Almost every metalhead, no matter how hardcore or marginalized, perks up when Manowar hits the radio or jukebox. That’s because Manowar embodies the spirit of metal, which is a desire to fight for what’s true and deny what’s popular, because we as metalheads know our own spirits and don’t care about the herd.
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Tags: Heavy Metal, manowar, power metal, spirit of metal
The Death Melodies Series (DMS) continues with composer Gustav Mahler.
I was recently invited to my local symphony to see Mahler’s third symphony. The first movement crept dismally slow; almost like a worm being poked with a stick and curling in its own demise. It was the best movement of the entire symphony and it brought a sense of dread that wasn’t extended upon in the later movements. The whole show was about eighty minutes and it was literally all over the place. There was a children’s choir in it which made the masculine first movement rather irrelevant. With no intermission for me to gather my thoughts or drain my bladder, I sat in my seat and experienced the entire symphony without interference.
Mahler was a late Romantic composer, but some would consider him as a Modernist. I believe that he’s in league with Liszt in the sense that he branches both in the Romantic and Modernist periods (Liszt’s Totentanz is a good example of both Romanticist and Modernist). Being that Mahler was inspired by Richard Wagner, it gets a bit muddy classifying him as a Romantic composer.
Much of Mahler’s life was spent conducting, so he wasn’t as prolific as Beethoven or other composers were, though he spent many summers composing. Tragedy wasn’t far from Mahler’s life. One of his two daughters died while she was still young and he himself had a defective heart. Mahler also faced prejudice for being an Austrian Jew, but it didn’t hinder his successes.
I picked these two pieces to coincide with the Death Melodies Series’ goal of sharing classical music that metalheads might enjoy.
1 CommentTags: death melodies series, mahler
Back in the 1990s, most people couldn’t stand Ildjarn and side-project Sort Vokter. These bands were seen as too simple, primitive, nihilistic, raw and amoral for even black metal.
One web site — our direct ancestor — praised the releases to the skies, claimed they were brilliant, and aggressively advocated them, culminating in an interview with the mastermind behind Ildjarn himself. We were ridiculed, mocked, scourged, spit upon, etc. until suddenly people woke up and realized the brilliance of Ildjarn.
Ildjarn mocks deconstruction. Modern people love to deconstruct things into tiny little statements that are true but also incomplete; Ildjarn took many tiny states, and using them like spatter-paint making a silhouette on canvas, used them to create a vision of a much broader and pervasive truth, as exemplified in the phrase “Forest Poetry.” Ildjarn is naturalism that does not retreat to happy Disney Land where all the animals are fuzzy and cute. Ildjarn is feral reality coming back through the (poetic) beast within.
Many years later, label Seasons of Mist has opted to re-release the classic of the Ildjarn era with new artwork and hopefully minimal remastering if any. These releases are already available for pre-order in the Seasons of Mist online shop.
We encourage all people who have not experienced Ildjarn to listen and revel in the simple coordinated profundity of this primal black metal band. These mighty slabs of minimalist metal will be available on August 16, 2013.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mg7Fkt3SWKA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0TDaAmp7DM
6 CommentsTags: ambient metal, Black Metal, budget riffs, ildjarn, microsymphonies, Thrash
As metal continues to grow in popularity, outsiders to the genre find it more appealing. They see it as an unknown region, or an exotic culture, and in comparison their lives seem drab. What is it that makes hordes of people headbang to violent and abrasive music?
This was the question the Amarillo Globe News posed to death metal band Abolishment of Flesh and it received an answer it might not have been expecting.
The band painted a picture of death metal different from what is commonly presented in the media:
“There are a lot of different things going on at the same time,” [guitarist] Cazares said. “It’s very comparable to classical music.”
“We have a lot of weird time signatures and different changes like classical music does,” bass player Chuy Camacho said. “There can be three different things going on in the music at the same time.”
In other words, rather than the circular key-centric two-part composition of rock and pop music, death metal uses chromatic scales to develop an internal dialogue and motif evolution through pattern as opposed to harmony alone, such that notes are relevant more to previous notes and riff shapes than they are to a sense of key or rhythm.
In death metal, notes stream forth in multiple tones and directions, creating a tapestry of sound, similar in goal of a symphony: each part is musically literate on its own, yet when put together creates something that transcends each individual instrument.
When musing on why death metal is not popularly regarded as an art form, the band speculated that the genre has been overtaken by bands that have confused aesthetics with actual content:
“We don’t get taken seriously because other bands make a joke out of it — try to get as perverted and as gory as they can,” Camacho said.
Not content with being a sideshow, the band decided to forge ahead and create music with quality control. Playing old-school style death metal with melodic interludes; the band creates a style of music that appeals to both veteran fans of the genre and newcomers that may discover older classics through discovery of the techniques presented.
And the reason the band plays this type of music?
To Cazares, death metal “talks more about what’s real or what’s going on in life.”
Thus the essence of Death metal described: piercing the veil of deception and beholding reality.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BH6MM6EEss
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4rmEp4c1LFc
5 Comments
We are fortunate to be able to announce that Martin Jacobsen, a talented writer and educator, and full-time metalhead, has joined our staff as a writer. He will continue to pen his “Analyze it to Life” column, which gives metal the detailed analysis it merits, as well as other news stories and reviews.
As an author, Jacobsen has covered a range of academic and popular topics, but readers may remember him on DeathMetal.org for his thorough inspection of the new Black Sabbath song “God is Dead?” and the even more detailed review of the new Black Sabbath album, 13.
A full-time Hessian, Jacobsen plays guitar and stays abreast of developments in the world of metal both above and below ground. All of us on the staff look forward to more of his insightful writing and to working with him in the future.
No CommentsTags: martin jacobsen, staff
Ripping high-intensity Dutch-German black/death metal band Sammath plans to release its latest work on Hammerheart Records in October of 2013. The album, entitled Godless Arrogance, will likely continue the Nietzschean-cum-Jack-London themes of this band: war, Darwin, struggle, death, misery and pain.
Best known for their 1990s melodic yet violent black metal release Strijd, Sammath emerged at a time when death metal was drifting into nu-core and black metal was spacing out like an aristocratic heroin addict into the territory of indie, post-rock and save the whales punk music. In contrast, Sammath brought a vision of humanity in constant struggle against its own stupidity and tolerance for the delusional, and expressed it in music that is equal parts knife fight and architectural grandeur.
Godless Arrogance will be Sammath‘s first release on worldwide Dutch metal conspiracy Hammerheart Records, and will continue the legacy of the past four Sammath releases with more streamlined music with a better integrated riff vocabulary and more selective but correspondingly intense use of melody. Expected to result in mass murder and spontaneous immolation of hipsters, Godless Arrogance includes the two tracks below in their final form.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QoFjn_nX150
No CommentsTags: Black Metal, death metal, sammath
Houston, Texas death metal band Imprecation have returned after nearly two decades since their epic slab of morbid death metal, Theurgia Goetia Summa, and have not only not mellowed but have added a streamlined power to their sound which combines the best of old school doom-death, black metal and high intensity underground death metal.
Satanae Tenebris Infinita adds a smooth transition between distinctive moods to this band’s strong infrastructure of aggressive riffs and abrupt tempo changes, acknowledging that while Theurgia Goetia Summa created a masterful vocabulary of death metal motifs, Satanae Tenebris Infinita connects them together in a narrative that reveals their inner compatibility and thus shows more than tells of the dark topics of the album.
While the music industry has kept itself busy “playing metal” with metal-flavored rock and punk creations like the nu-core and indie-core genres, underground metal has steadily reinvented itself, with bands like Beherit, Demoncy, Summoning and Imprecation returning to the front with not only new material, but a new view of the intent and purpose behind their older works, fusing them into new languages with a mastery and control that was not present before.
Released on Dark Descent Records, Satanae Tenebris Infinita features cover art by Chris Moyen (Incantation, Blasphemy, Beherit) and is Imprecation‘s first official full-length release, since Theurgia Goetia Summa was a compilation of earlier short works and demos. Satanae Tenebris Infinita can be purchased on CD for $10 at the label, or you can read our full review of Satanae Tenebris Infinita.
No CommentsTags: death metal, imprecation
Funeral doom metal pioneers Skepticism have recently begun composing music for a new album planned for a late 2014 release. Alongside their countrymates Thergothon, Skepticism shaped this style from slow melodic chord progressions, sustained deathy vocals, and keyboards meshed to create an enveloping tapestry of sound.
The band have rebounded from the creative momentum lost after their first album Stormcrowfleet with their 2008 release Alloy, which showed a return to a more guitar-driven sound and songs which unraveled more subtly, creating an album of enduring quality. This showed the band resurrecting the metal within the Gothic doom and using it to drive song development past what more pop styles could offer.
Much like other metal bands, Skepticism are both rediscovering their roots and surging past them. A parallel can be drawn to recent Summoning, who recovered from a bout of misguided efforts by returning to an earlier composition style whilst creating albums which are expressively different and of quality. As a result, we have high expectations for this band’s next release.
13 CommentsTags: Doom Metal, funeral doom, skepticism
Had I encountered this album in the early days of my journey of metal discovery I probably would’ve dismissed it as boring. True enough, this album does get a bit samey and the production doesn’t really help things by being quite plain and unadorned. What this album does have going for it – and what certifies it a classic, is its patient and utterly logical riff writing.
Taking the tradition as laid down by Hellhammer/Celtic Frost (more on that next week), each new musical idea on this album proceeds from a blueprint motif/riff that drives the whole track and makes each change sound like a clear and meaningful development from the one that preceded it. Most of the tracks remain in the one key for more or less their entire duration, whilst introducing a sparing and arguably quite Classical (Haydn, Mozart) sense of chromaticism at specific points to colour passing harmonic regions and create the necessary dramatic arc in the track. Being largely monodic though, it skirts the line between evocative ancient-feeling, modal style melody and more Classical structure-centric writing.
For example, Son of the Moon first deviates from its blueprint Aeolian/natural minor by introducing a riff with a # 3rd, returns to the Aeolian melodic shape and then introduces a riff with a raised 4th – two very typically Classical bits of chromaticism that colour regions related by the circle of fifths (a system that explains keys relationships and how to change key coherently) yet also, in the way they are used, give the riff a folkish/modal feel. They also come at just the right moment in the track, when the initial idea has been very much established and it’s time to reveal a bit of conflict and ambiguity. True to the narrative structural approach the track has been leading us along, what follows is a riff that returns to the Aeolian basis, responding to the ‘conflict section’ and expanding the original melodic idea. A properly satisfying emotional resolution is delayed until the very end of the track, yet even then, in typically metal form, the sensation it leaves the listener with is one reminding them that the journey goes ever on – rather than offering up a neat ‘happily ever after’ cadence, the way a pop song or even a piece of Classical music would be expected to end with.
The fact that the production comes with no proverbial bells and whistles means all the more that the riffcraft is laid bare and made the main focus of the listener’s attention. Melodically a lot of the album is very simple, and it really doesn’t stretch itself in terms of speed, variety or technicality, but it does what it does very well, revealing the essentiality of metal song writing in a relatively calm and assured way.
5 CommentsTags: Black Metal, His Majesty at the Swamp, musical analysis, varathron
Barbaric Softworks has signed a licensing agreement with Austin, TX-based continuation thrash band Birth A.D. to use Birth A.D. songs in Barbaric Softworks’ newest title, Blocks of Explosive Dismemberment.
Unlike most video games, Blocks of Explosive Dismemberment has no winners. You just lose a little less, and survive a little longer. American and European ratings authorities will have a field day with this violent game notorious for its irreverent mockery of death, suffering and humanity’s pretense of individuality.
In a similar vein, Birth A.D. has rocked the house with mockery on its latest opus, I Blame You. Recalling the golden days of DRI and SOD, this band nonetheless forges on in a continuation of what those bands created and does not rehash the past like the retro bands who are so thoughtless that it is tempting to lace their Capri Sun with antifreeze.
The combination of Birth A.D. and Blocks of Explosive Dismemberment should thrill even the most dour metal fan with its high splatter and body count, and the corresponding middle finger to all values that society holds dear. The game is due out in a later quarter of 2013.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qmE2XcpcC7U
(To get the full effect, hit “play” on both videos at the same time.)
6 CommentsTags: birth a.d., Thrash, video games
