Sadistic Metal Reviews 10-13-14

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What are Sadistic Metal Reviews? The first metal album that you really connect with should be a magic experience, one that transforms your life. But a large group of people want you to apply that same feeling to their album so they can take your money, but their music is mediocre. SMR is the dividing line between the greatness and the forgettable, and we exult in the tears of the latter, for they are the sweetest of wines…

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Solace of Requiem – Casting Ruin

A new epidemic trend grips metal, following war metal, which is the tendency to Angelcorpse — yes, that’s being used as a verb — a mixture of metal influences and tie the mess together with loud vocals. Fast guitars and overactive drums work for Angelcorpse, who clearly came along in the Fallen Christ vein of blasting streamlined death metal, but metal bands now are using that style like a tortilla to dump everything else into, wrap up the ends and make a metal burrito. While some bands that make burrito metal are able to keep interest, the problem with this style and the carnival music high contrast (read: randomness) aesthetic of bands like Behemoth that rose in parallel is that by turning the volume up to 11 for everything, it creates a constant flow of essentially invariant sound that possesses no dynamic and no real progression. It is thus easier to write; songs require no real internal contrast, and songwriters can stack bits of whatever they have on hand and stitch it up with some technicality. I find Solace of Requiem to be unlistenable for this reason. It is a barrage of noise that, if someone were to take any part of it and break it out into parts divided by its internal tension and then make a song of it, might work. But the whole burrito does not. The Solace of Requiem burrito includes more lead guitar and melody and some NYDM style technicality and sweeps borrowed from metalcore, but that does not differentiate its essential approach from all the other Behemoth/Angelcorpse hybrids. Like Taco Bell, it goes down quickly, is easily forgotten and leaves an unpleasant odor lingering in its wake.

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Wombbath – Internal Caustic Torments

This is one of those bands that makes plodding rhythms catchy to the point that a listener will fall into the groove and not mind, but also will not seek it out repeatedly because of the sheer repetition without much of a direction. These riffs came straight out of hard rock, got detuned and had some quick fills added, but remain as predictable as listening to AC/DC covers at the local karaoke bar. The result is that Wombbath batters your brain until it gives up, then pours a layer of relatively obvious material over it, including songs that complete an arc but without any real doubt or tension in the middle, such that like the riffs, the structure of the songs themselves is duplicative and numbing. Nothing is done poorly and this band clearly shows mastery of the old school style, but what it lacks is a reason for a listener who is aware of the best of old school death metal to embrace this. Internal Caustic Torments expresses in many ways the worst of old school death metal and the tendency that caused the genre to collapse on itself, which was nailing the style and then using it to hammer out repetition like propaganda. This album could be improved overnight by introducing actual tension between the first and second riffs, then seeing where that leads and using it to reorganize these songs, because many of the raw elements are there.

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Pilgrim – II: Void Worship

Stoner doom metal happened when 1970s jam music swallowed up doom metal and remains basically stuck in the 1970s, Slacker, That 70s Show, etc. mentality. In other words, it aims to dig out wonder in the smallest of things, much as stoners can find a universe in their toenails. In this case, it is not the “doom” aspect that is problematic, but the fact that this music seems designed to find the fascinating and earth-shattering in simple chord progressions that remind us of Foreigner and Journey releases but without the strong sense of harmony. Instead, it’s every stoner’s dream: just start plodding along, then jam over that until some sort of magic emerges. When you think about it, that is what the Grateful Dead did for decades, blarting out never-ending tuneless solos that incorporated every technique in the book but to no end, because there was no point, only a desire to keep the jam going for as long as possible so the audience and band could take more drugs, be more groovy, pose more in front of the flower-painted school bus and other activities for people who have voids in their souls and no purpose to their lives. Pilgrim are more musically adept than most bands which cross this desk, but they take it nowhere. Songs jam, build up, trail off. Solos and fills drop in competently but express nothing. The album has a big concept somewhere if you read the theory about it that they include with all releases nowadays — I never do — but it is not expressed in the music. Much like a recent failed indie-metal album about whales, the putative topic is not the subject matter, but a cover story for playing the same crap. Really, just go get the first Def Leppard album because it does everything that happens here but with a purpose. A vapid purpose, but no purpose is more vapid than no purpose itself. Flee.

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Midnight – No Mercy for Mayhem

Warmed over NWOBHM with American glam metal glitz under a glaze of alt-death bands like Nifelheim or Gehennah. Remember when that stuff came out? It was 1998 and black metal had officially shot its wad, following death metal the dubious status of having a fully developed form but having expressed all of its relevant content three years or more prior. Thus bands thought, “Well, we have this new technology in the death metal and black metal styles, why not mix them and use them to encode the same old crap that bands were talking about in the 1970s?” You know, the safe stuff: alcohol, sex, partying and pissing off your parents. No one in a modern liberal democracy will argue with you for such an assertion of individualism and defiance of The Establishment. Thus it’s about as challenging and volatile as tap water, as controversial as feeding pigeons in a park, and the perfect product because it takes almost zero effort to make a few catchy hard rock songs with heavier vocals and more intense drums. Anyone can do it! Those were the words they used in the dying years of punk, also, which meant that anyone and everyone did do it, which ensured that the music became boring because it wasn’t about anything. Midnight isn’t about anything either. Its members are fixated only on being in a band and making some tunes that people like. That’s sort of like a chef deciding that he wants to make Big Macs instead of Filet Mignon because “people like it.” Like a Big Mac, No Mercy For Mayhem is soft and uniform in consistency and slightly sweet with a tangy sauce of rebellious high school rock. But it resembles an average of every burger ever made with the never-fail treatment of adding fat, salt and sugar, thus there is no growth, learning or evolution in it. It is simply an object, a product. And like all soulless things, it can only occupy your time, not enhance it, which means you stagnate, and you know what they say about stagnation.

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Cemetery Lust – Orgies of Abomination

I suppose this is intended to sound like Autopsy, but it more sounds like the bad SOD and DRI clones of the late 1980s: really simple sing-song two-point riffs driven by the vocals to keep the rhythmic hook alive because that is basically all the song does. Rhythms are very similar to old DRI, COC and SOD as well. Lots of downpicking. Nothing is poorly done and yet this style, like all rap music, is just too simple to express much of anything especially with these entirely standard song structures. Each song consists of two related riffs, a vocal hook, and support from other instruments. The result is not exciting unless people playing stuff faster than normal excites you. Lots of tropes from middle-1980s speed metal and early death metal, but the songs never really get any momentum going and sound about thirty years old, out of date and without personality. Some things belong in the past and should be buried next to all the bands who didn’t make it because they sounded like watered-down versions of their influences. This band can join them.

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Rippikoulu – Ulvaja

Funeral doom metal with death metal touches in the vein of Skepticism, Rippikoulu on this release create a convincing atmosphere that relies too much on texture of vocals and instrumentation but nonetheless is convincing. These songs begin with simple riffs and expand both depth and tonality, moving from minor-key intervals to more open intervals much like Ancient used to on its longer tracks, creating a sense of a moving target on a lengthy journey. Use of piano, strings and female vocals both soften the abrasive distortion and force more spacious dynamics, allowing other themes more room to move. While these songs clearly focus on atmosphere, the more important idea here is the change of moods like seasons, which gives them a grace and makes the distorted guitar seem actually jarring by way of contrast. Although this release is an EP and thus short, the mood created by this musical approach could be, like Summoning Nightshade Forests, the basis for a short escape from reality that reveals more about existence than direct confrontation ever could.

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Nunslaughter – Angelic Dread

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This band have been around for over 400 years and have made the same album over 75 times, but each time it is good for a simple reason: this band know what they are aiming for and carefully edit their songs to make sure all parts fit together into a smooth musical experience. While it is tempting to categorize Nunslaughter as death metal, they are in fact speed metal, as most of these riffs come straight from the late-1980s fully-developed speed metal that incorporated advances by Slayer, Exodus, Anthrax and others into the Metallica standard.

Although Nunslaughter first came to the US on the Mayflower many years before Metallica existed, it is believed that Nunslaughter developed this style on its own and may have in fact invented it before the band was formed during the final days of the Roman Empire. While some may be tempted to categorize Nunslaughter as dinosaurs, the fact remains that this band takes the raw ingredients of power metal, speed metal and most death metal and makes a stripped-down, hardcore-punk style ripping version of this that remains highly listenable even if not particularly distinguishable on a song-to-song basis. Like other collections of many short songs, such as Dead Infection or Carcass, Angelic Dread operates like many small insights into roughly the same idea.

When paleontologists recently unearthed a complete Archaeopteryx fossil, they found early Nunslaughter recordings beneath it. Somehow, what this band creates never gets old, in part because they understand their riffs as a language from the same basic source, and in part because like a thrash band their song format carefully fits the particular clash of the two riffs (with a few budget transitions, and sometimes rhythmic variations, Nunslaughter uses two riffs per song on average) and the need of presenting them in the best light. The result is compelling and enjoyable and upholds the best tradition of riffcraft and expressive violence in underground music.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7xz6lqOAOc

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Details on Compilation of Death issue three

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DMU reported recently that Compilation of Death zine has issue three back from the printers and ready to distribute. Like many of you probably were, I was intrigued by the use of the term “zine” to describe what looks like… a book.

In the grand spirit of investigative metal journalism, DMU reached out to Gabriel Andres Gatica Kretschmer, editor of the Compilation of Death. He answered our questions about the new issue and created anticipation of the new issue with his answers.

How many pages are in the new issue? Are all of them illustrated?

Aesthetically this new issue might be seen as a book because of its large number of pages, but this appearance was not premeditated. Independent of the size, we are and we have the essence of a fanzine: Compilation of Death is created by fans for fans. Our new issue has over 390 pages but keeps the spirit and outlook of a xeroxed ‘zine. And yes, all of the pages are illustrated!

What bands are in it?

  • Features
    • SADISTIC INTENT (in depth special)
    • Brutal Assassin
    • Decomposed (Usa)
    • SINDROME
    • DREAM DEATH
    • PHLEBOTOMIZED
    • Druid Lord
    • DR SHRINKER
    • VOID OF VOMITS
    • EARACHE RECORDS (Interview about the history of the label)
    • Necroccultus
    • HEXX
    • BLOODBATH (Serbia)
    • SORCERY (Sweden)
    • AUTOPSY (Fucking big interview)
    • Nephrite (Norway)
    • DISSECT
    • DIABOLIC/HORROR OF HORRORS/UNHOLY GHOST
    • ENTETY/COFFIN TEXT
    • AGRESSOR (Fra)
    • FATAL (Usa)
    • CIANIDE
    • THANATOPSIS (Usa)
    • OBLITERATION (Nor)
    • BLOODSPILL (Usa)
    • DEATH THREAT (Usa)
    • DECEASED
    • DEATH YELL
    • ETERNAL DARKNESS
    • NILE
    • ROTTREVORE
    • Embrional (Pol)
    • NECROWRETCH
    • ETERNAL SOLSTICE
    • PENTACLE (Studio Report-Live review by Costa Stoios)
    • PROFILES
    • MAGNUS (Pol)
    • Pages of pure fucking Damnation (Chat with old fanzine editors)
    • Aaaarrghh Magazine (NZ)
    • INVOCATOR/MACERATION
    • GOD VOMIT’ Zine
    • RATTLEHEAD ‘ZINE/BLOWING THRASH ZINE
    • DECIBEL OF DEATH ZINE
    • THE BOOK OF ARMAGGEDDON’ZINE/ RAGE RECORDS
    • RAM METAL SECTION (The section of LAURENT RAMADIER)
  • Interviews
    • Gino Marino & NOCTURNUS/INCUBUS
    • MUTILATED (Fra)
    • EXCRUCIATION (SWI)
    • INCANTATION
  • SOME DIE, OTHERS ARE BORN (New section with over 50 new bands)
  • DARK AWAKENING (Review Section)

Is this all-new content? (I assume so, just verifying)

All the content is new, from our own staff and some guests as collaborators in interviews. But we also have some reprints of old interviews from old fanzines.

How is this different from past COD issues?

I think the essence is the same, we just have more pages, therefore, more interviews and articles. We also add a new section with more than 50 upcoming bands where you may learn the basic and essential information about bands who have only been around for a few years and have few releases. We continue with an in-depth special about the history of a band; last issue this was IMMOLATION and in this new edition is been SADISTIC INTENT.

Where can people get this, and about how much will it cost?

HELLSHEADBANGERS from USA is our official distributor; they were responsible for printing our new issue. Some labels in Europe like APOCALYPTIC EMPIRE, IRON BONEHEAD, THE SINISTER FLAME, UNHOLY PROPHECY, TERROR FROM HELL, MEMENTO MORI, WITCHCRAFT ‘ZINE, etc. are distributing our new issue as well. All who are interested in distributing our new issue should contact HELLSHEADBANGERS Records directly and ask for wholesale pricing.

Can you tell us a bit about your background in metal, in writing and in zine publishing? What are you listening to now?

Previously I edited a fanzine called Brutal Passion in Chile, it was something generic, nothing new, you could find the same in other 100 fanzines. I’m a crazy fanzine collector and I decided to do something different and create Compilation of Death zine as a tribute to the old fanzines and focused on the development, history and continuity of a style like death metal and its closest branches.

I see Compilation of Death as a link between the forgotten and the present time… I listen to many things depending on my mood, but these days, the new album of ZEMIAL, OPHIS, DEAD CONGREGATION, DOMAINS, DROWNED, GORGUTS, HAEMOPHAGUS, RUDE, ATARAXY, DISMA, BEYOND, SHEOL, INCANTATION, RIPPER (CHILE), U. KULTEN, PROCESSION, etc… I listen to almost all styles of metal, especially a lot of death metal and heavy metal. My favorite band since I was a child is RUNNING WILD for example…

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Sadistic Metal Reviews 10-08-14

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What are Sadistic Metal Reviews? When fans, writers, radio presenters and musicians get fed up with the exhausting flood of imitators and demand that music have a purpose, because only music that has content can express something of beauty or horror about reality and thus be relevant to our lives, because unlike the herd that seeks escape, we seek a means of understanding and glorifying life. Death to the imitators, drowning in a sea of angsty tears.

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Edge of Paradise – Immortal Waltz

This jaunty take on a cross between burlesque music and hard rock with symphonic overtones seems designed to showcase the talents of vocalist Margarita, who layers her vocals in waves that create, along with the carnival horror show keyboards, a sense of being in some oddity of a dream. But this band really invites comparison to bands like Genitorturers and Marilyn Manson more than heavy metal; these songs are vehicles for the vocals and are designed to create a sensation of spectatorship more than have the music itself inundate the mind. Aesthetically, this will strike underground fans as cheesy; while not terrible musically, it also derives much of its compositional direction from riffing off known archetypes of the type of music it cites. That and the way songs are entirely driven by vocals places this outside the range of most expecting riff-based music, and the simplicity of its delivery ensures that it will sound like children’s music to most death metal fans. If this is symphonic metal, it is clearly not for me, but if you like the Marilyn Manson style spectacle and ironic deconstruction of cultural tokens, it might appeal.

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Krieg – Transient

Krieg started as purely chaotic improvisational black metal, then organized itself into a ripping war metal variety, and finally detoured into indie/shoegaze. With Transient, the band returns to roots with a primitive type of death metal fused with a heavy amount of punk and garnished with varieties of its previous influences. The shoegaze influence is still here as are some classic black metal riffs but they are suspended in a gelatinous mass of punkish simple death metal riffs which keep an energetic uptempo charge. While it sculpts atmosphere with agreeable verve, most of modern Krieg consists of transitions into moods and then riding of those moods, which interrupts the frenetic energy this band once conveyed while simultaneously not building up to its transitions with enough groundwork to give them power beyond their own attributes. Black metal works its atmospheric magic by manipulating context and showing a progression between events like a battle scene, but this new style is more like visiting different rooms in a spooky hotel. That being said, Krieg is stronger in riff-writing and understanding of the dimensions of harmony and how to navigate them with a riff than other American black metal bands, and also beats the hell out of Sonic Youth.

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English Dogs – The Thing With Two Heads

This punk band uses a lot of metal riffs and rhythms in that it likes to interrupt continuity with abrupt internal collisions in its music, and uses the muted strum in a style spanning the spectrum from speed metal to Meshuggah. Unfortunately, it also mates this with a rock style of offbeat leading phrases that make this music bounce just like rock or hip-hop, which kills any gravitas or building of intensity. There are some great speed metal riffs on here and some moments of pure punk energy but the whole is torn apart by musical discontinuities which result in what sounds like a train crash between the 1980s and early 2000s that never resolves itself into a voice that can express anything. If this band dropped half the riffs and focused on making songs that generate momentum and then channel it somewhere, it would hit like a ton of bricks but as it is now, it sounds like something that should be on in the background during an LMN late-night movie about kids hanging with the wrong crowd and ending up in an organ harvesting gang.

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Horrified – Descent Into Putridity

This album shows a great deal of initial promise in its attempt to resurrect the old underground. It gets beyond the two-point riffs that hammer a rhythm and then answer it and go nowhere, preferring longer riffs that lead on to different points and at times in the Deathspell Omega way extend themselves into wandering melodies. Its combination of Swedish death metal and Autopsy power death metal worship works on the surface. But the nu-underground has never understood the purpose of death metal riffing which is to create subterranean structures that mirror what goes on in our subconsious minds; death metal is about looking beneath the surface to reveal structure and a subtext of motivation. Horrified in contrast has one layer, which is some riffy music on the surface that fits together nicely, but lacks a core of something which cuts between the mental state and the music. Thus over time this wears thin and repetitive at about the same time the listener starts noticing how many riffs are anchored with doubled downpicking and how few of these riffs, despite growing in their own right, amplify the subject matter of the song. Horrified come closer to the original than any others attempting this style recently but still miss the root of what makes the underground what it is, and so verge closer to the much more “face value” work of speed metal bands, at which point the repetition creates bad flashbacks of late 1980s metal and the repetition PTSD kicks in.

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Xerath – III

The horror, the horror. Symphonic metal must be done gracefully but with aggression and force; Xerath approach it like hard rock and use it as a vehicle for over-dramatic vocals. This hurts to listen to because the keyboards drift, the riffs sound like a heavier version of Def Leppard, and the metal gets forgotten. Synthesizing two disparate things only works when a common ground and thus basis for a common voice is found, and otherwise what emerges is the oil-on-water effect that produces carnival music where random patterns contrast one another as if they were designed to accompany a cartoon and its wacky action. Xerath goes down all of these rabbit trails and comes out at a comical level. Distraction, deflection, recursion, confusion. Like Behemoth and other bands in this newer style, Xerath does great work at the level of detail, but when you add it up the only picture that emerges is confusion and haste resulting in an entirely random platter of stuff that is recognizable as metal but by depriving itself of continuity and context, entirely lacks the punch. It compensates for that lack by hammering extra hard on pounding rhythms and blasting passages which do nothing but highlight the sense of On Through the Night colliding with a roadside minstrel show on its way to play the outer reaches of Alaska and hope its luck changes there.

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Interview with Adrian and Ola of The Haunted

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Back when At the Gates called it a day for the first time, a new band and a new sound emerged in metal. This hybrid mixed the late hardcore style of random and chaotic riffing with melodic metal and grindcore intensity, creating what most called “metalcore” with overtones of “math metal.” Unbeknownst to the band at the time, the entire industry followed their lead.

Almost two decades later, The Haunted return at the same time At the Gates is making a bid for return, and many remain curious as to how this band will continue its own evolution and contribute to the future of metal-punk hybrids. We were able to get in a few words with Adrian and Ola of The Haunted, thanks to Century Media’s Nikki Law.

The Haunted is returning with a new album and what seems like a new direction. Is that so? How does what you’re doing now compare to your previous album?

Hi there. Yes the new album definitely showcases a new style for the band. Its a return to our thrashy roots in some ways, but rather in a more modern version than what we were doing on the first few albums. It doesn’t really compare to Unseen. its just so far removed from that album on so many levels. Not strange though cause it was in sense a very different band with a different outlook and approach to what we are today.

The Haunted is widely credited with establishing metalcore, the style that took post-hardcore style composition and added in metal and melodic metal riffs. What is metalcore? How did The Haunted contribute to it?

I really have not got any clue about these genres. We just play the stuff that we like to listen to and the kind of tunes we like to play. Categories are really for people that needs to file music into compartments… For us they really are not that important.

Ola, you are in Feared as well, a band that sounds like Pantera performing Metalhead as performed by a deathgrind band. What influences your sound in Feared? How much of that will you bring to the new The Haunted record?

I keep my ideas separated; it’s clear to me when I start writing a song if it will be a song for the Haunted or for Feared. When I write songs for the band they were written a bit from a fan perspective initially before I started finding my role in the band. I bring youth and aggression to the outfit.

It’s impossible to discuss The Haunted without mentioning At the Gates. Why do you think At the Gates was so influential? What part of that sound lives on in The Haunted?

I really don’t know why. I guess it was a combination that we did what we wanted and did it with a lot of conviction. What we did hadn’t really been done by that many at the time when we did it… And then we disappeared. That’s what I think made it such a hype. My playing in The Haunted is way more open than what I do on the drums in At the Gates. When you hear the new At the Gates album i think you will be able to understand what i mean.

Adrian, you were in the original At the Gates lineup and founded The Haunted. How did the final At the Gates album, Slaughter of the Soul, contribute to the The Haunted sound?

It didn’t contribute at all. The Haunted was formed by Jensen and me the day after At the Gates split up and we wanted nothing to do with the last At the Gates album at that time. It was a fresh new start with brand new influences. I guess that the last At the Gates album contributed in the way that we knew how we didn’t want our new band to sound…

Slaughter of the Soul seemed like a break from the traditional At the Gates sound, and less death metal than a modern take on the melodic speed metal of Ride the Lightning or Don’t Break the Oath. Were those influences?

Slaughter of the Soul was influenced by a lot of different albums but mainly by the hardship and legal shit the band when through during the touring for Terminal Spirit Disease. We were so filled with aggression and wanted to make a full on album, a condensed more direct album than its predecessor.

How do you think The Haunted has changed death metal, and what is the nature of this change? Are the old school days dead, or did all of these genres (death metal, hardcore, speed metal) sort of merge into one?

Metal has merged in so many different ways and bands are combining different styles left right and center. I have actually stopped paying attention. My favorite metal albums are mostly from the 80s and early 90s. For The Haunted, we will continue mixing the different influences we have collectively within the band, play and write the kind of stuff we like regardless of what the style its called.

Ola, you have also played in Six Feet Under. How is it different to play in a Tampa-style band from a band like The Haunted?

Six Feet Under was pure death metal whereas The Haunted’s back catalog has so many different aspects to the playing and songwriting. I enjoyed Six Feet Under as well as shaping the future with The Haunted.

How does The Haunted write songs? Do you come up with riffs and then put them together, or use Jenga or another type of puzzle to make them all fit together, or is there some secret alchemy (numerology, occult symbolism) that explains these riff-mazes?

The songs are sometimes a contribution by one person that writes the whole thing. Sometimes they are a combination of someone’s verse and someone elses’s chorus and intro riff. There is no fixed formula. If the songs that takes shape is good then its a success.

You’ve got a new lineup and a new start as The Haunted. What do you hope your music will communicate, and how are you looking forward to sharing this with fans on tour?

There was no deep hidden meaning in the creation of Exit Wounds other than huge “Fuck off, we are not dead! Here we are and we are heavier than we have been in years!” Come and see for yourself at an upcoming gig! It will smoke you!

Thanks again for your support and hope to see you on the road!

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Godflesh – A World Lit Only by Fire

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In the early 1990s, everybody who was anybody had a Godflesh Streetcleaner t-shirt. That album broke out of the usual problems with industrial, which is that it was generally either rhythm music without beauty or dance music without aggression, and escaped the tendency of metal to be as intense as possibly by mixing in aspects of melody from crustcore and indie rock.

Since that time, Godflesh creators have spent their time searching for Selfless II. The crisis is that they are unsure of why that album is so revered. The band began its career with the rhythmic but amelodic Godflesh EP, which became repetitive and noisy but never rose to the level of grace of the album afterward, Streetcleaner. On that album, song structures expanded and use of melody and guitar harmony gave it a power beyond what the EP had. Then came Slavestate which introduced more of a techno influence, but underneath the skin was the same looping song structures with little more than rhythm that defined the EP.

After that, Godflesh tried Pure which attempted some melody, and when they were accused of being too “rock” on that album, Selfless which went back to tuneless droning in an industrial landscape for the most part. After that, the band experimented with alternative rock (Songs of Love and Hate, later resurrected in one of the bravest experiments in popular music, Songs of Love and Hate in Dub) and lost direction until Broadrick found Jesu as an outlet for his shoegaze/indie hopes. He kept enough of the metal and crustcore (remember his role as founding member of Napalm Death, which essentially combined crustcore and DRI-style thrash to make a new art form). But with the second album, Jesu lost its independent voice and became indie/shoegaze entirely, thus dispatching legions of not just metal fans but those who seek something unique.

With A World Lit Only by Fire, Godflesh attempts to return to the musical foreground but makes two critical mistakes. First, let us assume that Godflesh like a serial killer is a duality composed of “hard” and “soft” elements, which are stylistically grindcore and indie/shoegaze respectively. Let us also assume somewhat correctly that these create another binary of extreme rhythm and heavy distortion on one hand and melodic intervals and harmony through drone on the other. The history of Godflesh shows a band bouncing back and forth between these poles. When an album gets too soft, as Jesu did starting with Conqueror, the band bounces to the other area in which it knows it can succeed and sell product. On the other hand, when an album gets too abrasively grinding, it tries to go back toward the middle where it perceives Streetcleaner as existing. Its first mistake is being unable to find a style that balances its two extremes without varying them song by song, and as part of that, in failing to pick up on how much death metal influenced its choice of song structure and radically improved Streetcleaner. (When I last checked in 1994 or so, Godflesh was outright hostile to metal — understandable given the collapse of death and black metal in that year — although a few years earlier the influence had been more accepted as fact.)

The second mistake made by this band strikes me as more crucial. People create great albums in just about any genre but they need to introduce enough complexity to be able to clearly express an experience and corresponding feelings so that the audience can identify with the work and appreciate the viewpoint it illustrates. Napalm Death for example on its early albums succeeded by using individual songs as phrases in what essentially became a longer atmospheric work, but few people listen to it on a daily basis because it is mostly novelty. Not many people hail the Godflesh EP either because despite being a stylistic outlier, it makes for poor listening unless you like droning chromatic grind. The band lacked enough to express itself. With Streetcleaner, the band not only nailed style (mistake 1 rectified) but also nailed content (mistake 2 fix) by introducing enough complexity in song structure, melody, harmony and riff shape to be able to create atmosphere and manipulate it. Everything the band has done since, with the possible exception of Love and Hate in Dub, has focused on a one-dimensional approach where style is substance. While this “the medium is the message” makes sense in an academic setting, with music, it cuts out what Godflesh do well.

At this point, the meat of this review — the part that actually focuses on the new Godflesh album A World Lit Only by Fire — should be fairly obvious: Godflesh reverts to the mistake it made on its initial EP, Pure and Selfless and makes an album that is abrasive but repetitive and fails to introduce the elements of tension that gave Streetcleaner its power. If Godflesh finds a way to make an album like Streetcleaner in any style, even disco, it will take over the world. But that did not happen here. Songs are for the most part simple loops of verse and chorus riffs that while musically competent are essentially boring and rely on rhythm — very similar to Selfless — both in driving riff and in having an offbeat conclusion to each phrase. Over that, vocals rant out a phrase or two. The second half of the album improves with “Curse Us All” which has a powerful rhythmic hook, but the band never develops any of this potential into something with enough depth to want to revisit. This reveals that Godflesh has confused error 1 (style) with error 2 (content) because style cannot magically create content; it can only fit content and thus make it easier for the artist to visualize the content he or she is creating. Thus what we get is an album that sounds like classic Godflesh, but misses out on both voice and substance of classical Godflesh. Summary: Selfless II.

While that seems unusually cruel, even for a site known for its unrelenting musical cruelty, the greatest cruelty would lie in rubber-stamping this rather droning for fan consumption with the formula that most reviewers will endorse: “It’s hard like Streetcleaner, therefore it must be Streetcleaner II, not Selfless II.” This rubber-stamping displaces the funds that fans could spend on a better album and instead redirects them into what ultimately appears to be a dying franchise here, but also, lies to the artists about what they do well. They do not know, as is evident here. What made Streetcleaner great was a fully articulated style that did not slide into Pantera-style angry-bro rhythm music nor wandered into fixie-and-Pabst self-commiserating shoegaze. It took the best from all of its influences, including death metal, and made from it a voice unique to Godflesh. They can do it again; A World Lit Only by Fire is not that album however.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3PqXB-u4j04

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Compilation of Death issue three ready for release

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Chilean old-school underground metal zine Compilation of Death prepares to release its third issue, a book-bound assorted of interviews, reviews and features on underground death metal and black metal music.

Under the ministrations of editor Gabriel Andres Gatica Kretschmer, Compilation of Death has steadily gained audience and notable writers like Daryl Kahan of Disma fame. Its first two editions now being completely sold out, the zine looks forward to a new audience with this professionally packaged and ornately laid out content.

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My Bloody Roots: From Sepultura to Soulfly and Beyond by Max Cavalera with Joel McIver

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With all of the unanswered questions behind Sepultura lurking in the minds of metal fans, it makes sense that Max Cavalera would launch a guided autobiography like My Bloody Roots: From Sepultura to Soulfly and Beyond. Together with metal writer Joel McIver, Cavalera pens a work that fits within the genre of rock ‘n’ roll confessional-biographies but underneath the surface, a careful hand edited this narrative into a smoothly-flowing storyline that hits the points of interest to Sepultura fans.

Since the fragmentation of Sepultura, fan rumors and lore have obscured the complex dynamic of interacting personalities that made up the Sepultura camp and led to the consequent splintering off of Soulfly and other related projects. McIver shows his prowess in debunking lore by tracing it back to its origins and exploring the context of the time, which tends to show the lore as anomalous, and then making suggestions as to what was more likely to have happened. Cavalera seems amenable to this process.

My Bloody Roots: From Sepultura to Soulfly and Beyond reads like McIver accompanied Cavalera for months asking him questions about the past and then stitched together the chaotic responses into a single line of thought. The result is both genial and informative, since with multiple choices for any data point, McIver picked the one that was most thoughtful. As a result the text tends to frequently read as a pleasant narrative that suddenly gets serious in tone and detailed when an important point arises but does not, like most rock bios, leave fundamental questions unanswered by glossing over them with a trivial acknowledgment or anecdote.

The result knits together many complex threads in a narrative that has been both shrouded in mystery and inundated in propaganda from multiple warring points of view during the later years of Cavalera’s career. McIver makes the text flow so that the whole book resembles a campfire conversation. He brings out the texture in Cavalera’s voice by allowing as much as possible of his original statements to persist but seems to have re-ordered them and edited them to make them more efficient and thus intense than your average rock interview.

I started using only four strings on my guitar right after Bestial Devastation. My B-string broke at a practice, and we had a roadie, Silvio, who ended up singing for a band called Mutilator. He said, ‘We have a bit of money left, so we can buy a new string or booze,’ and I was like, ‘Fuck the strings, I never use that one anyway, so let’s get drunk.’ He said, ‘Why don’t you take the top E-string off as well and make it four?’ and I was like, ‘Why not?’

I got used to it, and it became my trademark. I never learned to play lead guitar, and I still can’t, to this day.I could learn if I worked really hard on it, and if I just did a simple, slow solo, but I always wanted to be rhythm only. I wanted to take riff-making to a new level. (61)

From this approach comes a wealth of information about the early days of Sepultura, but it is best read in its full form without an attempt at summary here which would miss the richness of detail and character it reveals. Over half of the book focuses on the post-Sepultura years, which for those of us whose interest in this band died with Arise seems like it would be extraneous, but surprisingly was not. I started reading this like any other story and found Max Cavalera a compelling subject as presented by McIver, and was curious to see how the story fully developed. As the story of a musician trying to find his path, it was ultimately satisfying to see Cavalera achieve the commercial success he has desired for years.

While many metalheads shudder at the mention of Soulfly or Cavalera’s extensive projects after that time, My Bloody Roots: From Sepultura to Soulfly and Beyond correctly identifies the origin of this tendency in Chaos A.D. and also shows how this was the fulfillment of Cavalera’s original intent. For him, death metal was a transition toward what he liked, which was the simple roots rock and early punk in which a catchy riff and chorus made the song. Through careful storytelling, this fact emerges fully-documented by the backstory of Cavalera’s early life and musical inspirations, and changes what seems like a sinister sell-out to a quiet disagreement. Similarly, seeing the narrative leading up to the Cavalera brothers Igor and Max feuding in the post-Sepultura landscape explains many of the mysteries and lore that surround them to this day.

Although rock biography is not known for its depth and is generally assumed to be more of a public relations exercise than historical fact-based mission, My Bloody Roots: From Sepultura to Soulfly and Beyond does its best to balance the two and let Max tell the stories as he sees them, while uncovering a factual framework that puts his words in context. Thanks to some inspired interviewing and editing, it is now easy to delve into the fascinating history of the Sepultura experience and how it shaped metal.

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Death metal playlist for Ebola ravaging the world

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As the Ebola virus continues to ravage Africa and spreads into America and Europe, it may be time to get over our squeamishness and explore the wealth of death metal that can be played as we all get headaches, have flu-like symptoms, and finally pass out in pools of blood expelled from our various orifices.

With the help of our readers, we’ve assembled an all-star death metal, grindcore and black metal playlist for Ebola fanatics:

  1. Baphomet – “Infection of Death” (The Dead Shall Inherit)
  2. Carcass – “Vomited Anal Tract” (Reek of Putrefaction)
  3. Pestilence – “Chronic Infection” (Consuming Impulse)
  4. Autopsy – “Ridden With Disease” (Severed Survival)
  5. Blood – “Ebola” (Gas Flames Bones)
  6. Banished – “Diseased Chaos” (Deliver Me Unto Pain)
  7. Suffocation – “Mass Obliteration” (Effigy of the Forgotten)
  8. Morbid Angel – “Angel of Disease” (Abominations of Desolation)
  9. Beherit – “Suck My Blood” (Engram)
  10. Immolation – “Fall in Disease” (Dawn of Possession)
  11. Repulsion – “Pestilent Decay” (Horrified)
  12. Dead Infection – “Start Human Slaughter” (Surgical Disembowelment)
  13. Blasphemy – “Weltering In Blood” (Fallen Angel of Doom)
  14. Mortuary – “Sickish Disease” (Blackened Images)
  15. Obituary – “Infected” (Cause of Death)
  16. Von – “Satanic Blood” (Satanic Blood)

And to kick it off, a rip of Blood’s on-topic 1998 hit, “Ebola”:

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