What else does one do when grinding through an edit? Listen to DRI of course, the thrash band that back in 1982 kicked off a lot of what every other band since would be emulating. And not just bands, apparently, but video game soundtracks.
Listen to the first thirty seconds of this later DRI track (“Hooked” from Crossover):
And then the first track from the game:
Tags: doom, DRI, video game OST
I hear Bathory before I hear DRI in that level. There’s another level in that game that wants to be South Of Heaven
First riff is identical on the two tracks. Probably other stuff in there as well.
Funny I thought I heard some Ride the Lightning once on another old school FPS. Don’t ask me the name, I lit can’t remember, but it was something like Red Faction or some other sh1t from the 90s.
There is absolutely zero way that half of the programmers from the 1980s and 1990s were not smoking weed and listening to metal while coding.
I think the developers of Doom games were for sure metalheads. That’s a given. Not surprised to hear the similarities in riffs between DRI, and the Doom soundtrack.
John Romero (modern gayming wouldn’t exist without him) still has a full set of hair to this day. Native Americans don’t seem to bald like us inferior whiteys.
Bald men seem to have higher testosterone. Even guys like Trump who have thin hair are pure male rage. Amerinds on the other hand are busy trying to reconcile the Noble Savage myth with trailer parks full of drunk guys with mid-90s IQs.
That’s half-true, g3n3t1cz also play a role in how sensitive you are to DHT (the shit that wrecks the scalp in men independent of T-levels). Ozzy struck me as high T considering how much of a beating his body took, and success in life usually equates to high T. The fucker still has all his hair. White males just bald more than non-whites – look up the statistics.
Also can you guys stop talking about the same old bands over and over? I’ve been hearing it for over 20 years, enough already. There’s way better modern bands today, although you have to dig deep.
I’ve heard this line a lot for the last thirty years. Let me point the muzzle of discernment at you; it separates sociopaths from whole people.
It says: list these better contemporary bands.
Now, instead of you shifting the burden to us, the burden is shifted to you, and you will either (a) step up with a mind-blowing list or (b) deflect.
Let us move on to your first statement:
No, it’s 100% true; you just cherry-picked it. Here’s the original:
Nothing in that says that every higher testosterone man is bald (that’s your B->A error). I agree on Ozzy and how success in life correlates to high T (or at least high energy and discernment). Ozzy is like Lemmy sort of a miracle of UK genetics that he has even survived this long.
But DHT is not independent of testosterone levels, is it? DHT = testosterone + enzyme, so you can’t have baldness without testosterone. Apparently, castrated boys can never go bald.
Its truly remarkable what mutilating some body parts and HRT can do.
As a fucking realist, my thought is that whatever works out well, I support. However, the trans surgeries do not appear to be working out well, 40% of the transtrender group still kill themselves, and society is upended for what looks like a trend fueled by free government healthcare. There has to be a better way. There is also the Darwinian aspect, which is that people for whom gender becomes ambiguous generally represent high mute load and nature would make them prey animals. On the schoolyard, we call the weak kids fags and throw things at them, but this is evolutionary behavior because if we were all out on the veldt and a lion attacked, we would kick the fags in the knees and run off to let the lions feast on the least-valued members of the community. Dark but functional, where transsexualism is light but dysfunctional (and therefore, concealed darkness, a maskirovka of the mind).
But they sound so heavenly.
He could afford a hair transplant to go with his black nail polish if he wanted.
Brett! Breeett! What’s your IQ? I’ve been doing this online test a few times and I’m getting pretty good at it, at least 130 points by now. What’s your record?
Easy, just add 40 points to it.
I am a homosexual retard.
Brett, I noticed that In the Nightside Eclipse is listed under Death Metal in the best of section of the site. Is this an error, or one of your infamous heterodox genre takes?
In the Nightside Eclipse is obviously what you name your album when The Dark Side of the Moon is already taken, so who knows what genre it really is?
It should be listed under mallcore cuz all Emperor sucks (only half sarcasm, I honestly think that the album is overrated – though not nearly as much as the sophomore – compared to DMDS, Transilvanian Hunger and the first four Burzum).
However I do tend to agree with one of Brett – I assume it’s his – unorthodox classifications, being that Blizzard Beasts is more death metal. Also my favourite Immortal album tied with Pure Holocaust, possibly even higher.
Brett and I don’t agree on much, but Blizzard Beasts sure is one hell of an album that gets shat upon by fake metalheads (metal-archive tards), and the lone fact that it is here acknowledged as one of Immortal’s best is proof beyond doubt that DMU > all other metal sites by far and wide.
I can agree on Transylvanian Hunger and the first four Burzum albums, but In the Nightside Eclipse is at least on a par with DMDS and probably surpasses it with regards execution and conceptual originality. Mayhem is a bit like Carcass for me, the more time passes the more my assessment of their legacy declines. The work of Mayhem is surpassed by nearly all of the other cornerstone bands of the scene.
I understand the DM argument about Blizzard Beasts and also albums like Far Away From the Sun. We see further evidence of Brett going both ways with the classification of early Septic Flesh and Eucharist as black metal, again which I can see the case for. I believe Immortal toured with Morbid Angel on the back of Battles in the North, seems like this may have had a big impact on the direction they took on Blizzard Beasts. It’s a pity that Demonaz tremolo picked his arm into early retirement.
Have to agree to disagree I guess. For me, there is nothing that sounds like DMDS (and I’m saying this as a die-hard Burzum/Phantom fan). It is simply unique. You can find Darkthrone clones (to various degrees of success), Emperor clones (lol), Immortal clones, Dissection clones (basically 99% of Swedish BM and, hell, even some of their DM), bedroom Burzum clones obviously (all fail to even reach a fingernail’s worth of the original), but no one even *attempted* to replicate – let alone successfully replicate – De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas. The album just defines the perfect BM sound, in the same way Onward to Golgotha defines the perfect DM sound.
As for grindcore, I’m hesitant between Repulsion’s Horrified and Terrorizer’s World Downfall. Would probably go with the latter, but that’s for another debate :)
For grindcore, it becomes a toss-up between Napalm Death, Terrorizer, Carcass, Blood, and Repulsion, but it is impossible disregard Repulsion.
Whilst extreme metal was in it’s infancy, Repulsion managed to achieve what 99% of ‘War Metal’ bands have failed to achieved for decades since – the perfect blending of angular grindcore riffs with tremolo strummed power chord phrases. We get the violence of grindcore without the sonic edging and retardation of stop start riffs, utilised only as compositional crutch for the inferior artist (rare exceptions being the sophomore LPs from Carbonized and Brutal Truth). Repulsion then paired this with simple power chord based phrases, delivering the same hypnotic repetition eventually seen in the simplistic riffing of the more primitive black metal cohort.
Repulsion were able to use percussive riffs without break the flow of the song, so they did not end up in the choice between bounce and groove like Pantera and other nü-metal did. I agree they had some textural wizardry going that is harder to replicate on guitar than most people realize.
Do you agree that “Black Breath” is their best song ? Or would it be the title track “Horrified” ?
As for Terrorizer, the best IMO is “After World Obliteration”.
Funny how there are all these debates about which is the best album of X band, but rarely which is the best SONG of X album. I’ll start:
– DMDS: “Life Eternal” or the title track, the only song I hate is “Freezing Moon”.
– Burzum debut: hard to choose between “Feeble Screams” (I used to think it average, but it grew on me over time), “My Journey to the Stars” and “The Crying Orc”.
– Onward to Golgotha: “Devoured Death” – the shortest song I think, but also the most perfect in every way possible. Not a single millisecond of filler, which is somewhat of a rarity for death metal.
– In the Nightside Eclipse (even though I don’t really like the album): every says “Black Wizards” but I have to go with “Inno a Satana” or maybe “Towards the Pantheon”. Come to think of it, “Inno a Satana” might be the only Emperor song I like.
– North From Here: “Wings”
– The Red in the Sky: “Neverwhere” (y’all though I was going to say “Kingdom Gone”, huh?)
– Peste Noire’s Ballade Contre Les Ennemis de la France (I know you hate PN but…): the ‘title track’ – written in weird old French, so it doesn’t exactly match the title – is awesome, especially for the climatic outro.
– Phantom’s Ascension of Erebos, Leader of the Gods: either the title track or “The Second Child of Mêtis”
– Unquestionable Presence: “Retribution”
– Effigy of the Forgotten: You thought “Liege of Inveracity” right? It’s actually either the title track or “Seeds of Suffering”.
Just to test it out, am I normal? I know sometimes my views don’t match those of the metalhead community, or DMU’s even (although sometimes we are close enough). Interesting thought experiment.
You are normal.
The metalhead community? Does such a thing exist? Best to just stick with the smart ones.
DMUs view remains both fixed and somewhat pliable as old albums are revisited, although most of the time the old conclusions were right even if for not quite articulated reasons.
As far as best song… I have never really been able to listen to songs. For me it was always about putting on an album for weight work or a task I had to do. Consequently, I think in terms of albums. Horrified is one of those perfect albums for just about any occasion. Wedding, bar mitzvahs, quinceañeras, initiations, first culls.
How can you hate freezing moon
Real talk.
The worst is probably the self titled track.
What do you think of Darkthrone’s “Crossing the Triangle of Flames” (last track on UaFM)?
Honest opinion? Not the best, not the worst (of the album – in terms of Darkthrone in general it ranks up there in the best, obviously, since their later output could never match the first 4). Probably second or third fav of the album. My absolute fav from Funeral Moon is “Inn i de dype skogers favn”, which is not a surprise considering I like TH better than Funeral Moon ;) I also like the debut, but not A Blaze for some reason (apart from “In the Shadow of the Horns” which I love). Told you my taste(s) are weird.
Now rank the best Sewer songs :P
I was thinking since it’s basically Fenriz’s take on “Freezing Moon” (and “Enter Sandman” is Metallica’s), turning that motif into one of the most evil and sadistic riffs to come out of the genre, in my view. “Inn. . . .” is brilliant. Funny how Zephyrous would initiate a style we mostly associate with Fenriz, but the latter was undeniably enamored of that song.
Love me some DMDS, but I think Under a Funeral Moon was a better treatment of Mayhem material than Mayhem ever managed.
In my view, DMDS is like Onward to Golgotha one of those albums that was not composed by a group, but rather had a lengthy procession of notables come through and work on it, with some sort of natural selection process selecting for the best bits working together by the end.
Here here
Take Attila’s Outre` vocal performance away from that record and you have one of the most aped sounds in black metal. Sure, the imitators never equal the original, but the same is true of the In the Nightside Eclipse, which definitely holds up better to repeated listens.
Led Zeppelin again. The entire genre was based on relatively few releases:
* Immortal Diabolical Full Moon Mysticism
* Emperor/Enslaved split
* Gorgoroth Gorgoroth
* Mayhem De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas
* Beherit Drawing Down the Moon
* Blasphemy Gods of War
* Impaled Nazarene Ugra-Karma
* Burzum Burzum
* Darkthrone Under a Funeral Moon
* Graveland The Celtic Winter
* Behemoth …From the Pagan Vastlands
* Sacramentum Finis Malorum
And a few others, really, but these defined the sound. All of these were totally imitated and then combined and genericized into black metal today which is basically Motley Crue plus Venom vocals at Morbid Angel speed with verse-chorus song structures and a few random transitional noise pieces.
Agreed, but instead of the Emp/Enslaved split I would have put Vikingligr Veldi. The only good Enslaved album IMO. Then again, everyone has their own taste(s).
“die-hard Burzum/Phantom fan”
Like a die-hard Slayer/Slipknot fan?
Die-hard Varg Vikernes / Taylor Swift fan?
Die-hard sodomy/eugenics fan?
Always. Sodomy, eugenics, cannibalism, and Satanism are cornerstones of the new post-humanist age.
I hate Taylor Swift but I’d love Dua Lipa to remix a Burzum track with her moronic yet strangely captivating attempts at “dancing” while miming giving a fell*tio at the Superbowl halftime show then throwing roman salutes and talking shiet about the Serbs (I’m pro Serb btw it’s just that she’s albanian/kosovo as far as I can remember – don’t know/care if she has an opinion on the issue).
I mean, Kanye did it – minus the dancing thing obviously, that’s only a Dua Lipa/Euronymous thing – and that was even BEFORE he turned edgy. Hell maybe that’s how he became based. Step 1) remix a Burzum track, 2) read the stuff Varg writes on his site, 3) think “dayum diz norse vikin crakka speak more truff than dem Oprah watchin byatchz I bang plus he even kill a nigga while fifty he only do it in da expendables dawg”, 4) vote Trump and be attacked by 99% of the media, 5) read DMU and get into metal, 6) start arguing in the comments about how Onward to Golgotha is both better and more influential than Altars of Madness using a stupid and fake username like “Warkvlt is High IQ Music” to preserve anonymity, 7) fool everyone & profit $$$. The Kardashians’ as****** are great btw, thanks for asking – only a** is real ;)
The more perceptive minority people have realized that diversity is dysfunctional and are either embracing WASP rule like Trump or want full reparations-with-repatriation. I might be interested in a Dua Lipa remix of the first Scorn album.
Isn’t it about time to bury Trump under the porch and forget he ever existed.
No, I think he just absolutely won the debate about the future on all points and is going to be remembered as the best American president, if there is even a 2024 election which I find highly doubtful.
Just another car salesman that whispers whatever makes you feel good into anyones ear, but hey at least he ain’t no politician.
I enjoy DMDS but do not listen to it much; it is the Led Zeppelin of black metal, sort of a simplification of style with a musicality that makes it hard to disregard, but every retard band started out cloning it badly. ITNE is a triumph in its own right in that it made good on the promise of the early EPs and demos. When Blizzard Beasts came about, much of black metal was fleeing its own genre. They wanted to move on and melodic death metal seemed like an improvement since it added stylistic range to what had become the black metal trademark of droning minor key melancholic material.
I cannot imagine failing to see the wizardry in Blizzard Beasts. Anything through At The Heart of Winter is good Immortal, but that album was truly their farewell and tribute to the past, like the last couple Sacramentums.
I read that Immortal wrote Blizzard Beasts after touring with Morbid Angel. This album has some compositional similarities with Formulas (luckily not Domination).
On to more important issues however. Brett, do you find that length or girth is more important when selecting a partner?
Most likely an error; ITNE seems to be solidly black metal.
Hey Brett, E3M3 – Deep into the Code uses Behind the Crooked Cross and was titled after John Carmack’s autism to bring your observations full circle.
https://youtu.be/L5KVMnS9zgY?si=lglVQSrELcPpwdHM
See the description for details.
Unrelated but here’s some of the Slayer parts from River’s Edge
https://youtube.com/results?sp=mAEA&search_query=rivers+edge+slayer
Interesting how this music floated at the periphery of the mainstream, but was viewed with something like envy.
Interesting. I figured they might be borrowing widely for inspiration and then developing those themes in more videogame-friendly ways.
I freaking love doom
Pure Holocaust was metal’s biggest evolutionary leap, but it also has near-retarded lyrics. What the hell is an “unsilent” storm? As opposed to the usual silent storms?
Yet we always return to DFM rather than PH.
DFMM is the Bathory album and captures a noctural, pensive take on the bombast which makes it a favorite. Celtic Frost atmosphere, Bathory mechanics.
Through-composed music with melodies in the guitars and rejection of vocals was a big improvement on rock. Sometimes poetic lyrics overemphasize certain traits; I always liked the title of that song.
Brett, some fodder for you: https://youtu.be/b0mo17wLB4Q A video from a music theory youtube guy about what makes heavy metal heavy. No I’m not trying to give this guy some views by posting here.
I noticed that brutal death and slam bands like Lividity and Katalepsy took on a weirdly melodic approach after a while, I think the first band of this type to do that was Fleshrot (UK) in 2010. That said, Rellik’s album Heritage of Abomination seem to have done it first without ever playing a slam breakdown. Sure, Broken Torso may have done it first but they didn’t base their whole sound on melodic phrases. Perhaps None so Vile or even The Red in The Sky is Ours had something to do. Some of the 2000s were also quite singular: Dreamweaver by Golem, Colossal Titan Strife by Kronos. Weirdly, it could all be categorized as deathgrind but with a strange melodic edge reminiscent of Megadeth. A vestige of earlier black metal, perhaps? Maybe someone here is more caught up on this than I, it sounds to me like something that flies under the radar considering the sheer amount of releases that began to appear due to the internet. People point out certain trends within death metal such as blackened brutal tech slam, the whole blast beat w double bass thing, more recently the dissonance thing and the “progressive” sound. I have some understanding of what the sound I am talking about consists of, at least in the case Fleshrot’s Traumatic Reconfiguration. From what I was told by a musician friend of mine, Fleshrot used plenty of 6th intervals, dominant 7s, and in some passages there’s major triads “which add a certain pop” (said my buddy, not sure what he meant) to some of these songs. The person who told me this is not a metalhead at all so I figured he would be direct in his analysis of this music. The album does not seem to use major intervals like other brutal death bands who copied the riffing style of Cranial Impalement. However small and short lived this trend was, it did have its moments and while I’m not surprised it is not being covered elsewhere, I wonder if this concerns DMU at all.
Is this a troll? Or are you slow?
Not trying to fool anybody
A certain disunited group of deathgrind bands began to play a sound that sounds similar to Cryptopsy and perhaps some melodies similar to what At The Gates did in their debut album. I listed bands that initially played slam/deathcore like: Fleshrot, Katalepsy, Lividity and grind bands like Rellik, specifically their album Heritage of Abomination. That is all I did, I stated what seems like a matter of aesthetics. Maybe it’s too small and specific to mention, or maybe you’re too lazy to find out for yourself.
Dante walked through the Inferno and wrote the names of the souls he encountered on his travels, I’m simply sharing my finding. If it’s not worth DMU’s time they don’t have to talk about it. If you think you’re gatekeeping, you’re doing a very bad job of it. The writers here took the time to talk about shoegaze black metal and tech death, maybe they have something interesting to say about what I posted as it is not slam, it is not a progression of slam or from slam. It is different, and that is why I’m bringing it up.
Yeah youre basically Dante bro
Go tell your boyfriend that
Go tell your boyfriend that
Yes and ask for a 3some.
If you’re trying to seem intelligent, you’re doing a very bad job of it.
The bands who have attempted to build on the works of artists like Cryptopsy, Suffocation and Deeds of Flesh by apeing certain aspects of their sound and ‘pushing them further’ are not worthy of consideration, let along serious musical analysis. So called ‘Brutal’ death metal is a largely idiotic phenomena in a similar way to ‘War Metal’
Deathcore is just rap for toothless trailer white people and dingy apartment city job trash huwhities.
While I kind sort of “get” the appeal of slam/brutal/groovy death/goregrind/whatever the kids call it these days – I actually like some Kraanium, Khranial and I can’t remember if it’s CBT or Guts that makes the “good” p*rnogrind stuff – I could never, ever understand the appeal of deathcore.
I try to be opened minded, I can tolerate some metalcore like Bullet for my Valentine, Killswitch & Avenged Sevenfold, etc on the premise that it’s more rock than metal… but deathcore is just no. I can’t name one decent band, one decent album, let alone one decent song. And this coming from someone who actually likes one Slipknot song (Psychosocial). No Korn song, sadly, but then again I don’t have the patience to listen to them or much else nu-metal.
There was a good 100 Demons song (Time Bomb) I think I mentioned it here one time, I don’t remember on which article. I didn’t know what “type” of music it was or how to classify it, and I didn’t really enjoy much of the rest of the band’s output when I checked them out (it’s a very obscure band that somehow made it into a very mainstream video game I don’t remember which one it was when I was a kid and barely knew what “metal” was at the time). It’s certainly a different type of metalcore than BFMV/Killswitch, then again I’m no expert when it comes to that stuff.
Oh and An*l C*nt & Seth Putnam are legendary in their own right.
The only decent Deathcore.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=88wCA7EzhtU
Better than the genre. Still too much of the grindcore blast then droning upbeat punk, but clearly they enjoyed Crossover.
“More rock than metal” says it all. I try to avoid inauthentic bands and their opposite, trve kvlt ideological bands which want to make one-note droning for an audience of hipsters
These bands remind me of Morgion: some imported melodies from alternative rock and indie rock, but basically pounding deathcore without song structure.
Hey brett would you murder your own children if they didn’t meet your eugenics threshold? Or just other people’s children?
Or you’ll just advocate for those things in writings and hope other wayward people are influenced to do it, and let them suffer the consequences for murder?
I would rather avoid having dysgenic children, which is one reason I have avoided casual sex. The number one way to get an oopsie is to plow some thot and then get the call nine months later.
Bigger point: I never advocate anything that I would be unwilling to do. In my world, I am both peasant and steward. That is, I clean the feces when I am on point to do it. I take this approach in my professional life as well. The reason is simple: if you behave like this, so do others, and you can live in a low-pretense environment which then becomes a low-tedium environment.
Always remember to clean your bowels before a long night of blissful sodomy.
Even better, do not use them. You can get all the nutrients you need from an IV and have a perpetually spotless colon. If you give yourself an enema of vaginal fluids, it will change the flora and fauna in there and it will even smell like a hybrid between a man and a woman.
I think it’s easier to “choose” to have dysgenic children as a woman. Most men who want to provide and remain secure are overly socialized normies willing to work 9-5 jobs with nice pay and holidays. If you were truly dominant, your will would re-shape any whore you fuck, and your genes would ideally compensate and overcome any weaknesses inherited from your partner. If anything, your presence ought to instill fortitude, intelligence, creativity, etc. in your children.
lol something tells me you dont fuck around much
No wonder cuckolding is such a popular fetish.
It is just social popularity. People get excited because everyone wants to fvck their possession.
Genetics does not work that way. Intelligent women want eugenic children and stability, but are not necessarily geared toward buckets of wealth. Gold-diggers want it all.
Does this site sell BALL JUICE?
No, that’s Black Rifle Coffee.
Hey Brett
Ban rap metal from this damn site
If you look like these bands u ain’t metal get rid of them brett
This all sucks dick
Korn
Slipknot
Cypress hill
Icp
Twiztid
Eminem
Kittie
Otep
Kid rock
Macklemore
Sam smith
Vinnie paz
Aaliyah
Snoop dogg
Dr Dre
Necro
Ill bill bitch boy
Ice cube
Marilyn Manson
John five gay ass
Saliva
POD
My ruin
Lacuna coil
Arch enemy even tho Alissa white needs a black cock pounding bottomles
Goth bullshit
Hey Brett can you ban all this crap from the world okay?
u forgot Arch Enemy bruh :/
If I were world leader… no, I would not ban this at all.
We need some way to identify the people we do not want to interact with, and they make it easy by labeling themselves with metalcore, deathcore, nu-metal, rap-metal, and “Christian metal” band names.
Can someone explain grindcore to me? From what I gather it’s like poor man’s death metal with 30 second gurgle/fart songs about politics and fecal sodomy… because if that’s all there’s to it, it shouldn’t even be a thing like war metal.
Grindcore took over where the first DRI LP left off. The point was to keep the punk feel while metalheads still wanted Iron Maiden styled epic songs and crushing riffs that had some kind of context and meaning to them. Punkers wanted total absence of meaning for pure equality with nature. If you leave it up to the trvest pvnks, you get one-chord droning songs, which is what killed the genre until thrash revived it. From thrash, grindcore took the short fast songs with unique structures, and eventually more metal crept in which meant riffs talking to each other, and then grindcore basically expired except for a few bands doing the same dumb Late Stage Hardcore stuff which bores us to this day.
Oh yeah and speed metal or “thrash metal” as they call it nowadays, is also poor man’s death metal, except good prototype stuff like Slayer, Celtic Frost and the first Sepultura fullength I guess. Why I should bother even with Sodom, destruction, Kreator and similar overrated “old skool” crap when I can listen to superior things like early Incantation, Deicide, Massacra, Therion and so on? I’d even rather listen to Scream Bloody Gore than speed-up-your-ass-metal (which is Death’s only reasonably listenable work).
Even with doom metal it can suck a dick, slowly, so just put on Asphyx, Cianide, Fleshcrawl and again first Incantation fullength if you want slower gloomy parts done right. Early 90’s and beyond extreme metal rendered most oldies obselete. Hipsters are as annoying as the old farts who can’t get past Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin.
I just like good music and some of it I connect to more because of what was happening in my life when I got into it
Music should be evocative. Sometimes this is of experience, sometimes idea.
I second this. The only speed metal song I like is Persecution Mania from… Persecution Mania. I hate all Kreator (proto nu-metal at best) and can’t stand the “big four” of thrash except perhaps the first Metallica (KEA) and the first Megadeth. And even that, only in extreme moderation.
Now depending on how you classify Bathory, there are some parts I like from the second album. But BFD and the Viking stuff > all the stuff before. As you said the 90s rendered most of that prior stuff obsolete.
Who would listen to Destruction over Burzum’s Spell of Destruction?
Who would listen to Death over Incantation’s Devoured Death?
Who would listen to Kreator crying about their priest r*ping them in the *ss over Demilich’s The Cry?
Who would listen to Sarcofagg*t over the actual f*ggots of Slipknot and Korn? Ok, maybe that’s going too far, but you get the point.
I have come to really loathe speed metal, but there are some creative works in there. I have never been able to go back and listen to Megadeth; too saccharine and obvious, too much jazz technique repurposed in places where it misses the glorious unison of a fully-integrated song and idea. I would consider Metallica “Orion” as a masterpiece of speed metal, but also point people toward Prong Beg to Differ, Rigor Mortis Rigor Mortis && Freaks, Nuclear Assault Game Over/The Plague, Overkill The Years of Decay, Testament The New Order, Voivod Dimension Hatross and Negatron, the first Possessed album, and stuff of that nature. There is good speed metal out there; power metal strikes me as like rock in that it is so genrified that all of it is pretty good but very little is compelling beyond the first couple Iced Earth and its inventor Judas Priest Painkiller; however, generally, the speed metal approach sounds old like 1960s rock to me because it is rebellion against past convention instead of a desire to invent a new world, and everyone is in denial that Discharge was the root and that metal rose and effectively killed punk by about 1987 or so.
I’m surprised Testament got included with those but those Alex Skolnick leads sure are a treat. What do you make of the first album?
Not just the Skolnick leads, the general spirit: halfway between party-bounce and the New Yorker “serious” drear of Nuclear Assault, with some of the atmosphere of Overkill, it is just solid speed metal; the first album relates to the second album as the first two unleashed albums do, that is they are very similar but for whatever reason I think The New Order refines the formula.
Testament sounds like one of those bands that everyone listens to when cleaning their bathrooms.
By 1989, speed metal had kind of run its arc with mature ideas like Prong Beg to Differ and Sepultura Beneath the Remains coming out. Metallica sounded slow and sort of like sped-up 1970s rock, Anthrax had gone goofy, and everyone was sort of out of energy. Death metal dropped in at the right time. I remember the serious metalheads in the late 80s being very much into Celtic Frost and Possessed.