In With Winter Comes Despair, we hear a maturing Sapremia [1] characterized by its ingenious arrangement of phrasal riffs that use common or even simple building blocks to craft meaningfully elaborate statements. (more…)
3 CommentsTags: 2008, death metal, sapremia, with winter comes despair
Following familiar queues in electronic music, 3Force manages to not only achieve the climaxes through well-crafted expectation and adequate use of impact, but also sound articulate: someone using an established, rich language to its full potential as a means of communication. (more…)
34 CommentsTags: 2017, 3force, electronic, fascism, resistance
Mortum plays a streamlined style of black metal, applying it towards an almost shy efficiency and directed in the present album at expressing a series of simple musical ideas in different pieces through conservative yet noticeable development. (more…)
3 CommentsTags: 2011, Black Metal, mortum, the rites of depopulation
Siete Lagunas is an experiment in metal music that is ultimately an attempt to move beyond the realm of standard expresions in the genre (such as particular motif formations, Slayer-isms, or other stylistic encroachments) without disregarding what traditionally defines metal (i.e. phrase, and the use of ‘power-chords’). (more…)
6 CommentsTags: condor, demo, la caverna records, LCR 001, Nadia, siete lagunas
Encapsuling the soul of underground death metal of the American stripe, Sapremia presents in Existence of Torture a fundamental, if not essential, picture of what the genre should be about. (more…)
6 CommentsTags: 1994, death metal, existence of torture, sapremia
Extending further into the past, and lying in deeper recesses of mystery, are the cults and legends of the ancient Pelasgians. Their symbols, gods and myths included precede, and in a way bring forth the Hellenic [1], while remaining in a relative obscurity even when the cults were known to be active [2]. Among these obscure cults was that of the Kábeiroi (a.k.a. Cabiri), a group of unknown but powerful beings tracing lineage to Rhea —The feminine Titan of Saturn [3]— and to the vast Sea [4].
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Tags: carl jung, kabeiroi, pelasgians, richard moult, robert graves, serpent ov old, the realms: early piano works, whithering hope
One of the principal aims of DMU is to not only serve as curator of metal music, but also to keep developing an informed, cultured and realist interpretation and formulation of the past, present and future of the genre in the interest of transcendent goals. To this end DMU is launching two contribution-based efforts in parallel to the website content: an e-zine and a music compilation.
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Tags: chymia niger, compilation, litigium, zine
Altar of Perversion return with Intra Naos, a post-black metal album taking this limited and confused style to its best, though still inefficient, results. We start by stating that this is not a black metal album because it is not a metal album in the first place, although its instrumentation, general use of imagery and screetched vocals may give us cause to think it is. Rather than being based on actual riffs to form phrases which themselves give rise to a sequence of flows [1], Intra Naos displays the shortcomings of what we have in the past characterized wallpaper black metal [2]. The overall experience of the album is one of somnolescence brought about by the lack of musical content in an extremely long recording full of ‘sounds’.
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Tags: altar of perversion, drama music, intra naos, post-black metal, wallpaper music
The term ‘traditional’ black metal used here denotes not the ‘orthodox’ movement of imitation or gimmick bands lacking any musical ideas of value, but rather points to the living and evolving movement now referred to as the death-black styles coming forth organically from punkish speed metal voices. The definition does not exclude the developments of the nineties which led to the musical distinction between a purified black metal and the older speed metal. However, this distinction represented only, or mainly, the Scandinavian expression of the genre separating itself from the more common tropes. More raw and unclassifiable bands within this distinction were forgotten in the wake of relative popularity of the Scandinavian stylings quickly became tired trope. The network of original underground minds seeking unique expressions of an undefined darkness became an incestuous cesspool. Unfortunately, this is today misleadingly known as ‘orthodox’ black metal.
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Rising from the pit of late nineties underground speed metal, Chileans Apostasy revived during the last decade to bring back to life a pure demonstration of metal as it is. There is no need to claim to be progressive, harsh, technical or the milliard other epithets that bands and marketing agents have come up to single out bands which present only narrow facets of what the genre can be. We can hear traces of what came to be known as the ‘riff salad,’, but like later death metal outgrowths of the style, there is a sense of organic flow and revolving around a main riff-idea. (more…)
3 CommentsTags: apostasy, chile, Speed Metal, the blade of hell
