Doug Cerrito and Hate Eternal – Conquering the Throne

by Nicholas Vahdias on January 11, 2020

Hate Eternal’s Conquering the Throne is a fairly mediocre album plagued by the symptoms that were spreading across the Death metal universe at the time. The need for even more brutality was visible on one side of the spectrum while the need to rival the more overground and Rock derived bands on their terms dominated the other side of the spectrum. Erik Rutan had finished his second stay with Morbid Angel who had just failed at accomplishing any of the objectives with the juvenile Gateways to Annihilation and would then form Hate Eternal who simplified everything Ripping Corpse had done into music that attempted to be memorable and punishing but ended up being predictable and flat. Though three songs stand out on this album, showing at times a level of composition far beyond anything that Rutan could ever dream of conceiving. These would become Doug Cerrito’s last contributions to Death metal.

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In the Pursuit of Power: The Hessian Playlist

by Nicholas Vahdias on April 21, 2019

When training various elements can influence one’s psyche and it is essential to “program” one’s mind to be as productive as possible in the little that most Hessians can dedicate for training. Music can strengthen certain emotions and conjure up feelings of strength, fortitude and determination which are mandatory qualities to progress in any domain. At times the flow of an album doesn’t correlate with a training session and it can be interesting to create playlists of different artists. Here is a playlist that I personally use when working muscular endurance/cardio for upcoming competitions.

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Tales From Vahdiasland: A Brief Glance Into The Sport Of Rugby

by Nicholas Vahdias on April 12, 2019

On the tenth of October 1876 during a schoolboy game of a unique form of Football, a young boy by the name of William Webb Ellis caught the ball between his hands and run unto the opposite side of the pitch to touch the ball down on the opposite side of the pitch and score. That is the origin myth of the sport of rugby. A now international sport that has spread all over the world and spawned many derivatives including American football. One hundred and forty-three years later. On a cold winter night. Floodlights illuminate an empty pitch as two teams enter the gate. Organized conflict would occur between two groups shortly after.

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Retrospective : Artillery – By Inheritance

by Nicholas Vahdias on February 9, 2019

Artillery are a Danish Speed metal band that have continued to sully their legacy with endless mediocrity that was so boring that even Metal Blade had to drop them in recent years. Despite all their recent shortcomings, Artillery were once an underground Speed metal that released two excellent albums before abandoning the underground in the pursuit of their magnum opus. Inspired in part by their journey to Tashkent in the former USSR which is now the capital of Uzbekistan, the band incorporated oriental sounds, a multitude of different riffs, haunting arpeggios and fist raising Heavy metal to create one of the finest releases in a genre which had already died at this stage.

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End of Year Reflections on Metal

by Nicholas Vahdias on December 31, 2018


The end of the year for some people is a time where they participate in debauchery and related idiocy as they are convinced that the arbitrary beginning of a calendar year absolves them of past mistakes and gives them the possibility to renew themselves without the burden of accepting reality. Those who don’t hide behind such comforting fallacies accept that this is a day like no other and that no actual changes will occur except for remembering to write 19 instead of 18 when it comes to paperwork. Metal has continued its sad and hilarious explosion to the top of the mainstream while pushing out less and less meaningful art. Rather than go ever end of the year lists as they are just useless and contain mostly salvaged junk with the occasional pearl. Here at DMU we shall analyse new compositional tools we would like to see implemented and which ones should be discarded.

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Analysis of Suffocation’s “Catatonia”

by Nicholas Vahdias on September 6, 2018

By the time Despise The Sun was released, Suffocation were on top of the death metal world and had at this point already influenced the rising slam and brutal death metal styles that would inundate and signal the downfall of the whole genre as the technicality and the percussive nature of the music would be the focal point rather than the incredible songwriting present. This short EP would prove to be the band’s final charge as they would soon break up only to reform a few years later, but without Doug Cerrito the band drifted off into mediocrity and tired attempts at pleasing the deathcore crowd. (more…)

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Malevolent Creation Retribution (1992)

by Nicholas Vahdias on June 30, 2018

Malevolent Creation have never reached the relative popularity of their Floridian peers, and neither have they received the same degree of recognition. The band members moved from New York in order to follow their dreams of metal stardom, yet they never saw even a quarter of the admiration that Cannibal Corpse and their brand of deficient death metal received. For a short while Malevolent Creation were a band displayed unlimited potential within their percussive style combined with primitive caveman-esque melodies, but they never reached the summits of Deicide, Morbid Angel, Obituary and Monstrosity. The band would eventually fade away due to constantly changing members, drug related stories and the inability to build upon previous works.
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The Most Popular Death Metal Bands- Who is #1?

by Brock Dorsey on April 26, 2018

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:

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SUFFOCATION’S BASTARD CHILDREN

by Nicholas Vahdias on March 14, 2018

Some bands perfectly encapsulate a sound and an era through the appropriation and development of an existing idea. Van Halen fascinated the mainstream with his take on tapping and his twist on virtuosity which had existed for centuries on various string instruments. Iron maiden took the harmonies from Thin Lizzy and adapted them for their long narrative epics. Suffocation took the slow thrash metal staccato riff and completely changed its use by using them as breakdowns. While those three bands are heavily associated with their respective techniques that have been used by all sorts of bands, Suffocation has spawned multiple subgenres that are all terrible and are completely eluded by the original intention.

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FRANK MULLEN RETIRES

by Brock Dorsey on March 13, 2018

Aging Suffocation vocalist Frank Muller has officially announced his retirementtarget=”_blank” rel=”nofollow external” from music as the extreme metal retirement wave continues.  Spanning an almost 3 decade career exclusively with the same band, Frank had one of the deepest gutteral vocal tones of the early 90s and enjoyed an unusual amount of success in his later years when Suffocation’s technical death metal style became interchangeable with the deathcore fad of last decade.  Frank now plans on attempting an acting career but will probably end up giving up on it soon and opening up a pizza restaurant in Staten Island instead.

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