DEATHMETAL.ORG: THE ULTIMATE DEATH METAL RESOURCE

Unearthing secrets of power and steel

The noble Deathmetal.Org staff has made the first conquests of desolate frontier lands in the year of our Lord 2011 and the time is right to celebrate it with something special. Across the mighty sea from the dark infested lands of Death Metal and Black Metal there is a realm where knights and dragons fight for prizes of gold and valour, the dimension of metaphysical memories, enchanted rings of power and ghosts prowling in recesses of Romanticism. Power Metal’s mainstream manifestation is rightfully regarded with scorn since there hardly exists a clique with so much repetition and so little content, but no headbanger or Hessian in his right mind can deny the vital impulse and crushing might of the originators who wielded the untamed lightning of the neo-classical solo and the barbarian riff. Also do not forget that Helloween and Running Wild forged unholy alliance with Hellhammer in Noise Records’ 1984 compilation which was unforgettably titled “Death Metal” while beyond the ocean bands like Cirith Ungol and Omen were interchangeable with Slayer and Possessed in Metal Blade’s unholy “Metal Massacre” bloodfeasts. Hail and kill for the forthcoming year, we present you Xavier’s epic journey through Mytho-Medieval warfare and Neo-Germanic heroism.

Of Power Metal and Other Tales by Xavier

Death Metal Album of the Week: Adramelech – Pure Blood Doom

How likely is it for a town of less than 20,000 inhabitants to deliver powerhouses of Death Metal simultaneously in Demigod and Adramelech, only Beelzebuth knows, probability about equal to an asteroid hit upon New York. While Demigod’s fractured melody and driving aggression recalled Swedish Sunlight productions but with the distinct morbid woodland funeral edge of Finnish forgotten death cults anno 1991, Adramelech was sub-technical, incisive, almost dryly surgical in a foreboding riff nightmare of chugging and delving passages akin to an excavator attacking the entrance of a pharaonic burial chamber. The debut “Psychostasia” was already nearly worthy of Demilich, setting the tone for the Rantanen brothers’ mythological and grotesque existential vision which eschewed the more concrete material of gore, suffering and serial killers in favor of archaic symbolism and ancient magical rites, at moments treating its sources uncannily similar to Nile‘s famous egyptological sagas. And like war history in Bolt Thrower‘s repertoire, devaluing and haphazard glorification is scorned as the nearly computerized and emotionally mummified roboto-riff mimics the pattern language of bestial nature, witnessing both the conflicts of gods and men as compulsory synthetic events of opposite principles necessary to fuel an abstract path through the aeons, throughout the universe, man aiming towards the vastness of space yet only descending into the depths of his subconscious mortality.

The frightening, deadset rigidity of “Pure Blood Doom” recalls the relentless, suffocating instruction of ancient Egyptian priests in passage through the demonic gates of the Afterlife, where only the perfect incantation and the straightest line will suffice to evade the Second Death. While simplifying Death Metal is hardly in the agenda of these musicians par excellence, it’s hard to find a more logically functional composition than their “Lord of the Red Land”, which grooves as effortlessly as anything from Carcass’ “Necroticism” dragging its wicked hooks in the skin of the leprous repentant, and alongside “Evercursed” and “The Book of the Black Earth” forms probably the most evil triple-punch of Finnish Death Metal history. Dreamy solos and rather relaxed drumming by Jarkko Rantanen alike to a much more chill Steve Asheim form a perfectly understated counterpart to the ambitious and cool melody lines and the hoarse, powerful but non-drama voice of Ali Leiniö. The fate of such brutal artistry is to be forgotten into the mists of time for the masses wish their metals to conform into aesthetics utilitarian for the current mode of “entertaining slavery” practice.

Three faces of Satan seen over Texas – Sermons of obliquity and madness

Black Funeral – Vukolak

Keeping it true to its Luciferian chameleon nature, this ancient Texan conceptual black metal band has toiled its share in obscurity, being denigrated in the eyes of music-minded people while being praised by unhallowed souls who seek an ever more frightening vision of darkness inside this elusive style prone to normalization. The heavy shades of musical history, conservationist mindset and appraisal of beauty that characterize Texan metal such as Absu is hardly in line with the distorted, belligerent and insensitive provocations of Houston’s Black Funeral. Key moments from the sadistic noise of “Vukolak” are hardly recognizable as black metal, instead taking the most psychotic element of the lo-fi ethos to unparalleled heights, directed only by the quest to unveil another mythical night creature (the Eastern European merciless forest beast vukolak), one of the mutations in a long series of albums dedicated to beings from the nether, shut out from the conscious mind of man but existing in dreams and irrational impulses. As a practical magician, Nachtoter is fully aware of the potency of a wedding between symbolic sound and a haunting tale that has tortured the minds of a people of a hundred generations. While doing this, he is sure to alienate a good ninety percent of even black metal devotees, unless the constantly maiming and shifting abstraction he calls composition at this point is attractive to attention seekers; at surface it would seem only murderers and madmen dare listen to his insane conjuration, despite moments of traditional medieval beauty in the well-placed interludes “Sanctum Wamphyri” and “Wolfskin Essence”. Mr. Ford remains a master, not so much in musical skill (which sometimes seems to deteriorate over time) or literate esotericism (where he is convoluted and counterintuitive), but of bringing alive an ancient dark myth framed in subtle psychic terror.

Hod – Serpent

Remembering the true-as-fuck black metal violence of Thornspawn demo from more than one decade ago, likewise the pulsating anti-music corruption of satirical Rehtaf Ruo, it was with some excitement that I picked up this promo from San Antonio’s supergroup, expecting a manifestation of the infamous “Sacrifice of the Nazarene Child” fest before my eyes in the form of fire-breathing succubi and inverted cross timpani encased in malevolent crystalline forcefields, but instead I got this slab of adequate, grooving, hate-filled black metal somewhere between the rhythmic energy of Averse Sefira and the easy solutions used by Satyricon to nauseating effects. The emphasis is on constructing the song out of simple, fiery riffs which are memetic enough to adapt themselves alike to a blastbeat or a churning Hellhammer pound, but the deceit comes across in the fact that the album in its whole chooses to explore neither direction, but grinds along at mostly mid-pace, like someone trying to look tough while walking in front of a church and shouting “are you talking to me?” at God. Likeable elements are a plenty, such as the moments when a hardcore influenced three chord riff bursts into an atonal pattern underpinned by an expert rhythm on drums while the cleverly restrained hoarse voice arrangement emphasizes tension instead of drama, making it easier to concentrate on the fragile atmosphere resurgent in the Christ-opposing ideas at play. Hod’s metal seems quite honest in purpose and recognizably Texan, mostly being cursed by Blood Storm’s and Divine Eve’s better takes on similar influence and subject matter. But the content that is simultaneously grounded and packaged, like the automated output of the Swedish scene, unfortunately makes “Serpent” sparsely appear in memory or in record player.

Blaspherian – Allegiance to the Will of Damnation

Heavy and pounding constantly almost like an old Manowar song has been transposed to the symbols of a Texan death metal notebook, the abilities of Wes Weaver in conjuring an evil sabbath of languid subversive black metal bliss are proven a second time; the first was, of course, Imprecation’s semi-classic “Theurgia Goetia Summa” one and a half decades ago. Absolutely unwavering, panzer-like in insistence, Blaspherian weaves slow melodies and processional passages of chords together mimicking funeral organ alternately on rhythmic chugs over slow double bass and tremolo runs giving slight nods to both Necrovore and Goatlord, always keeping to some ideal of profane serene moonlit beauty in the symmetry and progressive elegance with which this basically simple music unfolds, notable being for example the surprising tempi and energetic tension of “Curse His Name”. What is to be applauded is that Blaspherian takes absolutely no filler into this tight mini-album where it would have been easy to recombine for endless tedium. If a more critical angle is required, it’s possible to say that melodic possibilities and thematic spheres aren’t quite yet expanded on this debuting work; the epic aerial elegance of keyboards in “Theurgia Goetia Summa” for example has no counterpart on “Allegiance to the Will of Damnation”, which on the other hand benefits from the ascesis of the sound, conjuring to mind images of barren mountaintops where witches gather to dance under the stars, amidst shrubberies, and pay heed to the commands of Lord Baphomet who guides the anti-social in the harmonic ways of nature forgotten by a society occupied with trading trivial goods and vain honours. In such a situation it is obviously better to live in shame and obscurity. By this logic Blaspherian remains elité, even if they are and remain unnoticed by the majority of those who profess listening to death metal or black metal, for the benefit of cowards.

Death Metal Album of the Week: Order from Chaos – Stillbirth Machine

What do you obtain when you combine the violence of “War and Pain”, the temperament of “Blood Fire Death” and the malicious groove of “Symphonies of Sickness”? Well, amongst unexpected atomic reactions with statistical possibilities including the destruction of all cosmos, you will meet this deservedly cult Kansas City band whose heatwaves are still crashing against metalheads’ record players in the form of not only Helmkamp’s Revenge and Keller/Miller’s Ares Kingdom, but practically everyone who plays war metal or simply impudent, militant black thrash. The debut album “Stillbirth Machine” is an eternal favorite from this solid discography. It’s one of those albums that relentlessly crush for their entire playing time, grinding riffs convolving into spectral dimensions underneath the precise drum/vocals interplay. While sounding extremely old school despite the aggressive means borrowed from the blackgrind generation of Blasphemy and Beherit, Order from Chaos merges the Faustian essence of vectorized attack into pathless realms (best exemplified by the vocal chorus manipulation akin to a belligerent neo-fascist Kraftwerk and the absolutely crazy leads that sound like a neutrino storm at CERN shooting off) with a modern streetwise speed metal sensibility of using common phrases that elsewhere would be utilized for beer-thrash, but here the elité ambience is extricated much in the manner of Bathory classics to lead the brain onwards to serious contemplation of triumph, death and destiny.

We stand on a constant threshold of
A quantum hierarchy, universal and pure