Death Metal Album of the Week: Nocturnus - The Key
Album Reviews: Diocletian - Doom Cult
Live Reviews: July 21st 2010 - Inquisition in Vancouver, Canada
Book Reviews: Daniel Ekeroth - Swedish Death Metal
Film Reviews: Cannibal Holocaust
Essays and Research: Pyrrhic Victories - A Brief Study of Artistic Decline
Morbid Scriptorium: A Museum of Metal Zines
In order to establish a solid, even scientifical basis for the study and appreciation of Death Metal, we are collecting and digitizing diverse materials related to Death Metal history, such as zines, flyers and demo covers. The death metal zine reference center and the death metal art repository are at your disposal. If you appreciate the contents of these archives, please get in touch and contribute something from your own collections in order to preserve memory, information and knowledge and to save these rare gems from being buried by the sands of time: The Past is Alive. We also would like all our noble readers to stay active in their own productive manner and through their contacts spreading the word about all these projects, archives and analyses which ultimately achieve their meaning by the responsive awareness of the intelligent observers somewhere out there, who prowl as wolves among the sheep. Here are some Death Metal related flyers, links and banners you can spread like the plague in order for our hordes and communication networks to grow towards world domination and eternal victory.
Cynic – 1991 Demo
There is no denying the magnitude of Cynic as a historical phenomenon, as last year’s release of their comeback album has reminded us. 1993′s ‘Focus’, of which ‘Traced In Air’ is an approximate, contemporary rehash, was viewed by many as a revolutionary and progressive work that took Metal beyond its confines into a more liberal musical world. Others were suspicious of this sound. For them it was an attack on the vital, hard-hitting spirit of underground Metal – an outward promise of endless bliss if one renounces the sword and chants peaceful mantras; inwardly possessing characteristics of the herd. For the cynical, then, the 1991 demo recording may be a more palatable listen. It is what ‘Focus’ and Death’s ‘Human’ should have been conclusions to. Two songs from the full-length to follow and one exclusive to the demo (although parts were included in the album) are, rather than stripped down versions in the stages of infancy, more mature compositions than what would later be heard. The sound is technical and precise but the demo-quality rawness and vibrancy of musicianship illuminates the composition as it unfolds. There is a constant, cosmic sense of drama in the music, describing the world of flux in relation to unconditioned reality. Abrupt riff and tempo changes have a more satisfying and lasting effect, being underlined by subtle rhythmic patterns. This creates a layered dynamic culminating in moments of realisation which are characterised by lead guitar work that is, at better times, more adherent and logically conclusive than later works. The work of the guitars here is closer to Classical music, vaguely reminiscent of Robert Schumann and the up-tempo passages of his earlier symphonies in particular. There are no vocoded vocals on the demo; aggresive and restless open-throated growls typical of later Speed Metal bands make this recording truer to the original canon of Cynic’s career. Tony Choy’s masterful bass adds a skeletal and complex level of structural depth to the sound that Reinert’s percussion drives into light-speed, rendering Zeno’s paradox of motion. Cynic’s 1991 demo is a technical Death Metal masterpiece – perhaps only surpassed by Atheist’s unquestionably classic second album. It still challenges the conventions of Death Metal, but it bears the hallmarks that all great underground recordings possess, as an honest and brutally direct communication of the reality beyond our futile ways.
Filed under: Death Metal Music Reviews — Tags: Death Metal, Florida Death Metal, Technical Death Metal — ObscuraHessian @ June 14, 2009 03:41 — Comments (4)
Could not agree more… & I too love Atheist’s “Unquestionable Presence”, but for me, this is about as good as it gets.
Comment by Paul Gillis — January 19, 2010 @ 04:31
[...] 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 [...]
Pingback by DEATH METAL: Death Metal News, Death Metal Music and Death Metal Culture at Deathmetal.Org — February 3, 2010 @ 03:34
[...] 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 [...]
Pingback by DEATH METAL: Death Metal News, Death Metal Music and Death Metal Culture at Deathmetal.Org — March 9, 2010 @ 10:13
[...] but it’s worth mentioning because these guys were both thematically and musically far ahead Cynic’s and Death’s new age postures and theoretically just might have predated Atheist as [...]
Pingback by Death Metal Album of the Week: Hellwitch – Syzygial Miscreancy « DeathMetal.Org — June 27, 2010 @ 01:42