Bad doom metal focuses on aesthetic and technique to create a mood for consumers to purchase the way you would clothing at an outlet mall. Good doom metal subtly manipulates mood throughout the course of a piece in order to create the impression of expanding depth within a singular atmosphere.
Fortunately, Famishgod come to us from the latter camp. Their more maudlin, goth-rock inspired moments may strain the tolerance of some listeners, but a habit of massaging these themes via forward momentum into churning death metal riffing keeps this tendency in check.
In fact, it is this development of single-picked notes over shuddering chords into either flowing tremolo, or violent rhythms that achieves the aforementioned expansion of mood. Famishgod show us how an exploration of sorrow can result in conflict, but also revelation. If anything, their fault is not bringing their most intense moments to their height, even if that would perhaps betray the seeming aim of doom metal to be music that quietly develops in the background of your mind.
Personnel
Pako Deimler – All instruments
Dave Rotten – Vocals
Tracklist
1. The Sun, the Death
2. Ascencion
3. Fear Your Own Shadow
4. Deep Fall
5. Rotting Paradise
6. Crystal Palace
7. Earthly
Tags: doom-death, famishgod
All NPC deniers of history need to be placed into meat grinders.
Huh?
NPCs -> compost
You really shouldn’t waste your precious time with such trivialities.
Good review. I’d add that as with so many recent metal albums, the atmosphere created is neutered by the compressed, plasticy production.
On another note, why isn’t there an official DMU review of Condemned by Confessor?
Too much reverb too. The immediacy of otherwise good metal suffers for it.
Has anybody heard the 2020 remaster of Far Away From The Sun? Is it an improvement over the original?
Sounds like the drums are louder. The guitars on that album have always been a little difficult to decipher and that hasn’t really changed.
I dunno if it’s an improvement, but I wouldn’t kick it out of bed.
It’s on Metal Tracker if you want to try it out.
Speaking of production. I’ve seen all those “Production:” snippets prefacing the reviews in the Reviews section. But I’m bewildered as to what makes for good metal production.
Brett, which metal records do you think have the best production?
I am somewhat production-agnostic. As long as the record can be heard, the production has done an OK job.
However, bad production can make albums hard to discern. Peaks produce noise, and low reproduction of bass makes guitars sound like electric mandolins or something. Too much EQing of guitar can make for a clear but listeless tone with distortion that sounds more like brass than strings.
The volume war is another problem. ProTools compression made loud but is usually done badly and drowns out sound.
As far as volumes? I like the first Deicide, first Incantation, Sinister Hate, maybe the second Gorguts, Entombed Clandestine, and so forth, although many of my favorites have rough production like the Carnage album, Sepultura EPs, and early Morbid Angel.
It seems difficult for producers to capture the full range of guitar without it crowding out the bass and drums, so they tend to drop guitar bass and increase drum treble, making for a tinny sound. Either that or they wash it all together and it sounds like a schizophrenic convict shouting out Bible verses as he rapes you in the prison showers.
The last part made me rock hard
We are going to have a Prison Sex Writing Competition soon, honoring the paterfamilias of the genre:
You are a fucking faggot. Kill yourself and this website
“It seems difficult for producers to capture the full range of guitar without it crowding out the bass and drums, so they tend to drop guitar bass and increase drum treble, making for a tinny sound. ”
There’s more to that than just this. Guitar cabinets create a really horrible resonant peak at about 100Hz (the exact spot depends on the cab) that’s almost impossible to discern in the room but is incredibly dominant under a microphone. If you don’t smash down on this, hard, you’re left with an incredibly annoying humming sound which, in addition to being annoying, also destroys any clarity in your mix.
Interesting. I wonder if there is a new cabinet design which resonates at a less obnoxious frequency.
Then again, most people seem to be recording direct-to-digital at this point.
The cabinet resonance can’t be eliminated entirely (crossover distortion on a power chord in a tube amp creates frequencies an octave below the root, and most guitar equipment is never designed to accurately represent frequencies below 80Hz; the stuff that does, like Thiele cabs, ends up sounding weird to most people’s ears, just because it’s so different from what we’re accustomed to, and most of them are 1×12 designs that can’t handle high wattage) but it can be reduced; however, every known technique for reducing it has some drawbacks. The most common technique is to simply make the cab’s internal volume larger; Mesa and Orange do this with their cabs. The downside to this is that it makes guitars naturally more “distant”; it doesn’t just kill the resonance, but also a lot of the critical midrange frequencies that make a guitar stand out in a mix. You can also install some sort of insulation/bunting on the inside of the cab, but this tends to make the attack of notes less sharp, and rolls off much of your top end. Finally, you can front-load the cab, which is actually my preferred method of cabinet construction, but a lot of people dislike how this emphasizes the “grainy” parts of the guitar distortion, and it does hype the 3k-4khz region in a way that can be ear-fatiguing.
Some possibly interesting Youtube samples if you want to explore this:
“Normal” cab construction: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UuD_le-BE0E&list=PLgMVJZQaJHBf-TtHvk9Q8ERXuBsQK7rnM&index=9
Oversized cab: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbNdBVCeGhI&list=PLgMVJZQaJHBf-TtHvk9Q8ERXuBsQK7rnM&index=4
Insulated cab: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vhb46n5DVh0&list=PLgMVJZQaJHBf-TtHvk9Q8ERXuBsQK7rnM&index=1
Front-loaded cab: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LxQVBk0KZU&list=PLgMVJZQaJHBf-TtHvk9Q8ERXuBsQK7rnM&index=14
Overcompressed production is the worst most fatiguing thing about modern metal, just after compositions that go nowhere. Its all so tiresome.
That’s why a true MetalHead only listens to Divine Necromancy, Satanic Blood et the Mayhem demos.
I think it is how they often hide how bad the music is: use production that if it cannot wow you, at least blasts you into submission. “That was brutal…” — yes, but was it good?
That’s what she said.
I don’t get the production on albums like Ritual of Infinity and Onward to Golgotha. As soon as the guitarists tremolo pick lower scales the music turns into inaudible mud, at least to my ears. I genuinely wonder if there’s something wrong with my hearing, or if my speakers are tuned wrongly (any advice there?), or if it’s somehow on purpose and I’m missing the point.
Fred durst should be killed
Rap rock sucks and Latinos sucks wiggers suck I love Hawaiians
That is all
I can agree on rap rock. Rap seems irrelevant to me too, sort of like advertising. Wiggers are like cuck Republicans, people who act against their inner selves, therefore should be treated as plastic. I thought Fred Durst died of COVID-19? Maybe that was a fever dream… the product of a restless sleep on the porch as a norther blows in and cold rain begins to fall upon a silent world, revealing only the emptiness and the temporality of all.
Try it out on other speakers or headphones I guess and see if it sounds any different. The production is fine but it can take a while before your ears easily follow the riffing behind the drums and vocals. I personally don’t like too much bass in the mix as I find that gets in the way of hearing melody.
Blasting it in one room and listening in the next room gives an amazing sound but not always feasible if there’s other people around.
Being in a meditative state helps too. The more calm you are the more receptive you are to the transitions.
Trouble was the greatest Doom Metal band of all, Kyuss were underrated, and Monster Magnet was a great institution before Space Lord.
Greatest: Saint Vitus (Black Sabbath was proto-metal), Cathedral, Skepticism
Kyuss: indie rock
Monster Magnet: indie rock
Candlemass were better than Cathedral. Neither deserve to be mentioned alongside Skepticism, though.
Candlemass were a more consistent band but never put out anything as good as the first Cathedral. But yeah, Skepticism takes the top spot.
Also, you forgot Winter and Ras Algethi.
Like My Bloody Valentine, Kyuss put out their own brand of quality rock music. I don’t really care about the later offshoots.
“Bad doom metal focuses on aesthetic and technique to create a mood for consumers to purchase the way you would clothing at an outlet mall. Good doom metal subtly manipulates mood throughout the course of a piece in order to create the impression of expanding depth within a singular atmosphere.”
Nice word salad there. It communicates zero meaning.
I believe you are touch typing with polyps in your large intestine. Please remove iPad from rectum before proceeding.
Here’s an (admittedly imperfect) analogue for you:
Your comment: aesthetically resembles valid criticism but communicates very little aside from indicating the commenter’s lack of functioning brain cells.
My comment: communicates my observation that you are dumb (citing your comment) and therefore both resembles and functions as valid criticism.
its the difference between style and substance you doorknob
Have you ever been to the clothing aisle at Walmart and thought, “Wow, this jacket is rad! If I wear this, I’ll feel like Superman. Or this jacket! It’ll make me feel kind of like a cool hobo”? Then you look at the pricetag, gasping: “They’re on sale! What luck! I’ll have both of ’em. Superman today, vagabond tomorrow!”
But, unfortunately, after a couple of days, neither jacket feels very exciting any more. Nothing about you changed and soon enough the jackets are just cheap jackets, barely able to keep you warm. How infuriating!
That’s kind of like bad doom metal. It seems pretty rad at first, with all that cool guitar noise that sounds like it’s about to take you on a breathtaking adventure. But after a while, you realize it doesn’t go there at all – it’s just a lot of random noise! Gosh-darnit, right?
But here’s the thing: there’s also good doom metal! And it behaves a bit differently. In a piece of good doom metal, you won’t be hit on the head with clear-as-a-bell “feelings”, no, sir! Instead, there are these sly little changes here and there – nothing too obvious! – so that after some time, you realize the song has scooped out a deep and strange new world in your mind. Weird! And good. Much better than Walmart-jacket doom metal, anyway, ha-ha!
I hope this explanation wasn’t too tricky to understand. Otherwise, please tell me or someone else in this comments section immediately – it’s important that you get the hang of this! Wish you all the best.
Okay man
Not sure about that technical stuff -like what’s the difference between a mess and a clear mess but Brett’s prison rape fantasy got me thinking
It’s why people come here, for the sodomy references.
What doom album is ideal for the slow, caressing your bunkmate type; then, which is best for abrupt, forearm crusing the neck, caveman-like dominance?
Brett, what do you think of this remaster of The Red in the Sky is Ours? I prefer it to the original production because the guitars and the drums share a warm tone that makes them sound more like a unit.
https://youtu.be/NBT4L-6_WSk