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Death Metal Album of the Week: Num Skull – Ritually Abused

Continuing a series of albums of the transitional death/speed metal hybrids that were pivotal in the development of this musical field, this particular post looks at the debut full-length of Num Skull, an overlooked American act whose streetwise, thrashing and anthemic songs interlock themselves with a sense of musical structure and execution that bears a strong resemblance to European acts such as Kreator and Sabbat. Whilst not in any way oddballish, the manner in which the musical craft narrates itself bears a strong resemblance to a progressive version of the first Nuclear Assault album, and has a strong sense of rhythmic/percussive tension that is also present in the work of Exhorder, and like said act more tight, muscular and punchy in outcome. As stated earlier, the influence of European bands give Num Skull a highly disciplined finesse for making intense, engaging proto-death metal. Along with their dubiously titled 1986 demo “Num’s The Word”, this is an essential listen, and a great contribution to the furthering structural advancement of bands who would  have been embyronic at the time.

Embryonic exhumations – Unearthing classic demos

Ras Algethi – Oblita Divinitas

If the architecture of the great Gothic cathedral, with its upward arches, towering spires and cosmic domes laden with images of the suffering divinity on this earthly realm, had been constructed as a kind of sacral road sign to the eternal paradise beyond, then the music of Ras Algethi’s demo is a fitting soundtrack of cathartic expression, a release from the pain and misery of the mortal existence. Like the immortal ‘Oneiricon – The White Hypnotic’ album to follow, ‘Oblita Divinitas’ relies heavily on the sounds of the mighty organ for it’s intensity as an imposing beacon of death, magnifying the mournful, melodic patterns that guide the listener through the distinct passages of these songs. Where the organ picks up on the general idea of a riff that’s introduced first, the guitars go on to elaborate this phrase in an almost improvisational, though highly restrained, story-telling manner. The bigger picture develops more gradually – far more slowly and funereal than the full-length – and the organs and percussion eventually give way to the austere logic of the main riff, with clever variations that manipulate this momentary freedom from time and space, or blissful acoustic passages that prolong and reflect in it (anticipating ‘When Fire is Father’, one of the most memorable songs on ‘Oneiricon’), before the other instruments return in an emphatic transition, taking the music to an even deeper level of suffering. Ras Algethi show a very mature compositional style from the onset, not just giving a vague sensation of sadness, but carefully detailing the journey with a reference point of possibly going beyond the world that causes it, re-addressing this emotion as a painful longing for release. -ObscuraHessian

Helheim – Walpurgisnatt

Ghoulish, ethereal and enwrapped in a magnetic tape production reeking of ancient tombs and broken 4-trackers, Helheim’s vision of industrial black metal is far more elemental than the connotations of that description during the last decade. As with the primitivist throbbing drum machines of Mysticum and the ambient blankets of Sort Vokter, the aim is ritual-hypnotic music which does not try to spice up black metal in order to make it more comforting or exciting; instead, it challenges one’s concentration by looping, returning and rewiring little fragments and pieces of riff in powerful early Norwegian black metal language, conducted by the raging screams of the now-deceased vocalist Jon A. Bjerk. The svastika simulacrum depicted on the cover highlights the natural difference with the smoother approach of the other Helheim of the same era, famed mostly for the vagrant mythological epics of “Jormundgand” – this Helheim rather spits in the face of the observed tradition in order to bring forth the subconscious terror of life and death that has been embedded in the mythos of all ancient cultures and bring across a pertinent message to the civilization (macrocosmically) and the black metal of our time (microcosmically). -Devamitra

Alioth – Channeling Unclean Spirits

Remember how disappointed you were the last time you heard a new Varathron or Rotting Christ album? If the same lack of consistency and effort permeates other areas of Greek society, them having descended from the mythic glory of Athene into debts and poverty needs hardly the prophetic eye of Cassandra to fully explain. As in Neil Gaiman’s fantasy novel “American Gods” the lost European deities are found prowling the Wisconsin backwoods, Chicago based Alioth’s mystical and sensual tribute to Hellenic black metal ca. 1993 is admirably not only a continuation of the electric technoid dynamo drumbeat and an application of the palm muted speed and doom riffs in esoteric underground context; it’s also a highly logically strung sequence of moods as if the physical organization of pain and pleasure in a Dionysian ritual theatre, succumbing with the heavy held back moments of “The Channeling” and “Apocryphal Dimensions” and rising through the interludial “Invocation” and “Invocation II” to softly expire orgasmic relaxation. So much could be created out of this basic concept that it’s a pity the full-length album has remained cloaked in the depths of the primal sea, while Wargoat Obscurum iterates far less subtle (and far less interesting) metal with Cult of Daath. -Devamitra

Goreaphobia – Morbidious Pathology

Goreaphobia’s debut album wouldn’t have been quite so eagerly anticipated without a strong back catalogue of minor releases such as the ‘Morbidious Pathology’ demo, which provides an unexpected listening experience if ‘Mortal Repulsion’ is the only recording you’ve heard from the band. Where the full-length communicates visions from the abyss through the blank eyes of an old mystic locked in a lucid dreaming state, this demo is full of enough youthful energy to express the paranoia of a thousand souls trapped within the claustrophobic confines of their own mortality. Variations in riffs reflect these tightly packed structures, seeming to progress with not so much a linear logic than the re-arranging of parts of the whole, like limbs being removed from a body and sewn on to somewhere else entirely until the true grotesqueness of humanity is revealed. As with ‘Mortal Repulsion’, despite the physical connections to Incantation, there is a stronger similarity to the craftsmanship of Immolation and albums that would come in later years, such as the complex and disjointed but melodically evocative ‘Here in After’. The lead guitar work, though highly restrained, possesses a sense of neoclassical refinement that bridges some short-burst riffage with eloquent but totally disturbing solos. This demo shows the beginnings of an all too rare experiment in Death Metal where you can observe the maturation of a consistant idea as it goes through the turmoil of a tortured, temporal existence. -ObscuraHessian

Graveland – Drunemeton

It’s not difficult to understand the distaste that Darken has for the recordings commited to tape during Graveland’s infancy in the light of his recent catalogue of pristine, epic and Atlantaean creations. Some distance away from the expansive scenes of battlefields and expressions of Romantic nationalism, this ancient offering from the living master of Pagan Black Metal is totally shrouded in a necrotic production, like ghostly shadows moving through oaken forests, casting a spell within more cloistered and Druidic surroundings than the output of Graveland from the past 15 years. Alongside the visions that created the force of Scandinavian Black Metal in the early 90′s, this demo represents the reclusive and misanthropic esotericism of that era, especially the primality of the lowest fidelity cults, Beherit and Ildjarn. Sounding like the work of a punk ostracised by that increasingly over-socialised group for being too idealistic and inhuman, Darken conjures a lurid interpretation of hypnotic Bathorean riffing that develops through the echoing of majestic, synthesised voices that open this recording as though a prologue to ‘The Celtic Winter’. The experimentation with primitivism in ‘Drunemeton’ is so deconstructionist that the guitar technique becomes fragmented completely and subordinated to reveal gloomy ambient moods that amplify the silence of a forest at night before the dawn of battle. There’s a similarity to the Beherit song ‘Nuclear Girl’ in how the guitar is used more like a sample, reverberating it’s texture through the keyboards to emphasise a cloistered sensation, accompanied by monastic chants at other times. Culminating in the ambient classic, ‘The Forest of Nemeton’, this demo is the successful beginnings of Graveland’s exploration into unconventional and nihilistic territory beneath the folky phrasing of guitar-led melodic work, which would shape the dynamic of his entire discography to follow. -ObscuraHessian

Tsjuder – Ved Ferdens Ende

Fifteen years ago, we were too proud and lofty to listen to it, our sensory devices soothed and inflamed by “Panzerfaust”, “Battles in the North” and “Høstmørke”, while the new generation of neo-progressive and mainstream black metal bands sought to enrapture even wider audiences with movie soundtrack influenced keyboards and angelic female voice conjured by fat-bottomed gothic tarts. For the atmospheric maniacs only, as it’s hard to argue for its musicality against the likes of “Vikingligr Veldi”; but the epic wanderlust and distorted pagan death ritual of this demo’s centerpiece, “Fimbulwinter”, unfolding like a flower at dawn or the psychedelic mandala of LSD invading brain receptors, is one of the pure innocent and mesmerizing gems of underground black metal in this sacred and forsaken era. The primal Isvind-esque melody dance like ripples of waves on a forest pond, the hissing tracker production complete with the macabre clack of a drum machine and the dampness of a Nordic bedroom cellar permeate the recording to such a thickness of adolescent black metal fury that it’s hardly palatable to generic audiences then and now. Barely a trace of the fast norsecore of the more familiar debut album “Kill For Satan” is noticeable here, the only similarity being the guitarist Draugluin’s technique of bricklike tremolo chord architecture where rhythm plays little importance. While primitive, this compositional method bears an intrinsic beauty which is worthy of recapitulation when the pure augustness of early Norwegian black metal has mostly become forgotten in favour of seemingly more rich and elaborate indie stylings. -Devamitra

Tourdates of the Tormentors

Death Metal has never been averse to tolling the end of our unsustainable, technocratic age by manipulating it’s very machinery against the system, for the purposes of pure electro-sonic destruction. In the same spirit of infiltration and warfare, we’ve upgraded our upcoming events list to a compact and calendrical crystal ball of future live underground Metal massacres!

Death Metal Album of the Week: Hellwitch – Syzygial Miscreancy

Do you want the perpendicular magic of obscure Floridian scientific death metal to take you into an extinguished state of bliss? Do you desire opaque fusion rhythms to altercate with your heartbeat causing it to skip steps? Do you dare forsake brutal mosh party antics in order to proceed to a mentally intricate level of personal and musical analysis? An affected bit of text there, I know, but it is impossible to avoid when commencing another run of Pat Ranieri‘s merely 26 minutes long meisterwerk, after half a minute of classical guitar intro cutting the crap and going for the throat with the initial solo in “Nosferatu”, a technical thrash abomination conceived in 1984. With such timeless expression, age hardly matters, 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 well, who anyway beat them by a year in debut album release. Hellwitch‘s banquet table of speed metal, thrash and death metal can justifiedly be called non-organized, but that is exactly because the band shows no mercy in letting loose a sensual storm of associative significance, a swarm of noises including ridiculously angular solos and voices manipulated into cyborgian declarations. Despite the abstaining running time, a notable richness of taste and fullness of effort permeates this album, from the Renaissance touches in “Mordirivial Dissemination” to the speedcore foreshadowing of Deicide’s “Legion” which characterizes “Pyrophoric Seizure”. Thrash influence dominates in the use of short riffs and sparse punk influenced tremolos underneath elaborate and abstracted solos as in the tightly minimalistic spouting of syllables in lyrics that can hardly be called trivial even while there is an unjustified use of thesaurus; a frightening urgency of seeing a world falling into an apocalypse with the promise of demonic saviours permeates the text, gripping the heart of those not lured into false optimism by the pact society has instated upon an instinctively barbaric man. “Syzygial Miscreancy” manages to be metal from the mind of a zen priest and the mind of a panicking computer all at once – it hardly surprises that Antti Boman of Demilich has paid them tribute by guesting on their 2009 comeback album, which probably should be gotten under scrutiny somewhere in the future, before we all get blown by one catastrophe or another into this primordial plasma described (especially through Stravinskyian guitar work) by Hellwitch.

Three faces of Satan seen over Texas – Sermons of obliquity and madness

Black Funeral – Vukolak

Keeping it true to its Luciferian chameleon nature, this ancient Texan conceptual black metal band has toiled its share in obscurity, being denigrated in the eyes of music-minded people while being praised by unhallowed souls who seek an ever more frightening vision of darkness inside this elusive style prone to normalization. The heavy shades of musical history, conservationist mindset and appraisal of beauty that characterize Texan metal such as Absu is hardly in line with the distorted, belligerent and insensitive provocations of Houston’s Black Funeral. Key moments from the sadistic noise of “Vukolak” are hardly recognizable as black metal, instead taking the most psychotic element of the lo-fi ethos to unparalleled heights, directed only by the quest to unveil another mythical night creature (the Eastern European merciless forest beast vukolak), one of the mutations in a long series of albums dedicated to beings from the nether, shut out from the conscious mind of man but existing in dreams and irrational impulses. As a practical magician, Nachtoter is fully aware of the potency of a wedding between symbolic sound and a haunting tale that has tortured the minds of a people of a hundred generations. While doing this, he is sure to alienate a good ninety percent of even black metal devotees, unless the constantly maiming and shifting abstraction he calls composition at this point is attractive to attention seekers; at surface it would seem only murderers and madmen dare listen to his insane conjuration, despite moments of traditional medieval beauty in the well-placed interludes “Sanctum Wamphyri” and “Wolfskin Essence”. Mr. Ford remains a master, not so much in musical skill (which sometimes seems to deteriorate over time) or literate esotericism (where he is convoluted and counterintuitive), but of bringing alive an ancient dark myth framed in subtle psychic terror.

Hod – Serpent

Remembering the true-as-fuck black metal violence of Thornspawn demo from more than one decade ago, likewise the pulsating anti-music corruption of satirical Rehtaf Ruo, it was with some excitement that I picked up this promo from San Antonio’s supergroup, expecting a manifestation of the infamous “Sacrifice of the Nazarene Child” fest before my eyes in the form of fire-breathing succubi and inverted cross timpani encased in malevolent crystalline forcefields, but instead I got this slab of adequate, grooving, hate-filled black metal somewhere between the rhythmic energy of Averse Sefira and the easy solutions used by Satyricon to nauseating effects. The emphasis is on constructing the song out of simple, fiery riffs which are memetic enough to adapt themselves alike to a blastbeat or a churning Hellhammer pound, but the deceit comes across in the fact that the album in its whole chooses to explore neither direction, but grinds along at mostly mid-pace, like someone trying to look tough while walking in front of a church and shouting “are you talking to me?” at God. Likeable elements are a plenty, such as the moments when a hardcore influenced three chord riff bursts into an atonal pattern underpinned by an expert rhythm on drums while the cleverly restrained hoarse voice arrangement emphasizes tension instead of drama, making it easier to concentrate on the fragile atmosphere resurgent in the Christ-opposing ideas at play. Hod’s metal seems quite honest in purpose and recognizably Texan, mostly being cursed by Blood Storm’s and Divine Eve’s better takes on similar influence and subject matter. But the content that is simultaneously grounded and packaged, like the automated output of the Swedish scene, unfortunately makes “Serpent” sparsely appear in memory or in record player.

Blaspherian – Allegiance to the Will of Damnation

Heavy and pounding constantly almost like an old Manowar song has been transposed to the symbols of a Texan death metal notebook, the abilities of Wes Weaver in conjuring an evil sabbath of languid subversive black metal bliss are proven a second time; the first was, of course, Imprecation’s semi-classic “Theurgia Goetia Summa” one and a half decades ago. Absolutely unwavering, panzer-like in insistence, Blaspherian weaves slow melodies and processional passages of chords together mimicking funeral organ alternately on rhythmic chugs over slow double bass and tremolo runs giving slight nods to both Necrovore and Goatlord, always keeping to some ideal of profane serene moonlit beauty in the symmetry and progressive elegance with which this basically simple music unfolds, notable being for example the surprising tempi and energetic tension of “Curse His Name”. What is to be applauded is that Blaspherian takes absolutely no filler into this tight mini-album where it would have been easy to recombine for endless tedium. If a more critical angle is required, it’s possible to say that melodic possibilities and thematic spheres aren’t quite yet expanded on this debuting work; the epic aerial elegance of keyboards in “Theurgia Goetia Summa” for example has no counterpart on “Allegiance to the Will of Damnation”, which on the other hand benefits from the ascesis of the sound, conjuring to mind images of barren mountaintops where witches gather to dance under the stars, amidst shrubberies, and pay heed to the commands of Lord Baphomet who guides the anti-social in the harmonic ways of nature forgotten by a society occupied with trading trivial goods and vain honours. In such a situation it is obviously better to live in shame and obscurity. By this logic Blaspherian remains elité, even if they are and remain unnoticed by the majority of those who profess listening to death metal or black metal, for the benefit of cowards.

Death Metal Album of the Week: Dismember – Like an Everflowing Stream

Intricate, violent and permeated by northern lights in the form of Classical and Romantic pre-Gothenburg melodic influences, the debut album of Dismember, arguably the master of Stockholm death metal scene, took the world by storm and was instantly imitated by many a musical wanderlusting soul breathing the ether of the early 90′s. As an eagle flying through a blizzard, consonant themes interact in a matrix of suggestion while the guttural vocals emphasize the active, garage born hardcore ethic in electrifying the music with moments of relentless harshness and distortion to offset the aching beauty of the severed spinal cord strings of David Blomqvist’s and Robert Sennebäck’s threatening and archaic phrasing. The powerful alienated wails brought by the “whammy wizard” Nicke of Entombed bear mention as a non-trivial element in this journey of gloomy souls from the Candlemass-meets-Slayer traditionalism of “Dismembered” to the outrageous moshpit destroying hysteria of “Skin Her Alive”, which matches every proto death metal moment of “Reign in Blood” or “Master” in directness. What makes Dismember‘s debut one of the most elusive, underestimated and permanent death metal albums from the Nordic kingdoms is their uncanny ability to match the beauty of solemn dirges with the intoxicated riots of Stockholm’s torn-jeans-and-baseball-caps Tunnelbana punks, mostly realized in troubling and uncomfortable juxtapositions, such that often make for more meaningful art than perfectly resolved and consistent style and aesthetics.

Death Metal Album of the Week: Necrophiliac – Chaopula – Citadel of Mirrors

For this obscure group of Spaniards to have created a work of such grotesque morbidity, they couldn’t have been anything other than totally psychotic grave-fuckers, but as with most wise bands who avoid choosing their name out of bad taste despite the taboo lexicon of Death Metal, the designation of ‘Necrophiliac‘ befits this album of the week in particular on a level deeper than the mere profanation of corpses. ‘Chaopula…’ emerged from beneath the shadows of the Andalusian mountains at a time when Death Metal had reached it’s peak as an artform and is one of the best demonstrations of the theory behind the creativity and musical technique by constructing an independent philosophy from the Death Metal language. Through their emphasis of mutating, symbolic phrasal development over conscious stylistic reminders and trappings, Necrophiliac manage to impart the secrets of death in a context of intimate symbiosis with nature and the cosmos – a transcendental love of death, as though to engage in coitus with a carcass would unlock the kind of divine consciousness that Baron Julius Evola described in his ‘Metaphysics of Sex‘.

The European cousin of Gorguts’ debut album, ‘Considered Dead‘, this lesser known full-length is infact superior to the Canadian disincarnation because of it’s radical approach to riff progression, focusing on an evolving dynamic backdrop upon which a single riff can retain it’s essential shape while being contorted and reiterated through tempo and rhythm in order to create meaning, like the consciousness of a baby being altered by an awareness of mortality far ahead of it’s years. By subtly assigning an extra dimension to the linear template of change in riffs, Necrophiliac compensate for the instrumental format of Death Metal, rivalling the layered unfolding of an orchestral symphony within this compact, prismatic scheme. Songs like ‘Necrotic Narcosis’ and ‘Cyclic Pathology of Natura’ juxtapose the stages of organic decay against a sense of holistic awareness by oscillating between stuttering, rhythmically unstable patterns and fluid, more articulated passages where there isn’t just one speed of up- or down-tempo but many grades of fast and slow. The interaction of additional guitarwork is another important feature of the album, as the riffs change little in themselves, one guitar will often diverge from the main theme to add details in the form of microcosmic, melodic and rhythmic embellishments that eventually resolve themselves with the main theme resulting in epic riffs such as in ‘Astral Corpse’ or outbursts of lead guitar. The production of ‘Chaopula…’ throws the bass guitar into full prominence, which is highly appropriate as it compliments the guitarwork brilliantly to ground moments of melodic excitement to the central riff, and conversely, to enhance the sense of shifting momentum and tone to the main passages. The drumming is simple but like the other instruments, deceptively aware of the dynamic requirements despite not utilising too many different patterns and fills.

The maturity of thought behind ‘Chaopula – Citadel of Mirrors’, transforming thanatological studies into sublime, out-of-body experiences is what guided all the elite entries in this cadaverous canon of Death Metal, rather than purely musical knowledge or a sensory fascination with the genre’s husk. With song-titles such as ‘Image Control in Biosphere of Unreal’, it hints that the band were approaching a Vedantic understanding of reality and the self through death. The days when these ancient cults reigned are long gone and the practice of the music has irreversibly changed, but returning to this immutable knowledge will never cease to transform the riff into a mystical key and unlock the gates of death and eternity.

Pestilence – Malleus Maleficarum

I watched as the Lamb opened the first of the seven seals. Then I heard one of the seven living creatures say in a voice like thunder, “Come!” I looked, and there before me was a white horse! Its rider held a bow, and he was given a crown, and he rode out as a conqueror bent on Conquest. – Revelation 6: 1-2

Summoned forth to rage fury upon the unsuspecting but no less innocent, Pestilence, on each of their first three albums ushered in a predestined Apocalypse of the mind and struck at the heart of the dark forces of the Kali Yuga thereby completing their microcosmic responsibility as “Kalki”and providing the foundation upon which a new golden age and conciousness would hopefully arise. On their uncompromising and frenetic debut album “Malleus Maleficarum”, Pestilence as corporeal manifestation of death and conqueror, harnessed the power of becoming to destroy the destroyer that is illusion and ignorance, and defiantly placed themselves within the torrential stream of becoming in a quest for truth. We as listeners are thus treated with no less than a passionate and structurally free form album that through its fluid, intelligent and precise use of riff craft probes and attacks on multiple fronts the lyrical themes tactfully explored by Van Drunen and Co.

Although one may be quick to argue that that the addition of socially conscious lyrical subject matter such as genetic manipulation and religious strife defines “Malleus Maleficarum” as a strict Speed Metal album, it is nonetheless better characterized as a highly refined and progressive speed metal album that straddles the death metal fence. Indeed, indicative of their speed metal roots is the common use of hysterical and staccato driven guitar technique reminiscent of bands such as Exodus, Destruction and Slayer that, coupled with an emerging yet competent sense of dynamics, melody, development and recapitulation of themes, successfully places “Malleus Maleficarum” outside the realm of pure Speed Metal and onto a pedestal of its own thus providing the impetus for not a few debates regarding the essential nature of this album. Not to be missed of course is the embryonic vocal performance of Van Drunen, who while courageously exploring the memes that have driven modern society into calling forth the forces of plague and death to precipitate the end of this current cycle of humanity, opts for a hoarse rasp like yell in contrast to the later visceral death metal growl he is better known for.

Considering the less than inspiring output Pestilence has recently spawned, it is worth recalling and meditating on the legendary albums birthed by the youthful genius of this legendary band if only to provide inspiration and the soundtrack for a new generation of Hessians who will march forth triumphantly into the dreary haze of an uncertain but exciting future. With that said “Malleus Maleficarum” remains essential listening 20 years after its initial release. Standing out as a thought provoking album of much symbolic depth it also remains an uncompromising and virile album that successfully bridges the gap between speed metal and death metal and reveals the genetic ancestor of the latter genre. Not only a dramatic album in its own right “Malleus Maleficarum” stands as an interesting historical document that should not be overlooked by any serious Hessian.

June 2nd 2010 – Slayer, HMV Forum, London, England

Fighting the conspirations of ill health, amounting to months of delays, the much anticipated return of Slayer to England’s capital was in ominous syncronicity with the most auspicious time of the year for disciples of their church. As the Hessian-led International Day of Slayer falls upon us once again, last week’s early blasphemy proved to be an highly adequate preparation. The Slayer we all exhalt on this site was a mystical entity and their music excoriated the flesh of society’s body of lies and delusions, revealing the inner, beating heart of darkness and measurer of our mortal lives. They were also the progenitors of Death Metal, without whom many of the cults that feature in our catacombs may not have ever manifested with as advanced a template. The heat of the Spring sun, optimal for decomposition, drew the wehrmacht to Kentish Town’s Forum for an evening where the secrets of the dead promised to be revealed.

That, they would be, but not before some distractions within a chronology of events that would befit any highlight reel of modernity’s undoing, beginning with the supporting band from Sweden. The Haunted’s line-up consisted of some familiar faces, not just because they’ve been around for 10 years or so, initially Swedish Hardcore influenced Thrash before becoming the post-At The Gates band of Swedeath-influenced Speed Metal that they’re now famous for. Lead guitarist, Anders Bjorler of past-At The Gates fame, sporting a Disfear shirt in reference to both Swedish Hardcore and former bandmate Tomas Lindberg, launched with the band straight into ‘Bury Your Dead’, a signature track from their second album. Their set would mix old and new with some energy but the only problem from them is that their music sucks. This grammy-award winning combination of cliched galloping, groovy riffs interspersed with familiar and incoherently fragmented bursts of Swedish Death Metal melody, resulting in little to no melodic fluency is made even worse when the newer tracks demonstrate their love of pure nu-metal guitarwork. You know a set is bad when, despite it’s relative brevity and insignificance, every second of tedium feels absolutely unmitigated. They exit the stage with a warm crowd reception behind them but the diabolic concoction of Metal madness to follow boils the venue over with the hellish crepitance of anticipation.

Plumes of smoke veil the scene of everybody’s attention in stages of trademarked descent through noxious tributaries of the underworld. Led by battery commando Dave Lombardo, Slayer finally materialise from amidst the scarlet haze and open with ‘World Painted Blood, rendered near-flawlessy with Tom Araya’s completely static frame being the only, negligible sight to conflict with the fact that they’re still a well-oiled machine. Unlike other bands of such age and well-earned veneration, Slayer at least seem to understand the difference in purpose and spirit between their new and old recordings, rather than just the wear and tear of discographical order and simply ‘mixing it up’. The set was split roughly 50/50 in terms of timing, so there was quite some wait for the veterans to get their nu-material out of the way. The three standing band members would then congregate in a Seance-like circle formation around the beaten kit of Lombardo, ritually manifesting the schism and unleashing the demons of ancient times, channelling the wails of feedback as they did in their youth. Thus, the show really exploded with a rupturous performance of ‘Hell Awaits’ sending the violent hordes into a possessed frenzy. King and Hanneman were in brilliant, conversational form, damned to strike all the right notes and give a real sense of narrative familiarity to the chaotic and atonal guitar solos. Araya’s exoteric shouting was laid to rest and the invoked Mephistopheles conferred upon him sadistic scorn, the true voice of his priestly years, befitting such apocalyptic sermons as ‘Seasons in the Abyss’, ‘Mandatory Suicide’ and ‘Raining Blood’. The opening riff to ‘South of Heaven’ was possibly given it’s finest rendition to date, as the audio technicians menaced the sound with Kali-Yugic siddhis and lava on loan from Azagthoth. The song of the night was undoubtedly the pollutant ‘Chemical Warfare’, performed with as much vigour as on record way back in 1984. The intelligent, layered riff progressions that played out a multidimensional, mythologised communication of death, paranoia and destruction confounded the crowd but struck them hard, with the anthemic, holocaust winds of ‘Angel of Death’ to follow, releasing a tide of hatred and malevolence, and the highly multicultural crowd rose in unison to sing for the benefit of the Aryan race. The band known only as Slayer departed after covering the most recogniseable songs from ‘Haunting the Chapel’ through to ‘Seasons…’, reinforcing the memories of their greatness and perpetuating the echoes of their cryptic, Satanic messages.

Death Metal Album Of The Week: Rigor Mortis – Rigor Mortis

Whereas the structural and musical approach would not constitute for an FM-radio listener’s definition of ‘progressive’ this album is highly important and innovative in many ways. Given a nice thickening fuzz that anticipates the textural approach of the pioneers of Greek and Norse black metal, Mike Scaccia’s rhythm guitar is middle range yet lacks the crunch and the preferential techniques used in speed metal (constant palm muting, an emphasis on staccato), having  a much smoother sense of transition in execution than many speed metal and death metal peers. This also allows the other instruments to stand ground within this framework, helping a sense of musical advancement and accomplishment that is beyond mere head-banging fodder. Good word must also be given to his solo playing, which is intricate and whilst not dissonant evokes the more dignified of neo-classical shredder playing crossed with the King/Hanneman sonic attack.

Casey Orr’s bass as a result of this is made just as audible and distinct as the percussive backdrop, and almost as if to capitalise on the dark and foreboding atmospheres that Slayer and Possessed first realised on early works, we get a textural sense of craft that anticipates the outcomes of many important metal acts to follow, two major examples being Massacra and Mayhem. Bruce Corbitt’s vocal delivery is the typical rhythmic-cohesive delivery that is a mainstay of this musical field. It has lingering sense of camp in it’s mildly gore-fantasist lyrical depictions, resembling a cross between Dave Hewson of Slaughter and John Connelly from Nuclear Assault, with more of a rasp than a sung tone to it, perfectly fitting and well executed. Along with the work of Californian thrash unit Cryptic Slaughter, these Texans should be considered one of the more important missing links in the structural advancement of the extreme metal that was to flourish from the late 1980′s, and onwards…