Overtorture – A Trail of Death (2015)

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Swedish Death Metal has stayed popular ever since the early days for a number of reasons. Mostly it is because it allows for the music to be catchy, “brutal” and flexible (although few bands exercise this power afforded by the fact that in theory this is death metal). The death metal fan will readily associate A Trail of Death with names such as Dismember, Carnage, Nihilist or Entombed and the release lives up to these expectations from the production tone up to the general approach.

A hint of pop-influenced modernity alla Entombed is revealed here in the preference for obvious verse-chorus-bridge structures without venturing even as far as Dismember did in Like an Ever Flowing Stream and appearing like an Entombed going on Arch Enemy in the way the riffs are used: they have the affectations of death metal but underlying them can be seen the Iron Maiden – like NWOBHM chord-by-chord advance.

By this token, a more precise comparison would come of pairing this band with later Dismember and their obsession with riff-oriented music rather than a progress/development-oriented one. The Entombed edge (or should we say lack of edge) in composition is in its conventionality pretending to be extreme (Back in the day, people thought Entombed was extreme or visionary in some way — apparently some of those who understand death metal only superficially still do so even today). In the process of creating this music and never venturing outside or around of what their inspirations did at any level, Overtorture sound like one more of the herd. Nothing more, nothing less.

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David Vincent leaves Morbid Angel

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On the heels of much conjecture, and his own denials that an expulsion had taken place, David Vincent has announced his departure from Morbid Angel with a softly-worded press announcement:

Austin, TX – June 19, 2015

DAVID VINCENT Encourages
Fans To Stay Morbid

I had good communication with Trey yesterday and we agree that there are incompatibilities with regards to us working together.

Trey and I have accomplished amazing things together over the past 30 years and I wish him the best with his future projects. Out of respect for the legacy of these accomplishments, I encourage Morbid Angel fans to not take sides because, I am not.

I look forward to sharing my new endeavors with all of you in the near future. Until then, stay Morbid! ~David Vincent

While this may be disappointing to many, it represents new ground for Morbid Angel, which just hired Steven Tucker again, lost drummer Tim Yeung and guitarist Destructhor, and appears to be re-organizing itself more toward its last good material produced, 1998’s Formulas Fatal to the Flesh. Given the immense dissatisfaction with the most recent Morbid Angel album which took the band in a more Rammstein/nu-metal direction under Vincent’s guidance, this re-organization looks like the band orienting itself more toward metal material.

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In League With Satan and Blaspherian split 7″ goes to press

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Blasphemous Arts Records has announced that the split 7″ EP from Texas apostate cavernous death metal band Blaspherian and Italian black metal act In League With Satan has gone to press and will be available shortly. The label issued the following statement:

We are proud to announce that IN LEAGUE WITH SATAN / BLASPHERIAN (Italy/U.S.A.) Split 7” EP went to press today.

Exclusive and Unreleased tracks by both Bands.
The EP will come with Insert, in a limited run of 500 copies on black vinyl.
Unleashed through Blasphemous Art Prod. & Iron Bonehead Prod.

Infos very soon. Watch Out!

MORBID METAL OF DEATH!!!

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Wombbath – Downfall Rising (2015)

Downfall Rising Cover

Upon reviewing a comeback album from a band that has been out of action for more than a decade (more than two, in this case) we are given two options. The first is to approach the album in the context of the band’s past work. This is the traditional approach in metal, where bands with more experience are expected to improve while younger bands are judged with more leniency . The second is to see the album as a separate work and judge it by its own merits and the apparent goals it sets for itself from the musical point of view (avoiding ridiculous and absurd logical objections of the “and what if it was there intention to make a piece of shit of an album?” sort). Either way, Downfall Rising is as nonsensical as its cliche and meaningless title.

Generic beyond recognition, the effacing of the band’s voice comes as no surprise as the paper-thin music that Wombbath made as a younger band went little further beyond sticking genre cliches one after another without taking the music anywhere at all. It was a parade of Swedeath groove riffs that sound and feel good as background but that fail under closer inspection. The new album sees the band taking on some aspects from the so-called symphonic metal  (best referred to as metal-like pop) to fill in interludes or intros and a certain variety of retro-isms of the current nostalgia death metal scene. While Internal Caustic Torments was an empty husk made from death metal cliches at all levels (riff style, guitar tone, trademark vocals) that made it the perfect superficial representation of death metal without a voice of its own and without having any actual logical content, Downfall Rising represents an even wider collection of cliches of the new retro death metal scene.

At least the band is consistent in the type of mediocrity that constitutes their music. Sounding not only generic, derivative and content-less but far more tired than in their earlier fiasco, Wombbath come back riding the wave of come-back albums by “classic” bands that extends to any band from back in the day that was part of a scene and that is made possible by the ability of internet marketing and sales to close in the long tail in the distribution of fans of particular kinds of music. Rather than wasting any of your time in a collection of cliches being paraded without any purpose, I suggest spending some time watching adorable Wombat videos.

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Ogotay to release new album

ogotayband

Comprised of bassist/vocalist Marcin Świerczyński (Yattering), drummer Szymon Andryszczak (Pandemonium), and guitarists Artur Piotrowski (Mess Age) and Andrzej Peszel, death metal band Ogotay recorded eight brand new songs at G Studio sometime in 2014. The next album is set for August 1st, 2015 release via Selfmadegod Records on CD/digital.

Dead God’s Prophet Track Listing:

  1. Dead God’s Prophet
  2. Antiseptic Hell
  3. Axis Mundi
  4. Entering The Void
  5. Bastards And Orphans
  6. Kneel And Die
  7. The Wasteland
  8. Huge Fucking Nothing

http://www.facebook.com/ogotay666

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Serpent Ascending – The Enigma Unsettled (2011)

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Showing up on the metal radar somewhere between the third Therion album and the single release that Winterwolf put out, The Enigma Unsettled combines Scandinavian death metal with the more nuanced paces of doom metal and the subtler harmonies of instrumentally adept heavy metal. The result creates an atmosphere like a more listener-friendly version of Darkthrone Goatlord, building rhythmic intensity that it discharges through the unraveling of several threads of melody into a final statement of clarity and purpose. Guitars vary between death metal styled tremolo riffing and heavy metal style percussive offbeat riffs, creating a tension like a feral beast racing over land and through water, but these integrate similar rhythmic purpose and avoid the disintegration of song into component parts. Vocals take the hoarse and chanted approach, sounding like the calls of a demonic entity through a wall of distortion; these are probably the immediately recognizable weakest link. Inventive song structures, familiar riffs in new styles, and a tendency to have all parts of the song relate to each other and through multiple layers at the same time make this a well-sought listening experience for underground metal fans.

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Pilgrim’s progress

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I thoroughly enjoyed William Pilgrim’s “The postmodern Gorguts” for its list of metal attributes. For many years, writers have attempted to categorize metal and most commonly have ended up with a list of surface traits such as loud distortion, screaming, fast drums and occult lyrics. Pilgrim’s list looks at the compositional tendencies of metal that are consistent from proto-metal through black metal, and bears another analysis as separated from the topic of Gorguts, which is only ancillary to the question of metal itself. Thus follows his list:

The original idea, as metal goes, is as much structural as it is ideological. There are a few qualities that are common to how all true metal should be constructed.

  1. Melodic contiguity: All forms of metal, even the harshest strains, are inherently and recognizably melodic in nature. This means that the individual phrases that make up a metal song obey cohesiveness, as tenuous as it may seem at times. Though individual phrases are often in different keys, it is paramount that they share the same musical space.
  2. Movement towards a discernible and logical conclusion: This is the will to motion previously outlined in these pages. Metal’s roots in traditional story-telling with a beginning, a middle, and an end, are not to be forgotten in eager exchange of a need to experiment. There has to be a gradual ascent, or a plummet as it were, towards an ultimate punctuation. Though various approaches can be used towards achieving this, playing for time in false hope of creating mood, while using ideas containing little intrinsic worth, is anathema to metal.
  3. Rhythm section to assume a strong yet only supporting role: Metal is a predominantly lead-melody oriented form of music. Bass and drums are integral to creating a fuller sound but should only be viewed as swells on an ocean on top of which riffs and songs float. Often, swells rise and raise their load with them, but this hierarchy in relations is crucial and is to be preserved.
  4. Atmosphere created not through textural embellishments and quirks but as a by product of composition: All claim to that shady word “atmosphere” should come from immanent qualities in the way the music is written. Metal does not need overt experimentation with harmonics or tone if these asides are incapable of holding together on isolated inspection.
  5. Awareness that all forms of groove play to a far baser inclination in the mind’s analytical apparatus. They can be enjoyed on a case-by-case basis but are not something to be eagerly sought out or encouraged in metal.
  6. A keen comprehension of repetition as device: Repetition is to be used as steadily outward-growing eddies that take a song to a different place, yes, but one that maintains a tangible relation to the place left behind. Individual components within the repeating phrase should have some emotional consonance and not serve as mere padding.
  7. Conscious realization that metal is in fact composed music and not free jazz.

To insert a minor quibble, I disagree that metal is “ideological.” If anything, it is anti-ideological, being based in a harsh realism rather than a set of platitudes about Utopia, which seems to be the basis of all ideology to me. Metal is intensely artistic, and artists tend to have strong opinions, and from a distance this may look like ideology or even count as an ideology of sorts, but not in the modern sense, which means a series of appealing thoughts designed to mobilize mass approval and thus, political power. If metal has an ideology, it is an artistic outlook of a very general nature and not directed toward specific manipulations resulting in immediate real-world changes; rather, it hopes to condition the outlook of those who participate in it with the most general philosophies toward life itself.

By the same token, metal seems to me to less succumb to lists than a spirit which reflects this philosophy. Technique is a means to that end, and that we now live in an age when power chords and heavy distortion create a sense of foreboding of doom and insurgent power determines that these become the primal technique that unites all the others, like a drawstring bag around otherwise random artistic implements. Metal focuses on the union of harsh realism and intense mythology, because metal is fundamentally a worship of power and these are the greatest powers in human life. Only death is real, and yet people follow religions and hail the ancient stories. If metal has a goal, it is making realism into a kind of poetry, and it uses a series of techniques to that end that form its most visible component, but they are not in and of themselves the goal of the genre.

Let me then add my components of metal:

  1. Nihilism. The music must use the simplest and most gutter-level techniques possible when they are powerful.
  2. Through-composed. From Black Sabbath onward, metal bands have been stacking riffs to explode melodies.
  3. Guitar is lead rhythm. Songs are advanced by guitars, with drums/bass/vocals in supporting role.
  4. Phrasal riffs. Riffs use fills as main body of riff in order to create shapes which interact across key, time and form.
  5. Immanent meaning. No riff or part is the meaning, but the progression of the whole “reveals” meaning.

Any sensible observer will note that the above are simply less specific and more distilled versions of Pilgrim’s seven points above. His focus is more on specificity; mine more on spirit. And yet the two overlap and somehow hash out the same realistic truths about heavy metal. Metal is fundamentally anti-social music, in that it rejects “what everyone thinks” and experiences a downfall instead as it reverts to a nihilistic, literal, organic, materialistic and naturalistic level of reality. It rejects human society and all of its ideas, which are essentially pretense, in favor of harsh realism and mythological aims like beauty, truth, eternal love and eternal hate. I would argue that metal is conservative except for its constant forward focus, not toward “progress” but adventure.

As a result, I would argue that metal is impervious to both ideology and trends, since it consists solely of spirit and the aforementioned method. In fact, it takes no particular point of view, since its method must appear in all that it does. Thus metal is “spirit,” and will adapt to any developments in music, but since there have been none, it howevers around the intersection of the best humanity has produced so far — classical, modernist and baroque — using the techniques available to four guys, guitars, microphone and drums. This then leads us to a more vital question when examining metal, which is whether a band adopts this outlook and method through the question of what an adaptation of that method to the particular style of the band would look like. With post-metal, nu-metal, tech-death, metalcore and other modern metal, we find that missing and its opposite principle, the looping narrative of rock, instead.

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Desecresy – The Band of Liquid Evil

Finnish death metal band Desecresy grew in recognition over the past half-decade but still finds itself overshadowed by the obvious Swedish death metal tributes and other shallow pitches to the purchasing sensibilities of information overload numbed fans. This band has more to offer than many realize, crafting death metal in the old school style but with the sparse melody and emotional mood tapestry of a doom metal, even slowly and cautiously introducing some newer influences so that it never loses its old school appear at its core, in its spirit and its intent.

Sounding very much like a submerged horror launching itself on humanity, Desecresy came about in 2009 from the ashes of previous bands. It consists of two members, Tommi Grönqvist and Jarno Nurmi, who somehow produce this massive sound on their own. As a result, Desecresy does not play live but has built an audience by putting out successively improved albums, although which is the best may depend on taste as these are highly idiosyncratic and expressive works. They are also remarkably consistent in that the sound the band forged on its first album continues through its third but not unchanged, only added to and refined, so that it grows organically.

This band successfully evokes the sensation liquid evil rising from the depths through its death-doom attack. Its death metal uses rhythms like those of Bolt Thrower merged with the powerful two-layer riffing of Abhorrence, possibly influenced by early Paradise Lost and the second half of Burzum “Key to the Gate,” with other influences such as Fleshcrawl and Incantation for its dark and doomy passages. Its distinctive technique of melodic lead rhythmic riffing overlaid on dirge power chord riffs makes Desecresy instantly recognizable, and creates an atmosphere more like a doom metal band or traditional heavy metal without the friendlier rock trappings of such band. On top of this float strongly enunciated death vocals that guide the developing feast of riffs and unique song structures.

Arches of Entropy (2010)

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The first Desecresy album shows the band attacking their sound from the most traditional death metal viewpoint. These songs attack from a mid-paced death metal standpoint, and then build on that with successive riffs that grind against one another in the Bolt Thrower style, leading up to the atmospheric riffing with melodic leads stitched over it like silver linings of clouds. Vocals take a gruff and bassy enunciation of death metal vocals that is difficult to correctly sequence but here the timing is both impeccable and vague, adding an air of mystery. As the technique is new, it sometimes overlaps in memory, causing these songs to seem indistinct, although when listened to separately they stand out. These songs have a groove, but instead of being centered around stretching between offbeat notes, it starts on an offbeat and drifts into cadence, creating a feeling of entering a dream. Of the Desecresy albums, this may be the most idiosyncratic, owing much of its perceived randomness to attempts to stretch this style in ways that most bands would not envision. Its mood evokes early evening on a dry clear night, when the wind murmurs through the leaves and strange noises echo from the surrounding mountains, a noisy organic voice arising amongst them which promises certain doom and, within it, adventure.

The Doom Skeptron (2012)

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For its second album, Desecresy attempted to introduce more of a death metal sound as contrasted to the melodic-layered half-grind of the first album. At the same time, the band experimented with making its songs more distinctive and so tried to vary tempo, notes and rhythms radically. The result sounds more like an Immolation album with an Asphyx plus Carnage vibe, in addition to the aforementioned influences. This provides a more energetic album and isolates the melodic doom parts between different sounds, which makes this album an interesting and varied listen like driving through unknown countryside. The intensity of it however lost some of the doom appeal, and this seems to be the least atmospheric of all the albums, but also the most satisfying to those who enjoyed the later years of death metal. The Doom Skeptron carries the intensity of the first into a more confrontational vein, and brings out some of the implicit conflict in these songs in more abrupt collision. Presaging the next album, this work also makes more use of simple melodic patterns to create a sonic backdrop for riff change. If the American influences behind Desecresy make an appearance, it is here that they stand out the clearest and to the greatest impact, although the droning resonance that makes this band appealing to doom metal fans also makes itself known. Best enjoyed on bright days at top volume from a distance.

Chasmic Transcendence (2014)

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Most bands decay as the years go on. Not so with Desecresy, who on this album integrate the grinding approach of the first album with more of the doom and black metal influenced atmospheric pieces which now dominate songs instead of relying on a sandwich of death metal to make them pop out. As a result, like Burzum Filosofem, this album induces a mood of suspended disbelief and then sinks further into it, creating like Summoning an environment where melodies seem to extend each other across songs because they are similar in parts but different in end configuration. On Chasmic Transcendence, Desecresy show a more fluid rhythm and more high-speed tremolo death metal riffing to drive it, and also start borrowing patterns from the newer post-metal bands like Cult of Luna, but very carefully adapt these to old school underground metal melodies and riff structures instead of becoming alternative rock like every other band who has tried this. In the Desecresy universe, riffs talk to one another to create and shape a transition between moods like an architect assembling a design, and the result showcases both the resonant emotion from melodic rhythm leads — now focusing more on internal harmony — and combinations of riffs evoking a labyrinthine passage between physical obstacles toward internal learning, like the best of adventures. This album provides excellent listening on nocturnal escapades.

The odd state of metal in 2015 is that many of the best bands are acknowledged by those who can understand them, but this is a small group, so they seem overshadowed by larger bands that appeal to the bread and circuses type. However, Desecresy has been steadily gaining momentum for its elegantly designed and thoughtful music that refuses to sacrifice the raw guts of death metal to make an atmosphere, and as a result portrays the type of desolate conflict that we expect from dystopian literature, but in sonic form with the riffs like serpents taking the form of the things we fear in our dreams and see shadows of in the reality around us, rushing at us from a yet indeterminate future. With this musical power, Desecresy presages the next age of metal, along with other pioneers like Sammath, Blaspherian, Demoncy, Blood Urn, War Master and Kever. The spirit of the old school lives on by refusing to emulate the past, and instead carrying forward its ideas in the abstract with implementations specific to the bands, in this case the fertile imagination and dark prophecy of Desecresy.

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Scythian set release date for sophomore album

Scythianband

UK hard-rock-metalcore band Scythian are releasing Hubris in Excelsis on August 21st.

Tracklisting for Scythian’s Hubris in Excelsis

  1. Beyond the Dust…
  2. Hubris in Excelsis
  3. Apocalyptic Visions
  4. As Tyrants Feast…
  5. Penultimate Truth : Ultimate Deceit
  6. The Laws…
  7. Three Stigmata
  8. War Graves (Dulce et Decorum Est…)
  9. Dystopia

www.facebook.com/scythianuk

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Gruesome releases new lyric video

Savageland

Releasing Savage Land in April of 2015, Gruesome have released a new lyric video. Gruesome boasts band members who have previously been part of Exhumed, Malevolent Creation, Possessed, and Derketa and is said by some to play a style that “honors” Chuck Schuldiner’s work. This is partially true as Gruesome played a dumbed-down death metal consisting of simple, groovy rhythms played single-string riffs and intermittent sections of faster and slower d-beats. But I would venture to say that Gruesome’s songwriting is definitely superior to pre-Human Death (post-Human Death being a different kind of music, and belongs to a slightly different discussion).

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