Lucky Charms Metal

Death Metal Underground has received criticism for our review of limp-wristed, warmed-over Swedish heavy metal act In Flames. Our staff called them the Swedish version of Christian glam rock band Stryper. However despite being hard rock, Stryper were actually heavier, more sincere in purpose, and more aggressive than the Comic Sans In Flames. Stryper and the speed metal influenced glam rock of Skid Row were at least far more musical than Fredrik Nordstrom produced melodeaf such as post-Alf Svensson At the Gates, Arch Enemy, Dark Tranquility, In Flames, and Soilwork. Stryper and Skid Row were at least well-versed in 60s and 70s riff rock while directly influenced by Metallica and Slayer:

Gothenburg bands were merely hiding the most generic butt rock and heavy metal chugs behind New Wave of British Heavy Metal influenced guitar candy. This was pioneered in 1990 by Kreator on Coma of Souls. After turning Sodom into a second-rate speed metal band on Agent Orange, Frank Blackfire jumped shit to Kreator. Kreator was winding down their hyper aggressive random riff salads on Extreme Aggression before Blackfire was brought in to change their ship’s course completely. Kreator could hide all of their “Highway Star” tendencies behind marshmallow candy that idiots would be content to drink from the industrial runoff of the music industry. Coma of Souls was among the first boxes of Lucky Charms metal: repacked animal feed with added sugar for perpetual children.

True metal is intolerant of stupidity. Glam rock encouraged stupidity. Since speed metal acts like Testament were populated by failed glam rock stars, not people who wanted to write and play heavy metal, speed metal died. Pantera’s financial success and transition to nu-“metal” is evidence to this. Dead death metal bands were not immune either. By the third millennium, Bolt Thrower and Carcass were not the same bands who had made In Battle There Is No Law and Reek of Putrefaction; they were Lucky Charms Metal for a drunk Wacken crowd too.

Those Once Loyal‘s phoned-in (there’s even a guy with a phone on the cover) hard rock and heavy metal is bookended by two spoonfuls of stale marshmallows pressed into pretty shapes. “At First Light” starts with candy and then proceeds to a generic three chord grind riff for Karl Willets to growl the lyrics over until the candy is repeated into a solo. The grind riff is written around the marshmallows as unlike in actual metal compositions, Lucky Charms songs are not defined by riffs arranged logically but by the sugar content. The generic riff is there simply to connect two previously written jizz tissues ejaculated by the guitarists.

Carcass realized they could make Heartwork into Lucky Charms metal arranged around stolen Judas Priest and Megadeth riffs on the godawful Surgical Steel. “Noncompliance to ASTM F899-12 Standard” opens with a marshmallow just like “At First Light” before a straight melodic run/fill, one riff from “Hanger 18“, and a generic speed metal triplet. All of this was arranged by Bill Steer in Cubase or Guitar Pro for Jeff Walker to say the lyrics over to kill run time on the record before Steer can play the next solo he saved on his computer years ago. Around four minutes into this partially excreted turd, a random déjà entendu heavy metal riff starts whose sole purpose is to introduce the third solo and NWOBHM marshmallows where Bill Steer harmonizes with himself to bukkake Wacken fans faces before the song repeats itself again.

Sell-out or comeback bands like Bolt Thrower, Carcass, and Asphyx think they are cool as they can whip out these tunes in an hour or less in the studio like At the Gates did on Slaughter of the Soul. They spend as little time as possible on them as they know that the corpulent herd will compulsively eat up their new excuses to tour once they pour on the melodically-harmonized sugar. The only people other than the sub 100 IQ droolers willing to buy into this crap are people transitioning from mainstream jive looking for something “hard” and compulsive collectors who buy everything willing to pay to hear the hits live.

People want to relive the past as metal once had greatness beyond a handful of albums each year with print runs of under a thousand copies each. The funderground pyramid scheme labels, hipster shill PR agencies, rehash acts, and comebacks are simply picking fans’ pockets with nostalgia. How else would you sell “die hard” editions, thousand dollar Emperor vinyl box sets full of rehearsals, Carcass branded first aid kits, and die cast Slayer art deco eagle paperweights?

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37 thoughts on “Lucky Charms Metal”

  1. Marc Defranco says:

    Damn well these are the facts. I like the last bit bringing up the thousand dollar emperor box set. Completely uncessesary

    1. Marc Defranco says:

      And when I say completely unecessary I’m talking about the box set. So many useless, overly flashy releases like this now where half the material is not worth shit

  2. GGALLIN1776 says:

    In Flames is bullshit garbage but most of the other bands you listed are awesome aside from the marketing stuff. Welp gotta go cook dinner with my Amon Amarth designer cookware on the engine of my Slayer car. Hopefully my Exodus egg timer still works.

    1. Can’t wait for the new Opeth iPhone case.

      1. Krueger says:

        Opeth used to be good. After Still Life, they lost it. Don’t get me wrong, Blackwater Park was good, but it seemed like a Still Life 2.0.

        1. OliveFox says:

          What? No they didn’t! They are probably better now that they finally owned up to NOT being a metal band, but a weird pysch/prog rock act that just rips from better 70s bands.

          1. Night Booger says:

            Amorphis used to be good, as far as faggy bands go, but Abhorrence were even better.

          2. Dark Side Poop says:

            Wrong! Opeth always were and will be crap.

  3. nigstomper88 says:

    to claim metal rejects stupidity when Sodom wrote lyrics like “MASTURBATE TO KILL MYSELF” on their first album, and when Iron Maiden wrote a song about humans and dinosaurs living together in the same era, well, that’s pretty goofy. metal IS stupidity, it’s raw id

    probably the biggest giveaway Swedish melodeath didn’t have much connection to underground metal culturally speaking is their pseudo-poetic pussyfooting lyrics that “sound cool” but have no meaning

    “Gothenburg bands were merely hiding the most generic butt rock and heavy metal chugs behind New Wave of British Heavy Metal influenced guitar candy”

    Snow No Mercy was full of “NWOBHM guitar candy”, that doesn’t stop it from being the greatest album ever (on the contrary, probably helps it)

    1. There is no cotton candy fluff on Show No Mercy, that’s the actual music fitted into narrative compositions.

      1. OliveFox says:

        I find myself going back to Show No Mercy and Hell Awaits much more than Reign in Blood or South of Heaven.

    2. metal IS…raw id

      Which makes it opposed to surface-level posing and other social attributes. Unleash your feral and atavistic beast within!

      1. OliveFox says:

        Also, Id does not equal stupidity.

        1. Night Booger says:

          Fuck Swedish death metal, overrated crusty lineage butt rock, Finnish Death Metal reigns supreme!

          1. Necronomeconomist says:

            U 4got At the Gates’s 1st 2 releases…

            1. your welcome says:

              1st Necrophobic as well.

      2. Infected Scrotum says:

        Go promote your family values elsewhere.

      3. Rainer Weikusat says:

        The idea that metal is about thoughtless instant gratification of desires driven by primal instincts and equally thoughtless avoidance of unpleasedness – if in doubt, run, as animals are wont to do – is a bit odd. Man is the creature which tamed fire. No animal would have done that.

        Nice, odd church hymn

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GbkmqMCNoPU

        You (generally spoken) will probably hate that.

      4. InTheJungle says:

        SODOMIZE
        THE
        WEAK
        !!!!!!!!!!!!!

    3. Hero Quest Player says:

      Quest for Fire is adapted from a movie, itelf adapted from a book written in a time when it was not yet understood how long ago dinosaurs and early humans lived exactly, the essence of the song thou is about adventuring, risk-taking, mastering nature etc, it works whatever the dubious science !

  4. Rainer Weikusat says:

    In order to understand the purpose of Incoming Death, you have to know its placement on the album. The immediately preceding track, The Grand Denial, ends – a bit unusually for Asphyx – with an acoustic guitar outro and the verse-chorus-verse punk track (the only one following this form) contrasts very effectively with this.

    Here’s another pretty nice one

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUMxLklk6VE

    One should also know that Kreator “had been winding down their hyperaggressive riff salad” in favour of a much tamer, more “Bay Area”-style approach, on Terrible Certainty, and that Extreme Aggression was a partial return to form before the band embarked on its “We are Progressies!” meandering afterwards.

    1. Astronaut Bread says:

      Meaningless noise faggotry?

  5. Wopbopaloobopalopbombom! says:

    Every metalhead that is doughy and soft is a weak ZOGified piece of shit.

  6. Barrey O`Dolan McArthur says:

    Stop shitting on the Irish!

  7. Nuclear Whore says:

    Peooople I promise I won’t cry, but don’t compare Bolt Thrower with Carcass, Carcass delivered a record *after seventeen years* which was quite obvious it had no soul, but Bolt Thrower have always been consistent. More heavy metal? OK. But peoooplee poor Bolt Thrower.

    <3

    1. Always been consistent? Half of The IVth Crusade? Mercenary? Honour Valour Pride? Everything mediocre in the middle of Those Once Loyal which doesn’t even have guitar candy? What are you smoking? Pay attention.

      1. Nuclear Whore says:

        My heart pays the attention, I can’t stop listening to music but I never sit down and analyze a record. It’s that I’m busy! Bolt Thrower can be casual no complications Death Metal, I won’t deny it, but the spirit is there.

      2. Marc Defranco says:

        Yeah Mercenary is honestly boring as fuck

  8. Astronaut Bread says:

    Inspired by this article, I’d just like to thank the true supporters of the funderground for being unwilling to put in the effort (and/or lacking the ability) to differentiate between shit and quality music, as well as funneling their money, attention, and praise toward useless idiots, egomaniacs, has-beens, shills and scam artists so they can keep up the horrible farce that has been the state of metal music for many years. Please keep supporting wannabe rock stars, hipster douchebags, egregious masturbators, corporate shitheads and your stupid friends so anyone who wants to hear some quality heavy metal has to wade through a nearly limitless sea of excrement, soullessness, and pre-chewed candy corn to find something remotely interesting. I know you need something to distract you as you while away your meaningless lives, and I’m so very glad you’ve chosen heavy metal to be your host.

    Welcome to Costo, I love you.

    1. Dark Side Poop says:

      I will copy and paste this comment into all the local bands youtube videos.

    2. Monarch 2 the Kingdom of the Dead Milkmen says:

      What is Costo

      1. Astronaut Bread says:

        I could’ve sworn that said ‘Costco’ when posted it…

      2. Cornrose says:

        Dat nigga mean Costco.

      3. canadaspaceman says:

        I was taken along to a Costco once a long time ago. Got a giant box of bubblegum for cheap as well as some new PC game series called Need for Speed…. if I did drugs and drank whiskey like back then, I would be interested again in wasting hours playing that and blasting tunes before realizing a day had passed and it was time to go to work.
        :D
        Back in the days before cheap online sellers or mp3 ‘s/blogspots, when HMV could get away with selling me import CD’s (Bathory, Plasmatics, Onlsaught, etc) for $40+ each! ugh….

        1. Grim and Frostbitten Scrotes says:

          HMV is completely ass im glad they are losing business

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