Sadistic Metal Reviews: Flavor of the Week Metal Pt 2: Death Metal

Last month we ran the first  of a two part series on flavor of the week metal subgenres, focusing soley on black metal. The plan was to release a second edition a week later, but the Tulio Baars DDOS attacks prevented that from happening. That is, until now…
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At the Gates – To Drink from the Night Itself (2018)

Music is a language, and utilizes formulas to communicate emotions to an audience.  This is the most basic understanding of the idea of music as a tool, but the mastery of the manipulation of human perception through the mathematics of musical language can only be effective if an artist has something substantial to say, and uses the medium of music as the vehicle to communicate that idea, rather than approaching this communication as if the method of expression is the message itself.  This is the disconnect we see as musicians “mature” and develop their craft as their passions slowly extinguish, and it is not surprising that the best releases using metal as a communicative tool are often released in a band’s initial releases, when they knew the least of how the musical language works.  This ignorance allows an immediacy that overwrought cynicism betrays, and it is here that the heart of metal thrives.  The education gained from elaborating on the language of music can enforce the initial artistic message when the understanding of human perception is developed, or it can suffocate the communicative process should the composer fixate on how the listener will react to the information presented.  The efforts of post-reunion At the Gates are mired in the latter type of composition, and To Drink from the Night Itself is the band’s most grievous offense.

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/smr/ Sadistic Metal Reviews: Flavor of the Week Metal Pt 1: Black Metal

The ability to spot flavor of the week(/weak) trends in metal is a key element of elitism and will save you a load of embarrassment further down the road.  Both death metal and black metal have seen their share of torrid but temporary trends in the form of herd pleasing bastardizations that quickly spike in popularity and then evaporate from relevancy as their fans move on to something even worse (usually after a period of denial and/or clinging to a safe intermediary genre).  Crowdism is for losers but it’s heavily pushed in the metal scene and thus one must stay sharp to avoid it’s pitfalls.

Therefore in the interest of providing you, the reader,  with the knowledge of how to identify and properly dismantle future flavor of the week trends as they appear, this two part series SMR series will focus on a trend, a selected album from that defines it’s failings, and the worst offenders for each of these forgettable movements.  This week, we will focus on black metal’s most embarrassing waves of herd-fandom and sadistically dissect their unfortunate rise and much needed fall.

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With New Song, Dimmu Borgir Officially Becomes Nightwish

In an unexpected turn of events, Mortal-Kombat-tier Norwegian opera-metallers Dimmu Borgir have gone full on symphonic power metal in their new song.  Embracing the trending female fronted power/quest metal sound that has replaced metalcore as the newest wave of a strange phenomenon known as “girlfriend metal” (the metal your girlfriend puts on while she’s cleaning the house), Dimmu have essentially robbed the sound of Nightwish, Epica, and Within Temptation while yet retaining the Hollywood-orc vocals of Shagrath.  While moments resembling early Blind Guardian are in fact an improvement over a preceding album that was almost completely devoid of guitars, this is by no means quality power metal nor is it the hybrid of older Dimmu styles that the band has been mouthing off about the past few months.

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GIBSON IS DOOMED!

Gibson Guitars are on the verge of bankruptcy per an article in the Nashville Times.  The famed company is currently in a shitload of debt and its bondholders are panicking as their CFOs are abandoning ship. Despite bringing in a billion dollars last year, the prospects of Gibson are uncertain which begs the question: What future do high-end guitar brands have in a world that’s gravitating towards electronic music? And more importantly- is the death of electric guitar closer than we think, like many are claiming?

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Trendkillers #2: Blast Beats Must Die!

The blast beat has had a very unlikely journey through its relatively young lifespan in music.  Rooted in a jazz technique of an alternating bass drum/hi-hat and snare 16th note pattern (though played at much slower tempo in jazz music), it found a unique identity in the early 1980s when underground hardcore punk bands like Siege and Asocial began using it at aggressive speeds to enhance their violent bursts of rebellion.  This made it a close friend of metal when the middle of the decade saw a fledgling death metal movement getting its hands dirty with hardcore punk speed and sound in an effort to push its own extremity.  Over the next 15 years, several drummers would rise to prominence with their clever use of the blast beat to either push these combinations to extreme speeds or to utilize them enduringly for an effect similar to trance music.  Suddenly, every metal band that wanted to play fast or play simplistically HAD to play blast beats, and we eventually reached a point where blast beats were the most dominant part of every death and black metal song’s drum composition.

For the future of death and black metal to establish themselves distinctively, they must abandon what has become routine and keep only what is necessary to preserve their underlying spirit.  And with this understanding comes an unfortunate truth- the beloved blast beat must be laid to rest, so that new life in metal can grow.
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Metal Vocals are Obstructive.  Remove them.

There are many well cultured intellectuals who, when presented with metal music, will immediately be tuned out by the vocals.  This results in much of the metal collective being comprised of hold-my-beer normies and most of the world’s high IQ population never grasping a music genre that has both the depth and the complexity they yearn for.  Moreover, vocals in metal have not progressed AT ALL since the 1990s and therefore vocalists have been rendered indistinguishable from one another.  Through this understanding comes the ultimate revelation:  metal vocals, more than any other factor, are hindering the next great wave of metal. 

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Celebrating The Spirit Of Heavy Metal

The path of heavy metal is a solitary one. Most people do not like the idea of it, hate the sound of it, and look down on those who like it. It is not simplistic and mindlessly obsessive like rock, nor fancy and high-falutin’ like jazz. It seems deliberately antisocial, disruptive, violent and dark.

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“C” Is For Average

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Metal was born of the fusion of heavy rock, horror music, progressive rock and the nascent proto-punk movement. The history of rock is the history of rebellion and rule-breaking: from Friedrich Liszt making his strings break live at key moments on purpose, to Jerry Lee Lewis lighting the piano on fire, to the Beatles with their hairstyles and jackets which were radical for the time, to the Doors being suggestive on the Ed Sullivan show, through Hendrix burning his guitar, to Kiss being super-sexual and painting their faces, to Black Sabbath who sang about Satan and magic, to Metallica who combined neoclassical with thrash and had a hard-partying image, to Slayer’s seemingly outright Satanism. Metal is about taking things one step further, breaking the rules and being unique. Not about following them.

Good music aims for a grade of “A” by experimenting and breaking the rules, but in doing so, takes the chance that it will get an “F.” Think of good music as Icarus: he flies toward the Heavens (or in the case of metal: towards hell) aware he is taking a big chance. He may well crash and burn to the ground in pursuit of his musical ideals. It’s a risk Icarus is willing to take.

Today we have way, way too many bands following all the rules of their genre, and not enough acts pressing ahead. When I look at my local scene it is clear that the bands who have stayed together a long while, while following the rules of their genre, are the bands who have been most successful. Most of these bands have decent music and are listenable. But its not stuff I want to listen to more than once, or see live more than once. This is the curse of local bands: competent, good at following trends, but not so good that they break out and become emblematic of those trends.

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David Rosales’ Expectations for 2016

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Article (obviously) by David Rosales

Five years have elapsed since 2010, a year that seemed to mark a slight renewal in creative forces, a kind of premonition of a metal renaissance that came after 15 years of horrid decadence following the decease of black metal as a movement. By 2013 this force was still incipient but already showed potential for future development as acts with more refined views about composition grounded themselves in tradition, promising to build monuments to a past glory for future times. Musicians from the metal underground’s classical era also formed the bulk of this rebirth, either through perfection or purification of their own take on the art.

The last two years have seen a manner of steady output that is weakened in quantity of quality releases, little manifest presence to speak of, with a few exceptions. The same can be said of the years between 2010 and 2013. This seems to be in accordance with a 3-year pendulum swing as the small cycle of metal. The long one probably signaling stronger points of birth and decay – probably decades: 1970-birth, 1980-underground, 1990-golden era, 2000-dark ages, 2010-renaissance.

It was a different time, and when Slayer, Metallica and Iron Maiden were doing their thing at the beginning of the 1980s, metal was also at a mainstream high with many poopoo acts dominating the scene. When mainstream metal drowns in its filth at the end of the decade and the 90s leave them with unmetal metal like Pantera or Soundgarden is when the underground rears its head in greater numbers.This coincides a little with what is happening now, as nu-funderground and mainstream whoring like female-fronted so-called metal flourishes in numbers just as the shock rock and glam metal (hard rock) plague in the time of Slayer.

To make matters more complicated, we have the internet, along with other means of communication and technology that allow for pockets of both good and bad music to survive with less regard to overall trends. Metal is not yet at another apocalyptic end of an era like the one that saw the explosion of death metal, we may have to wait another decade for that, but there is rise not dissimilar to the rise of underground NWOBHM and soon after speed metal. The next ebbing of the tide is at hand, but not yet its climax. What changes is not the fact that there is or there isn’t more mainstream crap, but how much excellent underground music there is. The year 1990 was a very special time marker that signaled the advent of a climax low for the mainstream and climax high for the underground.

Now, that we posit the existence of such critical years does not mean that no excellent albums occur outside of them, but that there is a sort of genre-wide, or community-wide, perhaps, pulse that pushes general tendencies. Now, according to this idea, the next “big year” in the small cycle would be 2016. Below we give an overview of these so-called big years and some band releases we are looking forward to this year.

What are your expectations in metal releases in 2016?


A quick reference to distinguished metal works in the ‘pulse’ years. Not especially comprehensive.

 

1971:

  • Black Sabbath – Master of Reality

1974: (Not really metal, Black Sabbath is WAY ahead)

  • Deep Purple – Stormbringer
  • Rush – Rush
  • King Crimson – Red (Editor’s note: Probably closer in spirit to future metal than others)

1977:

  • Judas Priest – Sin After Sin
  • Motörhead – Motörhead

1980:

  • Iron Maiden – Iron Maiden
  • Black Sabbath – Heaven and Hell
  • Angel Witch – Angel Witch
  • Cirith Ungol – Cirith Ungol

1983:

  • Metallica – Kill ‘Em All
  • Slayer – Show No Mercy
  • Iron Maiden – Piece of Mind
  • Mercyful Fate – Melissa
  • Manilla Road – Crystal Logic
  • Manowar – Into Glory Ride

1986:

  • Slayer – Reign in Blood
  • Metallica – Master of Puppets
  • Kreator – Pleasure to Kill
  • Morbid Angel – Abominations of Desolation
  • Sepultura – Morbid Visions
  • Fates Warning – Awaken the Guardian
  • Candlemass – Epicus Doomicus Metallicus

1989:

  • Sepultura – Beneath the Remains
  • Morbid Angel – Altars of Madness
  • Bolt Thrower – Realm of Chaos
  • Voivod – Nothingface
  • Helstar – Nosferatu
  • Powermad – Absolute Power
  • Rigor Mortis – Freaks
  • Pestilence – Consuming Impulse

1992:

  • Burzum – Burzum
  • At the Gates – The Red in the Sky is Ours
  • Demigod – Slumber of Sullen Eyes
  • Morpheus Descends – Ritual of Infinity
  • Therion – Beyond Sanctorum
  • Sinister – Cross the Styx
  • Amorphis – The Karelian Isthmus
  • Deicide – Legion
  • Incantation – Onward to Golgotha
  • Atrocity – Longing for Death
  • Autopsy – Mental Funeral
  • Cadaver – …In Pains
  • Asphyx – Last One on Earth
  • Cenotaph – The Gloomy Reflections of Our Hidden Sorrows
  • Darkthrone – A Blaze in the Northern Sky
  • Emperor – Wrath of the Tyrant
  • Graveland – In the Glare of Burning Churches
  • Immortal – Diabolical Full Moon Mysticism
  • Sacramentum – Finis Malorum

1995:

  • Skepticism – Stormcrowfleet
  • Suffocation – Pierced from Within
  • Vader – De Profundis
  • Gorgoroth – The Antichrist
  • Graveland – Thousand Swords
  • Summoning – Minas Morgul
  • Deicide – Once Upon the Cross
  • Sacramentum – Far Away from the Sun
  • Immortal – Battles in the North
  • Abigor – Nachthymmen (From the Twilight Kingdom)
  • Funeral – Tragedies
  • Dissection – Storm of the Light’s Bane
  • Iced Earth – Burnt Offerings

1998:

  • Gorguts – Obscura
  • Vader – Black to the Blind
  • Incantation – Diabolical Conquest
  • Dawn – Slaughtersun
  • Sorcier des Glaces – Snowland
  • Angelcorpse – Exterminate
  • Blind Guardian – Nightfall in Middle-Earth
  • Symphony X – Twilight of the Gods
  • Rhapsody – Symphony of Enchanted Lands
  • Suffocation – Despise the Sun
  • Absurd – Asgardsrei
  • Soulburn – Feeding on Angels
  • Arghoslent – Galloping Through the Battle Ruins
  • Master – Faith is in Season
  • Skepticism – Lead and Aether

2001:

  • Gorguts – From Wisdom to Hate
  • Absu – Tara
  • Martyr – Extracting the Core
  • Lost Horizon – Awakening the World
  • Deeds of Flesh – Mark of the Legion
  • Averse Sefira – Battle’s Clarion
  • Graveland – Raise Your Sword!
  • Krieg – The Black Plague

2004:

  • Avzhia – The Key of Throne
  • Quo Vadis – Defiant Imagination

2007:

  • Blotted Science – The Machinations of Dementia

2010:

  • Avzhia – In My Domains
  • Krieg – The Isolationist
  • Burzum – Belus
  • Divine Eve – Vengeful and Obstinate
  • Atlantean Kodex – The Golden Bough
  • Graveland – Cold Winter Blades
  • Profanatica – Disgusting Blasphemies Against God
  • Autopsy – The Tomb Within
  • Overkill – Iron Bound
  • Decrepitaph – Beyond the Cursed Tombs

2013:

  • Black Sabbath – 13
  • Condor – Nadia
  • Graveland – Thunderbolts of the Gods
  • Satan – Life Sentence
  • Argus – Beyond the Martyrs
  • Autopsy – Headless Ritual
  • Profanatica – Thy Kingdom Cum
  • Imprecation – Satanae Tenebris Infinita

2016:

  • Condor?
  • Sammath?
  • Zealotry?
  • Deströyer 666? (Editor’s note: I have my doubts about this one’s possible… transcendence)
  • Vektor?
  • Voivod?
  • Summoning?
  • Graveland?
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