Hail of Bullets Breaks Up

Funderground party death ‘n’ roll and deathcore band Hail of Bullets has broken up according to a post on their Funbook page. Hail of Bullets’ illness was no reason to exist as a musical entity beyond lining the pockets and fattening the livers of Dutch death metal scene veterans through CD releases and festival gigs. Martin van Drunen quit the train wreck a while ago probably as death metal fans grew sick of the band’s constant stream of lame releases. The war is over Hail of Bullets. You lost and were executed for your crimes against metal music such as III: The Rommel Chronicles.

(more…)

18 Comments

Tags: , , , ,

Memoriam Snore Through “Reduced to Zero”

Memoriam posted the first track and track list for their upcoming death ‘n’ roll album For the Fallen. Hear Karl Willets sound tired and rip off himself on “Reduced to Zero” over riffs that make Benediction‘s The Grand Leveller sound like a peak of death metal in comparison. I’m so excited! Let’s find out what this single sounds like!

(more…)

7 Comments

Tags: , , , , ,

Bölzer Preview Hipster Christmas Carol

john-stamos-beach-boys1

Black/death ‘n’ roll band Bolzer premiered a track that sounds like the pretentious hipster occult version of the Beach Boys from their upcoming debut LP, Hero.  Their prior EPs had a few creative riffs in boring, meandering , and more boring alt rock songs. Rather than increasing the amount of actually meaningful musical content or improving their songwriting skills, Bolzer have tailored themselves to target the hipsters consuming the idiot safe-space pseudo-metal promulgated by Profound Lore, Vice, and MetalSucks. Will the bearded, flannel cutoff short short wearers be grossly offended by the runes tattooed onto Bolzer’s beer bellies?

(more…)

21 Comments

Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

Dismember – Indecent and Obscene (1993)

Dismember Indecent And Obscene

Almost all metal bands eventually run out of ideas and revert to imitating their influences or repeating themselves. The former usually results in songs that are Frankenstein’s monster mashups of old ideas hoping to hop across the finish line without their sutures bursting leading to loss of limbs. The latter have no raison d’être beyond releasing the expected new record every eighteen months or so to put a product on the shelves that the label can push and the band can tour to support on a James Bond series type release schedule. Even a teenager saying “I want to kill everyone, drink beer, masturbate, and be as fucking metal as possible” shows more purpose than such aimlessness.

Indecent and Obscene was Dismember proving that in 1993 they had became at least as proficient musicians as their seventies and eighties idols. Dave Blomqvist took over the leader guitar duties from Nicke Andersson and added Mercyful Fate-like sweep-picked leads to the bluesy, Ritchie Blackmore-influenced solos. The songs continued in the vein of filthy Pieces EP with verse chorus verse bashers. The problem was they were slowed down, less distorted, and more lazily constructed: Beneath the Remains Sepultura minus a standard deviation or two in IQ. Every time Dismember play an interesting riff on this album, they allow it to wear out its welcome through repetition in brain-dead pop song structures. That is only when they have a good, counterpointed Carnage/Dismember riff. Most of the rhythm riffs are generic Autopsy riffs; riffs Autopsy stole from Celtic Frost, who stole it from Metallica, who stole it from some NWOBHM band who took it from AC/DC or The Stooges. These riffs were used just so Dismember could construct a basic d-beat song and sweep pick Guitar World readers’ faces off.

Matti Karki sounded just as rabid as ever but in every song sprouted off the title of the song in the chorus of the song as a vocal hook. This is the same as an awful Hollywood action film script containing dialogue saying the name of the movie in the movie, eg: “This is Con Air!” or “You Only Live Twice Mr. Bond!” Idiotic bridges kill off any tension too. “Why don’t you just kill yourself?” followed by breakdown of the main rhythm riff so all the hardcore kids for whom Suffocation was too heavy could slamdance before the air guitarable solo.

Dismember on Indecent and Obscene was Nuclear-Blasted into Cannibal Corpse before Nuclear Blast mandated all their bands sellout into death/black ‘n’ roll for the Bic-flicking festival crowd. While superior to most of the later work out of Sweden, Indecent and Obscene never approaches the transcendent Dark Recollections and Like an Ever Flowing Stream. The only praiseworthy aspects beyond the superficial icing are Fred Estby’s creative tom fills on songs such as “Sorrowfilled”. His underrated percussion is the only part building and resolving tension in these mediocre songs. That’s simply not enough to hold hessian attention. Decent material must still be composed and Dismember didn’t bother writing any worthy of repeated listening here.

 

14 Comments

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Amon Amarth releases first single from Jomsviking

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLh_CJ4G-0Q

Amon Amarth is basically ‘beginner’ metal, although sometimes it’s very hard for us at DMU to hold that against them. Their latest effort, Jomsviking, comes out on March 25th and is already available for preorder from Metal Blade Records. The provided promotional video for “First Kill” continues Amon Amarth’s legacy of basic rock music with death metal aesthetics, and the fact that the band has stuck to this approach for their entire career (although their first few albums were allegedly a bit more complex) is non-news at best. After this album’s release, Amon Amarth will be going on a lengthy tour of the US with Entombed A.D and Exmortus that will last most of April and May.

5 Comments

Tags: , , , , , ,

Classic reviews:
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z