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March 11, 2010

Sarcophageous film on Finnish heavy metal culture

Promised Land of Heavy Metal is a documentary about the history and philosophy of Heavy Metal and how it became such a big deal in a small country called Finland.

We tell the story of Finnish Metal, from its early “underground” days to the present success stories, by interviewing famous musicians, experts and events organizers, a psychiatrist and a doctor of theology. The film takes us literally from the graveyard to the Finnish President’s palace!

Why is Metal a religion for so many? What are it’s links to satanism and ritualistic murders? What made Metal mainstream in Finland? Why does the Finnish Church have Metal Masses? What’s the future of Metal, after LORDI won the Eurovision song contest and even the President approves? We hear strong opinions: some see Metal as the new folk music, while others detest it’s commercial aspect.

The film is narrated by Kimmo Kuusniemi, a filmmaker, Sarcofagus guitarist and a forefather of Finnish Metal. Kimmo has lived in England for 16 years, and sees the current popularity of Heavy Metal as a strange phenomenon. He was the one who fought for the metal message 30 years ago! What happened in Finland in his absence?

One of our aims over the years has been to prove how the vital undercurrents of Finland produced cultivated metal sensations over the years from the earliest heavy metal days, best exemplified by the inimitable Sarcofagus, to thrash and the Finnish death metal movement, finally creating a discharge of consciousness that erupted in mainstream metal sensations all over the world, leaving most of the more focused and gloomy explorers to repose in the depths.

Kimmo Kuusniemi, the founder of Sarcofagus, the earliest Finnish metal band, has aggregated his unique vision into a documentary giving sporadic but meaningful glimpses into metal culture in search of the ultimate question: why?

March 9, 2010

Death Metal Album of the Week: Atheist – Unquestionable Presence

It would have taken a mad Nostradamus to predict in 1984 that the sprouts that grew from Hellhammer’s and Possessed’s gory and satanic fantasies would in barely half a decade bear fruits in bridging the arts of dark metal and effulgent progressive rock, even jazz, with a virulence unheard of. While Morbid Angel and Death were building Florida’s reputation for fiendish blasphemy, two bands specifically attended to the science of philosophy and the phenomenological realm of the mind. One was the thrashier Hellwitch, the other was the name to be synonymous with jazz influenced death metal; Atheist. Technical, baffling and impossible to headbang, despite their oddities the band easily captured the attention of open-minded metalheads bored of pop metal and hundreds of Slayer clones.

How did Atheist do it? While fans may argue for the technical aggression of “Piece of Time”, I find this album to be the key to the band’s unbounded ability to use syncopated percussive enthrallment, mathematical measures, subtle disharmony and a perfect understanding of tonality to show every formal musicologist that death metal is up there with other advanced musics of humankind. As the opening track “Mother Man” engulfs the listener to its helical and hypnotic guitar melody, Tony Choy, borrowed from Cynic to replace the tragically deceased fretless bass master Roger Patterson, unlocks the fluttering dormant quality of his instrument from the robust, minimal traditions of Geezer Butler and other heavy metal bassists. By the time we join “The Incarnation’s Dream”, it’s quite hard to recall we were supposed to be listening to death metal, as the eerie acoustic bliss takes us beyond Metallica’s “Orion” to what is the wildest dreams of symphonic rock á la Yes come life through the hands and mouths of irreverent Florida dropouts. Mental revelations induced by New Age literature and TV documentaries on UFOs and mysteries of the universe, or musical heirship to German classical idealist philosophy?

March 1, 2010

Death Metal Album of the Week: Atrocity – Todessehnsucht

Somnium timoris
Desiderum praeteritum
Maestitia praesentiae

Last week’s look at Cadaver’s mighty ‘…In Pains‘ album indicated an acute, tumultuous response to the human condition that was endured by a small number of tormented, Death Metal-playing souls during the early nineties. This largely-contained epidemic of mental afflictions very sharply scarred the minds of German band Atrocity, with their debut album, ‘Hallucinations‘ manifesting as an unrelenting commentary on the habitual ravages of the modern mind, exploring in particular one of it’s greatest banes: addiction. The music was technically inspiring, considered highly progressive in its day, and the subject matter was dark and disturbing in it’s pseudo-biographical recollections of fragility and fallibility. ‘Todessehnsucht’, the follow-up album would take both music and concept further, to create an all-encompassing opus of death and crucially, it did so on very Germanic terms. Far from being just another set of sociological observations, this work is painted on a much broader canvas, using the brushstrokes of a culturally-inspired aesthetic to illustrate something more spiritually aware.

Self-produced in Germany, far from the FLDM treatment given to ‘Hallucinations’ by Scott Burns at Morrisound Studios, Atrocity clearly had in mind to juxtapose the great past of their Fatherland with its failings under the weight of modernity. The liner notes in the booklet first prepares the listener for this journey, quoting the great pessimystic and philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer’s statement implying that the world is suffering, a view which he found to parallel Buddhistic teachings related to dukkha. A view which would enter into the music of Atrocity. Even the album’s title, translated to mean ‘Longing For Death’ (and released in America by this name) is evocative of Schopenhauer’s ascetic ideal, subduing the Will to live and halting the underlying motions that guide consciousness towards suffering. A variation of this idea develops throughout the album, from the basis that the modern world is plagued by all manner of self-absorbed and destructive vices due to a loss of spirituality (following the death of God in Nietzschean thought), but rather than withdrawing from this plane of despair to a state of solipsistic peace, Atrocity condemns and confronts it, to clear aside all the illusions that define the last age of man, ushering in a new era free from human ignorance and worldly attachment. The root of all ‘evil’ according to this worldview is not to be found in external structures like government or economy (although they serve only the mass delusion), but man’s capacity for avijja, to disconnect from reality and pursue the gratification of the ego. Hence, the rendition of Richard Wagner’s funeral march for Siegfried from ‘Götterdämmerung‘ is not out of place on the introduction to ‘Sky Turned Red’ (as if it could be out of place on any Death Metal album!) as an epitaph to the pre-modern world, and that’s not the only influence the master of the Gesamtkunstwerk exerts on ‘Todessensucht’.

The music on this masterpiece of Death Metal seems to follow the progression of ideas in German musical thinking from the venerable Wagner to modern schools of Classical, engineering grand, articulate riffs of Wagnerian chromaticism to be compressed and transformed with mechanistic force and precision into twisted shapes of dissonance and hyper-extended fragments, referencing Arnold Schoenberg’s emancipation of music from harmony. The guitars shred away at warped melodies and complex rhythmic patterns, technically similar to Florida bands like Cynic and Death but musically more reminiscent of Modernism, going further to evoke the nightmarish sounds of Dane Rudhyar or Bernard Herrmann, than Cadaver and possibly even Gorguts managed. This idea is explored as well by the sickening lead work of Röderer who embellishes the album with defining solos to the level that James Murphy achieved on Obituary’s ‘Cause of Death‘. Riffs often outrun standard timings and the drumming is well arranged to account for the added demands of energy or restraint. The bass is quite prominent and deviates very little from the main themes, emphasising the narrative context of the guitar riffs as they superimpose the restless dynamics. Alex Krull’s vocals are memorable, retaining only as much human tone in the guttural outbursts as an old man uttering his final words.

Before Atrocity lost interest in Death Metal, they were in the top tier of the genre and left behind a real classic that fell into relative obscurity due to the lack of re-releases issued by Roadrunner. This is an album that unveiled the futile attachment to mortality and found liberation in its demise.

February 26, 2010

Death Metal Album of the Week: Cadaver – …In Pains

The progressive death metal of Cadaver fulfils itself here in an aesthetically compact, streamlined form that is the best of the style. American styles are clearly a strong influence, with the structural and compositional narrative having the same quality of Death’s ‘Spiritual Healing‘, with phrasings and modes highly reminiscent of the dissonant, staccato heavy riffwork of Prong’s ‘Beg To Differ’. Occasional basswork that is reminiscent of light, lounge jazz music enhances the eclectic appeal of ’In Pains…’, giving an insight into what ‘Symphonies Of Sickness‘ or ‘Severed Survival‘ could have resembled given David Lynch’s or David Cronenberg’s taste for absurd, psychological and physical horror, albeit transferred into a less visual format, or what Cronenburg himself would term as music “from the point of view of the disease”. Much like the early work of fellow Germanics At The Gates and Atrocity, the lyrical and musical concepts concern themes of psychological, emotional distress that bring the most chaotic, despairing moments of Knut Hamsun’s ‘Hunger‘ or Dostoyevsky’s ‘Crime And Punishment‘, translated into a modern soundtrack, an opus for the darker recesses of the human condition.

February 18, 2010

Tourdates of the tormentors

I guess our readers won’t mind some recommendations about headbanging action and nights out at the city. Nice to see so many underrated old school constellations hit the lights again.

NORTH AMERICA

Feb 19 – DRI, TX – HOUSTON – Meridian
Feb 19 – Slayer / Megadeth, Air Canada Centre, Toronto, ON
Feb 20 – Slayer / Megadeth, Bell Centre, Montreal, QC
Feb 20 – DRI, TX – SAN ANTONIO – Rock Bottom Bar
Feb 21 – DRI, TX – AUSTIN – Emo’s
Feb 22 – DRI, TX – CORPUS CHRISTI – House of Rock
Feb 22 – Slayer / Megadeth, 22 Moncton Coliseum, Moncton, NB
Feb 23 – Slayer / Megadeth, 23 Metro Centre, Halifax, NS
Feb 27 – DRI, NY – FARMINGDALE – Crazy Donkey
Feb 28 – DRI, RI – PROVIDENCE – Club Hell
Mar 2 – Prong / Soulfly / Incite / Rotting Corpse, Scout Bar – San Antonio, TX
Mar 3 – Prong / Soulfly / Incite / Rotting Corpse, Scout Bar – Houston, TX
Mar 4 – DRI, SC – CHARLESTON – Oasis
Mar 5 – DRI, NC – JACKSONVILLE – Hooligans Music Hall
Mar 6 – DRI, NC – RALEIGH – Volume 11
Mar 6 – Prong / Soulfly / Incite / Rotting Corpse, Culture Room – Ft. Lauderdale, FL
Mar 7 – Prong / Soulfly / Incite / Rotting Corpse, Firestone Live – Orlando, FL
Mar 7 – DRI, NC – CHARLOTTE – Amos Southend
Mar 8 – Prong / Soulfly / Incite / Rotting Corpse, State Theater – St. Pete, FL
Mar 9 – Prong / Soulfly / Incite / Rotting Corpse, The Loft – Atlanta, GA
Mar 11 – Prong / Soulfly / Incite / Rotting Corpse, Starland Ballroom – Sayreville, NJ
Mar 12 – Prong / Soulfly / Incite / Rotting Corpse, The Crazy Donkey – Farmingdale, NY
Mar 13 – Prong / Soulfly / Incite / Rotting Corpse, The Royal Plaza Trade Center – Fitchburg, MA
Mar 13 – DRI, OH – COLUMBUS – Circus
Mar 19 – Deceased, allentown pa ALLENTOWN, Pennsylvania
Mar 19 – Prong / Soulfly / Incite / Rotting Corpse, Peabody’s – Cleveland, OH
Mar 20 – Deceased, GILS BAR AND GRILL va beach, va. va. beach, Virginia
Mar 20 – Prong / Soulfly / Incite / Rotting Corpse, Al Rosa Villa – Columbus, OH
Mar 23 – Prong / Soulfly / Incite / Rotting Corpse, Midland Theatre – Kansas City, MO
Mar 25 – DRI, KY – LOUISVILLE – Phoenix Hill Tavern
Mar 26 – DRI, GA – ATLANTA – The Masquerade
Mar 27 – DRI, TN – NASHVILLE – The Muse
Mar 28 – DRI, TN – MEMPHIS – Hi Tone Cafe
Apr 16 – Deceased / Superchrist, O BRIEN’S PUB allston, mass allston, Massachusetts*
Apr 17 – Deceased / Superchrist, UNION POOL brooklyn, new york brooklyn, New York*
Apr 18 – Deceased / Superchrist, KUNG FU NECKTIE philly, pa philly, Pennsylvania*
Apr 19 – Deceased / Superchrist, SIDE BAR baltimore maryland baltimore, Maryland*
Apr 20 – Deceased / Superchrist, KRUGS frederick maryland frederick, Maryland*
Apr 21 – Deceased / Superchrist, THE SMILING MOOSE pittsburgh, pa PITTSBURGH, Pennsylvania*
Apr 22 – Deceased / Superchrist, PEABODY’S cleveland ohio cleveland, Ohio*
Apr 23 – Deceased / Superchrist, MACS BAR lansing michigan lansing, Michigan*
Apr 24 – Deceased / Superchrist, RED LINE BAR chicago illinois CHICAGO, Illinois*
May 21 – Deceased, gallery 5 richmond, Virginia
May 22 – Deceased, VOLUME 11 TAVERN raleigh north carolina RALEIGH, North Carolina
May 26 – Gorguts / Portal, KNITTING FACTORY, Brooklyn, New York
May 28-30 – Gorguts / Possessed / DRI / Autopsy / Asphyx / Incantation / The Chasm / Obituary / Entombed / Pentagram / Necrophobic / Deceased / Superchrist, Maryland Deathfest @ Sonar baltimore, Maryland
Jun 11 – Deceased, JIMMYS PLACE allentown pa ALLENTOWN, Pennsylvania
Jun 12 – Deceased, Traxx Ronkonkoma, New York
Jun 23 – Deceased, THE WHITE SWAN houston, Texas
Jun 24 – Deceased, 1011 club san antonio, Texas
Jun 25 – Deceased, Austin texas AUSTIN, Texas
Jun 26 – Deceased, SMILERS BALLROOM harlingen, Texas
Jul 17 – Deceased, ’BLONDIES’ MICHIGAN DEATH FESTIVAL detroit, michigan DETROIT, Michigan
Jul 24 – Deceased, THE CANOPY CLUB Central Illinois Metalfest urbana, Illinois
Aug 6 – Deceased, cheyenne saloon las vegas, Nevada
Aug 7 – Deceased, the rock tucson, Arizona
Aug 8 – Deceased, u.b’s bar mesa, Arizona
Aug 10 – Deceased, ramona mainstage ramona, California
Aug 11 – Deceased, chain reaction anaheim, California
Aug 12 – Deceased, whiskey a go go west hollywood, California
Aug 13 – Deceased, thee parkside san francisco, California
Aug 14 – Deceased, satyricon portland, Oregon
Aug 15 – Deceased, el corazon seattle, Washington
Sep 11 – Deceased, philly thrash bash PHILADELPHIA

EUROPE / SOUTH AMERICA

Feb 19 – Master, São Paulo-SP, BRAZIL
Feb 20 – Master, Itapetininga-SP, BRAZIL
Feb 21 – Master, Otacílio Rock Festival in Santa Catarina, BRAZIL
Mar 5 – Master, K17, Berlin, GERMANY
Mar 6 – Master, Salut, Halberstadt, GERMANY
Mar 9 – Master, Pieffe Factory, Goriza, ITALY
Mar 12 – Suffocation, Tivoli, Utrecht, NETHERLANDS
Mar 13 – Suffocation, Substage, Karlsruhe, GERMANY
Mar 14 – Suffocation, Markthalle, Hamburg, GERMANY
Mar 15 – Suffocation, Voxhall, Aarhus, DENMARK
Mar 16 – Suffocation, Columbia Club, Berlin, GERMANY
Mar 17 – Suffocation, Klub Progresja, Warsaw, POLAND
Mar 18 – Suffocation, Randal, Bratislava, SLOVAKIA
Mar 19 – Asphyx / Winterwolf, Dante’s Highlight, Helsinki, FINLAND
Mar 19 – Suffocation, Chmelnice, Prague, CZECH REPUBLIC
Mar 19 – Master, Marktredwitz, Machine Park, GERMANY
Mar 20 – Suffocation, Conne Island, Leipzig, GERMANY
Mar 21 – Suffocation, Seifenfabrik, Graz, AUSTRIA
Mar 22 – Suffocation, Arena, Vienna, AUSTRIA
Mar 23 – Suffocation, Kino Siska, Ljubljana, SLOVENIA
Mar 24 – Suffocation, Feierwerk, Munich, GERMANY
Mar 25 – Suffocation, Soundtrack Club, Arcene, ITALY
Mar 25 – Master, Cottbus, Gladhouse, GERMANY
Mar 26 – Master, Rostock, Alte Zuckerfabrik, GERMANY
Mar 26 – Suffocation, Blackout Club, Rome, ITALY
Mar 27 – Suffocation, Rock Planet, Pinarella di Cervia, ITALY
Mar 27 – Master, Greifswald, Kleks, GERMANY
Mar 28 – Suffocation, Transilvania Live Club, Erstfeld, SWITZERLAND
Mar 29 – Suffocation, Glazart, Paris, FRANCE
Mar 30 – Suffocation, Underworld, London, UK
Mar 31 – Suffocation, Whelans, Dublin, IRELAND
Mar 31 – Master, Antwerpen, de rots, BELGIUM
Apr 1 – Suffocation, Rios, Leeds, UK
Apr 2 – Suffocation, O2 Academy 2, Birmingham, UK
Apr 3 – Master, Rotterdam, Baroeg, NETHERLANDS
Apr 3 – Suffocation, Turock, Death Feast Open Air Warm Up, Essen, GERMANY
Apr 4 – Suffocation, Trix, Antwerpen, BELGIUM
Apr 29 – Bolt Thrower / Rotting Christ, Atak, Enschede, NETHERLANDS
Apr 30 – Bolt Thrower / Rotting Christ, 013, Tilburg, NETHERLANDS
May 1 – Bolt Thrower / Rotting Christ, ULU, London, UK
May 2 – Bolt Thrower / Rotting Christ, The Button Factory, Dublin, IRELAND
May 3 – Bolt Thrower / Rotting Christ, The Limelight, Belfast, UK
May 4 – Bolt Thrower / Rotting Christ, Rios, Leeds, UK
May 5 – Bolt Thrower / Rotting Christ, Central Station, Wrexham, UK
May 5 – Suffocation / Napalm Death, Mexico City, MEXICO
May 5 – Suffocation, Mexico City, MEXICO
May 6 – Bolt Thrower / Rotting Christ, The Asylum, Birmingham, UK
May 7 – Suffocation, Caracas, VENEZUELA
May 7 – Bolt Thrower / Rotting Christ, Le Trabendo, Paris, FRANCE
May 8 – Suffocation, Teatro Metropol, Bogota, COLOMBIA
May 8 – Bolt Thrower / Rotting Christ, CCO, Lyon, FRANCE
May 9 – Suffocation, Bunga, Quito, ECUADOR
May 9 – Bolt Thrower / Rotting Christ, Trix (Hof Ter Lo), Antwerp, BELGIUM
May 11 – Suffocation, Voce, Lima, PERU
May 11 – Bolt Thrower / Rotting Christ, Progresja, Warsaw, POLAND
May 12 – Bolt Thrower / Rotting Christ, Abaton, Prague, CZECH REPUBLIC
May 13 – Suffocation, Teatro Caupolican, Santiago, CHILE
May 13 – Bolt Thrower / Rotting Christ, Metalfest, Dessau, GERMANY
May 14 – Suffocation, Teatro Flores, Bs As, ARGENTINA
May 14 – Bolt Thrower / Rotting Christ, Metalfest, Mining, AUSTRIA
May 15 – Bolt Thrower / Rotting Christ, Metalfest, Pratteln, SWITZERLAND
May 16 – Bolt Thrower / Rotting Christ, Kulturfabrik, Luxembourg, LUXEMBOURG
Jul 9 – Master, Darkness Over Paradise festival, Wolfsegg Am Hausruck, AUSTRIA
Aug 13-14 – Demilich / Destruction / Macabre / Gorgoroth / Carcass / Suffocation, Jalometalli, Oulu, FINLAND

February 17, 2010

Death Metal Album of the Week: Sepultura – Morbid Visions

The hot suburbs of Belo Horizonte shook with tremors as the satanic presence penetrated the walls of the Catedral da Boa Viagem. Dirty underground scoundrels gave bloody birth to Brazil’s death thrash phenomenon that was about span dozens of malicious LP’s of metal music released by Cogumelo Records consumed with thousands of liters of cheap alcohol that caused physical uproars of vomit, feces and mayhem. As with the majority of death metal classics, this music is a product of a group of young men having turned off their lobe of sanity, possibly by watching too much demonic possession horror movies and consuming every second of available music by bands such as Ratos de Porão, Hellhammer, Slayer and Terveet Kädet with a great deal of childish wide-eyed attention.

Neo-classical hardcore/thrash riff master Andreas Kisser is not yet in the band so his space is filled by the chaotic and fragmentary lo-fi signals of Max Cavalera’s unstable staccato rhythm guitar and the bursting leads of Jairo G., who later joined The Mist. Max’s vocals are the barks of a hostile Rottweiler or a species of South American wolf unknown to man, with a sharp rhythmic aggression no-one mastered with such bestiality as the hardcore punks and thrashers of this geographic region. The anarchist battery performed by his brother is a stupendous amalgamation of uncontrolled blastbeats still rare in this genre of music but hybridized by merging the messy Finnish hardcore/noise percussion heard in Kaaos and Kuolema with the more structured corpse puncturation of Dave Lombardo. Nearly none of the beautiful symmetry of “Beneath the Remains” exists here, as we are witnessing something like the primal life that arose in the jungles of the Mesozoic era, as plants, insects and reptiles grow, swarm, bite and rot in the ever-spinning cycles of evolution and death. I recommend this album for the brutals, as there is a reason it’s not called “Progressive Visions”.

Filed under: Death Metal Album of the Week — Tags: , , , — Devamitra @ 11:16 — Comments (2)

February 13, 2010

40 Candles upon the Altar of Heavy Metal








If we say that the average life-expectancy age in the western world is 80 and simplify things a little further by positing that half of those years are spent asleep during the night, then we’ve only got about 40 years to do some real, serious living. It’s been that many years to this day since Black Sabbath released their debut album, as good a day as you’re going to get to hail the 40th anniversary of Heavy Metal, and every single one of those years has been spent wide awake through procession of the daily sun and the darkness of the night. Heavy Metal arrived at a time to sentence a generation of delusion to death and confront the rest of modernity with the weight of reality and the power of the occult. A lot of newer generation listeners entered the Metallic planes of hell through bands that were breaking away from Heavy Metal’s Rock formalities and Blues atavisms, giving an impression that the older music was in most cases obsolete. From the moment that Sabbath had arrived and Satan unveiled his majestic black wings, the spirit of Metal was unlocked like a Pandora’s box that held all the secrets from the past and future, and the subversion of the present ensued, encoded in the language of the riff! Let us mark this unholy day with the truest celebration of Heavy Metal imagineable, as Devamitra introduces his epic compilation chronicling this wise and powerful art-culture:

History has become obscured, for few are interested to learn and explore the dawn of the barbaric and romantic sounds of metal music. All sorts of glam and joke bands are mistaken for Heavy Metal, which they aren’t, and many even believe there was never any serious merit, dark insight or focused direction to Heavy Metal in the past. The “Anvil of Thor” compilation was created to aid discourse on death metal and black metal with a friend of mine, as our musical learnings were composed in entirely different moulds and I wanted him to see the language of heavy metal with its forms, symbols and motion at least partially from my perspective. “If you don´t know the past, it´s impossible to understand the present.” Listening to these tracks in the preferred order as they appear in the playlist file, it should be easy, for example, to see how the tritone blues of Black Sabbath and the poetic narrative of Judas Priest contained the suggestion of high energy riffs as they appeared in occult bands Mercyful Fate, Death SS and Angel Witch, consequently mutating into Doom Metal in Trouble and Candlemass, Speed Metal in Slayer and Metallica and Epic Metal in Manilla Road and Manowar. This isn’t quite a “best of Heavy Metal” but one of the possible paths of seeing through core visions, techniques and moods of Heavy Metal music. For old heavy metal fans, it will hopefully revive fond memories of these sinister and majestic LP’s and for others, broaden the perception and hopefully bestow surprises.

Anvil of Thor – Heavy Metal Thunder Compilation

February 12, 2010

Vektor – Black Future

Were the year 1988/89, when Speed Metal was making it’s final, most definitive statements of dystopian frenzy and technical invention, the reverberations of this music would undoubtedly be traced back to places like Canada and Texas, detecting the names of Voivod, Obliveon, Watchtower and dead horse among others. Certainly not Arizona, where, in Vektor’s case, these sounds have travelled to and eventually merged in an energetic experiment of nuclear fusion. To some, the last few years have been good times for Speed Metal and saw a resurgence of bands trying to capture the spirit of the 80’s. In reality, this was one of many niched exercises in nostalgia and the long out-of-date fruits of useless bands like Evile, Merciless Death, Lich King and Municipal Waste reflected the trivial trend with sounds of supreme tackiness. Vektor are among the very few in revitalising Speed Metal, creating more than just a retrospective and methodological account of that genre’s heyday. ‘Black Future’ is a work that honours the past enthusiasm for innovation and musical proficiency, thus having a mind of its own to render this music for present and future audiences.

Voivod is the most visibly emblazoned influence on this band’s aesthetic, touching everything from the logo to the trademarked discordance and the futuristic scenes of technocratic dissolution it portrays. The Obliveon influence is quite explicit also, as there’s a lot of complex and unconventional movement of individual notes that resembles some kind of robotic Pagannini-droid, disembodied from the more rhythmic sections to emphasise the Classical aspirations of this band where melody is concerned. The rhythmic sections also stress this connection via. Metallica and their revolutionary instrumentals such as ‘Call of Ktulu‘ and ‘Orion‘ (there’s even the odd riff-a-like worked into the otherwise unique and beautifully crafted compositions). These songs flow very well through the course of the album, arranged much like one would theoretically expect it to sound had the band announced that they’ve written a ‘concept album’. It progresses from scenes of human conflict, chaos and error to glimpses of dark matter and the expanses of space hitherto undiscovered, mutating the neoclassicism into crescendos of high-end, sci-fi movie score material. Vocals are piercing shrieks that sound like the most ultrasonic intonations of Destruction with a touch of Absu. The drumming is really skillful but, as with the guitar-work, is almost over-indulgent at times, bringing undue attention to staple techniques like galloping kick-drums and shredding, though these occasions are few and far between and in any case, it’s infinitely more enjoyable to hear such exponentiated energy where it really belongs.

This album took us by surprise as 2009 was drawing to a close, capping off a year filled with more quality albums than the discerning Metal listener of recent years is used to. Vektor’s grasp of their ancestry is profound and combined with an epic concept and insane and elegant musicianship, ‘Black Future’ plays out like some cosmic race towards entropy with mankind in the driver’s seat.

Filed under: Death Metal Music Reviews — Tags: , , , , — ObscuraHessian @ 00:41 — Comments (3)

February 11, 2010

Death Metal Album of the Week: Ceremonium – Into The Autumn Shade

New York Death Metal is synonymous with the brutal, rhythmic style pioneered by Suffocation, Baphomet, Morpheus Descends and the less-than-able proliferous hordes who followed. The region was no stranger to slower, Doom-influenced Metal, but the surge in popularity of Brutal Death Metal and the faux-tough-guy images of wiggers that came with it saw that bands like Winter, Sorrow and Ceremonium would not receive much attention within or after the span of their careers. Of all the aforementioned cursed undertakers of doom, it was the last of them to disband after a relatively lengthy existence who created enduring albums that had as much in common with the European tradition of melodicism as they did the desultory and engulfing heaviness induced by their own locality.

‘Into The Autumn Shade’ is a massive recording and a great debut by Ceremonium, using their sound setup of deep guitars and bass to thunder out intricate and epic songs that develop slow to mid-paced melodies, drawing inspiration from northern European bands like Creepmime and early Darkthrone, and with ‘Soulside Journey‘ and Paradise Lost’s own morbid inauguration very apparent in the greater narrative sense of this album. Deep, mournful melodies are formed from the outset like an epitaph being inscribed at birth and are subjected to a rich, harmonic interplay which highlights the spiralling sadness of these riffs, fragments of which are carried away by heavier and more brutal passages, as the attachment to sorrow in life strips away all joy and comfort to reveal the inevitability of death. These elements are balanced well enough to preserve the emotional impact of such music. The pacing is managed with a riff’s melodic direction in mind, rather than through the awkward tempo shifts that many newer Doomdeath bands fall prey to in their divisive mentality. Keyboards appear frequently but this electro-vocal, choral layer bears down on the music as unintrusively as a forlorn, angelic statue that looms over an open grave, as the casket is lowered into the dirt. The actual vocals provided by Brandon Diaz are sometimes at odds with the mix, but the guitar thickness is usually powerful enough to even the sound out. Ceremonium’s statement of doomed Death Metal stands alongside the European heavyweights of this style, before they would move onto a more Black Metal influenced sound and successfully contend with those across the Atlantic once again.

February 3, 2010

An ennead of terrifying visions – classic EP’s of Death Metal

This series of reviews shows the infectious potential of condensing the multidimensional texture of darkness and mythology into a carefully trimmed brief explosion with no room for filler or long, meaningless passages of droning, experimentation or interludes. Those who mastered the art of the metal EP or mini-LP are rare, but deserve all the more credit for their achievements. The fact that you can listen to everything we have here easily within the space of one evening does not mean that the unlocked experiences won’t stay with you forever.

Slayer – Haunting The Chapel

Showing a strong advancement in technique and an evolution towards a darker style that would be the staple of records to come by the band, Slayer throw off the camp shackles of their excellent first album, and give a more progressive approach to songcraft yet give more emphasis on repetition within individual riffs. The violent droning guitar timbre of Discharge makes itself ever more present whilst the musical language of Judas Priest and Angel Witch works itself within those patterns. The dissonant twin soloing of King and Hanneman is more suitable to this new direction also, whilst Lombardo’s aggressive battery finds more cohesion in using less variation and being more of an ambient backdrop than before, with Araya’s unmistakable rasp encoding itself sadistically within the depths. A bleak affair that summed up the apocalyptic meanderings of the speed metal movement and the embryonic beginnings of the death metal that was yet to manifest. -Pearson

Napalm Death – Mentally Murdered

This work is like a convergence of Napalm Death and Carcass, having left ‘From Enslavement to Obliteration’ and ‘Reek or Putrefaction’ behind in order to expand on their styles, towards ‘Harmony Corruption’ and ‘Symphonies of Sickness’ respectively. By Napalm’s standards, at this point in their discography, these songs are quite lengthy and structured with an attention to detail that recaptures the subtle shifts in mechanical motion of the earliest side to ‘Scum’. This technique is re-invigorated by the cleaner production, relegating the extremity of fuzzy bass for the sake of a twin-guitar assault that creates an hypnotic and delusional sensation, and shows the input of Jesse Pintado who would go on to record another highly influential work of Grindcore – Terrorizer’s ‘World Downfall’. Composition is practically freed at very the earliest moments of songs onwards, unlike previous Napalm Death albums where these parts were used to establish exactly which single riff will become immersed in a barely discernable anarchic explosion for the rest of the 30 seconds of music. Instead, it’s given a more Death Metal treatment, e.g. in ‘The Missing Link’, the opening riff seems to degrade over time into smaller grinding patterns until the fragments are juggled like sacks of meat by morbid Death Metal riffs. This is where some of the tremelo melodies that would tear through the rotten wall of sound of Carcass finds its place, accompanied by the mocking lead guitars of Bill Steer. The human tornado, Mick Harris is even more precise than his previous effort, but doesn’t lose any of his epithet’s justification. Lee Dorrian’s vocals become more guttural and undecypherable, conceding to the futility of mainstream political discussion. The seeds of an approach closer in line with the burgeoning interest in Death Metal were sown here, simultaneously taking Grindcore one step further away from reaching the dead-end of short and simplistic outbursts of truncated riffs and hollow statements. -ObscuraHessian

Rotting Christ – Passage to Arcturo

Warm, playful and overflowing with the abundance of inspiration in the rediscovery of ancient shamanic techniques of mystical metal creation, the Greek pioneers of Rotting Christ forsook the aggravated modern noise of grindcore in time to ride the wave of blackness that usurped the European metal underground. Remnants and glimpses of 80’s fast modern metal (Slayer) give way to an astral, luminous intensity of synthesizers and slowly picked melodies that suspend the themes for a moment to enable the mind to stop wandering and relish the unholy moment of concentration, in a yogic gesture of blackness. Few have ever used the crushing sonic world of black and death metal to so fully immerse in ethereal ritual, and such rare examples as “Drawing Down the Moon” preserve plenty of subtle reminders to this widely heard classic of European black metal. As their chaotic exhortations in countless zines of the period conclude, Rotting Christ’s hybrid of gothic and black metal aimed for an architecture of the infinite, regal sunsets of lost kingdoms whose landscapes are not for the eyes of mortals, except in dreams and in death. As “Forest of N’Gai” aptly proves, black metal was at its height when not contorted to fit the schemes of a political ideology or an orthodox Satanist movement, but like the great works of literature a realm of fantasy of its own whose symbols are rooted in our deepest unconscious fears and desires. This sub-space can then be used by the analytical mind to figure the patterns of generation for a multitude of creative, even lunatic, concepts. -Devamitra

At the Gates – Gardens of Grief

The original Gothenburg gloomy melody cult made one of their strongest statements on this early EP, pressed from demo to vinyl on the first year of the band’s existence. Fresh from life disrespecting bands such as Infestation and Grotesque, these Swedes nail the most desperate guitar harmonies since Candlemass, but infect them with the viral sensibility of a flux of death current. As if plugging the Sunlight Studios into your brains in direct interface, Svensson’s tremolos rip and rend mercilessly apart the soul of the beast that dared expose its true feelings of living in a world of hypocrisy and uncertainty. The band has preserved the most fragile moment of the Swedish death metal underground, the precarious balance between the catatonic psychosis of headbanging under alcoholic influence and the deep, burning, thoughtful soul of an encrypted Romantic in a world of pain and disguised memories. It all takes such tangible form in Tomas Lindberg’s cracking, maddened scream: “I am at the gates – Lord of Chaos – Let me sleep”. The fear and anger of At the Gates’ most revered albums will always remain something that divides audiences according to their response to such emotional cues, but “Gardens of Grief” is the un-terrorized, exuberant sound of youth that realizes the presence of death and dives into it headlong, appropriate to the Per Ohlin dedication in the liner notes. -Devamitra

Wings – Thorns On Thy Oaken Throne

An all too brief EP from Finnish gloomophiliacs Wings, as ephemeral as the tortured existence that is enshrouded in these twisted sounds of darkness-raped melody. Almost like the missing tracks from Cartilage’s cult classic ‘The Fragile Concept of Affection’, this continuation goes further to explore the sombre moods of songs like ‘Why Do I Watch The Dawn?’, in their Replicant-like reflections upon the transience of a human existence placed between the crushing, vice-grip of nothingness. Wings don’t peturb the balance of pace of slower, more expansive lakes of hypnotic melody that made up Cartilage’s contribution to their split with Altar, but there is greater focus on creating a doomier atmosphere, leaving no space for the grinding riffs of the past incarnation – a technique that parrelleled the Swedish Unleashed on their first album. Instead, an older treatment is given to the bouncier riffs, which could be heard as Punkier passages, but as this EP comes together as a whole to reveal, these bridge the narrative that seems to span across both songs with a mid-pace tempo in which the drawn out melodies pass through towards an expressive, quite neoclassical riff of totality – encompassing all the hopes that are weighed down by all the sorrows in the journey towards death. This poem in two parts is a valuable recording of Death Metal history, as a valid direction for these Finnish musicians to have taken following the demise of Cartilage, with all their weird melodic knowledge as baggage. -ObscuraHessian

Sacramentum – Finis Malorum

A true gem, Sacramentum’s first EP showcases a style that is melodic and emotive in a manner not unlike countrymen Dissection and Unanimated. Epic, catchy and well crafted compositions are multi-layered not unlike Emperor minus keyboards, the rush of guitar notes being vibrant and lively, with little emphasis towards a rhythmic expectation, as one would expect with most heavy metal and hard rock music. Simultaneously moody yet without being whiny, this early release by Sacramentum showcases a band who are able to master quality control and bring the best out of all the elements that define their music. Alongside At The Gates, artistically the finest Swedish metal act of the 1990’s. -Pearson

Zyklon-B – Blood Must Be Shed

Fast, raging black metal with the fury of early Deicide and the sharp harmonizing typical of Mayhem and Immortal’s ‘Pure Holocaust’ come head to head, in the guise of technically precise, abrupt songs. Shouty hardcore vocals, warm synth overlaps, a near constant blastbeat and anti-humanist lyrical concepts indicate a desire by known Norwegian musicians to advance the aggression of the black metal style and shift it’s idealogical focus away from romantic nostalgia. This brief E.P. lacks the spark of Norway’s foundational acts, but remains an influential statement of the subgenre. -Pearson

Vulpecula – Fons Immortalis

Who would have expected Chuck Keller to open the gates to very Orion itself after the folding of the aggressor squad par excellence Order from Chaos? As if a continuation of the promise of the astrological and alchemistic symbolism of the former bands’ lyrics, Vulpecula slows it down and strums soothing, yet vigorous melodies while the vocals multiple into wraith-like dimensions of rhythmic rasps and Keller’s leads occasionally burst into the aggressive, spasmous flight of an eagle amidst a thunderstorm. “Phoenix of the Creation” delves into exercises in authentic space synth, while “The First Point of Aries” harkens to the mid-paced woodland meditations that the Norwegians used to record at Grieghallen. Occasionally slightly hindered by the band’s eagerness to cram all the influences from Schulze to black metal into one short EP, the mere richness of it invites the ears to take their pleasure at will from the Babylonian garden of ponderous and prestigious movements that are achingly attractive and acceptable in their innocent refusal to complicate things with dissonance. Credit also goes for the lead guitar efforts of Keller on their traditional melodious injection which easily avoids the neutrality of more pop oriented bands trying to do the same. Almost like envisioning a “new age” approach to the genre, Vulpecula is an alien saucer amidst the orbit bound technologies of “progressive” death metal. -Devamitra

Divine Eve – Vengeful and Obstinate

The first new release that’s being reviewed for 2010 and it’s already giving distinct impressions of the kind of quality that made 1993’s ‘As the Angels Weep’ a genuinely classic EP. Divine Eve keeps the form of this new material far simpler, stripping away the Death Metal-infected sludginess for a more rudimentary homage to early brutal music like Celtic Frost. ‘Vengeful and Obstinate’ makes its own unique statement by honing in on the nihilistic and warlike spirit of the Swiss legend’s ‘To Mega Therion’ magnum opus, even invoking the same battle-horns on ‘Ravages of Heathen Men’ that bring focus to the beauty of conflict and strife in a meaningless universe. The varied tempo of grinding riffs set to a dirty bass guitar adds to the atmosphere of struggle as an outlet for this primitive, instinctual response to the world. ‘Whispers of Fire’ being the exception on this EP for the constantly up-tempo pace, it’s a pleasure to hear such slow and sludgy music churning visions of the darker universe beyond our lives of comfort and languish. The final and most devastating touch of ‘Vengeful and Obstinate’ is how Divine Eve makes extensive use of the piercing tone that Xan’s grating guitar setup produces, highlighting the spiral passage of powerchords by revealing their hidden, melodic architecture, ingenuiously managing to explain and enhance this rugged approach of legendary lineage. It’s about time the band produced a full-length and they’ve proved that they possess more than enough knowledge of unholy riffcraft to do so. -ObscuraHessian

Death Metal Album of the Week: Wicked Innocence – Omnipotence

Following the course of American Death Metal through the early to mid-nineties shows the beginnings of a noteable schism in how bands approached Death Metal composition. As a new wave of fans became immersed in this extreme music, exposed via. mainstream outlets such as MTV and Music for Nations, the underground ethos of pure artistry became sacrificed to some degree, to reflect this broader audience. On one hand, there were bands like Cannibal Corpse, Deicide and Obituary dumbing down the music and setting a tradition of thoughtless extremity for musicians to pursue until this surrogate activity became formalised under titles like ‘Brutal Death Metal’ (also latching onto the furthest extremes of rhythmic Death Metal to that point – Suffocation, and the simplicity of Grindcore technique). On the other hand, an obviously smaller number of bands went in an opposite direction, inspired by the Jazz-infused music of Atheist and Death’s ‘Human‘, to create varieties of technical and progressive Death Metal. Whichever the case and whatever the quality of any individual example of music that sits within this timeframe, it’s obvious that there was somewhat of a spiritual decline in American Death Metal at this point.

To find this week’s prized album will then require us to venture away from the centres of Florida and the northern tri-states of America, and instead to Mid-Western Utah’s capital of Salt Lake City, famous for its infestation of polygamous Mormons. Here we find a band who were pretty much loners in that continent’s extreme music scene, but seemingly not placed there without a purpose. Their equidistant view of both scenes lead Wicked Innocence to create an album that, though sounding firmly in the camp of mid-nineties Brutal Death Metal, has a very progressive edge with lyrics that are closer to the cosmic existentialism of Cynic or Atheist. ‘Omnipotence’ gets rolling with a barrage typical of the aforementioned north-eastern, essentially, purely rhythmic style of Death Metal, but this music has very little in common with the tedious likes of Dying Fetus and Dehumanized, and gradually more and more progressive tendencies and flourishes of Floridan musicality creep into the album to leave an impression of something quite unique and stimulating.

Even on the level of rhythm, a direction is established within micro-rhythmic units of those riffs and sent spiralling into disarray with a Grindcore fervour for destruction. These kaleidoscopic patterns are hyper-extended into heavier chunks of guitarwork which get disintegrated further in another grinding sequence of powerchords that resembles a frustrated echo bouncing within the walls of some symbolic cube, floating meaninglessly in deep space. The melodies that tear out of this method resemble a less occult Incantation or Infester but are imbued with all of their insanities. Shades of Revenant appear in the shredding of more melodic riffs, whereby the rhythmical aspect is suspended above the beat, causing a profound sensation of impending death. As the album progresses, the melodic/rhythmic interplay becomes more integral to the sense of deconstructionism that the music conveys, revealing ever broader contexts of consciousness, like a reversed Hegelian dialectic. Bass guitar is extremely competent in underscoring this growing expanse of nothingness, similar in role to Cynic on their legendary demo, without being very discernably Jazzy. The drumming is reasonably technical as should be expected from any band that can trace their origins back to Suffocation, which the vocalist acknowledges with some amusing performances that are spewed out from an intestinal level of depth. Clearly, ‘Omnipotence’ was a timely release, before this intricate mesh of popular styles would be undermined by another generation of bands who randomly throw ideas together for no purpose at all.

January 27, 2010

Death Metal Album of the Week: Necros Christos – Triune Impurity Rites

After the backfire of metalcore and ironic jokes wrapped in death metal clothing, failed reunions and commercially motivated Bloodbath-style tributes a new breed of death metal bands obsessed with funereal, paranormal and asphyxiating atmosphere above all else penetrated the ground from beneath. While originally celebrated exclusively by collectors and geeks who possessed tremendous tape and vinyl collections, gradually metal fans from differing backgrounds gathered to see the tours and savor the albums of new more authentic seeming bands like Dead Congregation from Greece, Deathevokation from California and Deutschland’s Necros Christos. While these bands were all firmly rooted in the abominable legends told by Incantation, Mystifier and other anti-musicians, they took care to use the organized polish and visual design of 21st century black metal to appease also the generation raised on dramatic, ideologically motivated “art”.

As for the music, it’s far from impersonal or humble. Mors Dalos Ra and his team of qabbalists indulge in goofy rituals, hyper-exaggerated pauses and gestures, horror organs, chanted spells and minimal doom riffs almost like going for a parody of satanic metal through the ages. However, the songs are joyous, exhilarating, morbid and alive with unholy fire. The guitarists use their knowledge of classical guitar and oriental scales to wrap the death metal themes in a progressive procession of movements that seem to mimic an inverted Passion play, the journey of a goatborn Christ to relinquish his throne to undead gods, while sodomized angels weep over the mythical ziggurats appearing somewhere in the moonlit wasteland near Bethlehem. Sounds hilarious? Well, that’s what it is – like Impiety or Impaled Nazarene, Necros Christos throws all the mockery and analogy squarely in the face of the philosopher, eschewing subtlety and relishing madness. The music is surprisingly controlled, as there is no chaotic blasting nor disembodied screams floating all over the place. Instead, we get an organized meditation of lurking and crawling Sabbathic (in various senses) melodies, from extravagantly beautiful (“Gate II – Offenbarungen der Mayrim”) to grating and dissonant (“Skulldoom of Sumer”) while many leads toy with Baroque ideas and desolate urges fitting for a Paradise Lost demo. Especially recommended for a listener who doesn’t consider “cheesy” a curse word.

January 26, 2010

Morgue Supplier – Constant Negative

If you visualize the modern death metal genre as a knightly tournament with splendid banners adorning the tents of the contestants on an ancient Briton field, you can’t escape the prominence of the progressive camp espoused by Necrophagist and the obscure evil camp belonging to hairy South Americans and occult woodland Finns. Then there are the loved and the hated “brutals”. The unfortunate Morgue Supplier goes all the way to the leaden territory of mechanized grindcore, brutal blastbeat and convulsive gore that is best epitomized by Cryptopsy’s and Cannibal Corpse’s groundbreaking albums “Blasphemy Made Flesh” and “The Bleeding” (or your favorite other pick from that mostly dubious discography). The speed is astounding, the songs careen through slashes of riffs like the beak of a vulture on the prowl, injecting pinch harmonics into mono chord chug while vocals are the dual growl-and-shriek statement we have heard enough times in this beaten substyle. A couple of minor gems arise though. The cover version of Metallica’s “Fight Fire By Fire” is an entertaining lecture on the genealogy of early speed metal and how it almost by itself mutates to something close to Possessed or Sepultura if played with intensity, distortion and malevolent speeds. On the side, the title track “Constant Negative” has a smudged enough texture to operate as a chasm of interlocking layers similar to Gorguts’ fusionesque work on the mighty “Obscura”. Perhaps a hint where brutal death metal might develop if given enough care and attention? I personally could do without the mosh parts, but those who were disappointed by the wimping out of Cryptopsy should perhaps check this release out.

Filed under: Death Metal Music Reviews — Tags: , , , — Devamitra @ 13:04 — Comments (0)

January 24, 2010

Windham Hell – South Facing Epitaph

Darkthrone managed to conjure something far more stimulating to the imagination when they were inspired by horror and science-fiction movie soundtracks to create vast journeys of cosmic Death Metal. Windham Hell’s first album also follows from the deeper recesses of popular culture and cinema, fucking with the senses and expectations of the Metal listener through this Lynchian maze of psychological horror and ominous mortality. The first thing that’s evident about the musicians at work here, particularly the late Eric Freisen on guitars, is the uncustomary level of formal training demonstrated in these pieces, which bear close stylistic resemblance to the famous concertos of Antonio Vivaldi. The riffs that make up the bulk of actual Metal songs on this erratic album are nothing spectacular or unconventional but formed with the lead guitar in mind, acting much like the movie samples and vomitory vocals do to provide a kind of ambient feeling of suspended horror and panic that the leads then magnify through their virtuoso performances, building on the looming fear with sporadic outbursts of mental excitation. The rest of the album is a feast for those who would enjoy the subversion of popular culture through a post-modernist cutting and pasting of morbidly curious voices bridged with Classical flourishes, although may lose the attention of others. There is enough tastefully executed technique on show to keep this as engaging as possible, and a far superior album to the following ‘Window of Souls’.

Filed under: Death Metal Music Reviews — Tags: , , , , — ObscuraHessian @ 23:25 — Comments (11)

January 21, 2010

Death Metal Album of the Week: Septic Flesh – Mystic Places of Dawn

Septic Flesh’s first album fits very neatly into the old Hellenic scene as a collosus of melodic majesty, but where this one differs from the other noteworthy Grecian offerings is precisely what makes it suitable listening for our ritual of death-worship this week. Not unlike the infamous Nordic Black Metallers in the earliest stages of their musical careers, a lot of the Greek Black Metal bands began playing more rotten music before unleashing their fusion of epic Heavy and Black Metal, and Septic Flesh would be no exception two albums later with their own output of blackness, ‘The Ophidian Wheel‘. ‘Mystic Places of Dawn’ however, retains a little more of this band’s origins in Death Metal and Grindcore even though what ensues on this record is some of the most melodically articulate and enchanting music produced by this ancient country in modern history. The Greek underground was definitely a pandaemonic entity, and where some would exhalt Lucifer or some unknown underworld monarch, the band in question carved out their own mysterious and forgotten mythology of a far less ‘blackened’ conception, leading to the diverse approach of this release.

The opening track launches from deep below the Aegean sea floor and is quick to demonstrate Septic Flesh’s background in Death Metal with intense, rhythmically conscious blast-beats and kick-drumming that approaches the speed of Proscriptor on Absu’s famed percussive exhibition known as ‘Tara‘. Amidst this brutality are epic melodies that, although following familiar scalic patterns, are beautifully woven together between windtunnel shredding and grind-encrypted riffs. The slower tempos that dominate the rest of this work explore ethereal sensations of reflection upon lost spiritual wisdom, with keyboards taking cues from Rotting Christ. Older, sometimes tribal, sometimes Classical sounds produced by additional instrumentation goes further to create an atmospheric Metal approximation of the mystical, neoclassical and world music of Dead Can Dance on albums such as ‘Within the Realm of the Dying Sun‘ or ‘Aion‘. Caught in a dream of the past that might enliven the yearning of our waking lives for civilisation to once again resonate ancient and cosmic knowledge, Septic Flesh took Greek underground Metal to new heights, managing to seamlessly encapsulate all the major styles of Metal in the process.

January 17, 2010

Nocturnal Transcendence – Interview with Midnight Odyssey

As much of the northern hemisphere is being overwhelmed by the onslaught of winter, the flames of Hell are rising to consume the south at summer’s peak. Still, the hardened souls of Black Metal warriors remain unfrozen, and Australia’s Dis Pater from Midnight Odyssey is no exception. A recent arrival on the scene producing beautiful and mature music demanded one of our interrogations, which revealed some of this artist’s thoughts on ambience, patience and experience.

ObscuraHessian: We thought ‘Firmament‘ was among the best albums of 2009, and I was pleased to hear that I, Voidhanger is doing the good deed of re-releasing your old material within the next couple of months! Looking back at your first Midnight Odyssey work, with its exhibition of diverse influences, how would you describe your mindset as an artist back then, compared to putting tracks together for the more streamlined ‘Firmament’?

Dis Pater: Hello, thank you for your compliments. I, Voidhanger is in fact re-releasing “Firmament” which shall be out early March hopefully. The Forest Mourners was for me somewhat of a transcendence between the music I used to write and record privately and the Firmament release. I had a lot of influences which I wanted to incorporate into the project, and I guess I wanted to keep the door open as much as possible to prevent being labelled any one genre of music.

ObscuraHessian: In addition to hearing the obvious traces of bands like Burzum and Summoning in the demo, the ambiental feeling seems to quote some of my favourite ambient output, from Jääportit to ‘Dark Age of Reason’-era Arcana. What’s your relationship with ambient music and what’s your recipe for ‘Ambient Black Metal’?

Dis Pater: I have long been a fan of Cold Meat Industry bands, particularly early Arcana, Raison D’Etre, Ildfrost, Mortiis, Deutsch Nepal, In Slaughter Natives, etc, etc. Ambient music was the first music I ever tried to record, and it’s something I have worked on as much as black metal, so combining the two seems natural for me. A recipe? Well A lot of modern bands do a fantastic job of mixing ambience and black metal – Paysage D’hiver, Coldworld, Darkspace, Marblebog, Vinterriket, etc, I think it’s just being able to use keyboards with metal in a not so pompous way.

ObscuraHessian: I like to imagine that an entire Black Metal album could be recorded one day without percussion. Midnight Odyssey’s proclivity for ambience demonstrates as well as a ‘Filosofem’, ‘Winterkald‘ or ‘Antichrist‘ how this could actually work. Do you think that there’s enough scope in ‘Black Metal composition’ to eschew drums completely? Maybe an artist should just go and make electronic music like so many warriors have done?!

Dis Pater: It’s funny you say electronic music. I too have delved into the electronic side of things in the past, and find a unique way of writing music there that seems to work well with the way I write for Midnight Odyssey. Bands like Tangerine Dream, Kraftwerk, all the way up to Trance and Industrial Electronica all have some unique element for repetition and layer building. I try to do the same with Midinght Odyssey, but with guitars and bass. I think it is possible to record an entire album without drums, it’s something I have thought about, and think I could achieve in the future, without going too far down the line of electronic music.

ObscuraHessian: On ‘The Forest Mourners’, there is a subtle but still more continual folkiness to the music. Some of it reminds me of the folk/ambient images that A. Tolonen produces with Nest, but other times are a little more Celtic? as is the case with the opening track – which makes me think of a more contemplative Himinbjorg. Did you use such folk stylings as a conscious expression of ancestry, or is this a direct manifestation of musical influences? Being an Australian, is such a tribal connection even possible, in the manner of the Norwegians from Helvete, for example?

Dis Pater: The folk element is something deliberately incorporated into the music. I have good friends who are in a celtic folk band here in Brisbane, so their influence on my music is sometimes present. Also I enjoy folk metal, and some heavy metal such as Gary Moore’s Wild Frontier album, where there seems to be a lot of celtic folk/rock influences. So yes in Brisbane it is possible to still maintain some connectivity with a European heritage, probably more-so than say America because Australia is a much younger country, most of us have parents, grandparents or great-grandparents who weren’t born here. Also my music is about a time long ago in the past, and thus folk music has its meaning there.

ObscuraHessian: There is as much mention of ’spirits’ in the titles of songs from ‘The Forest Mourners’ as there is of nature, but the ideas of the subsequent album seem to suggest that this reflects more than just an animism of some sort. You talk about ‘Departing Flesh and Bone’ and of course, the whole work is underlied by this connection between the active and earthly, and cosmic and eternal. This is an idea which is really interesting to me because it seems to get lost in modern discussions of both natural science and populist, Judeo-Christian religion. Could you explain how you came to terms with this understanding?

Dis Pater: To me, this entire area has been corrupted by Judeo-Christianity and most modern monotheistic or dualistic religions, Islam, Zoroastrianism, Buddhism, etc. The album Firmament is based on the moment of death, the moment a soul leaves the human body and what supposedly comes after. This is based on a somewhat personal experience which I have attempted to migrate to a more populous and general theme, set back in a time which I believe has been erased from human record, a time when humans were a little more in touch with their spiritual and carnal natures, when everything wasn’t so easily divided into what’s good and what’s evil. I like the moral ambiguity of everything, that to me is what existence is about, it’s not about the ultimate battle of good and evil that religion tells us to believe in.

ObscuraHessian: Even with your influences on your sleeves, so to speak, the music of Midnight Odyssey is very imaginative and this rapid-fire consistency at this point of your career makes it feel very ‘lived out’! How would you describe the way in which the actual sounds that you produce are a representation of the aforementioned ideas or feelings? I mean, with most popular music, it seems to be fabricated in such a way to prioritise the broadest demographics, but obviously, good Black Metal wouldn’t be composed with such vagueness in mind!

Dis Pater: Yes my music is rather spontaneous actually. I won’t write anything for months, then do an album in three days, then sit back a few weeks and let it mature, perfecting it. When the time comes to write music, I am completely obsessed, engulfed in this strange atmosphere, it’s kind of like walking out before a summer storm, you can almost feel the lightning seeking you out ready to strike, it’s almost panic. It’s usually after hearing a certain song somewhere, an idea will come into my head, and I won’t be able to sleep, I usually don’t eat or drink anything for a day or so. I listen to a lot of music, and I know what I like and I only release music that after a while I can still listen to and not feel embarrassed or ashamed about, to me it has to envoke those same impulses and manic trances that I got whilst recording the music. I know the exact tones, the exact reverb levels, the exact production levels I like and desire, so my music is always a mixture of new creative forces and learned processes, which has taken me nearly 10 years to get to.

ObscuraHessian: The sound of the full-length is naturally better as there’s more space between instruments but you still managed to reflect an enclosed feeling which sounds like the music is passing through a million leaves and branches before it hits the listener. Did the demo receive any remastering before sent to be pressed for its forthcoming distribution?

Dis Pater: The demo, actually both demos which will be re-released, (The Forest Mourners on Kunsthauch Records in Russia, possibly as a split) But neither are going to re-mastered, they are being kept the same, the only difference is with the new version of Firmament, the songs will be made to cut out less at the end (i.e. the music fades a bit before ending abruptly) and the last track From Beyond The 8th Sphere is being renamed simply Beyond the 8th Sphere (We noticed I used the word From a bit too much haha).

ObscuraHessian: Are you still working on music for an album to follow ‘Firmament’?

Dis Pater: Yes there are a couple of things. One is a split with Wedard, which will be two songs from the Firmament sessions, actually one was written in between Forest Mourners and Firmament and has a bit more of an epic folk, and the other was written after and is not really a metal song). The next full length is recorded (except the vocals) and is a continuation of Firmament. Musically I think it is similar, but maybe a little bit more epic and ethereal in feel.

ObscuraHessian: Could you tell us a little about your activities outside of Midnight Odyssey, including any other musical projects?

Dis Pater: Other than Midnight Odyssey, I have a project called Fires Light The Sky. I had recorded two songs but have changed the style a bit of the band and am set to release 4 songs (which are actually old old Midnight Odyssey songs reworked and re-recorded, I think three of them I wrote in 1999, and one in 2001, so it’s a more aggressive and standard black metal but nonetheless I feel I have to release them just to get them out of mind, it’s like holding on to a secret that you want to tell everyone and can’t do anything else until you tell someone. Also I have plans for a funeral doom project at some stage this year.

ObscuraHessian: What was the last awesome book that you read?

Dis Pater: The last good book, well strangely I don’t read much, I think the last good thing I read was a book on Early Greek Philosophy, it was interesting to see just how fragmented records are and the work that goes into fitting the pieces of history together. It was interesting too to see these people from thousands of years ago try to describe something, and doing it relatively correctly, but just not having the correct terminology and understanding to fully comprehend it.

ObscuraHessian: What was the last piece of music you heard that resonated most with your own thoughts and feelings?

Dis Pater: The last music would definitely be the Polish band Evilfeast, I got some cds on the way and I can’t wait to hear the whole albums, a couple of songs I’ve heard of them blew me away – epic, atmospheric and very depressing dark music.

Hails to Dis Pater for answering my questions and all the best for the future of Midnight Odyssey!

Filed under: Death Metal Interviews — Tags: , , — ObscuraHessian @ 05:16 — Comments (2)

January 11, 2010

Death Metal Album of the Week: Monstrosity – Imperial Doom

Stylistically bonding the progressive riffcraft of Morbid Angel and the percussive intensity of Suffocation, Monstrosity craft a monument that hybridizes the ‘foundational’  death metal that came out of their native Florida and the ‘brutal’ take on the substyle that was making itself known in New York. Whirling power chord and tremolo led riffs not unlike ‘Altars Of Madness’ come face to face with the progressive, grindcore informed drumming that was a centerpiece of ‘Effigy Of The Forgotten’, whilst George “Corpsegrinder” Fisher’s intense, hoarse vocal delivery and Mark Van Erp’s bass playing have all the passion and savagery of a more mid-paced ‘Legion’. An essential piece of work, being a summation and hybrid of the foundational styles of American death metal. Any listener worth their salt should bow in admiration to this opus.

January 7, 2010

Totten Korps – Tharnheim: Athi-Land-Nhi; Ciclopean Crypts of Citadels

South America holds a very unholy place in the minds of Death Metal legions around the world, with the Brazilian scene of particular note for unearthing a bestial and blasphemous mode of Death Metal worship that drew inspiration from the mightiest warriors of Satan known to them: Bathory and Slayer, and would infuse these ideas with a level of wreckless primitivism and rawness unheard before. Chilean veterans Totten Korps’ music is an advancement of this style, assuming the forms of infamous Speed/Death barbarians like fellow Chileans, Pentagram and Brazilians, Holocausto and Vulcano within a cleaner soundspace that allows for more exploration of sinister melody in a winding, maze-like structure that is symbolic of the album’s perpetual struggle for primordial knowledge and occult powers. This is what separates Totten Korps from the trendier bands like Krisiun who have little taste for well thought-out narratives, preferring a collection of soundbites that cleave to a roughly Death Metal template. The band also knows how to keep the South American atavisms of bouncy and rhythmic passages that are punctuated by a vague melodic pattern in line with the greater whole of composition, often reflecting a central, recurring theme. There’s almost a Kataklysm-ic sense of grandeur in this method, although it sacrifices the flair of such precision for the fragmented and impulsive butchery of a good, old school Death Metal album from the land of condors and corpses.

Havohej, maggot
They are going to drag
Yourself in the dust
Ethereal orb
Let your thought go

Filed under: Death Metal Music Reviews — Tags: , , , — ObscuraHessian @ 02:41 — Comments (2)

Achtung! Totten Korps Kommen

In the abyssic southern lands of the Americas, an ancient force is re-awakening, as one of Chile’s best Death Metal bands prepares their next attack on this complacent world. After an absence of 9 years from the scene, within which saw the re-release of their last album, ‘Tharnheim: Athi-Land-Nhi; Ciclopean Crypts of Citadels‘ in a double-CD package along with another abomination of occultic Death Metal, Imprecation’s ‘Theurgia Goetia Summa’, Totten Korps evoked the images of their forthcoming creation with these words to Deathmetal.Org:

Francisco Torres: I tell you that it’s gonna be really wicked, 9 songs and 2 old school bonus tracks… it is worth waiting for, we are very motivated and convinced that it will be a very good production. Right now, it’s 100% produced by Totten Korps, although we don’t discard any offer that may raise our interest. It’ll become a reality in April, at the latest.

This album is not entirely focused in mysticism, we are including more tangible and real subjects regarding this damn world, we paint themes like madness, desires for death and blood within yourself, the manipulation of religions and much more, be patient and you’ll know more when the album gets into the streets.

Obviously the way we play and the sound have evolved in a very good way, take account of the 9 years that had passed by. Back in those years, the reachability and technology weren’t the same of today, so, now it’s much easier to achieve something monstrous.

Recalls the change in sound that occured in Sarcofago’s music two decades ago, so it will be very interesting to hear what level of brutality can be summoned by this premier South American Death Metal band. For those unfamiliar with the capabilities of the Chilean commanding veterans Totten Korps, a review of their only full-length album is due to burst from the festering cadaver of this post and onto your screens.

Thanks to Octuple of Forest Poetry for the translation of Totten Korps’ update.

Filed under: Death Metal Interviews, Death Metal News — Tags: , , — ObscuraHessian @ 02:39 — Comments (0)

January 4, 2010

Death Metal Album of the Week: Infernäl Mäjesty – None Shall Defy

None Shall Defy This week the hammer of Canadian malevolence returns to pound us mortals to shreds of cellular fabric, but we are far from the realm of cybernetic protoplasmas and progressive mayhem of Voivod, Obliveon and Gorguts. You should know that before Canada’s scene was fully immersed in grinding death metal (besides the mighty Slaughter), spiked thrashers wreaked havoc on the stages of North America spreading waves of violence that influenced war metal, death metal and black metal for decades. Bands like Darkthrone have been vocal about their influences from Razor and Sacrifice, while further insane hardcore oriented speed demons remain hallowed in the cultic shrines of vinyl collectors. Death thrashers Infernäl Mäjesty is not the heaviest nor the most progressive formation of its era, but in sheer memorability, grimness and riff glory surpasses much of the highly praised German and US technical thrash of its day.

In overall melodic construction, the Mäjesty are pretty close to a virtual unfinished Slayer recording that would have existed between “Hell Awaits” and “Reign in Blood”; Infernal MajestyNWOBHM-tinged evil dual guitars wail horror musics fogging the atmosphere when the pace slows down in “Night of the Living Dead” or “None Shall Defy”, the aggressive shout breaks occasionally into grunts of the demon and when the bands’ mania repels them from the older convention of thrash, they encode the music into low simple rhythmic Morse riff patterns that aggravate and counterpoint all the “happy” or “rock” sides of the music. Much mediocre death thrash was killed by their inability to meld high energy speed metal to nuances and fragrances of rotting corpses and stomped flowers but Infernäl Mäjesty does it with the stateliness of an apocalyptic wasteland – like a futuristic party band of a time when killing is the only law and cannibalistic Cro-Magnons feast on the living and the dead alike. Just check the atmospheric basslines and convulsive fistpounding tempi of “Anthology of Death” to see why it’s occasionally so delightful to stray from pure death worship to these punk rocking thresholds of the early days.

A respectable re-release from Displeased Records has been around for a while so if you see your favorite distributors carrying it, I recommend you pick it up and bang your heads ’til utter oblivion!

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