Death Metal Underground

Interview: Chewy Correa of Organic

by Brett Stevens on October 28, 2013

Many years ago, when I was desperately buying up any and all death metal to feed the voracious ears of the listeners of an underground metal radio program, I stumbled upon an album by a band called Organic Infest. The cover used unusual covers, but was dripping in gore-imagery, so I gave it a listen.

I quickly found what was in my estimation one of the undiscovered high points of that fertile period, which was a band that creatively merged the American heavy death metal sound with a European sensibility and its own articulation. Like many of those early bands, Organic Infest wrote their music from a viewpoint that was their own, and thus they made convincing music despite struggles with production and distribution.

Two decades later and very few bands achieve this ability to write from their own viewpoint. Many are able to adopt the musical language of others; this can turn out well, but usually does not. Some come up with their own perspective, but it doesn’t correlate to their actual inner feelings or the outward order of the world, so it’s of little relevance to anyone but themselves.

Organic Infest (now Organic) has kept up their own unique and relevant work during this time. To many of us, their uncompromising spirit and clarity of vision makes them an undercover standout to this day. For that reason, it is with great pleasure that I introduce bassist “Chewy” Correa from Organic.

I understand that some years ago you changed the name of the band from Organic Infest to Organic. Why did you make this change, and do you think it reflects a change in how metal bands are naming themselves and seeing themselves at this point?

We decided to make the change of the name in 2005 after our original guitarist left the band. The main reasons for Juan my drummer, and I to make the change on the name were that we wanted a new beginning for the band and also the lyrics. The lyrics were gore type in the beginning so the name Organic Infest was good then, but I started to write in a more diverse way so the name Organic gives us more freedom in terms of themes for songs. Well, we think that the name of the band is a thing not to be taken lightly. After all it is what will represent the band worldwide and the name in our opinion should be like the main theme for the band. I know many bands these days that use a name just because it sounds “cool,” and when you read their lyrics they have nothing or very little to do in relation with the name.

As I recall, you’re a bassist and Organic lost a guitarist, so you began using a higher-tuned piccolo bass instead of guitars. How has this worked out? Has it changed the way you write songs?

After a lot of experimenting, I finally have the sound that I wanted. This piccolo thing came out as a solution to our problem. When our original guitarist left and we changed the name to Organic we found an incredible guitarist ED Díaz, but after one year and nine months he left the band too. So one day my drummer Juan told me, “man put some distortion to your bass and let’s just play.” At first we were joking about it but then the idea became real after I listened to a fusion bassist named Brian Bromberg who uses a piccolo bass like a guitar on his album “Metal,” so I said to myself if he does that in fusion I will do that in metal. About the songwriting it did not change for me because all the material I wrote when there were guitarists in the band I wrote with the bass. The process stayed the same with the addition of me doing the guitar parts on my piccolo bass.

Back when you were Organic Infest, you put out the album Penitence way back in 1993. In fact, it’s been 20 years recently and you commemorated this by streaming all your albums on your website. What do you think of Penitence looking back at it now?

Well, in my opinion it is the work of young and inexperienced musicians playing what they liked the most at that time. I am not saying that the music is bad, but obviously we could have done something way better at least on the production side of things. If you read all the reviews for that album they all agree on the same, cool music with very bad production.

How do you think metal has changed since that time? Does the underground still exist?

Metal has changed a lot since that time in many ways. Those times were really difficult for everything, from promotion to recording. Nowadays, promotion is a breeze with the internet thing, and recording has become the easiest thing with more and more bands being able to have their own home studios. On the other side, nowadays is also difficult in terms of competition. There are thousands of metal bands now everywhere, all wanting to have their shot at being the best. The underground still exists, and will exist forever because there are always underground bands playing those obscure gigs that the more established bands don’t want or like to play because they are not good for exposure.

Many were critical of the production on Penitence and other recordings you have released. Do you think they’re right, or is this a “the production (medium) fits the message” argument like certain black metal bands have advanced?

Yes, I totally agree that the production on Penitence is probably one of the worst metal productions in existence but it was the result of what I mentioned before: our total lack of experience and a recording engineer who just wanted the money and practically ripped us off. The production on the Agony EP, was a bit better but it was recorded on a moderate home studio so we could not really do more than we did. With The Way To Temptation album the production I think is a decent one; it could have been better but the guitarist was the only one attending the mixing sessions so Juan and I had almost no input on the mix at all. We expect that our new recordings will finally have a good overall production that our fans can enjoy.

Do you feel you have had an inverse relationship to trends in metal? For example, they go black metal, and you head toward percussive choppy death metal; they go death metal again, and you come up with more tremolo picked material.

Definitely! I hate trends, whenever there was a trend growing I would always go the opposite way, and still do it like that. For example, our new material is completely different, while many bands are heading for a more modern stuff while we are delving deep in our influences and musical roots.

What do you view as your influences? What genre(s) do you feel you combine or create within?

The three of us have many different influences. For instance, for me Metal is my religion and main musical genre, but I also like and listen to classical, fusion, and flamenco. As far as metal bands go we listen to everything we like from bands like Iron Maiden to Cannibal Corpse and everything in between. Genres that we combine… everything metal. We have doom, speed, power, thrash, death, and black metal, all combined in our style and sound.

Elsewhere, you mention that Coroner is your main influence. How does that manifest in your music?

Yes, for me Coroner is the biggest influence along with King Diamond, Candlemass, and Death. I have their influence and it reflects in my songwriting, but I always try not to sound too obvious or like a copy. It manifests mainly on our mid-tempo riffs, and on the more technical stuff.

Can you tell us what the status is of Organic at this time — do you have more releases coming up, and will we see you on tour in Puerto Rico or the mainland?

Our status at this time is very good and focused one. Yes, there will be more releases coming up and many good things and shows for the band in Puerto Rico and internationally. I definitely think that this next 2014 is going to be a great year for us.

How do you compose songs? What do you start with (an image, an idea, a riff, a scale)? Has this changed with the departure of your guitarist?

The process of composing for me is different every time. Sometimes I come up with complete lyrics and how to sing them and everything, then I add the music and bring it to rehearsals and we arrange the song. Also there could be times when we come up with something good jamming on a rehearsal and later I compose around it and bring the finished material to a practice session, and then I add the lyrics. The scales that I use for composing the most are the Harmonic Minor, and the Half/Whole version of the diminished scale, along with the Aeolian and Locrian modes.

I know there’s a metal conference coming up which is designed to discover the roots of metal as a community. Will you be offering your view there? What is “community” in metal?

The conference will be a great event. We will definitely be present at the conference, because we are part of the history of our metal scene. “Community” in metal refers to everyone from the bands to the fans that attend to the shows and events that deal with the music we all share as our form of expression. Also refers to the cultural aspects that represent what we are in our social environment.

Organic Infest had a hiatus between 1993 and 2001, if I’m reading these other interviews correctly. What made you decide to come back? Are those reasons still going strong?

That hiatus happened because our original guitarist left the band for the first time to move to the United States after he got married, looking for a better life. He decided to return to Puerto Rico and in 2000 we got together again because we wanted to continue with what we like to do the most, play Metal!!! Definitely those reasons are still going strong, and will be until I die!

Are there any plans to re-issue your former works?

Personally, I have always wished to know what Penitence would sound like with better production. Even though that is not the style we play anymore, and I might do it one day, maybe even sooner than many people think. Maybe not only Penitence, but also some of the older material like the song Organic Infest from our “Drown In Blood” demo.

Well Brett Stevens and Death Metal Underground, on behalf of Tony (bass), Juan (drums) and myself (Chewy, piccolo bass and vocals) thanks a lot for the great interview and your support to the band. We will keep you informed on the bands new releases and important shows so people can follow up through your excellent website. Hails!!!

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Tags: death metal, organic, organic infest, puerto rico

Blaspherian recording new 7″ entitled Upon the Throne of Eternal Blasphemous Death

by Brett Stevens on October 25, 2013

Texas rolling destruction death metal band Blaspherian will enter Big Door Studios in Webster, TX on November 24th to finish recording two tracks for an upcoming 7″ entitled Upon the Throne of Eternal Blasphemous Death.

The new recording will be released through Iron Bonehead recordings, following a split 7″ between Blaspherian and Texas death metal legends Imprecation which will be released on Dark Descent Records.

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Tags: blaspherian, death metal, imprecation

Warmaster – The End of Humanity

by Brett Stevens on October 24, 2013

Brace yourselves: there are two masters of war. One, War Master (with a space), is from Texas and make old school death metal. The other, Warmaster (no space), are from The Netherlands and make grind-infused old school death metal.

The End of Humanity begins with one of the few Discharge-inspired apocalypse intros that are worth hearing and suggests to me a long lineage in grind. What follows is death metal in the American style with influences from Terrorizer and Blood.

Since they’re Dutch, and will get compared to Dutch bands anyway, it is worth mentioning that there is a passing similarity to the first album from Sinister, perhaps infused with something that uses a bit more rhythmic fluidity as opposed to internal conflict, more like an American heavy death metal band like Malevolent Creation.

Thick luscious vocals growl alongside the beat, injecting something almost like groove except for its offsetting contrast to the mood. Riffs, while bludgeoning streams of power chords, show a high degree of internal tempo change that gives them texture, and occasional melody. This marches forward on functional drumming that knows when to stay out of the limelight and accent guitars to build a greater surge of mood.

Allusions to Blood dot the album, from the abrupt tempo changes to the rhythmic position of vocals in respect to the snare. However, there’s a whole host of other allusions too from the classic death metal world, but none are lifts. They are similar ideas, applied in new ways.

While The End of Humanity tapers off into songs that are slightly more experimental and more sparse and drawn out, the intense roiling wave of power from the first half carries through and makes the whole an enjoyable experience. Like the bands it honors with its style, Warmaster is going its own way, driven by its own quest, and the result exceeds what any emulation could achieve.

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Tags: death metal, warmaster

Sadistic Metal Reviews: Androgel Edition

by Staff on October 24, 2013

Androgel is a testosterone supplement that you take when you’ve heard too much weepy mainstream pseudo-metal and become a useless person. Here’s a list of bands designed to make you mute, impotent and masturbatorily dramatic.

Wolves in the Throne Room – Celestial Lineage

For a band supposedly attempting to harness the beauty of nature, this is an astonishingly vapid album. Bland synths interact with tired black metal riffs you’ve heard too many times before…but then again, recycling is green. Listening to this album gives me the overwhelming urge to buy a used Scion, then take my Macbook to Starbucks and drink overpriced coffee. There’s nothing resembling wolves here, more like domesticated house dogs. For music that actually plumbs the full depths of nature in its transcendent glory and gore, see Ildjarn.

Agalloch – Marrow of the Spirit

When hipsters want to play metal, what do they do? Well, after picking up a Frappuccino they head to Guitar Center and get lessons on how play guitar solos, pick up a few effects pedals, and buy a chord progression songbook. After studying said book for three months, they book studio time and record their album. The vocalist is into that “heavier shit, brah” and thus records his vocals in the style of a strangled animal. The guitarist is into pop rock and thus records bouncy powerchords in that style, though sometimes gets a bit adventurous and throws in a folksy breakdown. Meanwhile, the drummer was arrested for selling marijuana under the overpass and has to be replaced by the local high-school band teacher, who really can’t stand this music but needs some extra cash. The band finishes recording and takes the finished project to their fair trade commune, where the community listens to it while getting stoned and spray-painting peace signs on walls. Afterwards, the band teacher goes into class and tells his students; “Don’t ever turn into those people.”

Skinless – Progression Towards Evil

Big news this week is that thud-metal band Skinless has reformed with a new guitarist named Dave Matthews. Cue jokes about Dave Matthews Band, who more resemble Opeth than Skinless. The truth is that if Skinless started playing Dave Matthews covers, it would be a huge improvement. There would be… like… music and stuff to it. Instead, we go down memory lane to the first Skinless album, which is the musical equivalent of opening your high school locker with your forehead. Peel back the skin, and this is standard grunt-and-bash death metal of the type that was an also-ran back in the day. But say what you want about the Skinless guys, they’re good businessmen. So what do with generic metal? Dress it up as a new style influenced by hip-hop and techno that uses breakdowns like a rave set and jaunty bounce riffs like nu-metal if it were influenced by underground hip hop. The result is this: thud thud thud, thud thud thud, whuuuttttt, smash smash thud thud, thud. These rhythms are catchy in the same way sirens on emergency vehicles are. And it’s death metal in the same way Apollo 13 was a successful mission.

Opeth – Heritage

Opeth stopped pretending to have balls and have now fully embraced their feminine side. This is a good thing because they were never “heavy” or “death metal” in the first place, but here their true nature is proudly on display: angry fat women complaining about washing the dishes because it interferes with their power block of eating cheesecake while crying to daytime soap operas. Perhaps the most honest Opeth album yet, but don’t be fooled into thinking this is a sign of legitimacy — it’s still Melissa Etheridge with Jeff Goldbloom on vocals.

In Solitude – Sister

Avril Lavigne parodying the demo from post VON project Sixx, only not as apt. Like other Swedish pyramid scheme acts like Tribulation, Repugnant, Ghost, and other bands created by androgynous men who lack the ability to grow facial hair, listening to In Solitude is akin to getting a chemical castration and attending a Culture Club concert simultaneously.

Skinless – From Sacrifice to Survival

This is another stunner from Skinless. Imagine that you took someone, and drilled through his forebrain and sucked out the tissue. Hollow-headed, he might turn to a record store and come home with this one and love it. Its heritage betrays a link to Pantera, who also liked stop-start riffs with chromatic progressions, but this is almost amusical. It is “first five frets” music exclusively, in chromatic patterns exclusively, using the most bone-poundingly basic rhythms, exclusively. It sounds like a special education field trip to a dynamite testing plant.

Blut Aus Nord – 777 Sect(s)

Clearly this band took Fenriz literally when he said black metal consisted of playing up and down the neck. Seemingly random chromatic riffs inch their way up and down with nothing connecting one section of a song to another. Sounding like a bastardized version of modern black metal and Godflesh-style industrial grindcore, confusion runs rampant over aggression. While this album may appeal to hearing-impaired wrist-slashers, it has nothing to offer functional people.

Forestfather – Hereafter

The end product of metal-archives regulars finding a way to make Ulver’s first album have more indie rock parts and appeal to Meatloaf fans, this brain bleaching, testosterone sapping travesty has no purpose other than to appear as another “artsy” product that hopes to one day occupy the same void of purpose Wolves in the Throne Room currently inhabit.

Skinless – Trample the Weak, Hurdle the Dead

The tragedy of this album is that Skinless finally refined their formula to the point where it rolls smoothly out of their instruments like an infectious bowel movement. What makes it tragic is that, despite being at the top of its game, this music still sucks in ways that would require a thousand philosopher-kings to explicate fully. The basic problem is that it aims at a moronic vision of music. In this vision, people want very basic riffs pounded into their heads. These riffs must resemble the process of hammering a stump out of the ground or beating dead horses. As with most truly annoying and terrible albums, there’s nothing wrong with the musicianship or even songwriting ability. It’s just that Skinless intends to make music for morons doing moronic loud and repetitive things, and they succeed. And now they’re back, and THEY’RE GOING TO DO IT ALL OVER AGAIN. AAAAAAHHHHHHNNOOOOOOOO!!!

Deathspell Omega – Paracletus

How these albums get filed under black metal astonishes me, as inept metalcore and 2 DEEP 4 U lyrics are all this band has to offer. If you think: “Hey, that sounds like every transcendental French post-black metal band in existence”, you’d be right. ANGRY MAN vocals are present, but it’s never clear what exactly he’s angry about.

Let’s take a look at the lyrics for a clue:

Two glances overwhelmed with woes
Reflecting the echoes of a fall upon a bed of rocks
Such a hideous clamour
An agony that stained the azure
The light of the world
And the wretched olive tree
Stars receded with shaking grace
Degraded holy essence, the third hypostasis

Well, that clears it up.

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Tags: Agalloch, Black Metal, blut aus nord, death metal, deathspell omega, forestfather, In Solitude, opeth, sadistic metal reviews, Skinless, wolves in the throne room

Rigor Mortis to release Slaves to the Grave in 2014

by Brett Stevens on October 23, 2013

Influential Texas speed-death band Rigor Mortis will return with a new album entitled Slaves to the Grave sometime in 2014.

Recorded with their 1988 lineup including now-deceased guitarist Mike Scaccia, Slaves to the Grave was recorded during February 2012 at 13th Planet Studios in El Paso, Texas.

According to the band, this will be the final Rigor Mortis release and a “swan song” to Scaccia, who died on December 23, 2012 while performing at the Rail Club in Fort Worth, Texas.

Poltergeist
Rain Of Ruin
Flesh For Flies
The Infected
Blood Bath
Ancient Horror
Fragrance Of Corpse
Curse Of The Draugr
Sacramentum Gladiatorum (Scaccia Instrumental)
Ludus Magnus (Guest Vocal appearance by Al Jourgensen)

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Tags: death metal, mike scaccia, rigor mortis, Speed Metal

Triptykon records Melana Chasmata to be unleashed April 14, 2014

by Jon Wild on October 22, 2013

Back in August, we revealed that Triptykon had begun finalizing their second record. We can now report that the band has announced further information concerning the album.

Entitled Melana Chasmata, the second Triptykon opus will be released on April 14th via Prowling Death Records and distributed through Century Media. Song titles and descriptions for Melana Chasmata suggest it to be in a similar vein to the Monotheist/Eparistera Daimones era, with allusions to Crowleyan occultism and personal reflection.

Former Celtic Frost/Hellhammer founder Tom Warrior said of the album:

We have been working on Melana Chasmata for some three years, in various shapes and forms. It’s not an easy album by any means, and to me personally it reflects an extremely complex gestation period, musically, spiritually, and, due to certain circumstances in my life, emotionally. At the same time, the album unquestionably reflects the continuity I was longing for so much during Celtic Frost’s period of self-destruction and demise. Hearing Triptykon creating such utter darkness again while exploring the potential of these new songs has been incredibly invigorating and inspiring.

Additionally, the band announced initial dates for the album’s touring season. The band will once again be participating in the Roadburn Festival, which was host to the event Triptykon curated in 2010, launching their first worldwide tour.


2/21/14	Bergen, Norway	Blastfest 2014
4/13/14	Tilburg, Holland	Roadburn Festival 2014
4/20/14	Munich, Germany	(Backstage) Dark Easter Metal Meeting 2014

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Tags: celtic frost, death metal, hellhammer, modern metal, triptykon

Bathory – Blood Fire Death

by Brett Stevens on October 21, 2013

In 1984, the unholy triad of underground metal were born: Bathory, Hellhammer and Slayer laid out a formula that, taken together, would create the basis for all of the extreme metal genres to follow.

With first album Bathory, mastermind Quorthon and an ever-shifting cast of musicians took the lead in creating fast and chaotic music that nonetheless exhibited structure and a sense of Wagnerian melodic evolution. In early Bathory, thrashing riffs gave rise to a sense of order, instead of a flat timeline of circular repetition like the (at that time) bad speed metal imitators.

Many point to Under the Sign of the Black Mark, but others of us point to The Return as a clear departure point. A cynic could have written off the first Bathory album as imitation of Slayer and Venom, although it’s not clear Quorthon had heard Venom at the time, but with the second, it was clear a new genre was born. Quorthon then spent the next dozen years trying to re-interpret that genre so that he could make sense of the vast lead he’d taken over others.

Where Under the Sign of the Black Mark showed a more structured approach to songwriting in a mid-tempo, organized style that used the aesthetics of The Return but aimed for more easily grasped songs, the fourth Bathory album used Quorthon’s improved musical abilities to expand the black metal vocabulary to include the genres before it. Blood Fire Death incorporated speed metal influences, and with them, imported heavy metal and NWOBHM motifs. However, it did so without losing the underground metal-ness of the record.

As a result, Blood Fire Death served as a bridge between the past and future of metal. Its fast and ripping songs combined the power of Slayer and the technical guitar virtuosity of bands like Metallica and Judas Priest with the style of songwriting exhibited on The Return, where songwriting was not just rotational verse-chorus material in which the end result was the same as the beginning, but a type of narrative where the major themes arose from seemingly disordered and chaotic lesser motifs.

In addition, Bathory’s finest hour on Blood Fire Death was its Wagnerian sense of drama. Every moment of the album breathes with a sense of epic purpose, from a slow organic arising to its febrile and aggressive warlike thrashing, to a gradual sort of data into epic tracks which combined acoustic guitar with a sense of purpose and meaning returning to a modern wasteland. Thematically, it developed riffs that echoed its concepts, which were a fusion of the mythological occultism of Slayer with the Nordicism of Wagner or Nietzsche. This created a worldview in which the Christian, modern and commercial were tied together as the needs of a mindless crowd, and a naturalistic, organic and Romantic side of life was brought forth as an alternative.

25 years later we mark the anniversary of this album in the current month, but its influence is hard to track since so many have absorbed its meaning and borrowed plentifully from it. Bathory’s finest hour perhaps occurred on Blood Fire Death, but this is in the context of a discography that is one of metal history’s nodal points in which must of the past is summarized and taken to the next level. For that reason, it’s essential to appreciate this album out of context before returning it to its place within the legend and pantheon of metal.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6wd9P_hOsQ

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Tags: Bathory, Black Metal, blood fire death, death metal

Deeds of Flesh – Portals to Canaan

by Brett Stevens on October 18, 2013

Deeds of Flesh pioneered the West coast version of the percussive death metal innovated in New York by bands like Suffocation and Morpheus Descends, itself a derivative of the more textured muted-chord riffing of speed metal bands like Prong, Vio-lence, Exhorder and Exodus. With Portals to Canaan, Deeds of Flesh hope to expand their style into the future.

As a result, they’ve brought in some influences. Some come from expected quarters, like the Gorguts Obscura influence visible on many tracks, or the modern “tek-deth” borrowings. Others are more obscure: the use of background drones and electronic effects like Tangerine Dream, for example, or the repeated allusions to tracks from all of the first three Deicide albums. This tendency shows a band in touch with how stale both the old school bands currently and the entire concept of modern metal have become.

Portals to Canaan does one better, which is that it attempts to make these riffs work with another. This leads to a sort of game: how outlandish can we be and still pull it off? As a result, the guitar fireworks immediately dive into almost paranoid riffs that despite being primitive show a delicate sensibility of avoiding predictability. Deeds of Flesh love breakneck tempi, but even more, they love to break up patterns, transition through a series of barely related ideas, and then return to the original. Tempo changes explode, riffs invert themselves, and guitars chase each other oblivion and emerge in harmony.

The primary downside of this album is that it borrows from both deathgrind and tek-deth, which both include tropes that are aesthetically annoying. Deathgrind has the chromatic chugging advance while the vocals chant in double time, and tek-deth has its video-game-sound sweeps and noodly squeal riffs. Deeds of Flesh try to minimize this whenever possible, but rely on it frequently enough that it is hard to overcome. What is great about this album however is that it is able to unite its wide variety with the riffs themselves, like an old school band, and not fall into the nu-death trap of being so divergent that the only unification can be found through return to very standard song forms after short deviations.

Culminating in the epic track “Orphans of Sickness,” Deeds of Flesh Portals to Canaan offers a credible attempt to find a new path through metal. I’d rather they dropped the deathgrind and modern metal and focused solely on inheriting the other techniques they have innovated over the years, but Deeds of Flesh have converted some annoying modern metal tendencies into fertile techniques and shown how old school metal’s approach to gluing riffs together to make sensible songs can overwhelm even the modern metal influence. In addition, the use of ambient sound and innovative song construction makes this release a good listen, even if as I do you wince at the core/grind parts.

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Tags: death metal, deathgrind, deeds of flesh, modern metal, tek-deth

Merciless Reviews 10-18-13

by Staff on October 17, 2013

Cursed 13 – Triumf

At some point, every artist must ask themselves who their audience is. For some, it’s the inexperienced. Cursed 13 would be OK as your first metal band, the one you listen to and swear is really cool and then you get distracted by something like a fishing trip and when you come back you just forget to listen to it ever again. This is metalcore: it uses late hardcore pacing, emphasizes the vocalist as the individual listener, keeps a groove to its riffs and uses them as contrast rather than motifs. No narrative evolves from this. It’s verse-chorus in the minor key bittersweet sounds of indie rock, but with death metal vocals and heavy distortion. Why not just be a shoegaze band instead? That way, at least you’d be aesthetically pleasant. As it is, this is just boring.

Vasaeleth – Crypt Born & Tethered to Ruin

Marshal McLuhan said that in our postmodern time, the medium is the message. To a large degree that’s true, and sometimes you just want old school death metal to blast at the neighbors to fly the flag of an eternal truth discovered with particular insight during the underground days. However, Vasaeleth is something boring. They rely on very primitive riffs in very predictable ways, which doesn’t create the awesome assault of randomness or idiosyncrasy that many old school bands fostered, but instead a sense of plodding. We know, for example, that a riff designed to emulate old Demoncy and Incantation will cycle between two chords, and Vasaeleth have picked two a third or a fifth apart, and beyond that the riff is essentially an extended chromatic fill. Because it is so focused on upholding the past, it loses much of the ability to use that chromatic fill toward a phrasal end, so we hear the thudding drums alternating between two chords with some guitar stuff fuzzing around in-between. It’s a shame; I like this, and I’d like to really like it, but it’s getting filed with Mortician and Six Feet Under as too musically obvious to stand up to repeated listening.

Corrections House – Last City Zero

Everybody’s jumping on the doom metal bandwagon. The metalcore bandwagon popped a spoke, then the retro wagon hit a pothole and the stoner doom/sludge bandwagon got stopped by small town police. What’s left? Take the exact same watered-down 1980s-indie/1980s-late-hardcore mix and turn it into doom metal. Corrections House is basically rock with some doom riffs, a whole lot of Gothic atmosphere and an energetic punk vibe, but wrapped around the exact same songs they would have puked out as an indie-rock, alternative-rock, post-metal, etc. etc. all these genres are the same, etc. band. What they do well is make doomish metal catchy by letting the aforementioned Gothic elements ride over everything else. If you ever wondered with a Paradise Lost/Type O Negative crossover would sound like, here’s your answer.

Urna – Mors Principium Est

This is a band playing a psychedelic hybrid with funeral doom, using extensive variety of riffs within their songs, but shying away from the metal style of riffcraft for a more static style. This approach, like Djent or many Nile tracks, relies less on creating riff phrases than to use rhythm to chop up a few chords into an interesting texture. Here, the texture is less important than using the chords to sketch out a basic progression for harmonizing, and while many of these progressions are doomy most show some influence by indie rock and approximate a cross between Skepticism, My Bloody Valentine and Catherine Wheel. The result is sensitive and has depth, just as its riffs develop a theme, but it is ultimately not convincing beyond aesthetics and so will not stand out as a classic of this genre.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6nR2sFHRqQ

Deprecated – Deriding His Creation

If you want to talk about a band that brings out mixed emotions, Deprecated is it. Listen to my two-word assessment: excellent deathgrind. That means this is excellent, but also, that it’s deathgrind. You can’t have one without the other. Thus we have to talk about deathgrind. Death metal focuses on the relationship between riffs; deathgrind focuses on forcing the listener into a strict rhythmic pattern and making them expect the consistency of it so it can be fragment. It’s sort of like Stalinist propaganda; you’re supposed to chant “All Glory to Mother HypnoRussia!” until the officials in charge announce that something has gone wrong, at which point you must call for the blood of Emmanuel Goldstein or Julian Assange or whoever else is the official enemy that afternoon. The result is that deathgrind is excruciating at least for this music-reviewer to listen to. For one thing, all the neat interplay between riffs that changed the context of choruses is gone; instead, the verse builds up a rhythm and the chorus breaks it, then affirms it. And the rhythms are brutally basic, very familiar in that we could assign them to common tasks: chopping wood, loosening the transmission case, beating a recalcitrant child, etc. Add to that the detuned chromatic “first five” use of the fretboard, and the result sounds like listening to “America’s Best Landslides” on an old TV with blown speakers. It’s good, but I really hate this style and can’t get past that.

Axegrinder – Rise of the Serpent Men

I thoroughly enjoyed this release but, as with much of punk, wonder how often I would repeat listen. Axegrinder is like a cross between later Amebix and earlier Amebix, so it has the rawness of Arise! with the more comfortable song structures of Monolith. The best way to describe Rise of the Serpent Men is accommodating. It has all the aesthetic elements of crustcore that we’ve come to expect, uses very familiar chord progressions in slightly unusual ways, and has a good sense of rhythm. Each song is reasonable distinct and very listenable. The only challenge is whether that’s enough to get over the boredom valley.

Baptists – Bushcraft

Sounding very much like late-1980s hardcore with the precision techniques that came about in the 1990s, Bushcraft is a punk album that mixes raw riffs with quirky dissonant hooks and open chords. The result is a ranting tirade that ends in an ornament and thus sticks in your mind like a pop song, such that you don’t notice how much of this is three-chord riffs under ranting vocals. It’s well-executed but sounds like many other bands and despite the high degree of instrumentalism, doesn’t manage anything more compelling than hook.

Falcon – Frontier

Whether ironic or not, this band is pure retro, combining 1970s progressive rock, hard rock, album-oriented-rock, soft rock and music you would hear at a skating rink. Falcon have no intent to make unique riffs, but rather to borrow riffs, rhythms and conventions and use them to cloak new songs which have more in common with the independent alternative rock of the early 2000s. They’re bittersweet, lost and melancholic songs, full of longing and insecurity with a vast backdrop of sadness at a civilization disintegration from within. If you have ever looked at younger people and spared them a moment of compassion for how lost in nostalgia and emotion they are, this music puts a soundtrack to that feeling. It also pumps out high-energy songs that are distinctive and highly listenable. The only thing that keeps me from listening to this again is that I hate the style, but it’s more competent than 99% of metal and far more musical.

Valgrind – Morning Will Come No More

How you approach a project determines much of the outcome. In this case, the band wanted to entertain, so they made songs with lots of variation, and sacrificed internal cohesion to that aesthetic ideal. The result is like riding a subway through a dream where it stops at random cities where people do random things, and at the end of the line, you remember nothing other than that it took some time. Valgrind have a number of tasty riffs, but inevitably they clown those by following up with chanty nu-core vocals, sweeping jingle-riffs, or comical absurdities of hard rock riffs taken to an extreme. You can appreciate any moment of this album, but when you add it up, it’s not something you want to hear again.

Empire of Rats – Empire of Rats

Did you ever wonder about the reason they had warning stickers telling you not to drink the rat poison, etching fluid or platen cleaner? That’s because some kids would chug it right on down without sniffing it first, or even wondering why anyone would drink something from a filthy bottle under the sink. The point of that factoid is that everyone needs different music. Empire of Rats is metalcore from the 1980s definition which means that it uses punk riffs with metal pacing and standoffish vocal rhythms in the style of Pantera or other hip-hop influenced bands. Thus what you have is good hardcore with the worst stylistic aspects of tough guy mainstream metal and punk. On numerous moments, I wanted to like this, but it wore me down through simple loudness and simple dumbness, much the way no amount of Fer-Dime’s candybag leads could sweeten up the fundamental skull-throbbing monotony of Pantera.

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Tags: Black Metal, death metal, reviews

Abscession – Death Incarnate

by Brett Stevens on October 15, 2013

If you approached Slaughter of the Soul with the stylistic outlook of Left Hand Path, you would follow the path that Abscession travel on Death Incarnate. These are short, melodic songs that understand the dramatic nature of successful Swedish death metal.

Easily imitated, Swedish death metal is hard to master. The basics are simple: play d-beat drums under riffs adapted from the vocal melodies of 1970s horror film music and American guitar rock bands, then stack those against faster Black Sabbath-styled chromatic rhythm riffs. Is there really such a void between “Symptom of the Universe” and “Crawl,” or the soundtrack to Carnival of Souls and Clandestine? Not if you listen to them side-by-side.

Thus, by combining Discharge and heavy metal with horror soundtracks, the Swedes invented a new style and kicked it into high-gear with that buzzsaw dimed-Boss distortion. But while qualification in this style is easy, it quickly becomes generic. That is because to take riffs out of context, one must build up a next dramatic context to give them framing, such that the change in riff (and tempo) is symbolically and aesthetically significant to the listener.

Abscession kick off this mini-album (EP) with a lengthy intro that, while funny at a first listen as it reveals death metal obliterating the music of normals, probably isn’t going to be fun past the first couple of listens. After that, it’s into what they do best: buzz-saw rhythm riffs which give way to lengthier melodic riffs which are played in power chords instead of single-string-picked like the first At the Gates.

The result captures much of the mood from Clandestine with big bristly clouds of buzzing distortion cushioning us as a melody emerges from within, like flying through clouds and seeing the moon emerge above. Once we’ve settled into the feel of the fully mature song, Abscession give it a kick or otherwise challenge it with a dramatic transition, which requires guitarwork to wrangle the song back toward its final state of affirming order.

What makes this release stand out is how well-composed the melodies are and how the band is able to arrange riffs in a meaningful manner, even if a simple “meaning” like the sensation of a walk through a dangerous forest at night and a confrontation with mortality as the blade of a foe emerges. Riffcraft is good and focuses on the longer melodies that distinguish the professionals from the “Garage Band” weekend activists in metal at this point, and all musicianship is good, but it is the content and composition of these songs that sets Abscession ahead of the Swe-death pack.

Abscession – Death Incarnate (free download)

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Tags: abscession, d-beat, death metal, horror movie soundtracks, Swedish Death Metal

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