this Discharge/Amebix-influence. The Stockholm HM-2 Boss guitar sound was the natural evolution of the bass-driven, gritty rasp that could be heard on Amebix releases as early as 1983’s Winter. Shrapnel Storm’s idea on how to elaborate on this legacy is to strip back the evolution of Swedish Death Metal one step further into the lost realm of Crust-bleakness where monotony and desolation rules. This is a valid endeavour and the result does predictably come off similar to a modernized, groovier version of what Deviated Instinct and Bolt Thrower did in the late 80’s.

There’s only one vital flaw: The music isn’t very engaging and hearkens back to Wolverine Blues and Welcome to the Orgy more than it does Left Hand Path and Arise!. Rather than exploring the ambiance that could be found in both of these genres when played with expertise, in actual content, Shrapnel Storm for the most part makes this seem like just another mediocre death-n-roll record rather than the potential their sound actually might possess.

If they drop the simple bluesy riffs, focus on the monotone but engaging crusty riffs, play around with song structures more you might actually find a worthwhile record from these guys sometime in the future, but for now, it’s not salvageable and we’re left with dull and mediocre riffs that go nowhere but straight into the bin.

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Nihilosaur – Icebreaker Hope (2014)

Reminiscent of the overtly artsy post-death metal bands in Finland after the countries initial boom of creativity died out, this band tries to take death metal in an interesting direction, but ends up sounding like a mediocre Sludge Metal band with no clear direction on how to escape the forest of their own design.

Loud, buzzing bass-distortion and peculiar, sometimes Godflesh-like guitar-notes screech in the distance. But no one will listen, except for their mothers who assure that they’re as special and unique as ever. The main differing factor between Godflesh or other quirky but successful bands like Carbonized and this is ultimately the fact that Nihilosaur merely know how to take you on an obscure journey through industrial film noir-visuals, but then leave they leave you with no satisfying conclusion. It starts and ends with a vortex of randomness where listlessness is king.

This is the Mulholland Drive of death metal, it wishes it was Voivod or other narrative bands, but for this fairytale, the narrator has long been asleep at the wheel, never to be found again. Good riddance.

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Minority Sound – Drowner’s Dance (2015)

Did you ever want Marilyn Manson with a bit more EBM, injected with leftover riffs from Megadeth Risk album to then be spiced with movie soundtrack electronic orchestras, desperately trying to inject some novelty into the tween-metal? No? You elitist bigot!

The band is definitely more instrumentally competent than most in the industrial metal genre but like other novel bands like Babymetal the music is pop music on steroids, disguised as an ironic, competent “new” take on metal. If the fair is too expensive for you but you still want that roaring deluge of incomprehensible, meaningless sounds and images to barrage before your senses and this might be just right for you.

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Lothlöryen – Principles of a Past Tomorrow (2015)

The trouble with the modern power metal genre is its overwhelming mediocrity, where the bulk of the music sounds like pop music on speed conjured up by the high from their own auto-effluvial sniffings. It is truly a rare gift to see anything even resembling what Iron Maiden could achieve with the beginnings of this sound in the mid-80ís. But that’s Is a story for another time.

This isn’t utterly horrific by modern power metal standards, it’s just so average that it could be any tired Blind Guardian-influenced attire shuffling through the fog for an original approach to songwriting that isn’t copy-pasted from an early Helloween album. The occasional EBM interlude and gimmicky parody of a Celtic major-driven song-and-dance isn’t doing this already stillborn record any favours – the only favour I can ask of the band members to do for themselves would be to stop wasting valuable plastic on this insipid tripe. That, or move to Finland, join a Polka-troupe and finally kill themselves.

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Crown – Natron (2015)

Indie rock will always find new aesthetic means to plague us and infest any worthwhile medium of creative composition. They will perpetuate Shakespeare’s legacy as if it were Comic Sans in their vain vision of art.
What does this new incarnation bring us? Well, the black rider in the night wears the robes of sludge/doom metal of the lowest caliber, laced with post-rock and industrial clichès. If you’re a fan of pseudo-prog of the last decade but would like it artsier, “spiritually deeper”, more Agalloch-infused and Rammstein-attuned, then this might be for you. Mind you, you would have had to have lost your taste buds ages ago if you find that sounding remotely palatable, so I’m sure you’ll gobble it up like a any fine happy meal from the garbage bin.

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Locrian – Infinite Dissolution (2015)

As the album initiates its sonic onslaught, we are at first greeted with something resembling early Godflesh, but with a more derivative, flaccid production. Where will this lead us? I’ll tell you where, to post-rock and Wolves In the Throne Room-tedium. The industrial aesthetic attempt to hide the fact that this is the same tired quasi-ambient formula where emotionless “emotional” sounds roll unto the listener until a barrage of harmonic, almost Liturgy-like random melodic throwaways strikes as if it is the only path for the music to take, until it dies a tragic death in reflection of its own hubris.

This pattern is repeated throughout the entire record. It’s clear that they want to be Drudkh 2.0 and some of the slower melodies hold some meagre musical merit, but the approach and composition is botched with no saving grace to be found. Avoid or fall into oblivion, as is the fate of this album.

Credit where credit is due: The album title perfectly describes how focused the composition is on the record.

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Sonick Plague – Street Wars (2015)

An 80’s speed metal band, forgotten by time and space, decide to make a new record almost 30 years after being out of business. One can wonder if anyone ever found their output special to begin with, as what we find here is something akin to early Megadeth without any substantial riff variation and a latter-day groove metal influence, pedalling in these similar motifs that don’t go much further than tying themselves up in a nice enough fashion. This is the barcode for mediocre, it might get them some high fives from their friends at the pub that they haven’t met since the late 80’s, but to the general public this is as forgettable as they come.

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Funebria – In Dominus Blasfemical Est… Ad Noctum Sathania (2015)

Some bands are only after the lipstick and aesthetics. Funebria is a Venezuelan black metal band that despite their best efforts, come off as a modern melodic death metal/metalcore act with dynamics borrowed from Marduk and Cradle of Filth. They try their best to disguise this under raw, simplistic war metal lyrics and scene pandering, but for the discerning ear this is as vapid as the latest Dimmu Borgir albums, unfortunately for this album however, they lack even the instrumental proficiency of the latter. Let this abortion sink into the depths that their doted Ea might give them a final mercy kill so we might never hear such belligerently tedious music ever again.

Note: Oddly, this sounds like “Fun”+ “ebria” (drunk in Spanish).

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Metal Orthodoxy

by Brett Stevens on November 20, 2009

You may have noticed a metal orthodoxy forming over the years, but especially 1998 to the present. This orthodoxy emphasizes “trueness” to the concept (as well as the trappings, aesthetic, style, etc) of the original bands, and is paranoid wary of newcomers who do not embrace it.

Now that the official hipster central of the internet, The Onion, has published a metal list, we can demonstrate why metal orthodoxy exists: it’s designed to keep metal from being assimilated, or taken on by the larger genre of popular music as a style without ideas of its own.

Keeping it simple:
Ideas -> music -> genre of its own = metal orthodoxy
Just a style, any ideas = rock ‘n roll

See why there’s a distinct movement to metal orthodoxy? No one in a genre that is unique wants to be assimilated by what’s not unique, and in fact is the average of everything it has so far consumed. Rock music is like a large corporation, eating up small brands and removing what makes them unique, turning them into a label that can be stuck on just about any product in order to sell it.

Here’s The Onion’s list:

  • Agoraphobic Nosebleed, Frozen Corpse Stuffed With Dope (2002)
  • Amon Amarth, Twilight Of The Thunder God (2008)
  • Anaal Nathrakh, The Codex Necro (2001)
  • Baroness, Blue Record (2009)
  • Blut Aus Nord, The Work Which Transforms God (2003)
  • Boris, Pink (2005)
  • Converge, Jane Doe (2001)
  • Deftones, White Pony (2000)
  • The Dillinger Escape Plan, Ire Works (2007)
  • Earthless, Rhythms From A Cosmic Sky (2007)
  • Electric Wizard, Dopethrone (2000)
  • Goatwhore, Carving Out The Eyes Of God (2009)
  • Harvey Milk, Life… The Best Game In Town (2008)
  • High On Fire, Blessed Black Wings (2005)
  • Isis, Oceanic (2002)
  • The Mars Volta, Frances The Mute (2005)
  • Mastodon, Leviathan (2004)
  • Melechesh, Djinn (2001)
  • The Melvins, (A) Senile Animal (2006)
  • Meshuggah, Catch Thirtythree (2005)
  • Opeth, Watershed (2008)
  • Orthrelm, OV (2005)
  • Pelican, The Fire In Our Throats Will Beckon The Thaw (2005)
  • Pig Destroyer, Phantom Limb (2007)
  • Queens Of The Stone Age, Songs For The Deaf (2002)
  • Skeletonwitch, Breathing The Fire (2009)
  • Slayer, Christ Illusion (2006)
  • Sleep, Dopesmoker (2003)
  • The Sword, Age Of Winters (2006)
  • System Of A Down, Toxicity (2001)

Why do they like these bands? Well, first and foremost — you, dear reader, are not naieve enough to think that there’s not a financial connection here. These are bands distributed by or signed to the labels that help support The Onion and may at this point be personal friends or just “scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours” type buddies.

But next, they’re bands that rock listeners can comprehend. Except Melechesh, which is there for a different reason. And that reason is next: each band is different, meaning that it doesn’t fit into a perceived orthodoxy. Each band is “different” by being not the perceived norm, as perceived by outsiders who cannot tell the difference between Incantation and Immolation even though that difference is immediately perceptible to anyone who likes, understands and most of all pays attention to the music.

The “different” plays into the psychology of the individual. You’re just a cog in the machine. You’d like to think differently, but every day you keep doing whatever a cog does. So you find some way to be the cog that’s a cog, but also has a little something else. Interpretive dance. A flute on your death metal album. Or you’re an oddity, the one thing of type X that isn’t like the others.

See this in action, with bonus points for adding a sense of victimization — all cogs are victims, because otherwise they’d be running the machine! — added in:

Long before The Sword, Boris was getting smeared as poseur metal. It’s unlikely that would have happened if the band wasn’t Japanese, and if lead guitarist Wata wasn’t a woman

That must be it.

Not that this band is indie rock dressed up with some metal stylings and has nothing in common with metal as an idea, as a genre, but everything in common with indie rock. After all, irony is a key way to be different.

Here’s another great dickslap in the face for metal:

Metal, more than most genres, rewards consistency; a lot of headbangers would just as soon their favorite bands keep making the same record over and over. As elsewhere, though, there’s always something to be said for progress, and Goatwhore’s most recent record is a great leap forward.

The same album over and over means “the album sounds the same aesthetically.” It doesn’t mean the notes are the same; it means the distortion, tempi, vocals, and concept are similar. So it’s not the same album, is it? But for people who cannot appreciate that album, it’s important to find a good put-down so they can feel better about their own CD rack. Yeah, it’s the same old stuff. Yeah, it’s just consistent. But this other band… they’ve (gush here) progressed, which means they added a flute to their grindcore. Did they progress? No, but all of us can tell that a flute is a change, where only a few of us can tell that composition gained depth, or new emotions, even if the aesthetic remained the same.

Indie rock is what happens when you have a bunch of people making music just as vapid as Madonna or Sting, but they want some way to appear not-a-cog so they trick it out in this superficial progress using irony to be different so we know they’re the unique cogs. But their problem is that every cog thinks it’s a unique cog, so then they’re in an arms race to both trick out their own music with weirdness, causing it be basically ugly trash (this has happened to all modern art), and put down any music which does have artistic content, because it threatens them.

And at the end of the day, that’s what this Onion article is about: the fear of masses of hipsters that they missed something within the music (e.g. not adding a flute) and therefore, that they are just cogs after all. Which as they go back to their hipster “it pays nothing but I feel educated or socially important” jobs, is a bitter consolation indeed.

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