After hermetic silence, we return to the arid plains of Jalisco, Mexico, in search of the chilling touch of undead spirit that permeated cult satanic Death Metal glory in Sargatanas’ debut album “The Enlightenment”, painstakingly detailed in our feature on the history and Weltanschauung of Mexican metal. Around the same time as Sargatanas, the essentially Latin American approach to death, mysticism and underworld powers was invoked by the rather short-lived Tenebrarum who left nothing but a legacy of one curious album. In consistency and endurance they would be overshadowed by their brothers, but “Alta Magia” is drenched with a creative, possessed instinct which makes it deserving of the mystic title. Stylistically somewhere between the chaotic pathos of dark skinned warriors of Mystifier and Italian black metallers obsessed with organs, masses and interludes, Tenebrarum juxtaposed noisy riffs and soothing breathing lapses in order to produce cerebral pleasure in annihilation of opposite principles.
Early Black Metal tended to be founded in Death Metal or Grindcore technique but an instinct for elongated, languid, even feminine architecture injected it with an atmosphere of subtle terror and reverence. “Alta Magia” goes for a simultaenous assault on senses and reason by building a Mortuary-like foundation of extremely dramatic and nuanced simple chromatic riffs, on top of which corny synthesizers exercise diverse pagan rituals as if in mockery of “vampire metal”, yet in their intensity and rather precise musical formulation approximating the most otherworldly moments of Nocturnus or even the classic progressive rock of Jacula. Some of the simpler riffs are only provocative, but the band is not one to exercise blocky repetition in the manner of Sargatanas; instead it takes delight in shock and explosiveness. This improbable, mercurial album is mostly recommended to Death Metal fans with an affection for the stylistic tenets of early Grindcore and Black Metal, as displayed for example in the ridiculous excesses of Blasphemy, Beherit and Imprecation.
The last couple of years have seen a artistic renaissance of a genre that throughout the best part of the mid- to late 90′s, and the early reaches of the millennium, was perceived to be a ghost that had long outlived it’s most glorious moments of artistic clarity. Great quantities of ‘gore’ and ‘brutal’ Death Metal acts have over the last two decades, dumbed down the mystical perversity that gave a genre the likes of ‘Blessed Are The Sick‘, ‘Legion‘, ‘Cause Of Death’, ‘Onward To Golgotha‘, ‘Imperial Doom‘, has in years past given way to acts that aim principally for shock value, sidetracking any of the compositional and dynamic attributes that were the essence of what made Death Metal so vital in it’s 1989-1993 heyday.
It’s great that Autopsy should record such a gem as this, as it serves to vanquish the plasticity and dross that once great acts such as Morbid Angel and Deicide have spluttered forth. Not only does it filter out these negatives, but it also does great justice to many artists who embrace an archaic yet craftsmanlike and refreshing interpretation of Death Metal.
In addition to having put out the excellent ‘The Tomb Within‘ EP last year, Autopsy have eschewed the notion of ‘re-recordings’ or filtering previously released material onto this new record. Instead what we have is a colossal, quite lengthy record, lasting greater than an hour but never straying from momentum and vibrancy.
It wouldn’t be unfair to say that in terms of intricate song structuring, Autopsy have perhaps even upped on what they originally achieved on ‘Severed Survival‘ and ‘Mental Funeral’, with a more obvious sense of grandeur. This exhibits itself on tracks such as ‘Bridge Of Bones’ and ‘Sadistic Gratification’, which sound somewhat like a logical conclusion of what was being hinted at on their second album. Eric Cutler’s riffs and modes are the usual tritonal, Black Sabbath meets Hellhammer-esque death dirges, which occasionally recycle patterns and forms familiar in early material, yet also giving the album a renewed sense of consistency. It is this grasp of orthodoxy within the metal genre which always makes for contributing to the collective framework of the artists work, which Autopsy fulfill here.
This is however not to say that there are flourishes of ‘experimentation’. Luckily the band have played a good hand of cards, and have not fallen into the ludicrous corner of ‘evolving for the sake of it’. Particular songs on ‘Macabre Eternal’ show the band using greater song lengths than before (‘Sadistic Gratification’, ‘Sewn Into One’), and also display a greater sense of direct melodicism (‘Dirty Gore Whore’). Whilst Autopsy have never been associated with playing at fast speeds, large stretches of this album are more uptempo.
Chris Reifert is on top form as a vocalist. His ability to evoke majestic visions of dismemberment and perversion seem to contain a greater dynamic than usual, as to suggest that nearly fifteen years of prolonged absence has only allowed his strengths to re-accumulate.
Though certainly not a complaint on behalf of the reviewer, what may potentially put off some fans of earlier material is the production, which is undeniably modern in tone. Whilst Chris Reifert’s drumming is still top notch the only minor complaint being that the compression on his drumkit seems to somewhat nullify the sense of ability, flair and aggression that a more analogous production would bring out. Whilst ‘Macabre Eternal’ possesses all of the right atmosphere and conviction worthy of great death metal, the more aesthetically orientated listener will notice that the overall tonality is not as analogous as what was committed to tape in the 80′s and 90′s.
In spite of this minor specific, this album is superb, and rightly deserves to be considered a beacon of the revivification of a dark and morbid art form that until the turn of the new millennium, was considered a dead horse. Hail the new dawn. Not only in terms of structural and grandiose perversion does this album triumph, but fragments of it’s lyrical scope only serve further as to compliment the metaphysical and transcendental nihilism that death metal eternally symbolizes.
“Under the sign of a skull faced moon
We rise from abysmal embryotic doom
Existence as torment, yet locked in a grave
A sick fragile cycle from which no one is saved”
Within the recent decade, this is the best ‘comeback’ release that has emerged from any of the elder practitioners of the genre. Undoubtedly, this shall also be a worthy contender for being the best album of the year.
Filed under: Death Metal Album of the Week — Tags: American Death Metal, Death Metal, Gore, Horror, Nihilism, Old School Death Metal — Pearson @ July 18, 2011 06:06 — Comments (2)
Though the barrier of moral pretense that’s raised in the minds of those who live in fear of this world can be seen as the work of social or religious conditioning, it isn’t necessarily intrinsic to systems of thought that wish to superimpose theories of order upon nature. Rather, the impulse is an artifice of the ego, in assuring it’s own physical safety and metaphysical sanctity, whether the origin of this is ascribed to a divinity or otherwise and then marketed to the masses. This monochromatic rendering of a world half engulfed by the shadow of such a barrier disregards the interdependent balance of elements, the opposite and equal value of death to that of life, and begins to symbolise a holy war against the unknown, just as the actual structure has represented conflicts throughout human history, from Hadrian’s Wall to the West Bank. Maybe Demoltion Hammer one year later recorded the soundtrack to the destruction of these architectural demarcators but Ripping Corpse pinpointed the mental plane with one of the apex recordings of both these tri-state bands’ style of corpse-shredding Speed/Death Metal.
‘Dreaming with the Dead’ doesn’t so much harmoniously reconcile life’s opposite extremes, though, as it reveals their arbitrary placement on the spectrum of phenomenon and deconstructs such division with the characteristic absurdism of Death Metal and Lovecraftian inhuman consciousness. The thematic outline of the album is even marked by a transition from the pulp ‘escapism’ of subconscious terrors on one hand to social commentary on the other, as though returning from the Abyss to expose the hypocrisy of so-called civilised men who indulge in normalised forms of depravity while pouring scorn over uncivilised ‘savagery’. The musical elements that Ripping Corpse fuse on the album illustrates this idea further, overlaying the quasi-neoclassical shredding posibilities opened up by European Speed Metal bands such as the socially conscious Destruction with perverse melodies and sequences of increasingly fractured riffing typical of Death Metal at the time.
Although the adverse effect of retaining such past influences would be that some later songs still structure themselves around anthemic choruses – a burden that most of Ripping Corpse’s contemporaries had already evolved far beyond – the band manages to employ enough compexity in their compositions to keep up with the demands of their vision. The sound of the guitars may be construed as being weak or mixed poorly, but this lighter texture lends itself well to the progression of riffs from measured punctuations of rhythm to insane variations by way of fucked up artificial harmonics and blastbeaten tremolo sequences. Tempo blurs the lines of what is considered primitive, though the act may be embellished with the jewels of modern society or justified in the name of some ideology. As layers of humanity are removed from the conscious mind, lead guitars erratically and uncontrollably rip through passages and bring a microcosmic level of culmination within a song, like the fleeting screams of demons being exorcised from a long tortured soul.
There is some continuity to be heard in the first album of Erik Rutan’s much later Hate Eternal, which is a far more sizeable contribution than his involvement in Morbid Angel, however, Ripping Corpse clearly struck an evolutionary dead-end with ‘Dreaming with the Dead’. Yet for all it’s antiquated aspects, the focus and engineering of the music manages to highlight the illusions which obstruct mankind from understanding the world around him because he chose to no longer belong in such a world.
Filed under: Death Metal Album of the Week — Tags: Death Metal, Horror, Speed Metal, Speed/Death — ObscuraHessian @ June 13, 2011 04:59 — Comments (3)
It is often asserted that some of the best works of the death metal genre arose as if by accident. A better assertion is that by the early 1990′s, many artists prominent within this musical form found themselves at a level of impassable momentum; a culmination of instrumental violence, a taste for profound and subversive ideals and a sadistic will to power. The year 1992 found death metal at its most potent, chaotic, destructive and virile, just as speed metal was in ’86, and black metal in ’93. ‘Legion’ sets itself in a league of its own, giving each musician a distinct elemental voice. Glen Benton’s cthonian barking is at its most virulent and savage, guttural yet dynamic, having a rhythmic cohesion that is comparable to that of David Vincent, but separable in tonality. His bass playing is clearly audible, sandwiched in between the juxtaposition of the trebly guitars, which are thankfully never distant or uninterpretable. The drumming of Steve Asheim is insanely over the top yet disciplined, as if one were battering cakes laced with grenades. 
The musical influence of Slayer is the clear template for Deicide’s work, and in terms of compact intensity, ‘Legion’ is to their self titled debut what ‘Reign In Blood’ was to ‘Hell Awaits’. A parallel can also be drawn to Slayer in the musical interplay in the dissonant soloing techniques that see the best ideas of Hanneman and King taken towards a polyphonic atonality. The album radiates just under half an hour of pure blasphemous momentum, and communicates through spiraling, chopping guitar riffs that sit in perfectly with a multi-faceted rhythm section. Structurally ‘Legion’ emphasizes a highly proficient musical backdrop, which advances what was exhibited on their debut and compresses it into a greater density that is both a pleasure to listen to and gives Deicide a platform on which to construct their most unique and standout work. Virtuosity echoes the best work of Atheist and Voivod if the melodic and progressive rock tendencies were eschewed, whilst the pattern language and aesthetic is in league with the best work of Morbid Angel, Sepultura, Massacra and Suffocation. This is Deicide’s pinnacle, one they would never surpass. A fundamental cornerstone of death metal, one of the all time best.
Know how to kill! Nothing is rarer, and everything depends on that. Know how to kill! That is to say, how to work the human body like a sculptor works his day or piece of ivory, and evoke the entire sum, every prodigy of suffering it conceals in the depths of its shadows and its mysteries. There! Science is required, variety, taste, imagination… genius, after all.
… So spake the lyrically impassioned and thoroughly blood-splattered master torturer from Octave Mirbeau’s exploitative allegory ‘Le Jardin des Supplices‘ — a work often regarded as the French parallel to Joseph Conrad’s ‘Heart of Darkness’ in its mutual objective towards smashing the moral edifices of Western civilization and exposing the corrupted, putrefyin
g soul beneath. Framed in this excerpt is a rational, eloquent and yet sickeningly grotesque declaration of sadism as a fine art — or even a manifestation of divine love — which so happens to mesh very excellently with the more measured methods that Massacra had undertaken for their second opus ‘Enjoy The Violence’, an album that has historically competed with its predecessor ‘Final Holocaust’ for total lordship over the death metal world. While the ivory sceptre is generally awarded to the debut by merit of its raw, inexorable and blindingly brilliant riff-saladry, an equally convincing case can be argued on behalf of ‘Enjoy The Violence’ — a sophomore effort in the greatest sens
e of the word. No longer does songwriting resemble frantic tornadoes of jagged phrases, bewildering developments and hazardously unhinged instrumentation: here we find Massacra, having done their thorough “research of tortures”, limiting their machinations of aural infliction down to a choice but variegated selection, with all parts oiled, honed, and sharpened for excruciating efficiency. Markedly fewer motifs are employed — a few even resurface on multiple songs — and yet it is this very spareness that imparts such character and memorability unto each composition, along with a newfound, almost cinematic command over tempo, texture, voicing and atmosphere. In addition to the familiar Destruction-esque, adrenaline-rushed thrashing fare, songs of pure death-doom are introduced, serving to showcase both the band’s ability to stage ominous and imposing dirges in the grandiosely operatic tradition, as well as the most tasteful musicianship yet to be wrought by the Duval/Tristani guitar duo and even percussionist Chris Palengat. Bassist and co-vocalist Pascal Jörgensen, whose efforts were unfortunately somewhat smothered by the crêpe-flat production on ‘Final Holocaust’, now rises to the status of an eminent narrator, complete with audible basslines and a dictatorial roar that bears with it the all the glorious and savage atavisms of the Gallic warrior spirit. A richly imagined, brutal and at times sardonic album, ‘Enjoy The Violence’ is very much Massacra’s second masterpiece and — like the aforementioned Mirbeau — speaks to the undercurrent of murder and pillage that flows blackly through even the modern, safe, and plastic societies that have pleasantly stultified us in this age of oblivion.
You take pleasure
In using violence
It’s in your nature
Psychopathic sense
Psychological conflict
You’re under my influence
You can’t repress your instinct
I incite you to violence
What is life? A mechanistic-deterministic reaction cycle of alkaloids, proteins and nucleic acids? A quantum spell of randomness or the whim of a willing god? Certain purposefulness, subtle intentionality and synchronic magic that leaks through the cracks of everyday reality seems to invite both mystical speculation and transcendental philosophy but elude a fully satisfying rational explanation. The brain-melting reaction to existential, eschatological and essential questions such as the existence of sin and afterlife was both more rational and nihilistic (plus masculine and lofty) in the death metal of
Protestant countries of Europe (and USA), while the South European and Latin American manifestation was feminine, instinctive, intuitive and categorically destructive of the social place of human in the cosmos. The sensual Italian attack in “Into the Macabre”, enveloped by the scents of leather, sweat and blood, is by no accident a bastard brother of the proto-war metal invocations of “Morbid Visions” and “INRI”, while the technical details show that the necro-warriors spent years studying the works of Slayer and Destruction. Most of all, “Into the Macabre” is an opera of rhythm, of intense vocal timings, stampeding blastbeats and onrushing chromatic and speed metal riffs which warp under the extremely analog old tape production into ambient paysages of ghostly frequency, much like the evil and infectious “Equimanthorn” of classic Bathory. Songs like “Necrosadist” seem to have the structure of a grotesque sexual orgy where each consecutive part tops the previous in volume and hysteria, with short breathing spaces in between to capture and organize the listener’s attention. Like the aforementioned Brazilian albums, “Into the Macabre” is one of the cases where music is about as far from an intellectual exercise as one gets, into the catacombs of a devil/alcohol/glue-possessed teenager’s brain but for the discerning and maniacal old school death metal listener there is no end to the amount of pleasures, revelations and evil moments that make it seem some transcendental guidance indeed dwells at the shrine of the unholy mystic.
On the 93rd (number of the Thelemic Law) anniversary of the independence of Finland from the Russian Empire, let the northern lights flash their yearning flames beckoning the souls of the fallen warriors of the Civil War. While it may seem to some as a sacrilege to play anything but the Romantic sylvan mystery plays of Sibelius, the true heir of Wagner and one of Finland’s national composers, the early death metal symphonies of Oulu’s Sentenced epitomize a great deal of the same thundering natural melancholy. Following the youthful, reaping, Dismember-esque debut album “Shadows of the Past”, the musical theory of Jarva, Lopakka and Tenkula turned like the Roman mythical Janus statue two ways at once: towards the pure riffcraft of Iron Maiden and the ethereal, streaming melody of Nordic black metal. Much like At the Gates had captured nearly protestant-religious passion and sadness in Sweden, Sentenced managed to concoct music which was worshipful, raging, realistic (even pessimistic) and imaginative all at once, in defiance of the taciturn apathy characteristic (like alcohol) of the working class of northern Finland. In Sentenced, the pent-up rage of skeptical and prematurely cynical young men was transformed into elaborate poetic reflection.
Power metal riffs in a death metal production would later experience a horrible mangled mutilation death in Children of Bodom’s excessive rock stage theatrics, but the sharp minds of Sentenced treated their source material with such profound affection that heavy metal, thrash, death metal and black metal weave into each other as interminable patterns of tangled paths amidst hypercosmos – a Northern Finnish shaman’s spell. The careful production recalls the most biting moments of Kreator while the technical skills of the guitarists are on par with the hallowed “prog” moments of Atheist and Death. The songs hardly suffer from any useless repetition (the anthemic verse-chorus structure of “Awaiting the Winter Frost” serves a specific purpose in exclaiming the satirical “heavy metal victory” over the forces of light, while it is deliberately obscured whether the narrator is a man, a beast or a spirit). That “North from Here” was never Sentenced’s most popular or esteemed moment is a total wrongness, as “Amok” followed on the footsteps of this work adequately, but only that. One of the strongest candidates for the best Death Metal album in the history of Finland, the bewitching maledictions of “North from Here”, from “Capture of Fire” to “Beyond the Wall of Sleep” (and practically any piece since there is no filler), achieved the aims of “Gothenburg” much more effectively and impudently than the horde’s western neighbours.
“Immigration in the Abyss, Immense to the Heart”
Invoke and summon the elder ones,
darkest realms await your arrival.
Succumb to passion, the temptation
to penetrate and probe the abyss.
Employ the wisdom of the ancients
Overcome thyself, transcend and rule
Utilize the chaos, discover.
And finally give birth to ones-Self.
Penetrate the mysteries of life,
Existence, and explore Arcane cults.
Do they not remain? Vanished, unseen,
But felt and unforgotten within.
Share in the beauty of the descent!
“Tonight my voice will echo in the Abyss”
Have we not explored and discovered?
Have we not elevated ourselves?
Our minds, conciousness eminent now,
immersed in lofty symbolism.
A keen eye, astute and compelling,
Such language, a modern aversion,
Forbidden, a cryptic inner realm.
A revelation! Hessians, a gift!
Romantic longing, a melody
To touch the spirit! May it now soar!
Powerful, competent and focused
Restrained beauty, a wandering soul.
“The promises beyond, a new reality I adore”
Filed under: Death Metal Album of the Week — Tags: Black Metal, Greek Black Metal, Heavy Metal, Melodic Black Metal, The Abyss, Transcendence — TheWaters @ November 26, 2010 08:56 — Comments (2)
This overlooked Finnish gem, from 1992 sees an act from the Southern Finnish town of Nokia (the same town that gave the world Convulse, and a phone company of it’s namesake) playing death metal in the style 
that characterizes their native country. It is quite raw, sludgy and semi-melodic, yet in terms of rhythmic dynamics, has quite a lot in common with American acts such as Autopsy and Incantation. The seminal music of Demigod also garners a valid comparison though the production is much more murky, with the guitar tone having something more in common with the likes of Rippikoulu, and the drums having a quite jilted, and occasionally offbeat syncopation, aesthetically complimenting the strangulation strings. Keyboards, and additionally acoustics, used quite sparingly, accentuate a gothic sense of clarity amidst an aural dimension that conjure mental images of wriggling life beneath cemetary dirt. Like the best Finnish releases the real cohesion of this album is attained through a collective listen to the album in it’s start to finish entirety, rather than picks of individual compositions, which if played alone would render giving the album less significance than it deserves. For those that like death metal worth it’s salt, this is certainly worth listening to, and some 18 years after it’s original release, more than easily attains a lasting value in the annals of the history of this genre.
“De Profundis” emerges from out of the depths as a record, which, by virtue of its robust essence, heaps scorn upon the effeminate and moribund remains of modern society. Self assured and squarely virile, the long forgotten virtues of traditional civilization are here clearly on display. Courage and the impetus provided by the ever burning genius inherent in the creation process allow Vader to plunge into the Abyss and emerge victorious, finding within the power to give form to formlessness, to transfigure the chaotic primordial forces in order to create meaningful, engaging and solid sonic architecture. “De Profundis” remains a sleek and brutal slab of orthodox death metal whose culmination, while rooted in the speed metal tradition, transcends the inherent communicative limitations of the aforementioned genre. While riffs shapes are undeniably familiar, and the blasting atonal and chaotic solos reveal a profound Slayer influence, each track delights in its powerful use of pulsating, rhythmically sleek, intrusive and neatly compacted riffs that are strung together with such precision as to effectively invoke the recurring feeling of being confronted with and submerged beneath the ever infinite, although oft-times forgotten, existential possibilities inherent within man.
Although relishing in a brutality becoming of all Death Metal, and maintaining an overall martial feel that reveals the a-priori characteristics necessary for an exploration of the Abyss, this release is hardly one-dimensional. On the contrary, diverse but related phrases tend to focus on and explore the outer boundaries and the indefinite gradations between two states inherent in man’s deeper psychological condition: the meditative and the aggressive. However, this exploration is hardly absolute in nature as these intrinsically ambiguous but powerful phrases wrap themselves around related, although equally indefinite phrases, thus creating a relationship of signification whose inherent reciprocity is the key to the development and extraction of meaning. The overall effect is a highly complex narrative whose abstract meta-structure alone contains the capacity to plunge listeners into deep levels of meditation. Undeniably powerful transitions remain for the most part subtle enough to facilitate the development of an uninterrupted epic narrative that brilliantly capitalizes on what appear to be consciously restless themes which invoke a sickly sense of anxious anticipation. Vader’s shrewd capacity to playful explore various themes in the context of a highly thunderous album reaches its apex on this epic album which is highly demanding, intelligent and viscerally satisfying.
Overall, “De Profundis” remains the absolute zenith of Vader’s career as it most clearly and boldly exemplifies Vader’s astute song writing capacities. 15 years later this work remains highly recommended.
Filed under: Death Metal Album of the Week — Tags: American Death Metal, Brutal Death Metal, Death Metal, Polish Death Metal, Speed Metal, The Abyss, Virtue — TheWaters @ November 11, 2010 22:42 — Comments (4)
