DMU chat/forum on DISCORD

In response to repeated requests at the reactivation of the now-obsolete Death Metal Underground forum section, our staff has decided to open an official DMU Discord server for the unhindered sharing of opinions, articles, links, music and more. (more…)

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RIP Brock Dorsey 1985 – 2018

It is with a heavy heart that the DMU staff mourns the loss of one of their own.

Earlier today, we were alerted to the sad news that Brock Dorsey, our fearless leader and editor, has passed on.  Brock was killed in a horrific sky diving accident over the Hamptons during a luxurious vacation with several other venture capitalists.  (more…)

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Vacation’s Over

Ass-tier beta male hacker Tulio Baars ran out of money to keep knocking Death Metal Underground offline. Tulio, you feminine slab of loserdom, that’s all ya got? All that “special Google and NASA training” for a couple weeks of 404? Was it really worth destroying your career for that, as any future employer will google your name and see the related pictures? Did the Brazil trucker strikes knock your village’s power offline, did you get starved off by the lack of food? Will you be taking a helicopter ride once the Third Empire of Brazil is instated in the Chilean fashion?

Tulio, my man, I’m disappointed. I was really enjoying my vacation time, got some beach time in with my hot trad waifu, even got to try that new Mediterranean place down on 66th and 2nd. But now thanks to your technical shortcomings, it looks it’s back to work for me and the DMU staff.

Thanks to all our readers for your patience, with full assumptions that you had better shit to do than to keep entering deathmetal.org into your browsers every few hours. Also, thanks to everyone who visited us at our DMU in exile 8chan board at www.8ch.net/deathmetal/ and went ruthless with the shitposting. Perhaps we will keep it up, and make some rounds there. Barring any more whiny techfag meltdowns, DMU will be back to the usual sadism and destruction tomorrow with an immeasurably stronger resolve and more beta male smashing mayhem. Lefties, soy metallers, fake metal news outlets, and social justice warriors on suicide watch!!! Sodomize the weak!!!

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On The Direction Of This Site

I know that many of you have comments regarding the future of the DMU and what direction it should take, and I want you to rest assured that I do not care at all what you have to say unless you are one of the 5% of humanity that is capable of actually doing something, i.e. making a contribution here. The rest is just chatter by filthy little monkeys posturing at self-importance and trying to stay relevant because their lives are entirely irrelevant.

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Changing of the guard – a new editor for Death Metal Underground

old man yells at cloud

Changes in my schedule have dramatically cut into the amount of time I have to contribute to Death Metal Underground. While I might be able to put together the occasional article in the future, I will, after today, no longer be editing for this site. In my place is Daniel Maarat, who has contributed to this site for some time and, from a writing stance, specializes in providing us with Sadistic Metal Reviews (which are admittedly, like many things on DMU, a group effort). You should do everything in your power to make him feel welcome, including our time-honored suggestion of contributing to the site by sending articles, reviews, news, and whatnot to our email.

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A call to arms – How to get published on DMU

"How to be a feisty rock critic" - Matt Groening (1986)
One of our goals here at DMU is to be free of the incessant marketing and gossip that plagues all too many metal music/culture websites. This deprives us of a lot of potential content, and surprisingly, not posting the occasional throwaway video of a photogenic animal ‘enjoying’ metal (or at least moving to a rhythm almost, but not entirely unlike that of the music) costs us some traffic. With that in mind, every now and then one of our readers gives us a hand by contributing an article, a review, or even just a topic they want to see discussed. We’d like to see more of that.

A brief summary of what we are looking for:

  • Intelligent, in-depth articles about various metal related topics – theoretical analysis of the music, cultural analysis, academia, and so forth.
  • Reviews of albums both old and new. I focus on covering major new releases at this point, but there’s always room for everything else. This is to be distinguished from the publication of press releases, or the promotion of your avant-garde neo-traditionalist blackened bedroom death metal project with nearly 3/4ths of a view on their one Youtube video.
  • Did something worthy of our commentary in the land of metal pass unnoticed? This is your opportunity to fix a glaring omission.

If your submissions meet our quality and relevance standards, we will publish them; possibly suggesting some revisions in the process of getting them ready. Ideally, we will get more content and more reader interaction without sacrificing an iota of quality, but that lofty goal depends on you specifically rising up to the challenge. If this interests you, send your submissions to the same email address as always.

P.S: Our ‘lifestyle’ (read: drugs and alcohol) reviewers are looking for someone who can analyze whiskey. If you’re a connoisseur, or at least a gas chromatograph, this might be a good way to get started.

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We’re hiring!

command_and_control_center

DMU has grown over the past year from a retro-site keeping the old writings alive to a vital source for information on the new underground metal that hasn’t sold out or otherwise lowered quality.

At this point, it’s time to push to the next stage.

This would involve taking on the “big” sites that publish label press releases as news and write fawning reviews that praise musical gibberish as “innovation.” But to reach that level, DMU has to become a more general-purpose news source.

To that end, I’m reaching out to you, the audience. We need a new editor. This editor would do the following:

  • Post daily news stories on all relevant events.
  • Write reviews on new death metal and black metal releases.
  • Edit texts submitted by writers including myself.

This takes about four hours a day minimum and so it is a paid position. Qualifications are an ability to write and edit grammatically-sound and interesting text and to produce the volume of stories needed to bring in this new level of audience. Apply within.

I have somewhat served in this role, but with multiple writing obligations, I no longer can do so.

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Interview with Strider of Inner Society

inner_societyInner Society covers metal of the past and present both in China and the world. Strider, the editor and progenitor of this project, took a few moments to speak with us about his role in music and the strength of metal that powers the blog.

How did you become a fan of heavy metal music, and what made you decide to take the next step to being active in the community?

A net friend introduced me to Emperor, Dimmu Borgir, Burzum and other extreme metal bands during my first semester in college when I was just a mainstream alternative heavy music (like NIN and Tool) listener at the time. From then on I became a diehard metal fan.

I spent a lot of time surfing metal forums at the beginning of this process, debating about music and searching for anything I found interesting about metal. After listening to metal for about five years, and gaining skill at playing an instrument at the same time, I digested most of the big names in metal and became selective about what I heard. All those pop-song formulated and chord-based music are of little interest to me in the guidance of DLA and DMU.

At this point, I felt an urge to construct a community for all the people who like me have had enough of the dramatic modern music scene and instead want to study the heroic, narrative, anti-modernism nature of metal. Thus I created the blog.

China has been steadily increasing its numbers of metal bands. Do you think a distinct national sound is emerging? Or are there multiple national sounds (regional, like in the USA, or ethnic, like in Europe) appearing? Can you describe it, and mention how it pairs up with any belief systems that may have guided it?

Yes, bands like Zuriaake and its follower Deep Mountains had pioneered a sound that combines the Romantic side, more specifically the spirit in the Tang Dynasty poems and the landscape paintings of ancient China, with black metal.

Their usage of drumbeats are in the vein of court dances while the guitar sound resembles the overwhelming feelings of the misty Chinese mountain scenes. Together they provide a unique national metal sound that is very distinct from the average black metal bands.

But the problem is that these bands are at their core depressive or suicidal metal acts, which tosses decomposing chords and weepy riffs like an emo/screamo band would use into the songwriting mold of Burzum while lacking a valid direction. Basically they have nothing to say: they are aesthetically innovative but not transcendental.

Your blog, Inner Society, features an academic but practical look at the history of metal and its classic works. What are the advantages of this approach, in your view, relative to them more fan-based view that most sites take?

The fan-based metal sites are nightmares to me. They group all the people including the self-image-showcase hipsters into the same place in the name of metal. This lets everyone scream out their opinions no matter how foolish or worthless they are. Eventually this drowns the quality works in the sea of generic. That’s why I found DLA and DMU appealing at first place and ultimately created the counterpart in Chinese.

traditional_chinese_paintingDo you think metal music is in a slump? If so, how would it get out of this slump? What is it that makes the older metal stand out more, in the West at least, than the newer metal? Is there an idea, spirit or approach that works best?

Yes, metal music is dead at least on the surface of this planet. If it is to rise again the fans and the artists should learn to appreciate the consistency, integrity and artistic (as in classical music) approach that the older works endorse. Don’t lower standards if the music is not on par with the classic Burzum or Pestilence albums, because if we lower standards, metal will not be reborn; instead, we will get a wreck of clones and mainstream-absorbed rock star wannabes, and their popularity will drown out any quality metal that does birth itself.

What is it that makes the older metal stand out more, in the West at least, than the newer metal? Is there an idea, spirit or approach that works best?

There is an old saying in China: The times produce their heroes.

I think the same applies to the older metal bands. They had a broader space for development during the birth of underground metal. Based on the melody line oriented composition mode (the usage of movable power chords) and the barbaric image (anti-modernism) of the past metal genres, bands like Slayer, Sepultura, Possessed and Bathory simply took everything further. Ultimately, they pushed metal to a more extreme and more intricate height.

Whereas the newer bands are confronted with a highly commercialized metal scene, in which most of the people are looking for the metal version of rock music.Deep in their hearts, they know writing something as cryptic as the old classics would immediately cause them unpopular(at least it is so from the beginning). It feels like sail against the current.

In your view, is there something “ancient” about metal music that makes it so distinctive from every other pop genre? How would you characterize what you love about metal?

To me, the warlike guitar sound, orientation of melody lines and poetic structure of metal music are all inclined toward the ancient. Whereas other pop genres seems to be mostly about the celebration of modern world and modern lifestyles.

What I love about metal is that I think people can find the true beauty of our world through the abstract but reality-reflecting fantasy world that metal music creates in the absence of social pressure and the false values of our recent society. Metal culture is one of the few grounds nowadays that the hidden-reality-aware people can make use of to rebuild society from within, and that is definitely worth fighting for.

Visit Inner Society at www.innersociety.org.

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