Italian late-1980s style proto-black metal (Morbid, Venom, Tormentor, Goatlord) at its core, Tenebra speeds up the process somewhat and incorporates 1990s black metal of the Teutonic and Nordic varieties, eschewing the traditional melodic approach of Southern European bands for an advancing front of sawing riffs, using these to produce the backdrop for the slow emergence of atmospheric melody which stays minor-key without getting maudlin.
1 CommentTags: Black Metal, cult of parthenope, tenebra
Blood Fire Death: The Swedish Metal Story
by Ika Johannesson and Jon Jefferson Klingberg
240 pages, Feral House, $19
As we get past the glory years of underground metal — roughly 1987 to 1994 — more histories are emerging such as Blood Fire Death: The Swedish Metal Story which came out two years ago and presented itself as a history of Swedish underground metal. It achieves that and more, but falls short of its ultimate mission, which is to explain Swedish death metal and black metal, world-renowned for their intelligence and intensity.
8 CommentsTags: Bathory, entombed, mayhem, Sweden, Swedish Black Metal, Swedish Death Metal, swedish metal, underground metal
Amid rising calls for racial justice in the wake of the George Floyd death at the hands of police, terms like “master” have fallen out of favor due to their associations with slavery and feudalism. Consequently, industry leaders like GitHub and the Houston Association of Realtors are discontinuing use of these terms.
145 CommentsTags: master of puppets, metallica, social justice
Formed from the fragmentation of Kever, Deathsiege approaches extreme metal from more of a war metal background, melding the sounds of Angelcorpse and Blasphemy into a new voice that uses more atmosphere and contrast to give these charging anthems space to develop a menacing aura.
7 CommentsTags: deathsiege, War Metal
Sometimes creativity emerges best from a limited palette, and finiteCell by generating its sounds via custom programming on an original Game Boy and then sampling the result, adding breakbeat percussion, and editing the outcome into songs, demonstrates the possibilities found by experimenting in a sandbox of restricted options.
7 CommentsTags: chiptune, finiteCell
Metal needs a new sound and a new imagery ecosystem. 1970s metal had doom and warnings of the apocalypse, 1980s metal warned of collapse from within through choppy fractured sounds, and 1990s metal brought a fluid structuralism that emphasized pattern and order while embracing the evil that 1970s metal warned of and the chaos of the 1980s.
9 CommentsTags: creature, postmodern metal
Recent digital archaeology brought forth the paradox of Entombed, an Atari 2600 game from 1982.
17 CommentsTags: alcohol, atari 2600, entombed, marijuana
Rap/punk/metal band Body Count, responding to recent race riots across the US, released a radio edit of its song “No Lives Matter,” which apparently is a commentary on the confusion and acrimony over the name of the National Bolshevik style group Black Lives Matter.
19 CommentsTags: body count, Crossover
Veteran doom/proto-metal band Black Sabbath decided to cash in on the latest media trend and released a riff on one of their classic designs changed to read “Black Lives Matter” instead of “Black Sabbath.” It is apparently hoped that this will extend their relevance for another six months and shift up to another fifty thousand units.
30 CommentsTags: black sabbath, money
Animate Records continues re-releasing compilations of tracks from classic Agathocles rare recordings as part of an eight-record series that reproduces a triptych from Hieronymous Bosch, “The Garden of Earthly Delights.” Each contains tracks from splits, EPs, singles, and other hard-to-find Agathocles music.
1 CommentTags: agathocles, animate records, Grindcore
