Old school Swedish death metal stalwarts Dismember represented one of those moments where the heavens, Earth, and natural kingdoms align to produce a window into the world beyond the immediate and physical, unleashing possibility through an embrace of realism and a pursuit of quality in life experience.
36 CommentsTags: death metal, Dismember, Old School Death Metal, Swedish Death Metal
Grinding martial black metal band Sammath publish their seventh album, Grebbeberg, on June 16th of this year via Hammerheart Records. The band has already released two tracks from the album, one of which is on our radiocast of underground metal.
7 CommentsTags: Black Metal, death metal, hammerheart records, Old School Death Metal, sammath, War Metal
This split album showcases high intensity grindcore and old school death metal with a speed metal pace, with Brain Corrosion demonstrating an inventive approach toward varying conventional grindcore patterns and working in touches of melody, while Ripped to Shreds sounds like Nunslaughter executed by Slaughter Lord, using a high-energy approach to a crossover between traditional heavy metal and fast death metal.
No CommentsTags: brain corrosion, Grindcore, Old School Death Metal, ripped to shreds
Deserted Fear – Dead Shores Rising
Century Media, 2017
Living after the age of vitality of a genre, one becomes accustomed to the process of decay that happens as knowledge of why things are done becomes lost, and people instead fill in with the usual stuff that they do anyway. Humans are experts at dressing up the mundane as the exceptional.
5 CommentsTags: death metal, deserted fear, Old School Death Metal, Swedish Death Metal, tampa death metal
Adversary came to us from the heartland of Indiana and released two solid old school death metal albums, the second of which, Forsaken, may deserve more attention. This one is misunderstood because its form is old school death metal, but its heart is in classic heavy metal with melody and groove, as well as some of the more atmospheric 1980s rock.
As a result, listening to it presents a dual experience. It sounds like Num Skull or Nunslaughter doing their version of a Possessed-Venom hybrid, but with more attention to melodic guitar hooks. Vocals take the form of barfed out gruff explosions, guiding the rough-hewn riffs like a second drum track, but the heart of each song is a 1970s heavy metal riff with a broad chord progression through which melodic lead-picked figures wind. Songs mostly follow the speed metal pattern of verse-chorus with interludes and transitions, but each song is wrapped around a presentation of dynamics to bring it to a dramatic close.
While other bands worked with this formula, none have done so with such old-school technique and so this album neatly slipped between its potential audiences. Compounding this fact was the trouble that Adversary’s first album, The Winter’s Harvest, used a drum machine and so was overlooked by many. But for those wanting the feeling of 1985 — that nexus of different influences and unresolved potentials — this album deserves a second look.
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Gravestone is an old school death metal band that go back more than a decade but have only been able to crystallize their effort into an album publication until now, despite the material being written for a very long time already. The style approaches the more melodic expression of Mexican (or other Latin American) death metal bands who are more reluctant in the use atonal solos and maintain a controlled dosis of chromatism in their riffing.
The album can be purchased through Australis Records’ website.
Tracklist:
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During the 1980s, a group of wives of senators and other busybodies got together to form a group they called the “Parents Music Resource Center,” or PMRC. Their intention was to protect children from the dangerous heavy metal, rock and rap music which had sexual, drug and occult themes. After essentially shaming the interesting bands, the group finally used the coercive power of shame to force labels and record stores to insist on warning labels for albums with content that might upset the precious snowflakes and their absentee parents.
Unlike acid-washed jeans and Valley Girl slang, the PMRC unfortunately did not die with the 1980s. It lives on in zombie form through the Parents Music Resource Center appreciation group, which has taken to flagging certain metal bands, zines and labels as hostile to decency, morality and good taste as all metal should be.
Morpheus Descends proved to be the most recent instance of quality metal running afoul of these deranged censors, who feel that the new material from this band will cause “casual sex, drug use, enema fetishism and voting Republican” (PMRC boss Tipper Gore was wife to Al Gore, at the time Democrat senator from New Hampshire). We’re not really sure that people — at least still living people — want to have sex to old school death metal, but as the internet’s “rule 34” implies, any imaginable fetish has already occurred.
This clash between good and evil occurred at the moment when Morpheus Descends released one of the two newly written and recorded tracks to be on their From Blackened Crypts compilation. Check it out below.
7 CommentsTags: censorship, dark descent records, death metal, morpheus descends, Old School Death Metal, pmrc, sodomy
Even back in the early 1990s, people referred to Num Skull as “old school death metal” for its plodding, dark cadences and thudding primitive riffs. Now the most famous artifact of this band, Ritually Abused, will terrorize your living room thanks to a re-issue through Relapse Records on September 16, 2014.
Famous for engaging but highly basic music, Num Skull reduced death metal to its simplest elements and tied them to a groove which replaced rhythmic expectation with a pounding certainty like the march of undead armies across a wasteland. Songs followed much of the format of those of early death metal innovators Possessed but did so at a slow dreadnought pace alternating with high-speed violence, mulching listeners into paste with militant power chords.
The Relapse re-issue of Ritually Abused will include a bonus track from the ’86 demo “Num’s the Word” to commemorate the original release of the album 25 years ago. You can pre-order Ritually Abused in LP or CD format with or without a t-shirt bundle at http://www.relapse.com/numskull.
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Texas old school grinding death metal band War Master takes its influences from old school death metal and melodic grindcore like Bolt Thrower. Since its launch in 2009, War Master has built up a following for those who like underground metal in the feral and atavistic way that distinguished the old school from the imitators.
Following the success of its EP Blood Dawn last year, itself following the triumphant Pyramid of the Necropolis full-length the year before, War Master unleashes itself on the Southwest with a mini-tour that should bring old school death metal maniacs out of the woodwork.
Tour Dates:
Tags: death metal, Old School Death Metal, tour, war master
Dark Descent records unleashed the cover art for the upcoming Blaspherian/Imprecation split 7″ recording. This will combine the power of the two bands, including Blaspherian vocalist Daniel Shaw who drew the intricate and necrotic cover.
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Tags: blasphemy, blaspherian, dark descent records, death metal, imprecation, Occultism, Old School Death Metal
