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?
Indeed, they were more than just proof that Death metal is a legitimate musical style with higher compositional merits: Atheist were a state of mind for me. Before I’d even decided to major in psychology, these guys taught me that there is this special language that can be conveyed through the technicality of the music itself and essentially come to bridge the gap between what we would hear as just organized sound signals and language put to lyrics for the purpose of enjoying the art of death metal and understanding the point behind all the noise.
Love it.
Comment by O'meed — March 10, 2010 @ 05:00
Coincidentally, I’ve been diving deeper into this album this week then when I initially heard it a long time ago.
This album has an overall sound to it (in all aspects;instruments,vocals, etc) that I haven’t been able to find in many other albums.
Just excellent.
Comment by Brandon — March 11, 2010 @ 07:39
[...] 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 [...]
Pingback by Death Metal Album of the Week: Hellwitch – Syzygial Miscreancy « DeathMetal.Org — June 27, 2010 @ 01:46
[...] tremelo style in ‘Soulside Journey‘. Atheist’s apex of fusion music, ‘Unquestionable Presence‘, handled Jazz harmony competently within Death Metal epics and back in Gothenburg, At The [...]
Pingback by Death Metal Album of the Week: Dark Tranquillity – Skydancer « DeathMetal.Org — September 2, 2010 @ 04:39
http://www.facebook.com/DeathMetal.Org/posts/164889743548655
“While the mystical and gory preoccupations of Death Metal were mostly seen as morbid entertainment, a core tendency to seriously strive towards the “outskirts” of spiritual and paranormal possibilities, “meaningful ends” in Atheist’s words, revealed itself from the very onset, in the only genre ever to take this angle seriously and without irony or posture.”
Comment by ks — September 19, 2011 @ 16:25
[...] of the Americas yield regional anomalies as diverse as Gorguts and Obliveon up in Québec to Atheist and Hellwitch down in Florida. And, wherever possible, Wagner takes great efforts to cite any [...]
Pingback by Jeff Wagner – Mean Deviation: Four Decades of Progressive Heavy Metal « DeathMetal.Org — October 16, 2011 @ 06:13