/smr/ Sadistic Metal Reviews: Post Black Eulogy (Part 1)

[Join DMU editor Brock Dorsey on the first of a two part massacre of the soy metal sub genre that has bastaradized black metal beyond the belief!  Also, this image is an actual cover from an actual post black metal album- you can’t make this stuff up!]

Post black metal was an embarrassing sub genre of soy metal.  Built upon a foundation of either screamo, pop punk, metalcore, math rock, shoegaze, or avant-garde and fused with the most minimal touches of black metal, post black metal was a flavor of the week(/weak) trend that lasted from around 2009 to 2014.  The genre name is misleading, however, as most bands only claimed to be metal and incorporated only slight touches of metal characteristics before abandoning them completely in future releases.  As indicated by its core standard bearers being dropped by labels, performing terribly in sales and Facebook likes, and being forgotten by fans, post black metal has finally passed away.  As we lay it to rest with one final cremation in the SMR fashion, let us learn from its failings as the future looks to more traditional forms of heavy metal  to restore a once proud genre.

First, we must understand metal history to understand how such an abomination could happen, as Post-black metal followed a number of flavor of the week black metal trends and bands.  The first of these, symphonic black metal, sent many fans of the original (true) black metal genre into a frenzy with their incorporation of gothic influences.  What was to come would be much worse, however, as the soy metal bands marketed as black metal would prove to be far more embarrassing than the Victorian campiness of Cradle of Filth or the industrial meddling of …And Oceans.  The next flavor of the week black metal trend was cleverly concealed in a cloak of static, but the hipsterisms of “depressive black metal” would soon be known to the world.  Time was not kind to the legacy of Xasthur and Leviathan, both of whom are now widely panned against the metal community, as where the thousands of “bedroom black metal” clones who polluted Myspace.  With many short lived flavor of the week trends (such as “Norsecore” and “Cascadian black metal”) and bands (Kult ov Azazel, Inquisition) in between, the soy metal- black metal hybird that was post black metal was the next successful marketing scheme to deceive young and retarded metal fans alike.

Performed mostly by wealthy but useless trust fund kinds from liberal cities, post black metal was to metal as emo was to rock music: feminine, tame, and a complete and utter bastardazation.  Thus, post metal was eventually abandoned by its former fans, spat on by the metal community, dropped by metal/rock record labels, and remembered poorly by music lovers.  Much like how the rent some of its musicians was eventually cut off from their parent’s bank roll, post metal was eventually told to stop leaching off the metal community so that the genre may maintain a shred of dignity.

Brace yourselves for an infernal evisceration unlike aynthing you’ve ever seen before, because in this edition of SMR, we won’t just be sadistically reviewing albums…

 

 

we’ll be sadistically reviewing careers.

 

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Nortt- Endeligt (2017)

After a decade of nothingness and decay, Denmark’s Nortt re-emerges in the form of a third full length on pt. 2 of the Avantgarde Music canon (the rock n’ roll/new wave edition). Rising to prominence in the early days of the suicidal black metal wave but vanishing just as the Thy Lights and Nocturnal Depressions of those days brought the movement to self-parody black and white Myspace-metal, Nortt returns to a world that has mostly forgotten their existence. As fate has seen their fellow Total Holocaust Records peers of that time fall into the pits of post-rock (Hypothermia), drug addiction (Nachtmystium), or straight up oblivion (Blodulv), will Nortt’s funeral doom foundation lead to a more desirable outcome?
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Atmospheric Dendrophilia

Recently, I found a Youtube channel called “Atmospheric Black Metal Albums” devoted to what hipster urban lumberjacks have termed “atmospheric black metal”. We must call attention to the horrible Youtube, supposedly “black metal” sub-genre festering right under our noses for it is wholly different from the Eastern European flowing varietal.

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Solitvdo – Hierarkhes (2016)


Article by Lance Viggiano.

Solitvdo are yet another epic sounding sing-along, rootin’ tootin’, arm swingin’, marble-pilled good time with yer ole partner melancholy. Think Vikinglider Veldi with riffs about a quarter of the length, half the inspiration and none of the thoughtful placement. Riffing on Hierarkhes is mostly inspired by nu-Rotting Christ but with triumphant melodies echoing swords and sandals epics, song structures are mostly sing-along vocal driven black ‘n’ roll about the Romans, culminating in solos by someone just learning to play whose guitar god is not Jupiter Optimus Maximus but Slash from Guns ‘n’ Roses.

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Conqueror – War Cult Supremacy (1999)

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Conqueror wanted to be a part of the “scene” but did not have musical ideas. The band discovered that the muddied sound of early Beherit and Blasphemy circa Fallen Angel of Doom could be used to obfuscate their dearth of ideas. Furthermore the hostility between the Norwegian scene and the rest of black metal could be amplified under false pretenses while not offering any truly satisfying alternative themselves. Basically, point to candy assed pop drivel like Dark Funeral but go to the other end of the spectrum entirely with a paper thin wall of television white noise with a drunken chipmunk howling nonsense. Conqueror’s “music” is structured which ironically stands contra to the concept of all out war. A little anarchy would at the very least allow the essence of battle to bubble up from the pot. Instead it’s a tame morass of very low effort grindcore riffs and mostly incomprehensible low E-string noodling. The best that can be said about Conqueror is that J. Reed has an identifiable sound.

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Lech – Lech

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Emerging from former careers in metal bands, Lech describes itself as “doom music,” with the metal absent. More accurately, this is organic ambient noise soundscaping — think Lull, Final and Suuri Shamaani — composed of found, distorted and manipulated sound.

Tracks begin with a single loop of sound and additional layers ride on top of this, many full organic in that they are like older K.K. Null works a sound “bent” to hit different notes but inexactly so that a melodic influence is felt. Usually the first layer creates a surge of noise that asserts a type of rhythm, heavily distorted so that it feels like a distant sound on a fall night, and other sounds are more distinct but still altered to make their source remain unknown. The result creates musical ambiguity that hides the work with tone going on behind the scenes, in sprawling interactions that like those in Tangerine Dream or Neptune Towers set a mood and gradually mutate it behind cover of organic noise.

The eight tracks that make up Lech both resemble each other and remain highly distinct, covering similar ground in an attempt to create a world more than have “songs” which separate themselves by isolating events. Instead, they aim for a kind of continuity where each track is like discovering a new area in a graveyard shrouded in darkness. This is doom music, indeed, but more of the existential darkness and mortal dread variety than the angsty stoned hippies singing about dragons type. While it does not have the instrumentation or format of metal, it follows the metal tendency to be through-composed and use prismatic order where similar patterns recur in different contexts, creating a sense of parallax shift as points of reference are altered and familiar actions appear in a new light. The result is more interesting than the pure drone of Lull and more like what Final wanted to be, but with less intent to be intense on the surface, preferring instead to create a pensive, tenuous darkness that embraces all that it contacts.

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In-depth analysis: Desecresy – Chasmic Transcendence

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The seed of Desecresy’s music contains a basal melodic notion or two, not without poignant appeal, which then comes to gradual bloom in an unhurried, self-assured manner. Songs on principle do not outstay their welcome but Desecresy’s approach towards writing revolves solely around realizing vehicles for this germ of an initial premise, in the process sublimating the interstitial stuff that goes into the making of a fully-fleshed, narrative piece.

Flirting rarely with outright aggression, Desecresy prove adept at developing the elegant, bittersweet melodies typical of Finnish death metal, using a mid-tempo style reminiscent of Bolt Thrower, Vore, and Ominous Crucifix for these hooks to sink in. The result is an album curiously devoid of visceral thrills but one that will serve perfectly well as amicable background accompaniment.

This is no slant against the band. Desecresy’s intentions are redoubtable but they could conceivably be making more resonant death metal if they gave away their Honour-Valor-Pride CDs and let their collective imaginations take flight. While the lack of variation in speed renders a sameness to much of Chasmic Transcendence, it is obvious that this is of the band’s volition. Desecresy choose to meander along this detourless path, confident in betting the house on the inherent quality of the melancholic nuggets they litter through the album; more than a few of these are thoughtfully crafted, and capable of launching songs on an altogether different trajectory in another band’s hands (see Creepmime or Deathevokation). Unfortunately, for Desecresy, the monotonous, simplistic nature of bridges linking these phrases — usually little more than a muted, open string or rambling, inconsequential power chords — makes these songs a game of waiting for the next cute part.

This, of course, is a caveat of this particular style of droning death metal; the few good bands trawling these waters are able to create a consistent mood on an expansive, album-wide scale. Desecresy can certainly not be accused of striking discordant notes in this respect; Chasmic Transcendence is a relatively seamless experience but that is a low bar to meet when the band’s sense of adventure clings so close to the ground.

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Extreme Noise Terror – A Holocaust in Your Head

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Avoiding the pitfalls of repetition that normally afflict later punk-derived albums, A Holocaust in Your Head is a fire spitting, unhinged, high speed high intensity crust album. That is, if you ignore the first and last tracks, which are a political statement not a song and an insult track to the band S.O.D., respectively.

Extreme Noise Terror rip thourgh hardcore punk and primordial death metal riffs with reckless abandon. Dual singers give some variety to the vocal patterns. Though the political rhetoric in the lyrics can be tiring on some tracks, the music speaks for itself, portraying something quite like the album title suggests: a droning of madness with explosive texture within suggesting a writhing, disturbed and out of control chain reaction just under the surface.

Admittedly none of the musicians here demonstrate great instrumental prowess, but the sheer force of the music and performance makes this entirely irrelevant. It’s as if these fellows channeled their entire frustrated essences into this album; most punk albums get boring half way through, but by sheer energy alone A Holocaust in Your Head remains intense throughout. For the most part this album uses simple song constructions, but interestingly enough there is deviation from verse-chorus-verse format in some songs, which is rare for punk music.

Bands following and contemporary to this group were heavily influenced by Extreme Noise Terror’s hyper speed crust, which became a primordial influence on the rising grindcore movement. Even years after that genre branching and the death of hardcore, A Holocaust in Your Head remains not just essential listening from a historical perspective, but a thoroughly enjoyable musical experience that reveals a world of insanity lurking all around us still.

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