One of the principal aims of DMU is to not only serve as curator of metal music, but also to keep developing an informed, cultured and realist interpretation and formulation of the past, present and future of the genre in the interest of transcendent goals. To this end DMU is launching two contribution-based efforts in parallel to the website content: an e-zine and a music compilation.
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Tags: chymia niger, compilation, litigium, zine
Altar of Perversion return with Intra Naos, a post-black metal album taking this limited and confused style to its best, though still inefficient, results. We start by stating that this is not a black metal album because it is not a metal album in the first place, although its instrumentation, general use of imagery and screetched vocals may give us cause to think it is. Rather than being based on actual riffs to form phrases which themselves give rise to a sequence of flows [1], Intra Naos displays the shortcomings of what we have in the past characterized wallpaper black metal [2]. The overall experience of the album is one of somnolescence brought about by the lack of musical content in an extremely long recording full of ‘sounds’.
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Tags: altar of perversion, drama music, intra naos, post-black metal, wallpaper music
The first riff off “Golgotha” is a fitting introduction to the madness of the early composition of Incantation. It is abrasively confrontational yet more detailed than what its immediacy initially hints at- although the listener is confronted with the familiarity of power chord accents and tremolo picked notes, the arrangement presents an inversion of death metal tropes that echoes the blasphemous lyrical content of the band. (more…)
2 CommentsTags: analysis, golgotha, incantation, onward to golgotha
Article by Belisario
Almost four years after their previous full-length, Varathron is back with a new effort that meets expectations and offers a fantastic black metal listening experience in the distinctive Greek variety. The veterans from Ioannina have been able to maintain a difficult balance between respecting their classic sound and developing new forms, something they had already achieved on Untrodden Corridors of Hades. These new forms are slightly different and more modern, yet clearly related to their older albums.
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Tags: 2018, agonia records, patriarchs of evil, varathron
Funeral Mist are a Swedish band that came after the heyday of the second wave Norwegian bands. They were desperate to find a gimmick to stand toe to toe with their idols, but actual acts of hatred and violence proved too much for them. The band resorted instead to samples and pseudo-biblical lyrics, only to see themselves remain as irrelevant as they were before they even started. (more…)
8 CommentsTags: 2018, funeral mist, hekatomb, noevdia
Rising from the pit of late nineties underground speed metal, Chileans Apostasy revived during the last decade to bring back to life a pure demonstration of metal as it is. There is no need to claim to be progressive, harsh, technical or the milliard other epithets that bands and marketing agents have come up to single out bands which present only narrow facets of what the genre can be. We can hear traces of what came to be known as the ‘riff salad,’, but like later death metal outgrowths of the style, there is a sense of organic flow and revolving around a main riff-idea. (more…)
3 CommentsTags: apostasy, chile, Speed Metal, the blade of hell
Chilean speed metal trio Apostasy has released their new album The Sign of Darkness via Fallen Temple. After releasing two demos in the late eighties and early nineties, followed by a compilation in 2013, Apostasy started releasing demos in 2014. The new demos contain old and new material, with the album presenting the band’s fully developed voice.
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Tags: apostasy, chile, Speed Metal, the sign of darkness
In his quest for accuracy and rigour eventually leading to his contributions to Calculus, Sir Isaac Newton borrowed terminology from an area of classical mechanics called Kinematics[1]. The terms fluent and fluxion incorporated eventually came to be known as variable and derivative. Each set of terms has its advantages in describing the object in question, highlighting one or another aspect. Fluxion in particular is quite useful in poetically illustrating an ‘instantaneous rate of change,’ and may serve us outside the realm of pure mathematical abstraction to bring attention to such immediate movement at each point in time. So, while the change from a measure to the next, from an idea to the next are changes in fluents, there can be said to exist fluxions in music which describe movements across a separate dimension —that of the inner experience. But such a transposition into the realm of musical description is only metaphorical, if useful to expand perception, and should be taken as a flexible mental aid.
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Tags: artistic self-honesty, fluxions, inner experience, monophony, Organum, phrasal
Hammerheart records has released Necrophobic’s four classic albums, and is making them available for purchase through their online shop. (more…)
No CommentsTags: hammerheart records, LP, necrophobic, the nocturnal silence
It has been over a month since we have launched the song contest here at DMU. Our suspicions that very few people would enter the contest due to our reputation for honest yet harsh reviews were confirmed. This was probably why only two contestants presented themselves in any capacity. Consequently, no winner shall be appointed nor will awards be handed out: two entries do not constitute a contest.
Tags: ambient1, deepspace23, irillion, song contest, Tierra Negra
