Billed as a doom metal band, Into Darkness spends less than half of its time at that range of tempo on its first demo. Instead, what you get is a band taking the Metallica approach of finding a unique vocal, rhythmic, and technique hook per song, and then writing riffs to fit around one big showboat riff.
1 CommentTags: Doom Metal, Into Darkness
Imagine that someone went back to that brief period of time when music like Merciless, Devastation, and Sarcofago hovered between speed metal and the underground metal to come, and then approached it with the high-intensity styles of war metal and black metal.
2 CommentsTags: nuclear revenge, Speed Metal
We predicted many years ago that rock would assimilate metal and adopt its techniques, missing the point, and Inquisition comes along with a release that is half metal of various subgenres and half 1970s album-oriented rock, sure to be popular and yet, not bad at all.
7 CommentsTags: AOR, Black Metal, Inquisition
Clearly enjoying both classic Swedish death metal and the music of Bolt Thrower, whom it covers with “Spear of Destiny,” Burial Remains seeks to make a simplified and melodic but omnivorous atmosphere out of basic verse chorus songs with a few interludes to develop mood and theme, but otherwise a high-speed, rigid attack.
No CommentsTags: burial remains, death metal
Punk rock came about to make rock without the cruft and convention that had clogged it, since labels and bands tend to accumulate a collection of whatever has worked in the past, meaning that by the 1970s rock had become a fruit salad of folk, progressive, disco, blues, and country tropes that had no relation to a whole idea.
No CommentsTags: death metal, melodic hardcore, obituary
Some would compare this to grindcore with a touch of death metal, but it sounds more like mid-period Impaled Nazarene (Latex Cult era) mixed with a B+ level Autopsy clone, and uses this simple formula to make three-part songs: a verse riff, chorus riff, and a more melodic transition to keep an air of mystery.
1 CommentTags: death metal, glam metal, Grindcore, megascavenger
As much as we want to think otherwise, our reception, enjoyment and evaluation of music is not strictly dependent on the pure act of listening. A truism perhaps, but still something that is worth reflecting on from time to time. Especially for collectors of cult metal vinyl – the modern-day personification of the emperor’s new clothes syndrome (or should we say old clothes?). If you invest a disproportionate amount of time, effort and money in reading about and eventually acquiring a record – as collectors of obscure metal tend to do – your judgement is likely to get clouded to the point where it’s hard to assess the quality of the work in question. And this includes both positive and negative judgements. Case in point: the hype surrounding the Icelandic proto-black metal band Flames of Hell and their sole full-length album Fire and Steel (1987).
2 CommentsTags: Black Metal, fire and steel, flames of hell, Heavy Metal
Part III: Man and his place in the Cosmos
Perhaps the most anthropocentric song by Bathory. And this is a good thing, since this is not the humanism of egalitarianism and mediocrity, it is rather a vision of mankind’s destiny and potential that should find a good use to our technology and knowledge. This destiny shall propel us towards the stars!
No Comments
Formed in the heyday of the Norwegian Black metal movement and even rehearsing with one of main participants, Hellhammer. Mysticum never fell into the trap of copying the more popular bands and though the death of Euronymous and various issues had delayed the release of their first album, Mysticum are the first band to create what is referred to as “Industrial Black metal”. Being left out the narrative due to their late entry was probably a blessing in disguise as this removed any pressure for the band to copy their first album or to completely change style. Planet Satan takes off from where In the Streams of Inferno left off and develops further the cosmic psychedelic horror that the band started to experiment with other two decades ago.
3 CommentsTags: 2014, Industrial Black Metal, mysticum, Planet Satan
