Death Metal Underground: Ambient

Autechre – elseq 1–5 (2016)

by Staff on January 12, 2017

Article by Lance Viggiano.

Autechre‘s elseq 1-5 is a four hour anthology consisting of five individual EPs, each compiled together loosely upon conceptual coherence between the constituent tracks. elseq 1-5 is an exercise in release format rather than just content; the artists behind Autechre seek to utilize the immediacy of the digital age, releasing tracks “as they go” without traditional limitations imposed by the “album.” Granted of course this collection appeared as a hulking and impenetrable dump rather than a sequence. This point bears worth remembering as this overview proceeds as the temptation to view elseq 1-5 as a complete work, or works, is ingrained in popular habits.

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24 Comments

Tags: 2016, Ambient, anthology, Autechre, electronica, experimental, intelligent dance music, review

Marko Laiho – Ambient RH020151A (2016)

by Staff on November 4, 2016

marko-laiho-ambient
Death Metal Underground staffers Lance Viggiano and Corey M. reviewed Marko Laiho’s new ambient mix he created for Radio Helsinki.

Marko Laiho’s forays into electronic music can be described as anything but explorations of the myth of the machine. Though his aesthetic pallet draws from future invocations – anything we say of the future is always about the present – he blurs the line between the biological and mechanical unlike so much of the greater genre proper. For this mix, created for Radio Helsinki, the bohemian devil troubadour crafts an enveloping near-ambient journey using samples of original work and that of other artists as well. The success or failure of music in this mode is dependent entirely upon pacing over the course of an unbroken set which in this case does not falter. Broken into halves, the latter is more recessed while the former is more pronounced.

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16 Comments

Tags: Ambient, ambient music, beherit, Finland, Industrial, marko laiho, nuclear holocauto

Goatcraft – Yersinia Pestis (2016)

by Staff on August 19, 2016

Article by Lance Viggiano.

Arpeggiated minor chord melancholy culled from or composed during belligerent improvisational tirades given body by a sluggish left hand approximating power chords to provide the work a lattice to the traditions of metal. Yersinia Pestis abstains from its predecessor’s thematic coherence – an accident of writing what were essentially cover songs of a famous painter – to make marked but mishandled improvements in its individual presentations through tuneful reprisals of established Goatcraft trademarks. The dependence upon staccato and arpeggio retain the artist’s characteristic stiffness in execution which blemishes through its brutishness.

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25 Comments

Tags: 2016, Ambient, ambient music, dungeon synth, goatcraft, gothic, keyboards, review, Yersinia Pestis

Nigromante’s The Euphonies and Profundidades Available For Download

by Daniel Maarat on August 1, 2016

Nigromante’s Profundidades, recently reviewed by David Rosales, has been released for free download in MP3 format by experimental ambient label Spheredelic along with the earlier The Euphonies album:

Our second release in July is a double feature including the brand new album “Profundidades” as well as the reissue of the EP “The Euphonies” by Nigromante.
All music and ideas by Ebvleb. The picture for the cover layout was created by Marvin Narciso MMXV

The project Nigromante was founded between 1997/98. The shadowy figure behind Nigromante is inspired by and operating in the most deteriorated graveyards of Guatemala. Nigromante is to be listened to in the darkness of night, with pure candlelight, in order to feel the sound unleash specific emotions. It is the music of graves and the next dimension aiming at a direct contact with the lost souls of those who wander between the next dimension and this one. Nigromante is UNIQUE, a medieval modern aura of necroespiritual compositions.

Nigromante describes his music as “Necrospiritual Occult and Ethereal Nostalgia”. He uses sounds of medieval pianos, oboes, strings, etc. – all created with synths.

3 Comments

Tags: Ambient, dungeon synth, mp3s, Nigromante, Profundidades, Spheredelic

Alluring – The Room (2013)

by Stephen Cefala on July 29, 2016

The Room provides a relaxing, tranquil listen. The opening trope is slightly clichéd in mood and form but it works well in context and creates a relaxed hallucinatory vibe. A lush analogue chorusing effect with solid low-end sound makes the introduction a seismic force in addition to a musical one.

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14 Comments

Tags: alluring, Ambient, Doom Metal, review

Nigromante – Profundidades (2016)

by Staff on July 28, 2016

PROFUNDIDADES

Article by David Rosales.

Receding light and surrounding darkness encroaching, a stench of death and the beginning of lamentations beyond the veil of mortality; this is the picture presented to us by Nigromante. These images cannot come from elsewhere but the deepest wellspring of human sorrow immortalized through its own seal of power, a searing symbol that brands pain and agony unto souls — that they may be thus imprisoned and chained.

“Usar un sigilo sin saber…. ¡Se maldicen a ellos mismos!”
— A. Valentina
(trans.: “To use a seal without knowing… They curse themselves!”)

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13 Comments

Tags: Ambient, Nigromante, Profundidades, review

Desolation – Chorus From The Ruins (2008)

by Staff on July 25, 2016

“Detail shows the face of Stela D which rises 12 ft beside the altar of sacrifice with a death god effigy. The stele represents the 13th ruler of Copán, King Waxaklajun Ub’aah K’awiil (in English, Lord 18 Rabbit), showing half of his face as it was sculpted, and the other half stripped as it would look in Death.” – Akherra Phasmatanás

Article by David Rosales.

Desolation is a full-on ambient project that blends simple and solid harmonic backgrounds, repetitive phrases of a dark coloring, with recorded lamentations both human and otherwise. The aim seems to be to produce the whole array of impressions encapsulated within that single word: desolation. The music’s structure is progressive and appears to be segmented in an episodic manner, which normally implies a loss of continuity between sections. This unwanted effect is expertly avoided by providing smooth transitions, interleaving ambient soundscapes, nature sounds, vocal improvisations, all of which bring variety within a strongly directly concept that never loses content density or a strong sense of purpose. Furthermore, the album being simply distributed between two long tracks reinforces its unity and the requirement that the audience listens to the whole work as if commencing a mental journey, which once begun must be seen through to its very end.

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6 Comments

Tags: 2008, Ambient, chorus from the ruins, dark ambient, demo, demos, desolation, review

The Mythic and the Mystic

by Staff on July 1, 2016

Article by Lance Viggiano.

Burzum and Beherit each represent two summits of black metal’s many perspectives – in particular its looking back to look ahead ethos. The work of Laiho is exploratory and spiritual while the work of Varg is seeking and religious. Each composer followed a similar trajectory of mapping this landscape through metal first, then ambient. Each phase reveals strengths and weakness in each of their aims which results in a somewhat complementary synthesis between two highly individual bodies of work.

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12 Comments

Tags: Ambient, ambient music, beherit, Black Metal, burzum, composition, musical analysis, mystic, mysticism, mythic, mythic imagination

Space Rock Special: Hawkwind (1971-1973)

by Staff on June 4, 2016

Article by Johan P.

The stylistically inclusive nature of progressive rock allows quite a lot of stretching of the genre’s musical boundaries. This part of Death Metal Underground’s 1970s Progressive Rock for Hessians series looks into the early, classic period of the English group Hawkwind – a group of sonic shaman-warriors who transgressed more than one genre border right from their inception. Well, almost. Their unconvincing 1970 self-titled debut album can rightfully be dismissed as a failed attempt at improvisational psychedelic folk rock, with songs that sound too much like flawed byproducts of the flower power era. Luckily, the following years saw the band re-forge their sound on In Search of Space (1971), articulate it on Doremi Fasol Latido (1972) and finally push their newfound style to its limits on Space Ritual (1973).

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7 Comments

Tags: 1970s, 1970s Progressive Rock for Hessians, Ambient, ambient music, electronic music, hard rock, Hawkwind, lemmy, lemmy kilmister, music analysis, musical analysis, prog rock, progressive, progressive rock, psychedelic, rock, space rock