Long time DMU veterans should be familiar with our enthusiasm for Sammath. Strijd was well received by the staff back in 1999 when it was originally released, and a re-release on Hammerheart Records in both CD and vinyl format is still planned for the first quarter of 2016. In the interrim, a digital version is now available on Bandcamp, offering potential purchasers a chance to easily preview the album’s tracks and purchase a copy of sorts.
2 CommentsTags: 2015, Black Metal, reissue, sammath
This live split contains two lengthy songs from Nan Elmoth and five more conventional ones from Maldicion. These two bands could not form a greater contrast: the prog-oriented, folk metal informed Nan Elmoth with long discursive songs, and Maldicion with fast gripping songs like Mayhem meets Terrorizer.
Nan Elmoth kicks the set off with “Unleash the King of Wolves.” This lengthy song shows what is good about this band and what it needs to work on. Nan Elmoth is confused in both genre, and trying too hard. This song mixed Graveland with folk metal and power metal influences, then tries to cram it into a lengthy death metal tinged song. Perhaps a better approach would be to synthesize those voices into one of the band’s own, and then to not use method as a substitute for content; let the content lead you to an epic song or lengthy instrumental if it can, but forcing it creates a disconnect. These songs hold up well with rhythm and repeated motifs, and stand as some of the more deliberately “pushing the envelope” in extreme metal at this. The next iteration may bring more fluidity and allow them to breathe a bit. Nan Elmoth covers wide ground on riffs and themes and pulls them all together in this song, and a longer second song, “Nan Elmoth,” in which the variation sometimes seems pro forma but some excellent riffs stand out. This fades out into somewhat repetitive violence and then segues into Burzum “The Crying Orc” for a hint at what the past wrought.
Maldicion takes over with its songs which are dark like Mayhem, and feature periodic powerful internal collisions, but mostly seem to be more in the vein of fast death/grind. The result generates a lot of energy, gives it mystique, and then leaves it hanging about half the time. Songwriting is more proficient than most of metal but it could use some editing to determine the parts sufficiently relate to one another. Nonetheless, the raw aggression and vitality of this band outpaces most of what underground metal is doing now. Together, these bands create a set that is varied and strong, and point to future evolution of their sound that could push them farther in the world of underground metal.
1 CommentTags: Black Metal, death metal, maldicion, nan elmoth
The Scandinavian countries have always had disproportionate metal output; Finland’s continues with this debut album from Sacrificum Carmen, an occult-inspired black metal band. Ikuisen Tulen Kammiossa is set to release on October 30th and showcases a more melodic sound than is stereotypical of the country’s black metal output.
Saturnal Records issued the following statement:
2 CommentsHailing from the fertive Finnish black metal scene, Sacrificium Carmen both embody their home country’s prevailing underground idiom and offer a unique, diabolical twist to it. Founded in 2009 by vocalist Hoath Cambion and guitarist Advorsvs, the band draws their inspiration from the areas of occultism and Satanism exclusively. Sacrificium Carmen became active in 2012 with a full lineup, and soon released their debut demo “Sanansaattaja” in 2013 via Finnish underground label Spread Evil Productions. After the demo’s release, the band excelled in the areas of live shows and split releases, which all spread well around the underground scene. In 2014, Sacrificium Carmen started working on a debut full-length album, and the demo recordings led into a signing of a record deal with Finnish record label Saturnal Records for the release Ikuisen Tulen Kammiossa.
Sacrificium Carmen plays black metal with a melodic and atmospheric touch where all tendencies have been directed into very aggressive and sinister output, where Finnish black metal sound meets murky death metal sound as witnessed with orthodox black metal acts. Across the eight tracks of Ikuisen Tulen Kammiossa, the listener is dragged to the sulfurous depths, with vapor trails of hypnotizing melody lingering above the tar-thick sewage. Exquisitely filthy yet exceptionally well-recorded, Ikuisen Tulen Kammiossa presents Sacrificium Carmen as a serious newcomer, a contender to be reckoned with in the years to come, as the band continue to propagate live rituals to increasingly rabid audiences.
Tags: 2015, Black Metal, Ikuisen Tulen Kammiossa, press release, Sacrificium Carmen, saturnal records
Vociferian comes to us from the European sprawl through members who are originally French, but now reside in Belgium, and make a type of death metal/rock hybrid that rumbles in the right places but never really gets enough direction beyond drone to make a point. The songs do not ramble, but also never reach that moment of really wrapping around what the riffs have unleashed and transforming it into a new energy. In addition, many of these riffs are clever variations of very well-known types, which makes one wonder what is being said.
Although the band lists “crust” along with its other influences, the main focus here is droning doom metal of the hard rock variety, more like Crowbar and Sleep than Neurosis or Amebix. Unlike funeral doom bands like Skepticism, the songs do not gain momentum from the increasing layers of atmosphere but move in a circular pattern much like Sleep Holy Mountain. The result is a pleasing veneer on background sounds of collapse with more aggression than most of these bands can muster, wandering into sludge territory with rock/punk patterns.
Princess of Violation presents an album that falls far from bad, and has some interesting twists, but for death metal fans will not be internally varied or purposeful enough to seek again. Like most music, it has found a method without a cause, and so while this band scrupulously avoids randomness or wandering, never gets to its end point. Now that Vociferian has mastered its basic style, one can only hope for greater expansion of content and internal dialogue for the next work, as that would give this fertile style the power it needs to cruise forward.
3 CommentsTags: Doom Metal, hard rock, sludge, vociferian
Many do not understand why MetalGate and GamerGate have so determinedly resisted the SJW incursion. There are several reasons, but the first is that if you do not resist invasion, you become replaced as SJWs have tried to do to metal fans. The second is that most people are inert and will simply allow it to happen. The third is the most troubling: SJWs and people like them destroy the lives of innocent people, just so that SJWs can get popularity points on Tumblr.
For example, consider the case of UK scientist Timothy Hunt:
In 1983, the British biochemist Timothy Hunt discovered cyclins, a family of proteins that help regulate the life of cells. Eighteen years later, in 2001, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine. Between June 8 and June 10 of this year, the 72-year-old Hunt went from being a universally respected and even beloved figure at the top of the scientific establishment to an instant pariah, condemned everywhere for antiquated opinions about women’s role in science that he does not, in fact, hold.
In only 48 hours, he found himself compelled to resign his positions at University College London and at the august Royal Society (where Isaac Newton and Robert Hooke once fought petty battles) after being told that failure to do so would lead to his outright firing.
But what were these “antiquated opinions”? (“Antiquated” seems to be an easier way of getting rid of things than disproving them, so it seems one of those suspicious terms that indicates lazy reasoning). Ah, here’s an explanation from the petition to have Dr. Hunt reinstated:
His jocular observation, at a conference in Korea, that men and women tend to distract one another when working together in laboratories:
“Let me tell you about my trouble with girls… three things happen when they are in the lab… you fall in love with them, they fall in love with you and when you criticise them, they cry!”
Source: The Guardian, Article by Robin McKie, 13/06/2015
He then continued: “Now seriously, I’m impressed by the economic development of Korea. And women scientists played, without doubt, an important role in it. Science needs women and you should do science despite all the obstacles, and despite monsters like me.”
Source: The Independent, Article by Heather Saul, 24/06/2015
Aside from the jokey, self-deprecating context, another deliberate irony everyone seemed to miss was that Sir Tim met his own wife whilst working in the lab! Not to mention the broader picture: “No one seems to mention his main speech in Korea in which, according to the ERC President, he was ‘very supportive towards women in science and he said that he hoped there was nothing that barred women from science” (Dame Athene Donald).
His crime: a joke about falling in love with his wife in a science lab.
His punishment: total destruction of his career with no trial and no chance of re-admission. In short, exile.
How was this done? SJWs raised a hue and cry which was then picked up by journalists, a group which overlaps significantly with SJWs because they have the same audience — people who cannot stop themselves from buying products and clicking “like” on Facebook if social guilt is involved.
As the original article observed:
The Timothy Hunt affair represents more than the gratuitous eye-blink ruination of a great man’s reputation and career. It demonstrates the danger of the extraordinary, almost worshipful deference that academia, government institutions, and above all the mainstream media now accord to social media. It is yet more evidence of the way moral panic and (virtual) mob rule can be accelerated and intensified by the minimalism of Twitter, with its 140-character posts and its apparently inherent tendency to encourage snap judgments, prejudice, and cruelty.
Fortunately, the story did not end on June 10. In the weeks following the initial assault, some of Hunt’s most ardent persecutors have been exposed as liars or blinkered ideologues, abetted by cynical hacks and academic rivals on a quest to bring him down or use him as grist to a political mill.
Across our society, people who have slept through the past three decades of thought-crime being used as a reason to destroy someone’s reputation, career, family and friendships are waking up and opposing the cancer of SJW-style persecution. In metal, the same thing is happening: we are realizing that SJWs are not helpful voices but immoral enemies who take joy in destroying the lives of innocent people. And we are pushing back.
14 CommentsTags: gamergate, journalism, metalgate, Science, sjws, timothy hunt
Those who have followed heavy metal in the news know that we seem like an odd crowd to the mainstream journalists who write about us. This sometimes takes on a weird dimension where they offer us health advice. In an otherwise excellent article about photograph Jacob Ehrbahn documenting heavy metal hair at European metal fests, WIRED magazine waxes neurotic:
The risk of injury is real. Several musicians—Slayer’s Tom Arraya, Megadeth’s Dave Mustaine, and that dude in Slipknot who does the sampling—have been injured by their headbanging, and studies have linked the practice to all manner of head and neck issues. So Ehrbahn was wise to be wary, because a Canon 1D Mark IV isn’t something you want to get whacked in the face with. For that reason, he generally avoided peering through the viewfinder and instead held the camera beneath his subject and moved in sync to avoid collisions.
The whole thing is worth reading, as most likely is Ehrbahn’s book Headbangers, which is light coffee table reading for anyone who wants to admire the lengthy locks of Euro-metal devotees in full headbang.
1 CommentTags: headbangers, headbanging, jacob ehrbahn, media
SJW journalist Kim Kelly, who was just yesterday talking about “signal boosting” outrage over alleged actions by Deiphago guitarist Sidalpa, is now backpedaling and claiming she was only “commenting on a couple friends’ Facebook posts” even though we all know that “signal boosting” is an SJW dog whistle for joining into an attack mob via that armchairest of armchair activist zones, the internet.
Like many SJWs, Kelly hides behind her role as a journalist and its overlap with her personal life as a way to claim that her actions were innocent, when she was participating in group calls for violence, boycott and public defamation of Deiphago and anyone who defended their right to a fair examination of facts. Kelly, fitting right into the SJW mindset, knows that her strength consists of summoning many perennially unhappy internet people to attack and use guilt to cow and browbeat others into submission.
Needless to say, normally SJWs can get away with it, but they have pushed too far. Many on the internet are making a similar observation to the following:
The point is that before we go destroy someone’s life, we should make sure they in fact did what they are accused of and that there are no mitigating circumstances. According to SJWs, demanding actual facts and legal process is fascism, racism, sexism and other Very Bad things.
SJWs swarmed at first to attack Deiphago, and then got the predictable vague apology, but the band later removed it after realizing that the SJW monster had become defanged. First it became common knowledge that Kelly and other SJWs have faked news stories to advance their ideological agenda, and that at least some SJWs were previously trying to be toughguy internet Nazis before realizing there was an audience out there who is afraid to not eagerly support any article, band, or person who wields guilt as a weapon.
The pushback has been gratifying. Metalheads are tired of the invasion of SJWs, who bring both their doctrinaire politics and their bad indie-rock derived metal-flavored (but not metal) bands, and are starting resistance by doing what should have always been done: making fun of SJWs for the self-perpetuating victims them are, and openly mocking their presumed legitimacy and their dishonest and manipulative attack. One user posted the following which seems to summarize the situation:
Tags: censorship, gamergate, guilt, Kim Kelly, metalgate, sjws
Blake Dodge, a student at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, did something many students do: write what your professors and peers like to hear about, but give it a new emotional spin. It is a good way to gain favor with the people above you and possibly get their recommendations and other favors students need in the future.
There’s only one problem: she is spreading a dangerous guilt-based ideology that punishes people for not having problems. Blake Dodge, originally from Beaufort, NC, wrote the following op-ed which is clearly designed to feature in her future CV or résumé:
I have the utmost empathy for my male peers. But for every “pretty and smart” comment I get (and for the ones that aren’t even that flattering), for every patronizing inflection and for every inadvertent power grab at my expense, you add a grain of sand to the increasingly heavy load we women carry. You perpetuate sexism in environments where it absolutely cannot belong.
Astute observers will note that we have only her word that these incidents occurred, and they fit very nicely into her thesis. Considering that she spent the first half of the article talking about how unattractive she is, it makes sense to discard at least half of the article. But her message resounds, because her professors and administrators will nod and smile knowingly, thinking how brave she is and how profound and altruistic they all look for standing up for the little guy… er, woman. She is kissing ass in the oldest way possible, which is preaching from an angle of victimhood because none can oppose her or they will be accused of being in league with the victimizer.
Citizen: There is no evidence of that.
Inquisitor: Oh, so you are a friend of witches? That is the only reason you could oppose this trial.
Citizen: No, I stand up for the freedom of all to —
Inquisitor: — be witches. You are in league with the Devil! To the ducking pond, immediately.
Blake Dodge thinks she is just sucking up to some powerful people in her life so she can get on to the next stage, perhaps an internship or law school. She has pressed all the right buttons, made all the appropriate noises, and has an instant group of champions among those who are professionally miserable. But her real message shines through clearly: I am victim, how dare you not be victim, and especially how dare you be male. These comments are innocuous. Her toxic, passive-aggressive response is far from it.
No CommentsTags: blake dodge, censorship, colleges, sjws
Chris Whited, from mainstream metal band King Conquer, allegedly got jumped in the pit by some adversaries at a recent concert. But what has attracted attention from the reality-blind SJW journalist camp is what he said afterwards:
So I Moshed last night for adaliahs last song because it was there last day with us, and some pussy got butthurt and scooped me up from behind and slammed my face on the concrete(which knocked me out) then 4 other pussy ass faggots decided to kick me in the face while I was on the ground already knocked out, and then none of them would fight anyone one on one. And then they all lied to the cops about what happened. Long story short, I woke up in the hospital with no clue about anything that happened. Crazy, that’s never happened to me before.
In particular, it seems his use of the term “faggot” — used in different contexts by men around the world to refer to both homosexuals and men they dislike — has attracted the Language Police who want us all to feel guilty for not outright attacking him. Nevermind if you think his use was bad form; you are bad, and should feel bad, if you do not outright condemn him and join the other people without lives who gather on the internet nightly to fetishize outrage.
Metal Insider leapt on the SJW bandwagon with its shrill-voiced preaching about how terrible this all is:
There are two regrettable things about this: that it happened and that Whited feels the need to throw around the word “faggot.” Granted, he’s understandably angry in light of a cheap shot, and it’s cowardly to literally kick a man when he’s down. And if the venue had no security that would take care of any pit violence, that’s an amateur move on their part. And the police doing nothing about it likely added to the frustration. That being said, he lost a lot of sympathy as soon as he wrote that word not once but twice. Even if it was in the heat of passion, there’s no need to be homophobic about it.
The problem for them is that his thinking does not conform to what they view as “social justice,” which is both their hobby and their way of being better than you. Where humans once went to church and bragged about how many Hail Marys they had said, now they get onto Tumblr and brag about how morally correct they are by being politically correct. Same psychology, different era.
In the meantime, realistic and reasonable people are wondering: what is wrong with simply not engaging in the behavior? In other words, who cares what he said — fix yourself, first, and that is not limited to the easy method of changing your language for ideological reasons. We all have our own failings, but it is easier and feels better to attack someone else for something trivial they did, even if it may make sense in their local community, culture or friend group. Or even as an artistic statement of some kind. But SJWs are not about thinking, freedom of speech or even friendship. They are about control, and controlling you through guilt, no matter how many lives it ruins.
4 CommentsTags: censorship, chris whited, gamergate, king conquer, metalgate, sjws
Inspired by the buzzing Boss pedals of the Swedish death metal scene (and even featuring a cover of a track by Grave), Bloodstrike from Colorado has announced that their full length debut In Death We Rot will be released to the public on September 25th. Samples suggest a fairly basic, hardcore punk inflected recording that might come in handy at house parties. The band released the following press statement:
Combining the putrid licks & groove of early 90s Stockholm with the dark and cryptic delivery of early 90s death metal in the Midwestern United States, Denver, Colorado’s Bloodstrike are showing us what it means to truly redefine darkness with their first full length LP. Grave, Entombed, Dismember with a smattering of Bolt Thrower and early Obituary are all present here, so If you are searching for an old school sound in 2015, Bloodstrike is the answer.
After a head spinning (and splattering) demo in 2014, the quintet of metal veterans (having spent time in Silencer, Moth, and Havok to name a few) will not stop until the piles of rotten bodies their brand of death metal harvests, blot out the sun. If you prefer the ominous and rawer end of the death metal spectrum rather than what many of today’s studio wiz kids have to offer than look no further, Bloodstrike will be the best addition to your hall of suffering!!
Ryan Alexander Bloom | Drums
Artwork courtesy of the legendary Mark Riddick
“Soulless” written by Grave & released by Century Media Records 1994.
Tags: 2015, bloodstrike, death metal, in death we rot, modern metal, press release
