Yes – Fragile (1971)

yes fragile

By Johan P, with the amiable assistance of David Rosales. This review continues Death Metal Underground’s 1970s Progressive Rock for Hessians series.

In this part of the article series “1970s Progressive Rock for Hessians”, I have chosen to take on the English group Yes‘ fourth album Fragile from 1971. While their fifth effort, Close to the Edge, is generally regarded as their creative peak and definite statement, Fragile was more important for the development of the nascent progressive rock genre, and perhaps a more suitable entry point for someone who is getting into prog rock from a metal background. There is definitely a sense of power in the works of Yes even if it takes on a different form than what we are used to in metal music. Where early metal bands like Black Sabbath expressed a gritty, doom-laden heaviness through guitar-centered power chord riffing, Yes opted to build momentum through a more instrumentally integrated approach. That is not to say that there are no heavy guitar parts on ‘Fragile’, but here the guitars assume a somewhat different role than in metal.

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Slayer Fall 2016 North American Tour with Death Angel and Anthrax

Slayer_Kerry_King cheetah guitar

Slayer are touring North America this fall with lesser eighties speed metal bands Death Angel and Anthrax. I’m still hoping for a SlayExodus tour where the same lineup plays 75% Slayer and 25% Exodux material. Slayer Fan Club members (Does anyone who doesn’t watch the WWF pay to join this?) may preorder tickets now; sales to the general public go on sale Friday.

Kerry King: “It’s always super fun for us to tour with Anthrax. Frank is one of my best friends in the biz!! Put that together with Death Angel, and fans will probably see the best package this year. See you there!”

With more dates to be announced, here is the confirmed itinerary:

SEPTEMBER
9 Jacob’s Pavilion, Cleveland, OH
10 Freedom Hill Amphitheatre, Detroit, MI
12 Sound Academy, Toronto, ON
13 Metropolis, Montreal, QC
15 Stage AE, Pittsburgh, PA
17/18 Rock Allegiance, Chester, PA*
20 Egyptian Room, Indianapolis, IN
22 The Pageant, St. Louis, MO
27 Hard Rock Live, Orlando, FL
28 Fillmore, Miami, FL
30 Horseshoe Casino Tunica, Tunica, MS

OCTOBER
3 Norva, Norfolk, VA
5 Tabernacle, Atlanta, GA
7 Gas Monkey Live, Dallas, TX
8 ACL at the Moody Theatre, Austin, TX
10 Fillmore, Denver, CO
11 The Complex, Salt Lake City, UT
13 The Wilma Theatre, Missoula, MT
17 ENMAX Center, Lethbridge, AB
19 South Okanagan Events Centre, Penticton, BC
20 Abbotsford Centre, Abbotsford, BC
23 Reno Events Center, Reno, NV
27 El Paso County Coliseum, El Paso, TX

* Slayer, Anthrax and Death Angel are all on this bill.

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Dead Congregation Repress Purifying Consecrated Ground

DC_purifying_digi

Dead Congregation have repressed their debut EP, Purifying Consecrated Ground, on frontman Anastasis Valtsanis’s own Martyrdoom Productions label in digipak CD format. The new fans the band picked up with their last album, Promulgation of the Fall, will finally have a chance to own a physical copy of the band’s most concise work.

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Free Dark Descent and Unspeakable Axe Records Sampler CD

Dark Descent New Release Sampler #4

Dark Descent and Unspeakable Axe Records have released a new free sampler CD of their recent upcoming releases. It is freely available with a purchase from the Dark Descent online store and for free download on their Bandcamp page with four additional tracks that couldn’t fit on the CD.

The new Dark Descent Records/Unspeakable Axe 2016 CD sampler is now available. This is a FREE sampler and available with purchase through our web store and at Unspeakable Axe. Included on the disc is 16 tracks (8 from each label) with premieres from Blood Incantation, Excommunion, Lantern and Ruinous. The sampler also includes an discount code good for our web stores. Get yours now before it’s too late!

Trenchrot – Hell Pilot’s Call
Blood Incantation – Chaoplasm
Ripper – Anthropophagic Life
Ghoulgotha – The Sulphur Age
Hemotoxin – Transparent Eyes
Sheidim – Without Reins
Nucleus – Cube
Excommunion – Nemesis
Mortal Scepter – Violent Revenge
Nox Formulae – Hidden Clan NXN
Scorched – Lust for Strangulation
Lantern – Cleansing of the Air
Manic Scum – Strapped to the Gurney
Ellorsith – Jerome I
Obscure Evil – Enchants of Bitterness
Ruinous – Dragmarks

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Traversing the Underground: The Beginning of a Journey

tolkein moria gate

Article by David Rosales.

We often use the term underground following the multiple discussions of underground extreme metal started on Death Metal Underground by Brett Stevens himself. Conceptualizing it here would be redundant and confusing. Instead, we might benefit more from brainstorming that allows for the reveling of authenticity that so characterizes underground music. What we are interested in here is not metal only, or metal as a whole, but rather metal as conducive to realization, breaking of false boundaries, destruction of a false mainstream, doing away with a useless society, and a contempt for a decadent civilization that through negation is blind to its own fatality.

The answer is not in this or that genre, in formal philosophy, or in the bare findings of the scientific establishment, but in their use in service of individual discernment. Music itself, if taken as more than mere sensual distraction, is the intuitive way leading to the shattering of illusions perceived through the senses, instigated by the mundane. This is not mere sophistry,; its most practical result is that in the abstract realizations thereof the mind is free to challenge what before appeared as commandments written in stone. Reality does not belong to anyone; truth is a quest.

baphomet pan shub-niggaurath
Unaussprechlichen KultenBaphomet Pan Shub-Niggurath (2014)
The tumultuous death metal of Unaussprechlichen Kulten captures the rawness of exploring black magic in darkness upon the listeners mind. What is significant about the interest of metal at large in what is hidden, what is occult, is not the morbidity alone, although that is the explanation that even luminaries may conjure and the only one that the rabble may consciously understand. The open door to asocial darkness, to inhumanity, to disintegration, is the contrast between ephemeral and the immanent. However, facing this burning darkness is also a voluntary act: it lies beyond good and evil, where the primal breath of the whole that puts our non-divinity into perspective. Here, the old school death metal expressions within free structures that never overextend and are perhaps inconclusive, nevertheless represent a perfect introduction to an energetic flow of destruction and consumption.

snowland mmxii
Sorcier des GlacesSnowland MMXII (2012)
A well-deserved update of Snowland, Sorcier des Glaces’ Snowland MMXII shines with self-attenuated glow, hiding vibrant vitality. This is the course of nobility after or through darkness. Sorcier des Glaces takes us to the essence of black metal as post-nihilism. What some would confuse with empiricism or mere scepticism, but is in reality free transcendentalism following death, complete nihilistic destruction. The dark light emanating from image and action, from reality and unreality, the delight beyond sensuality in the universe as it is as perceived imperfectly as we see it in the thousand ways in which we tune in to it.

Departure at Sunset
Isa – Отход на закате [Departure at Sunset] (2015)
Risking death by lynching, I’ll introduce this rather inconspicuous and only vaguely metal album as the culmination of this discussion. This lies more in the realm of ambient and is liable to be confused with post-rock when seen from a certain angle. Departure at Sunset captures the naturalist side of metal in a stronger way than do most these days. This is done in perhaps an extreme way that does not befit the always-hidden, the underground spirit of metal. That is, there might be too much sunshine in this for the traditional underground, so that it might seem counter-intuitive for some to see this as more authentically revealing than what sounds traditional. But the trademark old school sound has been hijacked for a long time now, it has been commercialized in what is almost a counter-spell to its original black conjuration. The truth seems to emerge, then, in the opposite, sunlit, ice-clear sounds of this ambient metal that transports us to Siberia as the antithesis to the modern world.

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