SMR – Dispelling the Magic of the Pretenders

O Mars! God of War! Infernal battles and bestial devastation have ensued on this week’s Sadistik Metal Reviews! Unholy wars between the true and the pretenders, the golden race and the plastic one. Which shall prevail?

(more…)

12 Comments

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

Uada – Cult of A Dying Sun

Hipster Black metal arrived at the stage where copying from Indie and Post Rock bands was no longer going to work and to distinguish themselves from the rest of the crowd, Uada had to resort to stealing Batushka’s hooded look and the music from the funderground favorite Storm of the Light’s Bane while in arranged in the droning style of Mgla and the like. All of this is sprinkled with every hipster trope possible and the new publicity stunt of “being supposed Nazis” which is a smart way of bringing in Hipster metal to the anti-SJW crowds while playing music that caters to their tastes. The band being formed in Portland which is known as being the hipster mecca should already cast doubts for those who haven’t experienced the pain of listening to such a record.

(more…)

13 Comments

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

End of Year Reflections on Metal


The end of the year for some people is a time where they participate in debauchery and related idiocy as they are convinced that the arbitrary beginning of a calendar year absolves them of past mistakes and gives them the possibility to renew themselves without the burden of accepting reality. Those who don’t hide behind such comforting fallacies accept that this is a day like no other and that no actual changes will occur except for remembering to write 19 instead of 18 when it comes to paperwork. Metal has continued its sad and hilarious explosion to the top of the mainstream while pushing out less and less meaningful art. Rather than go ever end of the year lists as they are just useless and contain mostly salvaged junk with the occasional pearl. Here at DMU we shall analyse new compositional tools we would like to see implemented and which ones should be discarded.

(more…)

8 Comments

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

Analysis of Dissection’s “A Land Forlorn”

Dissection was one of the last bands to be associated with violence and action in metal. Jon Nodveidt, a true Hessian who rejected the modern world,  committed various acts that most will consider morally reprehensible yet they embodied his personal philosophy and the ideology of his music.  Barring the third album, Dissection display a penchant for ambitious composition within a framework of heavy/death and black metal.  The second outing reached too far and ended up sounding almost confused from the virtuosity of the musicians and the wide number of techniques at their disposal without the vision to streamline all these ideas. The Somberlain is a lot more focused in its inspirations by sticking closer to the source material and more structured arrangements.

A Land Forlorn impressively bridges multiple approaches to metal.

(more…)

4 Comments

Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Roman Salutes Are Too Evil For Watain

At the end of last year, we predicted that overt satanic lyrics and themes in metal would see their last days. There is no band that will accelerate this quicker than goofball circus act Watain, who market themselves as the evilest band in the world by LARPing as an American biker gang and staying in character through all media interactions. By doing so, they can act like they’re more “trve” than Dimmu Borgir and Dark Funeral despite being even more campy than both in their music and aesthetics.

But in the most cowardly of moves, the band kicked out the only credible member- former Dissection guitarist Set Teitan- because a picture of him doing a Nazi salute surfaced on the internet.  Though the band hides behind the lame excuse that “he left so we wouldn’t have to talk about politics,” it’s clear that the move was desperation on the part of Watain as they struggle to preserve their cash grab machine.  But regardless of whether lefties decide to shutdown Watain’s freak show carnival tour, the band will never survive this incident as the few supporters they had will likely realize that Watain are as timid as they come.

Make no mistake, I’m not at all defending what Set Teitan did, as all Hitler/Nazi LARPing is a corny stunt pulled by fat redneck rejects so they can feel extreme from their mom’s shed.  Instead, I’m celebrating as the Watain scam will finally lose all traction and the band will soon be homeless and broken in the streets.  Though they thought themselves to be instruments of the devil, they ultimately did a better job serving God by destroying the satanic metal scene from within.

(more…)

38 Comments

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

Somber Lands: The Harmonic Minor Scale

Dark, brooding, and long cloaked in obscurity, the harmonic minor scale is a compelling collective of notes that has historically been used as an accent to minor key compositions.  For centuries only a handful of pieces had been written within its bounds as composers instead opted to weave in for a number of measures before an eventual progression into the natural minor scale.  From there it appeared again in a few folk songs, took a strong spiritual presence in Islamic culture, and later became an integral part of horror movies when they progressed into the frightening mediums they became in the 1970s.  But it wasn’t until the musicians of the early Swedish death metal scene discovered how to fully harness the scale’s potential that lengthy songs and even the majority of some albums began being composed within its bounds.  A truly grotesque wedlock, the scale gave he who wielded it the power to craft the most sinister and foreboding compositions possible within the laws of music.  It is for this reason one could attest that the minor harmonic scale has found a home in heavy metal that no other genre of music could provide.
(more…)

19 Comments

Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Saltiness Over Sadistic Metal Reviews of Sentimental Albums

Old Disgruntled Bastard, one of the few quality metal blogs around, accused Death Metal Underground of writing clickbait on Facebook for our recent Sadistic Metal Reviews of older albums our staff had noticed to be inferior to the best of the past:

To Death Metal Underground: Certain albums have endured – for musical and extra-musical reasons – across decades and among generations of metalheads of diverse backgrounds, and the least they warrant is treatment with the respect they’ve earned. There is no revelation to be made and there is no current of general perception to be reversed by “raping sacred favorites”. Clickbait is distinctly unelitist and pissing in the wind for the fuck of it isn’t terribly smart either.

(more…)

118 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