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
Seven Metal Inches Records is re-issuing the 1990 Derketa EP Premature Burial as part of the label’s “Unearth The Underground series Pt. III” series of classic underground metal back in print.
1 CommentTags: death metal, derkéta, Doom Metal, doom-death
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
Forensear come to us from the Argentinian scene, part of that wide South American envelope where the distinctions between subgenres blur, and sounds roughly like an early Testament playing death metal at moderate speed metal pacing, resulting in a trudging but energetic delivery.
1 CommentTags: forensear, Speed Metal
by Osovar
This is one of the classics worthy of its praise, and should unite both casual listeners and underground connoisseurs in this opinion. It might feel rather fruitless to review a classic of this scale at this point, but after re-listening to it multiple times lately and learning to play some of the tracks I felt compelled. Most of everything that can be said about this album was probably already said but I figured I’d give some further analysis of the songwriting and tracks.
28 CommentsTags: megadeth, Speed Metal
Hammerheart Records plans to re-issue Resurrection Embalmed Existence on April 20, 2020, bringing this second-wave Florida death metal release to the light once again. Originally issued in 1993, this slab of well-produced solidly chunky death metal never quite got the attention of other Florida bands.
3 CommentsTags: death metal, resurrection
The most epic bands often struggle to clarify their voice, which includes composition, technique, and performance. For Emperor, the first foray consisted of crepitant necrotic recordings which emphasized solidarity with the early works of Hellhammer, Sodom, and Sarcofago. Later they refined their approach.
35 CommentsTags: Black Metal, emperor
Master’s Paul Speckmann is known for taking an idea and squeezing everything he can from it through repetition and then utilizing the most direct route to return to that idea. Though this mentality would fail many bands because the riffs didn’t have the necessary urgency and creativity to work. Bolt Thrower on the other hand took this approach and pushed it to the logical extreme as each individual riff became the central focus while narrative development was relegated to an afterthought despite somehow still being present. What made Bolt Thrower so intriguing was that they possessed powerful riffs that were caveman like and more often than not completely idiotic yet the band managed to soar where others failed miserably.
17 CommentsTags: Bolt Thrower, death metal, Realm of Chaos, world eater
In nature, nothing can exist in stasis, but radical change forms the same chaos that stasis does, namely a loss of energy potential. This means that anything enduring exists in a constant state of internal conflict but within the parameters of continuity between past and future to its roots.
4 CommentsTags: ambient metal, death metal, Necrophiliac
