Once again the streams of ancient songcraft from the kantele of Finnish past extended their freezing grasp across the ages to bring death-skalds from around the world to gather in a morbid mass of heavy sound at Dante’s Highlight, Helsinki, on the wake of the massively successful event one year ago headlined by the supreme warmongers Blasphemy and Revenge. As if gripped by demiurgish megalomania the organizers deemed that two days of black/death hybrids and Blasphemy clones are not enough, this time the event spanned three nights of violence, bloodshed and alcohol while the weak were trampled upon the mossy floor of the woodlands.
Unbending intent
The gates of Dante’s church opened wide for the worshipers to enter in the middle of the busy workweek of the middle class, but true to the ethos of Death Metal, it didn’t stop the venue from being filled to the brim with headbangers ’til the late AM hours. The attendance of underground gigs in Finland, especially near the capital area, has steadily grown from the meager cult of the 90′s and this contributes to the possibility of gig organizers to summon up massive events the likes of which are unknown probably everywhere else but Germany and USA. By all criteria, three nights of underground death metal mostly in a similar sub-style is an overdose but we couldn’t help but step up to the challenge. Even though the day already had included work, exercise and painting, I dragged my sorry ass up to the venue to get brutalized by the sounds of the foreign bands who deemed to come across the seas to herald the apocalyptic messages of old school Death Metal once again.
Vorum and Neutron Hammer from Finland are decent bands, but I didn’t care enough to try fitting their ritual into the schedule since plenty of chances to observe them await the locals. While traveling through the nocturnal cityspace, which always seems to bring forward a more grey, industrial, overcast threat when Metal is imminent, I inadvertently also lost the chance to see UK’s Craven Idol, reputedly a doomy, crisp and unpretentious massacre. I did get to see Diocletian‘s more old school incarnation Witchrist though, who spent about an hour conjuring a tempo-flipping contrast between Doom and Grind much like the forte of Finnish cult classic Rippikoulu, except lacking for one thing: intricate melody. Without it, the maiming down tuned web of chords seemed like a mockery of the modern war metal ethos with its Black Witchery spawned “street credible” ghetto hoodie “evilness”; lacking a dimension where essential things are said. Tough without purpose, the heartless spawn of urban netherworlds.
The wait for the main band of the evening, for this reviewer the main band of the entire festival, was torturously long since the Californians Sadistic Intent had but just arrived on their star-crossed flight and carefully proceeded with their soundcheck, as if carefully honing their weapons for the one and only decisive battle. At this point the atmosphere at the venue was expectant but relaxed, much less strung than the hysterical chaos that gripped even the most balanced partygoer in the insanity of 2009. When the sadists got their shit together, there was no evading the invincible force of Death Metal roaring from the stage. Sadistic Intent, who never released a full-length album in their career, had nevertheless realized the essence of Death Metal better than all those blackened bands of the 2000′s who were too caught up in “necro” manifestations of ghastly pallor; this band breathed energy, blasted away as if it was the world’s final hour. One of the central pillars of Sadistic Intent’s dark symphony was the sharply dynamic percussion work of Emilio Marquez, though we must not forget the clarity and precision of Rick Cortez’ and Ernesto Bueno’s dueling guitars. Through this band, the young audience glimpsed a mighty vision of the history of 80′s underground metal, with all its sensible and senseless implications – to me, it meant much more than the routine Morbid Angel gig in this land two years ago. -Devamitra
This sound is no Nirvana
When arriving at Dante’s, I couldn’t help but feeling this visitation was to only a regular festival in the Finnish capital, for so strongly the walls of the old church emitted still the atmosphere of madness from the Blasphemy live ritual a year ago. 
That being said, it was time to commence the forthcoming aural hammerings. I didn’t see the beginning act, Stench of Decay, due to overlap in my tactical schedule. Them being a domestic act, I presume many more chances of seeing them in the future. Maveth didn’t ring any bells before the festival, and being the quick replacement for perhaps my most anticipated act personally, Cauldron Black Ram, I felt somewhat disappointed and in the end, Maveth doesn’t ring any even now after the whole event! Next up was Grave Miasma, who delivered their material as well as they could, I believe. Their precise playing and overall presence pretty much reflected the visions I have had from their “Exalted Emanation” EP. Even the sounds of the venue, in some odd way, seemed to back up their aural pathworking in the catacombs of darkness.
The muddy sound seemed to haunt all the bands during the three nights and not everyone profited from its nature. Mainly the rhythm and tempo of the bands seemed to dictate the clarity and catchiness of the acts, if one was without better acquaintance of the material being performed. This facet of reality added a huge positive impact into Hooded Menace‘s first live appearance, for their slower, blind-dead-worshiping, doomy metal profited from the overall muddiness of the sound, and structure-wise, concerning the night’s band line-up, their gig acted as a very functional breathing space between the other, more faster majority of bands, while Karnarium played their Swedish death metal of which I had only a few short experiences beforehand. The wickedness of live situations is that even though some bands do sound quite all right from their recordings, the reality of the gig can be just the opposite. All elements are right, but for some reason, the whole thing just doesn’t deliver. Unfortunately this was the case with Karnarium.
Although I expected things from Excoriate, their act suffered from the shitty sound at Dante’s and the whole gig just entirely passed me by, while my comrades praised their straight-forward deathrash brutality and merciless un-pretentious playing. Maybe I get to witness them again at some point in time and space. Also meeting an incognito man of mystery, who bribed me with a 7″ EP of best Finnish death metal and oversees the 
Finnish underground scene and the happenings from the shadows of the European Union committee, might have added an element of disturbance into following the deeds of the Germaniac necromancers. Nirvana 2002‘s classical Swedish death metal sound echoed throughout the church as the last act of Friday. I was a little suspicious about them being just another band riding the reunion wave. After the gig I really couldn’t tell if it was so. Maybe to some it served as a good soundtrack to beer-drinking, to some it might have refreshed the memories of the early scene of Sweden, and the band seemed to enjoy playing – might have been a reaction to the audience’s reaction. I guess that those not into the Swedish sound didn’t really get much out of Nirvana 2002, although they were supposed to be the very headlining act of the evening. -SS Law
Towards the mist-enshrouded Infinity
For those who have not inhaled anything like the cold, northern atmospheres of Finland, it’s possible that they have never really taken a breath at all and filled their lungs with so much ancient mystery and natural purity. That these primordial dimensions of the Finnish experience could give rise to such canonical works of the Metal underground as are unquestionably from this realm, in all their brutal and grotesque yet contemplative and spiritual totality, is a unique and unsurprising fact. To be in the company of two proud Finns, journeying through eerie woods of twisted fractal forms, landscapes that crumble before the sea to be swallowed by sinister mists, and sites of the unknown dead, buried by millenia and rocks is nothing short of an education in the origins of Finnish Death Metal. An education that would close with the ultimate but unofficial final statement of this 3-day long Black Mass Ritual, taught by true professors of unholy metaphysics.
The doors of Dante were already wide open and broadcasting the buzz of hordes and other indeterminable bestial sounds from deep within, as one more apocalyptic night of darkness and chaos was underway. The bloodstained figures of Cruciamentum were the first band to be witnessed onstage as their set was nearing it’s end. The familiar polish and precision to their otherwise rumbling riffs, like a more rhythmical Grave Miasma, would be a sign that the sound of the venue would be favourable to this kind of band who played according to a careful dynamic framework, only to leave the blasting War Metal legions that comprised the middle-era of the evening struggling to convey their manifestos with enough clarity to lead any would-be army into battle. Blasphemophager from Italy followed with a set that would epitomise all the technical difficulties of the festival, with a lengthy period of being at odds with the sound before finally commencing their angry and drunken attack; a musical mess but nevertheless potent in the way the band creates a time-travelling vortex of sound, caught between the war worship of Blasphemy and the tropical heat of 80′s Death/Thrash from Brazil. Though not as peturbed by the failings of technology, Diocletian‘s sound would receive no favours from the set-up, with the indistinct noise of raging guitars falling short a much needed quality in this type of band, to justify their existence apart from the countless others who cast global nuclear omens. If there was any positive element of these New Zealanders’ performance, it lies exclusively with the hands and feet of their drummer, an expert in militaristic precision and the cascade of bombed city ruins and rubble.
With civilisation’s demise at least envisioned in some form, the time of more abyssic and introspective prognostications had arrived in the form of the legendary Death Metal band from Loimaa, Demigod, to once again reveal the eternal fate of all mankind. With all but a session guitarist returning as the force that channelled the transcendental ‘Slumber of Sullen Eyes’ album – one of the undisputed masterpieces of the genre – this was something of a special moment for anybody who recognises the importance of Finnish Death Metal and as the introductory keyboard motif of ‘Apocryphal’ finally sounded, this was the signal that the atmosphere of the venue was metamorphosising into a Dead Can Dance state of mystical curiosity. The band’s near perfect, though slightly re-ordered rendition of the album was a masterclass in riffcraft and energy as only the most elite Finns know how to deliver, demonstrating control over the requirements of their complex sound. Most notoriously is their penchant for disharmony which gives the songs their expansive and cosmic sense of beauty, as the blasphemy and discord of tearing down layers of ignorance and the control of human terror only serves to reveal the awakened visions of reality. Closing the set with the ‘Slumber of Sullen Eyes’ song itself, echoing those final words behind the mists of eternity, Demigod had completed a mesmerising and what should have been a headlining performance and dispelled all memories of the last couple of albums associated with this band.
Having shown all the young guys how to do it, even with an aging roster of musicians, Demigod entrusted the stage to one of the few worthy inheritors of true Death Metal spirit that remains in this current age. Greece’s Dead Congregation provided a highly competent and tightly delivered set that surprised the fuck out of the entranced onlookers. The sound was well-balanced enough to facilitate both the most crushing riffs and otherworldly ambiences, showing the strength of melodic composition as spectral leads passed through songs like an occultic storm of neutrinos. 
Dead Congregation demonstrated how they excel where other bands in this style fall straight into insignificance, putting many acts on this bill in their places. However, holding the supreme position on this night, as the night grew old and entered the early hours of a new day, Necros Christos had the daunting task of not just following two excellent bands, one being exceptional, but also risked lulling the entire audience into a deep sleep. Perhaps it could be said that they did just that, but with confidence and morbid intent, grasping the reins of the creeping, collective subconscious and transporting the entire venue to distant lands and times where the revelations of Hebrew gods are oppresed by the rule of tyrannical death-worshippers. Even Dante’s mists turned into a deep sandstorm as the cyberchrist-like figure of Mors Dalor Ra addressed the bloody, brainwashed crowds and launched into the sardonic dirges of the ‘Triune Impurity Rites‘, while introducing the promising and lengthy compositions from the upcoming ‘Doom of the Occult’. This veteran act concluded the night’s ritual with a sense of overwhelming evil power, regality and clarity, leaving the hordes to disassemble in a daze of hypnosis. A fitting end to the festival, and definitely justifying Necros Christos’ headlining status. Only the blackness of the morning unlight remained, to disappear into the mists where, in the words of Amorphis, “men can realise the meaning of life”. -ObscuraHessian
“For our God is a consuming fire” – Hebrews 12:29
Although North America and Scandinavia are primarily regarded as the two great bastions of extreme metal, Germany herself has birthed not a few great extreme metal acts including Blood, Ungod, Nox Intempesta, and Atrocity. Continuing this tradition and formed in 1991, Fleshcrawl have been releasing quality albums for nearly 20 years, illustrating their profound understanding of the art of death metal by releasing evocative records that effectively string together various motifs, developed primarily through the fluid use of power chords, in order to create an expressive language that eschews novelty in favour of lucidity.
Enter one of 1996′s great releases, “Bloodsoul”, an album that stands out as a recklessly orthodox and violent album at a time when extreme metal was descending into either maudlin and effeminate Black Metal or streamlined and diluted Death Metal. The album opens with two light cymbal touches, effectively evoking the ominous impression that something is looming, a state or reality that with the first crash of the album can no longer be ignored. The momentum built by such an inspiring introduction never wanes and each battle cry on “Bloodsoul”, augmented by an apt approximation of the infamous “Sunlight Studio Production”, is characterized by a youthful vigor and an atmosphere of power and aggression that remains one of the fundamental hallmarks of a great Death Metal record. Employing familiar lyrical themes, Fleshcrawl also utilize an ambiguously familiar sense of melody that far from simply emotive becomes the function of a larger and more profound vision of life, adding a level of depth and texture to the musical experience. With that said, “Bloodsoul” is a superlative example of cyclical composition as each phrase ends, and “paradoxically” begins, on a cadence that acts as the primordial embers from whence a new impetus for struggle, power and self overcoming is born – the spectacle of life begins anew. The second half of each track generally recapitulates exactly the first half, leading one to contemplate whether Fleshcrawl had simply run out of the creative vision necessary to create a full song, however given the already microcosmic structure of each track it would seem likely that these seasoned death metal veterans applied the same logic to their macrocosmic structure in order to present a wholly unified attack. The application of such logic leads to an ever interesting study in the cyclical nature of time and reminds this listener of the Nietzschean concept of the eternal recurrence. Refreshingly, there is no fatalism on this record, but rather a heroic, inspiring and clear sighted vision of reality, a willingness to struggle anew and give meaning to life.
Furthermore, each instrument while played with surgically tactful precision remains refreshingly restrained – working in complimentary synchronicity, executing and augmenting the vision of each song at appropriate junctures to create an all encompassing experience where listeners can contemplate, among other things, the final inevitability of our existence and any concomitant realization. There is little in the way of “flash” on this album but there does exists a depth and “heaviness” in so far as Fleshcrawl are able take concepts that have hitherto remained esoteric, perhaps slightly metaphysical and taboo and explore them – using a language that for the undiscerning may seem rather cryptic.
See – Open your Eyes – Take a look back
Find truth in the past.
Your mind, gliding through time
reminds you of signs, once seen, but defied.
Trapped, by paranoid dreams
World inside the skull, whatever that means
Lies, Built Upon rules, reject and refuse
Deny and Abuse
The paradox of life, preserve and destroy
Heal the scars of the past
Disappear into the Void
In the forgotten backwoods, abandoned cellars and dimly lit city alleys of this devastated remnant of social collapse prowl psychotic minds that rule their victims with fear and torture and traumatic pain shall be their legacy on earth. Serial killers have left their bloody trail on our culture because of their mechanical insistency of treating people as objects, as useless organic spawn of a world that offers little appeasement for neurotic, frustrated impulse or desire. As if to prospect a visceral counterpart to the psychoanalytical surgery of many previous albums of the week, such as “Changes” and “Hallucinations” (both appropriately originating from Central Europe), this ritual of Blood alongside the recent Autopsy review lunge into gore and swarming maggots, while entrails burst and bodyparts are severed by brutal bludgeoning weapons.
Readers of our zine archives have noticed the tremendous impact of Napalm Death and Carcass pioneered social but spirited grindcore upon the entire scene, as well as how quickly the failure to invent surprising music within the boundaries of the style evaporated the desire of bands and audiences alike to keep to the principles of grind as something sacred. While countless German demo bands were cranking out noisy, self-indulgent and hectic odes to fun and horror movies, Blood’s economical but poetic hallucinations spanned the philosophical (“Linear Logical Intelligence”), the mythological (“Kadath”) and twisted black humor (“Sodomize the Weak”), building into an entire self-consistent worldview on par with the anguished, outwardly more serious output of contemporaries Morgoth and Atrocity.
The tuneless, stumbling, roaring moments recall Canada barbarians Blasphemy and early Voivod, while the drawn out, precise clarity glimpsed like sun behind the clouds when the band regroups and reformulates its attack through moments of slow, traditional metal riffs are akin to Finnish death metal moments (hardly surprising as this band was widely heard in early 90′s Finland despite being almost forgotten nowadays). The truncated track lengths (3 minutes maximum) reveal an ascetic, rigorously disciplined plan to build albums from sheer musical force of expressionism, cut into bits as in a Burroughsian tapestry of absurd and horrifying moments trapped inside the madness of civilization and natural lifecycles. Nothing could be farther from the haphazard, elongated drone rock-outs that characterize trendy metal of the new millennium, so it is perfect time to taste the Blood.
Filed under: Death Metal Album of the Week — Tags: Death Metal, German Death Metal, Gore, Grindcore, Society — Devamitra @ May 26, 2010 23:03 — Comments (3)
Golem – Eternity: The Weeping Horizons
This album has developed a small following over the years but from the ridiculous cover artwork to the irrelevant intro and outro from ‘Le Sacre Du Printemps‘, it’s difficult to understand why. The actual music is no greater indicator, although there are flashes of potential in the songwriting, which echoes more of the Hungarian composer Bela Bartok than it does Stravinsky. From pulsing but uniform rhythmic basis emerges melodies of varying complexities like Ceremony’s ‘Tyranny From Above‘, although it’s being punched out by the same AI that must have been responsible for the computerised approximation of Death Metal called ‘Dreams of the Carrion Kind‘ by Disincarnate. As with James Murphy‘s band, Golem have a generic sense of logic behind each riff progression, where the contextual dynamics of mood and tempo totally nullify the sense that there’s any idea behind the compositions, at least any worth listening out for. Add to this sterile formulation some really uninspiring rhythmic filler and you have a largely disappointing album.
Profanity – Slaughtering Thoughts
If you’re one of those deranged masochists who listens to Death Metal for the audial desecration of the senses that it can inflict, no matter how much you end up panicking to turn down the volume before your brain finally explodes, then Profanity might be one of the more tastefully executed methods of phrenocide. ‘Slaughtering Thoughts’ follows from the structuralism and down-tuned aesthetic of Morpheus Descends ‘Ritual of Infinity‘, but add to this the intensity of percussion and spiralling riff-work of Sinister and you have an album that steps out of the adipocere of decomposition and into the chaos of a sonic vortex. Like trapping a tornado inside a test-tube, this album captures the tumult of the mind in a world of illusions, based on the fragmentary nature of perception, creating a whirlpool of thoughts that veil the impersonal reality beyond. Sporadic outbursts of unexplainable lead guitars heighten the mental frustration, but with a kind of resolute beauty in trying to break free, creating patterns that would resemble the cracked and bleeding glass of its experimental, symbolic container, before being swept up in the almost ambient madness. All this brutality and not much groove nor a single breakdown in sight, this is the right music to attack your brain with and tear down all its worthless, mortal thoughts.
Filed under: Death Metal Music Reviews — Tags: Brutal Death Metal, Death Metal, German Death Metal, Modernism — ObscuraHessian @ April 8, 2010 13:52 — Comments (0)
Somnium timoris
Desiderum praeteritum
Maestitia praesentiae
Last week’s look at Cadaver’s mighty ‘…In Pains‘ album indicated an acute, tumultuous response to the human condition that was endured by a small number of tormented, Death Metal-playing souls during the early nineties. This largely-contained epidemic of mental afflictions very sharply scarred the minds of German band Atrocity, with their debut album, ‘Hallucinations‘ manifesting as an unrelenting commentary on the habitual ravages of the modern mind, exploring in particular one of it’s greatest banes: addiction. The music was technically inspiring, considered highly progressive in its day, and the subject matter was dark and disturbing in it’s pseudo-biographical recollections of fragility and fallibility. ‘Todessehnsucht’, the follow-up album would take both music and concept further, to create an all-encompassing opus of death and crucially, it did so on very Germanic terms. Far from being just another set of sociological observations, this work is painted on a much broader canvas, using the brushstrokes of a culturally-inspired aesthetic to illustrate something more spiritually aware.
Self-produced in Germany, far from the FLDM treatment given to ‘Hallucinations’ by Scott Burns at Morrisound Studios, Atrocity clearly had in mind to juxtapose the great past of their Fatherland with its failings under the weight of modernity. The liner notes in the booklet first prepares the listener for this journey, quoting the great pessimystic and philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer‘s statement implying that the world is suffering, a view which he found to parallel Buddhistic teachings related to dukkha. A view which would enter into the music of Atrocity. Even the album’s title, translated to mean ‘Longing For Death’ (and released in America by this name) is evocative of Schopenhauer’s ascetic ideal, subduing the Will to live and halting the underlying motions that guide consciousness towards suffering. A variation of this idea develops throughout the album, from the basis that the modern world is plagued by all manner of self-absorbed and destructive vices due to a loss of spirituality (following the death of God in Nietzschean thought), but rather than withdrawing from this plane of despair to a state of solipsistic peace, Atrocity condemns and confronts it, to clear aside all the illusions that define the last age of man, ushering in a new era free from human ignorance and worldly attachment. The root of all ‘evil’ according to this worldview is not to be found in external structures like government or economy (although they serve only the mass delusion), but man’s capacity for avijja, to disconnect from reality and pursue the gratification of the ego. Hence, the rendition of Richard Wagner‘s funeral march for Siegfried from ‘Götterdämmerung‘ is not out of place on the introduction to ‘Sky Turned Red’ (as if it could be out of place on any Death Metal album!) as an epitaph to the pre-modern world, and that’s not the only influence the master of the Gesamtkunstwerk exerts on ‘Todessensucht’.
The music on this masterpiece of Death Metal seems to follow the progression of ideas in German musical thinking from the venerable Wagner to modern schools of Classical, engineering grand, articulate riffs of Wagnerian chromaticism to be compressed and transformed with mechanistic force and precision into twisted shapes of dissonance and hyper-extended fragments, referencing Arnold Schoenberg‘s emancipation of music from harmony. The guitars shred away at warped melodies and complex rhythmic patterns, technically similar to Florida bands like Cynic and Death but musically more reminiscent of Modernism, going further to evoke the nightmarish sounds of Dane Rudhyar or Bernard Herrmann, than Cadaver and possibly even Gorguts managed. This idea is explored as well by the sickening lead work of Röderer who embellishes the album with defining solos to the level that James Murphy achieved on Obituary’s ‘Cause of Death‘. Riffs often outrun standard timings and the drumming is well arranged to account for the added demands of energy or restraint. The bass is quite prominent and deviates very little from the main themes, emphasising the narrative context of the guitar riffs as they superimpose the restless dynamics. Alex Krull’s vocals are memorable, retaining only as much human tone in the guttural outbursts as an old man uttering his final words.
Before Atrocity lost interest in Death Metal, they were in the top tier of the genre and left behind a real classic that fell into relative obscurity due to the lack of re-releases issued by Roadrunner. This is an album that unveiled the futile attachment to mortality and found liberation in its demise.
Filed under: Death Metal Album of the Week — Tags: Classical, Death Metal, German Death Metal, Progressive Death Metal, Religion — ObscuraHessian @ March 1, 2010 17:42 — Comments (6)