Hecate Enthroned – Embrace of the Godless Aeon

Hecate Enthroned are known for being second fiddle to Cradle of Filth within the UK black metal scene and have followed their footsteps into third rate Black metal generally in the ridiculously named «Symphonic Black metal» style which is a complete lack of riffcraft being overcompensated by simple keyboard melodies. For those who are unfamiliar with this band, their 1997 release The Slaughter of Innocence, a Requiem for the Mighty was decent if at times inconsistant Black metal and is their summit. Their latest release sees an uninspired band attempt to reconcile cookie-cutter Blackened Death metal with the newer post rock elements that have invaded Black metal to create one of the worst excuses of Black metal to have ever existed.

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/smr/ Sadistic Metal Reviews: Flavor of the Week Metal Pt 1: Black Metal

The ability to spot flavor of the week(/weak) trends in metal is a key element of elitism and will save you a load of embarrassment further down the road.  Both death metal and black metal have seen their share of torrid but temporary trends in the form of herd pleasing bastardizations that quickly spike in popularity and then evaporate from relevancy as their fans move on to something even worse (usually after a period of denial and/or clinging to a safe intermediary genre).  Crowdism is for losers but it’s heavily pushed in the metal scene and thus one must stay sharp to avoid it’s pitfalls.

Therefore in the interest of providing you, the reader,  with the knowledge of how to identify and properly dismantle future flavor of the week trends as they appear, this two part series SMR series will focus on a trend, a selected album from that defines it’s failings, and the worst offenders for each of these forgettable movements.  This week, we will focus on black metal’s most embarrassing waves of herd-fandom and sadistically dissect their unfortunate rise and much needed fall.

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/smr/ Sadistic Metal Reviews: Massacre of Death Metal’s Mainstream

Yesterday, we gave you the 10 most popular death metal bands of all time.  Now one by one they will face public execution as we absolutely massacre their most recent release.  No mercy will be shown- orders are to kill everything that moves.

Did you fucking soy metal nu males really think they would get off easy?  This is Death Metal Underground- the most savage music site on the internet!  Death to soy metal, death to sellouts, burn and die all falses!  Mayhem- war- sadism- brutalization!  No death metal band should have 1 million Facebook likes!  No death metal band should be on Facebook at all!  Pussies!  Behead the corpses, throw them into the streets- the Templar way!

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Antestor Re-Release of Return of the Black Death Out Today!

Fuck yes!  Legendary Norwegian black metal band Antestor have re-released their timeless classic Return of the Black Death via the Nordic Mission label.  If you’re too much of a sodomite pussy to know, this album was the best release (and probably only good one) on the famed Cacophonous Records, who gave us the earliest works of Cradle of Filth and Dimmu Borgir- those fucking scumbags!  This album was also the precursor to the depressive/suicidal black metal genre that immediately became gay when Xasthur first put on his little makeup kit and started doing blek majick.  Yeah, I bet you thought Sortsind and Burzum started that shit-NOPE!  It was all a second rate ripoff of Antestor’s sorrow metal!

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/smr/ Sadistic Metal Reviews: Post Black Eulogy (Part 1)

[Join DMU editor Brock Dorsey on the first of a two part massacre of the soy metal sub genre that has bastaradized black metal beyond the belief!  Also, this image is an actual cover from an actual post black metal album- you can’t make this stuff up!]

Post black metal was an embarrassing sub genre of soy metal.  Built upon a foundation of either screamo, pop punk, metalcore, math rock, shoegaze, or avant-garde and fused with the most minimal touches of black metal, post black metal was a flavor of the week(/weak) trend that lasted from around 2009 to 2014.  The genre name is misleading, however, as most bands only claimed to be metal and incorporated only slight touches of metal characteristics before abandoning them completely in future releases.  As indicated by its core standard bearers being dropped by labels, performing terribly in sales and Facebook likes, and being forgotten by fans, post black metal has finally passed away.  As we lay it to rest with one final cremation in the SMR fashion, let us learn from its failings as the future looks to more traditional forms of heavy metal  to restore a once proud genre.

First, we must understand metal history to understand how such an abomination could happen, as Post-black metal followed a number of flavor of the week black metal trends and bands.  The first of these, symphonic black metal, sent many fans of the original (true) black metal genre into a frenzy with their incorporation of gothic influences.  What was to come would be much worse, however, as the soy metal bands marketed as black metal would prove to be far more embarrassing than the Victorian campiness of Cradle of Filth or the industrial meddling of …And Oceans.  The next flavor of the week black metal trend was cleverly concealed in a cloak of static, but the hipsterisms of “depressive black metal” would soon be known to the world.  Time was not kind to the legacy of Xasthur and Leviathan, both of whom are now widely panned against the metal community, as where the thousands of “bedroom black metal” clones who polluted Myspace.  With many short lived flavor of the week trends (such as “Norsecore” and “Cascadian black metal”) and bands (Kult ov Azazel, Inquisition) in between, the soy metal- black metal hybird that was post black metal was the next successful marketing scheme to deceive young and retarded metal fans alike.

Performed mostly by wealthy but useless trust fund kinds from liberal cities, post black metal was to metal as emo was to rock music: feminine, tame, and a complete and utter bastardazation.  Thus, post metal was eventually abandoned by its former fans, spat on by the metal community, dropped by metal/rock record labels, and remembered poorly by music lovers.  Much like how the rent some of its musicians was eventually cut off from their parent’s bank roll, post metal was eventually told to stop leaching off the metal community so that the genre may maintain a shred of dignity.

Brace yourselves for an infernal evisceration unlike aynthing you’ve ever seen before, because in this edition of SMR, we won’t just be sadistically reviewing albums…

 

 

we’ll be sadistically reviewing careers.

 

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/smr/ SADISTIC METAL REVIEWS: YOUR FRIENDS ARE DEAD EDITION

You know your nation has reached peak sadism when kids are using the shooting deaths of their classmates to catapult themselves into celebrity stardom.  That means the time has come for frequent, merciless, rapid fire sadistic metal reviews.

BUCKLE UP, BECAUSE THE RIDE NEVER ENDS

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Poverty is the Price for Metal Stardom

The Talk:

Every metal musician needs to have “The Talk” at some point or another and for some of you, this will be that moment.  In the world of metal, “The Talk” is the soul crashing, dream obliterating conversation where one learns the valuable lesson that you can’t get rich playing extreme metal.  It’s heartbreaking and defeating but better learned sooner than later.  And since a young ambitious musician isn’t necessarily considering the logistics, lifestyle goals, etc. of their future before they drill on that pentagram neck tattoo, I want to make sure readers of DMU are abundantly clear on what to expect on the financial front when engaging in life as a touring musician.
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Upcoming tours: Cradle of Filth

Cradle of Filth - Promo Picture

Less valuable to us than yesterday’s Voivod announcement is this upcoming Cradle of Filth tour. This legendary traditional heavy metal masquerading as black metal act will be headlining the “Inquisitional Torture” tour, supported by Ne Obliviscaris and Butcher Babies. This tour is presumably intended to promote the band’s latest album (Hammer of the Witches), which came out in July and was undoubtedly of little interest to our previous editor. These concerts are probably not worth your time, unless you really like throwing rotting vegetables at stages.

The tour dates follow:

Jan. 26 Philadelphia, PA @ Theater of the Living Arts
Jan. 27 Boston, MA @ House of Blues
Jan. 28 Baltimore, MD @ Baltimore Soundstage
Jan. 29 Raleigh, NC @ The Ritz
Jan. 31 Charlotte, NC @ Filmore Charlotte
Feb. 1 Atlanta, GA @ The Masquerade – Heaven
Feb. 2 Orlando, FL @ Venue 578
Feb. 3 St. Petersburg, FL @ State Theater
Feb. 9 Memphis, TN @ New Daisy Theater
Feb. 10 Dallas, TX @ House of Blues
Feb. 11 Houston, TX @ House of Blues
Feb. 12 San Antonio, TX @ The Aztec Theater
Feb. 14 Eaglewood, CO @ Gothic Theater
Feb. 15 Salt Lake City, UT @ The Complex
Feb. 17 Los Angeles, CA @ Avalon
Feb. 18 San Diego, CA @ House of Blues
Feb. 20 Sacramento, CA @ Ace of Spades
Feb. 21 San Francisco, CA @ The Fillmore
Feb. 23 Seattle, WA @ The Showbox 
Feb. 29 Ringle, WI @ Q and Z Expo Center
Mar. 1 Chicago, IL @ House of Blues
Mar. 2 Cincinnati, OH @ Bogart’s
Mar. 3 Cleveland, OH @ House of Blues
Mar. 5 Detroit, MI @ St. Andrew’s Hall
Mar. 6 Toronto, ON @ Phoenix Concert Theater
Mar. 7 Montreal, QC @ Corona Theater
Mar. 8 New York, NY @ Webster Hall

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5 albums that ruined metal

idiocracy-metal

If you create anything of beauty in this world, people will be attracted to it. They will want what it has, but because achieving that would require them to change themselves, they will instead make a version of your beautiful thing that fits their needs. This will become popular and soon idiots everywhere will adopt their dumbed-down version of your beautiful thing, effectively ruining what you have created.

Over the course of metal’s lifespan, it has several times been afflicted with the curse of popularity. During the middle 1970s, bands began cloning what Black Sabbath did and mixing it with the more radio-friendly sounds of Led Zeppelin, Cream, The Who and Deep Purple. The result gave metal such a bad name it required an underground genre, the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, to renovate it with punk energy and DIY spirit. Then in the late 1980s, speed metal bands started selling out and making radio-friendly jive that quickly destroyed the genre because no one wanted to associate with it anymore. Only a few years later in 1994, underground metal imploded as clone bands and outsiders began making imitations of the new sound that used songwriting conventions and “values” from other genres. Most recently in the 2000s metal became “socially acceptable” and became basically a cover story for lite jazz and indie/emo which now could claim they were groundbreaking and authentic.

But I digress. Let us look at a brief history of bands that helped ruin metal and see if we can figure out where their influences ended up in today’s milktoast hybrid metal.

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Pantera – Cowboys From Hell

Before this album came along, speed metal had a certain gravitas to it. Songs were about war, human moral conflict, literature and the apocalypse. Then along came Pantera and injected a bro-sized dose of personal drama into it. After Pantera, speed metal included talking about how angry you are, getting drunk and starting fights about whose jeans are out of fashion this season, and raging about your inability to retain women who are not covered in naturally-growing wool. It was a strike of Idiocracy against the intense music of Metallica, Nuclear Assault, Overkill, Testament, Anthrax and Megadeth that dumbed it down to the Belieber level, just with more angsty testosterone. Not only that but the complex songs got replaced by verse-chorus and lots of “emotional” vocals accompanied by softer guitar parts. The path to death for speed metal started with this watered-down, dumbed-down, ego-drama path to stupidity. Luckily after they had made their money, Pantera disappeared and the band members went on to more reputable projects.

cannibal_corpse-tomb_of_the_mutilated

Cannibal Corpse – Tomb of the Mutilated

In the year that death metal reached its peak, Cannibal Corpse release an album that made death metal accessible and in doing so, made it a satire of itself. This is Dethklok before Dethklok. Borrowing from the percussive style that Suffocation innovated, Cannibal Corpse took out all the complex songwriting and replaced it with somewhat complex riffs in predictable format. It took away difficult rhythms and topics and replaced them with I-puke-blood style blockheaded lyrics. They also introduced Pantera-style songs about sexually mutilating women because women are difficult and sometimes all one can get is a brojob back at the frat house. This album crushed the growing death metal movement by putting a giant IDIOTS AND SYCOPHANTS WELCOME sign over the door to the genre and convincing people that songs with blockheaded gore lyrics and simplistic structures under grunting incoherent vocals were more “death metal” than the complex music of integrity that defined the genre at the time.

cradle_of_filth-the_principle_of_evil_made_flesh

Cradle of Filth – The Principle of Evil Made Flesh

Point your TARDIS back to 1994. Black metal was in full-swing, having just put forth all of its founding works and then exploded in a media-fueled inferno of murder, anti-Christian and politically incorrect sentiments. In come the “smart” people who figure they can make a buck off this new phenomenon. Their formula: make Iron Maiden style metal with the new screechy vocals and make it emo so that kids can feel like it sympathizes with their horrible lives where their parents just totally control them and stuff. Then mix in the usual “teen paranormal romance” rambling about vampires and evil and you have baby food for coddled toddlers. It took some brains to like black metal, but Cradle of Filth asks nothing so challenging of its listeners! Even more, this band introduced the “carnival music” style of putting radically different riffs next to each other so that the listener loses track of song structure entirely. These songs are basically advertising jingles and warmed-over Goth rock stuck into second-rate metal, but all the kiddies brought their sweaty dollars to Hot Topic because they felt it “understood them.”

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Meshuggah – None

Right in the middle of 1994 it became clear that black metal and death metal had left the building. They had said what they wanted to; people had to either top it or find some easier and sleazier way to do. Ripping off the percussive textures of Exhorder, Prong and Exodus, Meshuggah came up with a “new” style that consisted of over-extending ideas from previous and better bands. It’s worth mentioning that Meshuggah’s first album was 80s speed metal with death metal vocals, but that it was extremely boring. Meshuggah figured that if they just made their style more dramatic and used lots of choppy riffs with shiny new “complex” polyrhythms, they could fool a new generation into liking their stuff. Without fail, it worked, and now metal bands find it necessary to incorporate the worked-over 70s groove with two-chord texture riffs and claim a “djent” influence. At its core, this band remains the same bad 80s speed metal that failed on its first album.

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Opeth – Orchid

You can pitch a market one of two ways: on one hand, you can be “just one of us regular guys” and pull a Bruce Springsteen (or warmed over punk); on the other, you can claim that you are so far out and deep that only a few deep people can understand you. The best is to hide the former in the latter so that you are selling the “profundity” of sing-song music for children but it gives them a chance to pop on a Fedora and think they are really so deep, you know totally deep, that no one can be as deep as they are. Opeth sold itself on being “open-minded,” which is this message: we are different from the rest of metal because we use acoustic passages instead of just solid heavy metal riffs. What they choose not to tell their fans is that they are more like everything else that is not metal, so to like this stuff is to admit you fail as a metal listener and go back to pumping radio pap through your Beats by Dr. Dre headphones. But every underconfident basement-dwelling pretentious geek loved this stuff even though it consisted of a simple formula, soft verse and hard chorus, that is most famous for its use among nu-metal bands. Nonetheless, Opeth opened the door for people who wanted to signal to the world how profound and different they were, and now most bands are tinged with the same simpering pander that makes this music sickly sweet and an inch deep.

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