These random, gimped releases are held in high regard by high-pitched “metal” critics and core pogo stickers. The Death Metal Underground staff takes it upon themselves to scorn and defile them in the name of all that is good in the metal genre.
28 CommentsTags: amon amarth, cynic, deathcore, dripping, fags, homosexuality, in flames, jazz fusion, lykathea aflame, melodeaf, metalcore, nu-metal, random, sadistic metal reviews, slam, techdeaf, tek-deth
Nu-“metal” (really rap rock) bands Korn and Slipknot were banned by an American military captain heading a command post according to a Department of Defense memo posted to Twitter by a United States Marine. Also forbidden from being played at all hours were late 90s and early 2000s butt rock bands Smashmouth, Nickelback, and Creed. The reason for the officer banning the playing of the groups’ music in totality was that they were “terrible.” Hopefully this officer has his wits about him and bans metalcore and hipster whine rock if whichever imbecile was playing rap rock moves onto other styles of “terrible” rock music.
6 CommentsTags: butt rock, Korn, nu-metal, rap rock, slipknot, terrible
Hipster alternative rock band Bolzer blew up at Death Metal Underground on their Funbook page for telling the world what the first preview track, “I AM III”, from their upcoming album Hero actually was: vocal harmony focused alternative rock with generic riffing in the middle for no reason other than to pretend that their random music is metal and to “connect” two unrelated rock parts. Our staff’s commentary is after the jump.
59 CommentsTags: alternative rock, Bolzer, crypto-indie, death metal underground, facebook, hard rock, Hero, hipster bullshit, hipsters, Iron Bonehead Productions, nu-metal
Coming soon to a used CD bin near you!
64 CommentsTags: acanthrophis, Age of Agony, Aggressive Mutilator, Arktogäa, beer metal, Black Metal, blackened death metal, Cranial Engorgement, Dawn of Disease, Dead War, deathcore, folk metal, Garroted, gothenburg metal, Hardcore, Hardcore Punk, hipster bullshit, In the Court of Nyarlahotep, melodeaf, national socialist black metal, nsbm, nu-metal, pseudo-prog, pseudo-progressive, sadistic metal reviews, sludge, stinking shit, techdeaf, tek-deth, Tennger Cavalry, Victorian Whore Dogs
Article by Corey M.
Sewage plants are ever-flowing streams of shit. So is the deathmetal.org promo box:
10 CommentsTags: AVDL, Brutal Death Metal, Coliseum, Dyssentia, emo, metalcore, modern metal, nu-metal, sadistic metal reviews
Back in November, Suffocation played a few concerts in the United States. This April and May, they’ll be following up on that by supporting the nu-metal gone generic modern metal band Soulfly alongside some other bands that I’m entirely unfamiliar with, but suspect would get poor reviews from the DLA just going by precedent alone. This is definitely a more comprehensive tour than the last, although a decent chunk of the United States is being left out. The lineup also reminds me of the last tour I announced/advertised on DMU – you’ll have to decide whether or not the other bands are worth sitting through for a chance to see Suffocation.
8 CommentsTags: death metal, modern metal, nu-metal, soulfly, suffocation, tour dates
Article by Daniel Maarat
Tough guy empowerment activist and former heroin addict Phil Anselmo has formed a new extreme metal “supergroup.” Scour features members of metalcore and post-hardcore bands Pig Destroyer, Cattle Decapitation, Decrepity Birth, and Animostiy. Anselmo claims they play “predominantly, in my ear, modern-ish black metal sounding, thrashy black metal type stuff.” All underground metal fans can do is wait and hear if former Pantera frontman is describing randomized first wave black metal with breakdowns, the Britney Spears black metal exemplified by Aura Noir slowed down, or Gothenburg melodeaf influenced metalcore with nu-metal vocals.
15 CommentsTags: mainstream metal, metalcore, modern metal, nu-metal, phil anslemo, scour
On the heels of much conjecture, and his own denials that an expulsion had taken place, David Vincent has announced his departure from Morbid Angel with a softly-worded press announcement:
Austin, TX – June 19, 2015
DAVID VINCENT Encourages
Fans To Stay MorbidI had good communication with Trey yesterday and we agree that there are incompatibilities with regards to us working together.
Trey and I have accomplished amazing things together over the past 30 years and I wish him the best with his future projects. Out of respect for the legacy of these accomplishments, I encourage Morbid Angel fans to not take sides because, I am not.
I look forward to sharing my new endeavors with all of you in the near future. Until then, stay Morbid! ~David Vincent
While this may be disappointing to many, it represents new ground for Morbid Angel, which just hired Steven Tucker again, lost drummer Tim Yeung and guitarist Destructhor, and appears to be re-organizing itself more toward its last good material produced, 1998’s Formulas Fatal to the Flesh. Given the immense dissatisfaction with the most recent Morbid Angel album which took the band in a more Rammstein/nu-metal direction under Vincent’s guidance, this re-organization looks like the band orienting itself more toward metal material.
3 CommentsTags: david vincent, death metal, morbid angel, nu-metal
Revolver published its list of metal bands who define the future of metal, and naturally people are a bit taken aback. The dominant trend on the list: metal bands that look like 90s bands who play with more distortion.
They come in several types: Marilyn Manson style hard rock goth, lite-jazz merged with Dream Theater riffing made technical in the math-metal style, black metal hybridized with shoe-gazing soul-searching solipsistic indie rock, tepid stoner rock, and the descendants of nu-metal who have mixed elements of the above in to hide their rip-off of hip-hop melded with bouncy radio rock.
In short, the list reveals a dearth of ideas, and instead of forging forward, these bands are heading backward toward past “successful” genres and mixing them together with a few metal riffs to make the claim to be the future of metal. Like the great metalcore revolution, and Napalm Death’s attempt to go indie with Words from the Exit Wound, this will succeed with the audience the industry has cultivated and fail with the wider audience for metal.
Metal thrives when it tackles the forbidden. In any civilization, that excluded taboo is the nihilistic approach of literal reality: the inevitability of death, the vast unknowability of our role in the cosmos, the necessity of war and violence, and the innate hatred that exists in humanity as some individuals break away from the herd and try to rise above. Metal is naturalistic and feral, aggressive and amoral, violent and morbid. It is everything we fear in life.
On the other hand, this new list presents nothing we fear in life. Tattooed hipsters in sweaters and goofy cartoons of uniforms do not induce fear. They induce tolerance and a shrug. They tell us nothing we do not hear from the many media outlets and rock bands of past. Unlike Black Sabbath, who dived bombed the flower power circlejerk with their own dark vision of the evil within us all, and the necessity of conflict, these bands offer us what Good Housekeeping might if dedicated to the quasi-“edgy” urban culture of guys with media jobs looking for a purpose so they can be unique at the local pub.
If you want to find the future of metal, go to its roots. Metal does not change because humans do not change. We fear death and the possibility of it coming for us, so with the aid of social conventions we exclude terror from our language so that we can exclude it from our minds. This is what metal rebels against, and its philosophy originates in rejection of this denial in order to discover what lies beyond the realms of sociability and polite conversation. The future awaits there at that horizon, not safely within the boundaries of existing culture.
31 CommentsTags: Heavy Metal, indie metal, indie rock, nu-metal, stoner doom
Black metal band reformed as nu-metal powerhouse Mayhem released their latest album Esoteric Warfare on June 6, 2014. Much like late-career albums from Triptykon and Massacra, the latest Mayhem shows that as a metal band ages the probability of it becoming Pantera or Southern Fried rock approaches one.
Although the album communicates little to no artistry or depth, it offers a strong example of how to successfully appeal to one’s commercial audience by being both digestible and using lots of hard and heavy sounds the audience recognizes as dangerous… if they came in any other form than a commercial product. Esoteric Warfare creates a blueprint for success by appropriating nu-metal’s populist simplification of the speed metal style of mono-dimensional lower-string muted riffing and sprinkling it with the pixie dust of commercial black metal aesthetics..
The band thus builds its appeal entirely from catchy central riffs which are so reduced in complexity that one is capable of comprehending them on first listen. The rest is garnish: the introductions, acoustic breaks, spoken word sections, black metal fireworks, seemingly random caesuras and even some death metal technique that randomly flares in the midst of the thudding rhythmic hook. This album belongs more to the exoteric, or easily and equally grasped at first contact, than the esoteric like older black metal, which deepened in revelation the more the listener devoted his or her consciousness to exploring it.
With the latest generation, the rock-metal hybrid that industry has always wanted rears its ugly head here. The new innovation is this tendency to break up the monotony with garnish, which allows the monotonic lower register riffs to drone on with strategic breaks to remind the listener that the entirety of an album does not necessarily need to sound indistinguishable however much the band may be seemingly trying to lead it in that direction. Complete sonic pointlessness does not dissolve, but rather mutates into a more friendly and funky exterior, thus allowing the listener an escape from a complete degradation of metal as an art form into a complete degradation of jazz as an art form. Whether that constitutes progress will be left to the view of the reader.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nk2i0sS1Gmo
14 CommentsTags: Black Metal, indie metal, jazz metal, mayhem, metalcore, nu-metal, two word review
