Listening to the review queue, it strikes me how few bands write songs with any unifying patterns to them. Most piece together riffs around a form, like those paper cut-outs seamstresses use to make dresses, and when it all seems to work, cut tape and call it a day.
No CommentsTags: assault, Melodic Death Metal, Speed Metal
Last month we ran the first of a two part series on flavor of the week metal subgenres, focusing soley on black metal. The plan was to release a second edition a week later, but the Tulio Baars DDOS attacks prevented that from happening. That is, until now…
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Tags: death metal, deathcore, despised icon, flavor of the week, gut, Hate Eternal, hipsters, in flames, Job for a Cowboy, leaf metal, losers in life, Melodic Death Metal, nu death, nu-metal, sadistic metal reviews, scene kids, slammin gore, smr, trends, white trash, wiggercore
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
Arghoslent are working on new material according to their website. Hopefully the “melodic death metal” band’s extended downtime has allowed them to refine their material into something not merely a collection of riffs and heavy metal wank like their last few records.
29 CommentsTags: Arghoslent, Heavy Metal, Melodic Death Metal, Speed Metal, upcoming release, virginia
“Melodic death metal” is meaningless. What is popularly called “melodic” death or black metal can be roughly divided into the three different types of music sketched out by Ludvig Boysen in his “The Three Types of Melodic Death Metal” article for Death Metal Underground. While Ludvig’s three categories are essentially correct, refining and broadening them allows formal classification of all “melodic” death and black metal. Note that Death Metal Underground’s extensive Heavy Metal FAQ covers the topic of genre in great depth but a brief rundown for the ignorant and lazy is in order.
42 CommentsTags: carcass, chromaticism, death metal, Flight of the Bumblebee, genre, Heartwork, incantation, melodeaf, melodeath, melodic black metal, Melodic Death Metal, melodic metal, music analysis, musical analysis, onward to golgotha, Rimsky-Korsakov
Article by Ludvig Boysen.
There are three different kinds of music that are popularly called “melodic death metal”. Each is distinct and none even belong to the same metal sub-genre.
13 CommentsTags: amorphis, At the Gates, Deicide, Legion, melodeaf, melodeath, Melodic Death Metal, metalcore, musical analysis, Slaughter of the Soul, The Karelian Isthmus
Carcass have been touring almost-nonstop since reuniting and releasing their phoned-into-ProTools excuse to tour, Surgical Steel. Right after supporting Slayer, they have announced yet another set of dates. Despite the mainstream metal openers, this “One Foot in the Grave 2016” might be worth worth checking for grindcore and death metal die hards as Carcass play material from all periods of their career when headlining.
Following a successful assault on our shores alongside label mates SLAYER and TESTAMENT, disinterred British metal icons CARCASS, will return to North America for a headlining tour this summer.! Joining them are southern metal heavy weights CROWBAR, horror thrashers GHOUL, and Los Angeles based metal act NIGHT DEMON.
“One Foot In The Grave 2016”
CARCASS, CROWBAR, GHOUL, NIGHT DEMON
07/16/16 Chicago, IL – Chicago Open Air Festival
07/17/16 Lawrence, KS – Granada Theater
07/19/16 Denver, CO – Bluebird Theatre
07/20/16 Salt Lake City, UT – The Complex
07/22/16 Sacramento, CA – Ace Of Spades
07/23/16 Santa Ana, CA – The Observatory
07/24/16 Los Angeles, CA – The Roxy Theater
07/25/16 Phoenix, AZ – Club Red
07/26/16 El Paso, TX – Tricky Falls
07/27/16 Albuquerque, NM – Sunshine Theater
07/29/16 Memphis, TN – New Daisy Theatre
07/30/16 Louisville, KY – Mercury Ballroom
07/31/16 Columbus, OH – Park Street Saloon
08/01/16 Baltimore, MD – Baltimore Sound Stage
08/02/16 Richmond, VA – Broadberry
08/03/16 Philadelphia, PA – Underground Arts
08/04/16 New York, NY – Gramercy Theatre
08/05/16 New Haven, CT – Toad’s Place
08/06/16 Montreal, QC – Heavy MTL Festival (Carcass only)
Keep in mind that Carcass are still entertaining when shitfaced:
12 CommentsTags: carcass, death metal, Grindcore, mainstream metal, melodeaf, melodeath, Melodic Death Metal, news, nuclear blast records, tour dates
My experiences with Brutality prior to Sea of Ignorance‘s release lead me to believe that all of their works take a disproportionate acclimatization in order to properly comprehend, only surpassed in my experience by the wall of voodoo that is Incantation’s debut. This album has little to do with Incantation’s style, like most of their others, but it has only reinforced my hypothesis. Brutality’s take on “melodic” death metal consistently contains enough harmonic hooks in the riffs to draw a listener in, but odds are you’ll only find their music truly rewarding if you give it some time to sink in. That’s not exactly suited to the fast paced world of online music criticism (advertising thinly veiled as criticism), but odds are you’ll get more out of Brutality’s latest than your average death metal album even if you don’t give it a proper chance.
In general, Sea of Ignorance varies only subtly from its predecessors, and most of these changes play out on the surface. Brutality settled on their current approach early in their career, occupying the liminal space between their often sparser Florida contemporaries and the emphasis on structural and harmonic complexity of a band like At the Gates. The comparison to the latter has come up on occasion when DMU covers this band’s exploits, but Brutality synthesizes enough disparate influences that pulling any one out is difficult, although in my more comparative moments I might bring up Autopsy, since the band plays around with speed and atmosphere enough to significant enhance their formula. Sea of Ignorance follows from previous works in a fairly predictable way – more emphasis upon melody and simpler, more streamlined song structures than the past, but when they aren’t flat out covering Bathory (“Shores in Flames”), the lineage is obvious.
My opinion on this album is ultimately very similar to how I felt about Skull Grinder, although like most of the comparisons I’ve made in this review it’s a comparison of convenience as opposed to significant musical similarity. Sea of Ignorance is a stylistically appropriate if not particularly ambitious continuation of Brutality’s previous work; while it’s not particularly essential if you own any of those albums, it’s still a valuable purchase for those who want to study the strong points of this sort of death metal, and a good enough release to be worth financially supporting.
3 CommentsTags: 2016, brutality, death metal, Florida Death Metal, Melodic Death Metal, sea of ignorance
Article by David Rosales
Exmortus is a speed metal band with leanings towards what is commonly called ‘power metal’, although the general public seems to lump them in the mixed bag that so-called melodic death metal is due to their use of angsty growled-barked vocals. Exmortus have built up quite a following in the young, mainstream metal community. Ride Forth is the exciting fourth album these youngsters and guitar enthusiasts have been awaiting. This album features ‘neo-classical’ metal gestures that were first introduced in very small quantities by NWOBHM bands in combination with pentatonic soloing. It took the likes of Malmsteen and Randy Rhodes to bring this aspect to the fore. Exmortus themselves highlight it to the point of making it more than just the center of the music; enlarging it to be all the relevant music to be found herein.
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Tags: 2016, Exmortus, Melodic Death Metal, power metal, ride forth, Speed Metal
Article by David Rosales
Arghoslent are frequently and incorrectly tagged as a death metal band while they are actually a speed metal seasoned with a traditional heavy metal approach to the use of melody and soloing that goes can be described as lyrical or ‘singable’. The barking vocals that are featured here are the only thing that is borrowed directly from death metal and their usage is still more heavy metal in nature, given that the relationship of vocals to the underlying music is more akin to the riff-riding of Ozzy than the punching counterpoint of Suffocation or Gorguts.
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Tags: 1998, Arghoslent, galloping through the battle ruins, Heavy Metal, Melodic Death Metal, Speed Metal, traditional heavy metal
