The Dark End metal show

DJ Cherrysthorne brings you the Dark End metal show and The Metal Trip show every week at the following times:

  • The DarkEnd Metal Show ( Tuesdays 7-9pm EST)
    Thrash, speed, power, doom, black thrash and all kinds of 80’s metal
  • The Metal Trip Show ( Mondays 10-Midnight EST)
    Atmospheric ambient metal, progressive rock and metal, and very dark doom.

Listen to Core of Destruction radio via javascript or winamp MP3 stream.

If you want your band or advertisement on the show, mail to:

CherrysThorne
501 Omar Drive
Killeen, TX 76542
cherrysthorne -at- gmail.com

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Interview: Ray Miller (Adversary/Metal Curse)

Some people exist as unsung pillars of the underground, and Ray Miller of death metal band Adversary is one of them. First, he started up a zine called Metal Curse that is widely regarded as one of the few quality death metal magazines extant today; next, he began selling death and black metal through his label Cursed Productions, which has also released quality demo compilations from bands such as Varathron and Deceased. Finally, he’s in a death metal band called Adversary which could be described as a more late-night-radio American version of Asphyx. We caught up with him at his country villa in Chingadosmujeres, Mexico, as the first shots of a revolution rang out in the street.

When did ADVERSARY begin?
Just a little over five years ago, in May of 1994. Jack Botos (guitar) and I are two of the original founding members. Our drummer, Bob Burns, is fairly new – he’s been damned with us for about a year-and-a-half.

What’s the distribution of the creative work in songwriting, lyrics, artwork, and concept/pot smoking?
Anyway, in the beginning we had another guitarist, Thom Benford, and he wrote a couple riffs back then. But since he quit (before our first demo was released), Jack and I have written all the music and lyrics. However, when Ed was still in the band (on keyboards and drum programming – before we had a human drummer, of course), he created all the drum and keyboard arrangements. How that would work is that Jack or I would present some riffs, or sometimes a “complete” song (the riffs in the “right” order – we sort of tweaked stuff a lot as we worked on it, so a “finished” song would probably still mutate somewhat), and Ed would listen to us play it a few times and get some ideas.

Then we’d record the riffs on my 4-track, and Ed would work out the programming at home, and at the next practice maybe have something we could play along with. Now that Bob is in the band, we just show him a riff, and he starts playing behind it. Right before Ed quit (he got married…), he had written a few really great riffs for a new song, but we decided to not use them after he left. Not that we parted on bad terms, or anything of the sort.

metal curse magazine has been a longstanding feature of the black and death metal undergroundAs far as the artwork goes for the band, it’s been different on every release. On our new demo-CD, We Must Be In Hell, Bob brought over few books of photos and paintings, and we basically swiped one. I altered the colors and so on, and did the actual layout myself. I’ve done CD packaging designs for a few underground labels, in addition to my own releases on Cursed Productions.

I also publish a zine called Metal Curse, and Bob has done 99% of the art for that for the last several issues.

Concept… Well, I suppose our general sound was more or less my idea, being inspired by “simple” Death Metal such as MASSACRE, ASPHYX, (early) GRAVE, UNLEASHED, IMPETIGO, (early) DEATH, AUTOPSY, and onward into countless others. Of course Jack has done his fair share (or more) to shape our sound since. And now, with Bob, we have the added power of human drumming, but we have also lost our keyboards.

So, I suppose our sound is almost constantly evolving, but still hopefully memorable Death Metal. If that’s what you mean by “concept” at all…

As for pot smoking, I leave that to Jack. I don’t smoke, or even drink unless it’s a “special occasion.” So, Jack gets my share. Bob has been known to partake every now and then, too.

The surest way to corrupt a youth is to teach him to hold in higher regard those who think alike than those who think differently.
– F.W. Nietzsche

adversary are a band of much potential in the old school simple doomy death metal style, like an american asphyx with Are you guys touring?
I wish! That’s exactly what we would love to do, but Cursed Productions is too small to support it. That’s one of the reasons we would like to get signed to a larger label: So we can go out and see the world. And the sluts, of course. We do have some shows lined up during the summer, and there is a really slim possibility of us going to Brazil to play some shows with some bands (NERVOCHAOS and INSANITY) on Muvuca Records.

What kind of instruments do you play, and why?
I have a Washburn bass, and a Fender Bassman amp. I like my Washburn because it does not have all that “active electronics” bullshit. It’s old, but I’m attached to it. And speaking of old, my Bassman is nice and fuzzy, and I really like that sound. I think it adds a lot more depth to our live sound than a clean bass tone would. However, when we recorded our debut album, _The Winter’s Harvest_, I was talked into plugging directly into the board, and got a really clear “Steve Harris” kind of sound. That works pretty well for IRON MAIDEN, but I think it made the album sound more “clean” than it should have. Well, and the keyboards and drum machine also added to the “clean” sound… Believe me, I learned my lesson about that, and will stick with my “warm” Bassman sound form now on.

Jack has had a couple different guitars over the years, and he just got a new one. I think he may finally be satisfied with the guitar, but now he’s looking for a bigger, meaner amp.

And my drum knowledge is pathetic, so all I know about Bob’s kit, is that it’s like nuclear explosions going off whenever he hits the snare.

Do you feel it matters, or matters only for aesthetic (“sound” quality, texture, timbre, “feel”) qualities?
What else would it matter? Just to be like B.B. King and his beloved guitar? No, I’m not that attached to any equipment I own, so if I could afford to get a bass and amp that I thought sounded better, I would. But “sounding better” is obviously extremely subjective, and after many years of using this same gear (I’ve had it and been in bands for a lot longer than ADVERSARY has been around), I guess I’m so used to it, that I’m not sure what would sound better. So, maybe I *am* a little like B.B. after all.

The Christian resolution to make the world ugly and bad has made the world ugly and bad.
– F.W. Nietzsche

What are you guys like outside of the band? Do you suffer under the Judeo-Christian pestilence known as “day jobs”? Tattoos? Historical heroes?
Bob and Jack do have “day jobs,” but my full time job is running my label, Cursed Productions. It may seem odd, but none of us have any tattoos. I think we may be the only ink-free Death Metal band in the world! I’m not sure I really have any heroes other than the guys in MOTORHEAD. And, as my pal Psycho would say, “the guy who invented lesbian pornography.”

scheitan is the hebrew/jewish god known as adversary, and is the ancestor of the morally sanitized christian satanIs the ADVERSARY eponym an identification with Satan, the “adversary” of ancient Hebrew religion?
YES! Thank you. You are exactly the second person to ever ask me that. I had thought it was odd that no one had snatched up the name before us, but I guess not many people understand what it means.

What do you see as the difference between Jewish, Christian, Islamic and Buddhist views of “evil”/”suffering”?
I’m not really well enough versed in Islam and Buddhism to answer that. So, what I’ll do instead is say that mainstream (x-tian at least) religions seem to think that a lot of natural behavior should be considered “evil,” and that seems crazy to me. Fucking, well that’s evil. Killing, no matter what the situation, that’s evil too.

What forms of art, ideas, or actions inspired the inception of your artwork?
Early Death Metal, of course. But also other music, such as MOTORHEAD, VENOM, SLAYER (I believe that you consider them to be a Death Metal band, but that’s open to debate, if you ask me), ACCEPT, DEAD KENNEDYS… Non mainstream music in general. And I suppose that honestly, everything I’ve ever heard has inspired me in some way. Maybe not always in a positive way, though. I also read whenever I can, and have certainly been inspired by the authors I like, such as Charles Bukowski, Henry Miller, Vladimir Nabokov, Italo Calvino, Jorge Luis Borges, William S. Burroughs, Douglas Adams, to name just a very, very few. Plus, as geeky as it might sound, Godzilla movies. I’ve always been a huge fan (excepting the dismal TriStar attempt of last summer) of Godzilla and his monstrous pals. And, horror movies. Zombies, especially, seem to grab my interest. I appreciate the special effects, and I suppose like the thrill.

Do you consider your music a form of “art” (the academic definition, not the trendy one)?
Certainly.

What motive inspires your art?
To create something that will outlast us.To, in sort of a Shakespearean sense, live forever. The hope that someday we might be a source of inspiration for others to creatively express what they feel.And to one day take over for MOTORHEAD as the best, most respected, band in the world.

Or maybe just to meet chicks and take over the world.

drugs are a lot of fun, but they can TAKE OVER YOUR LIFE... be carefulDo you think drugs help/hinder art?
I can’t really answer that, since I don’t use any drugs. But I do think that drugs can be used as a tool to possibly help with creativity. However, they can also be detrimental. As I said, I think they’re a tool, and should be used as such, if at all.

Does religion help/etc?
Well, it sure seems like a lot of Extreme Metal bands these days rely on religious (or more accurately, anti-religious) themes in their lyrics, so I guess it helps them in that way. I think that organized religion is a great way to oppress and control the masses, so it “helps” us by giving us a focus on one of society’s problems: it’s easier to be a sheep than to accept responsibility for your own actions, think for yourself, and be your own person.

Of course, x-tian religions love to censor everything they can, from books to thoughts, so in that way, that kind of religion clearly hinders the creative process.

“They train them to drop fire on men… But they won’t let them write the word FUCK on their aeroplanes… Becuase it’s obscene!”
-Colonel Kurtz, Apocalypse Now!

Violence?
I don’t know if violence has any affect on art, but I suppose that as a society becomes more and more violent, the art it as a whole produces will reflect that.

Television?
Most of what’s on broadcast television is extremely dumbed down, so that even the most idiotic Joe Sixpack will understand it, so generally I see TV as sort of a filter that removes most of what is interesting about life. Even worse when a movie is butchered so that it can be “safely” shown without “offending” anyone.

In your personal lives, how do you understand and respond to the presence of corporate control and material need?
Of course you do need to pay the bills, and obviously I like music and books, so I do my best to bring in cash, and spend it just as well. It would be nice to not have to worry about huge companies like Blockbuster having more than a little control in determining the content of the movies they carry, or Meijer driving all the mom and pop grocery stores out of business, but when faced with the decision of having enough to eat if I get the shit at Meijer, or going hungry from trying to support a local store, I must choose to eat.

What do you think of “jobs”?cursed productions has released many underground works and continues to operate as a death metal label and mail order of great promise
I don’t like them. I am lucky enough to be able to make a very modest living at doing something that I enjoy (Cursed Productions, Metal Curse, and ADVERSARY), but I do put in a lot more time at this than Jack and Bob do combined at their jobs. Sometimes, just for a second, I wonder if it wouldn’t be easier to go work for someone else. Certainly it would be easier, and considerably less work. I could have more “free time” to read and relax. But at what cost? So I could go be a nameless cog in some huge machine that cares not at all about me, as I am utterly replacable? So I could “finally grow up and get a real job”? I don’t think so. To quote Jello Biafra, “I’d rather stay a child and keep my self respect, if being an adult means being like you.” But, then again, if one day Cursed Productions fails to provide me with enough to get by, I will be forced to take other actions. That’s not part of the Global Domination plan, though.

Do you blaspheme on a regular basis for dentological, aka done for the intensity of the action itself, reasons?
Maybe. It seems more appropriate to blaspheme for the reaction it generates in others, whether positive or negative, as both responces are extremely important at various times and in various situations. But just screaming “Fuck god!” in an empty room doens’t do much for me.

Are you moral? Do you believe in morality?
I suppose so, but I certainly have my own morality. What I think is “right and wrong” might not match up with what some people think. I’m fairly close to what LaVey says in the _Satanic Bible_ as far as morality is concerned.

Do you think ethics are separate from morals?
I hadn’t considered it before. Perhaps morals could be seen as a personal code of conduct, while ethics might be viewed as more of a code of conduct for groups or whole societies. Perhaps to remain with the given society, one would have to conform to the ethical “guidelines,” while still retaining his own personal morality that might only come into play in other societies or groups.

What is the most important factor for you in creating music that satisfies you at the deepest level?
Knowing that what we have created is honest and true to us.

If you met Jesus, what would you say?
“Until I see you turn this water into wine, you’re just a punk in sandals.”

Or, maybe upon seeing a “miracle” I couldn’t debunk, “Oh shit!”

Hitler?
If I were back in time, I might say, “Stay out of Russia.” But no matter when I saw him, I’d want to talk about eugenics. What else could you talk to Hitler about?

“God”?
Now that depends on what you mean by “God.” But, playing along for a moment, I’d ask why we exist, and what the purpose of the universe is.

friedrich nietzsche is considered by many to be the philosopher of metal Nietzsche?
Maybe I could get him and Hitler together, as the conversations would be pretty related.

Gandhi?
I’d tell him that passive resistance cannot always work.

Without music life would be a mistake.
-F.W. Nietzsche

How would you react if your daughter got breast implants?
Interesting. I’ll try to take this one seriously. From the perspective of a father, I don’t think I’d like it, but I would certainly have to have more information as to why she was doing it. Is it just the fact that she’s small chested and wants to fuck the football team, who will only fuck the big boobed cheerleaders, or does she think that she’ll be better able to control the weak sheep-wills of men and have legions to do her bidding? If she wants to get a boob job so that she can dominate the universe, then okay.

Do you feel society is evolved from the hominid state, aka “ape” social existence with inherent power games?
Evidently not. As George Carlin would say, “It’s the bigger dick policy at work. If they have bigger dicks, bomb them.”

Why do you feel that many experience a dark sense of foreboding regarding the millenium and significant times afterward, such as 2012?
Fear of the unknown, for one thing. And I don’t have to mention that most people are sheep, and that the media has been forcing “millennium fear” on everyone, so it’s only natural that the herd is worried about it. What’s significant about 2012?

2012 is the date the Mayan calendar “ends” an era, with the implication that what comes will be either total destruction or a new frontier. I however think it is the date when the genome of marijuana truly matures, and thus all earth will be unified in clouds of sweet smoke.
More like the number of bong hits you’ve taken during this interview!

Is ADVERSARY is exploring a new type of metal, and an old type of metal, like any other group of self-respecting artists in this age?
Yeah, it’s sort of like my taste in literature: mythological and postmodern.

A giant HAILS and BLACK VOMIT OF ETERNITY to the mighty ADVERSARY for this lengthy interview.Thank you for your time.
You’re welcome of course. I should really thank you for the interest in ADVERSARY.

…The one-eyed man will have one eye the stronger; the blind man will see deeper inwardly, and certainly hear better. To this extent, the famous theory of the survival of the fittest does not seem to me to be the only viewpoint from which to explain the progress of strengthening of a man or of a race.
– F.W. Nietzsche

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THRASH is not SPEED METAL

Mix together the early CIRCLE JERKS, early BLACK FLAG, MDC, MINOR THREAT, SSD, TERVEET K�DET, and GANG GREEN, and you have something approximating these DIRTY ROTTEN IMBECILES (so-called by their parents). What can I say–this is manic, intense, tight thrash with great lyrics, and I can’t wait till these Houston boys unleash themselves upon the rest of us deprived people. 22 songs.
-Tim Yohannan (from Maximum Rocknroll #5, March/April 1983)

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Big media behind Indie Metal takeover

Insightful commentary on those “Best of Metal 2011” lists:

I’ve begun to realize that most of the lists currently being published are also exercises in varying, and scalable degrees of exclusionism. I say this because in the past two years major non-metal/indie oriented media outlets have taken it upon themselves to declare to their reading audiences what is the Best Metal of the Year. I’m referring to websites such as NPR, Pitchfork Media, Spin, PopMatters, Stereogum, Noisecreep, Frontier Psychiatrist, etc…There are countless other minor non-metal oriented blogs and sites that have their own list up as well, and they all pretty much loosely mirror one of the examples posted above.

This is a curiously new phenomenon: ten, seven, even six or five years ago you wouldn’t find non-metal/indie media daring to touch the very idea of the “best metal” released in those years. The cynic in me wants to ask, “Did the hipsters get tired of all the garage-rock bands ironically limping around Brooklyn?” That is mean spirited I know, but part of me does wonder, how long will this new found interest last? First let me offer this: I am not attempting to argue that these sites have no business publishing best of metal year end lists, nor am I attempting to critically analyze their selections. Each of the writers of these lists have their own tastes, preferences, and the right to promote them…but after mulling these lists over for a few weeks and listening to most of the albums on them, one thing has become very clear to me: The most popular of these lists are created by a handful of very prolific writers/bloggers, and the rest stem from the templates laid out by said writers. In particular, the highly read and discussed lists from NPR’s Lars Gotrich and Pitchfork/Stereogum’s Brandon Stosuy are parroted throughout the blogosphere. In deserving respect to these two writers, they both offer their opinions with interesting takes and lucid arguments. I enjoy reading their stuff, and dislike having to single them out — however due to their popularity, I feel they are liable to be held to a higher standard.

Without delving too deeply into Gotrich and Stosuy’s lists, the most obviously striking things about them both is that they tend to lean heavily on the new crop of post-black metal bands. There are occasional death metal albums sprinkled throughout, the odd doom record, and a good bit of math-metal (I hate that label but its what everyone uses). Okay fine, I actually like a few of their selections as well, but here’s a question: Aren’t we missing something in terms of various other styles of metal? You’ll notice that traditional metal and power metal are noticeably absent from these lists. – The Metal Pigeon

That’s the point. These aren’t metal lists, they’re replacement metal. That is to say, indie metal is taking over with the support of Big Media.

Metal is undisciplined by commercial standards. It has a gauge of trueness of spirit. That makes it a hard product to sell. Rock music on the other hand is accepting, has no specific spirit other than ironic surliness and greed, and is universal and easy to make. The labels prefer to sell rock music.

As a result, they’ve invaded metal with the indie hipster crowd because indie-metal sells. It’s familiar like rock, but seen as “rebellious” like metal, so all the extremely ordinary people who work very hard to style themselves as extra-ordinary are in love with it.

It’s the perfect product.

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Metal: popular but lacking quality

Has metal traded its soul for its popularity with the “service industry” workers, a/k/a hipsters and indie rockers?

Metal today is probably the most popular its been since the 80’s with bands reaching “the charts” with more frequency, worldwide acceptance in mainstream culture (even hipsters and indie fruitcakes are into it nowadays), feature films and documentaries (The Story of Anvil, Metal: A Headbangers Journey, Hesher). The ability for bands to tour on this side of the globe when in past years they would never had gotten the chance because of lack of label support, the popularity of Metal festivals not only in Europe but now in the U.S. with MDF, Gathering of the Bestial Legion, CIM, 70000 of Metal and others. The involvement of major companies like Scion with the Scion Fest and all the shows they put on and a wider acceptance by major venues like HOB to host Metal shows.

Come to think about it, its a pretty good time to be a Metalhead these days.

On the flipside one can’t help but notice that a lot of what people call Metal these days is utter crap I wouldn’t touch with a 10-foot pole. A lot of the bands and music being churned out left and right is unoriginal and emotionless. It is more concerned with fashion and image than with creative riffs and memorable anthems. So much of what kids (old fart voice) listen to nowadays is so watered down,tepid and soulless. Its hard for me to find new bands have any of that spark that would get my heart racing…. memories of listening to Dismember’s Like an Ever Flowing Stream for the first time and headbanging nonstop because you couldn’t help but feel the music. – SDMETAL.org

He makes a good point. Click the link above to read the whole rant.

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Death metal band saves cats from life on the street

metal_meowlisha

Donald Tardy of death metal band Obituary and his wife, Heather, spend their spare time and most of their “spare” money picking up stray cats off the street and taking care of them. Their charity, the Metal Meowlisha, cares for 20 colonies of feral cats 365 days a year.

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Metal Styles and Techniques

“Styles” are divisions of a subgenre not pronounced enough to warrant a new subgenre. “Sounds” are aesthetic variants of a subgenre. Just as “doom metal” means music that is either heavy metal or death metal played slowly with morbid/gothic surfacing, “sounds” differentiate groups of similar musical approach from each other. The evolution of “sounds” can be viewed as a hierarchy of specialized technique and aesthetic within a genre, the technique creating an effect that reveals the intent of the creators as communicated to the listener.

Technique and “Sounds”

Rhythm

Melody

Aesthetic

Structure

Vocals

Aesthetic and “Styles”

Heavy Metal

Ambient/Prog

Punk

Death

Black

 

 Heavy Metal

  Speed Metal

 

 Ambient

 

 Punk/Hardcore

 Thrash

 Grindcore

 

 Death Metal

 

 Black Metal

 

You can understand the styles of heavy metal by looking at the musical techniques and theory used, the aeshetic created, and the patterns of underlying structure pursued (as you can do in differentiated not just genres but types of music). Styles of death metal, black metal, heavy metal and crossover metal divide into “containers” for stylistic and compositional tendencies which reveal the interpretative structures in the music evoking the larger meta-perception or “life philosophy” beneath.

Aesthetic — or styles, arrangement, and production decisions — “works” where it supports the internal compositional structures of whatever music it encloses. Technique and production and performance come together to produce an aesthetic, which matches a compositional style, which in turn reflects the ideas that inspired the artist to communicate with his or her audience.

Heavy metal, in general, is music of loud, intense, nihilistic, feral, atavistic sound that reduces the individual and places them in a context of history where they are nothing (some would call this realism or nihilism). Accepting the reaction of despair to the violence and paranoia and insanity of human world living in denial of fear/death, and turning it into a living, willful, and distinctive nihilism that affirms nothingness as a gateway into more profound realms of thought — this is the goal of heavy metal, and it has many voices, or styles.

Rhythm

Syncopation

By playing off of internal rhythms, metal bands achieve syncopation — the inversion of stress in a passage. Normally strong beats are weak and the weak are strong; this effect is often achieved through polyrhythmic overlay by double-bass in death metal bands or by the chaotic, threshing blast beat of blackmetal drummers.

The variation enables an excited internal sub-rhythm to drive the song, as many bands do with double bass drums, letting snare and high hat/cymbal disassociate for key structural textures.

  • Slayer
    “Hell Awaits” and beyond featured the granddaddy of double-bass technique.
  • Deicide
    “Deicide” featured songs with anti-synchronized pump-beat percussion similar to the “Jaws” theme.
  • Suffocation
    The master planners of moving syncopated air and bass drum integration.
  • Unleashed
    “Shadows in the Deep” used this technique to warlike effect via guitar player forearm.

Polyrhythm

Using multiple rhythms to enhance layering effects bands create multiple dimensions of rhythmic space, using a normally linear framework in new shapes and often long or indeterminate phrases. This can occur in the dominant rhythmic instrument (guitars) or the background rhythm (drums/bass).

Some bands have taken this to extremes of chaos piling into itself, revealing an inner consistency and beauty, where others have interpreted this in the way of more contemporary ambient composers and have layered counterpoint or complementary rhythms in complex neo-electronic compositions.

  • Immortal
    “Pure Holocaust” features raging chaotic polyrhythm and ambient melody.
  • Burzum
    “Hvis Lyset Tar Oss” layered repetition to create epic meta-structures.
  • Morbid Angel
    “Altars of Madness” began with an inverted polyrhythmic beat.
  • Mayhem
    “De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas” used high-speed polyrhythms under ambient guitar.

Percussion

Explosive or definitive notes in a phrase are accentuated by percussion in drums or stringed instrument. Most often in guitars this occurs in the bands who muffle chords and strum staccato or interplay phrasing for conclusive effect, more than open-ended styles.

  • Metallica
    “Master of Puppets” used emphatic muffled chords for percussive centering in riffs.
  • Suffocation
    “Effigy of the Forgotten” used intricate polyrhythmic progressions to center complex songs.
  • Sepultura
    “Beneath the Remains” combined speed metal percussive strumming and death metal speeds.

Texture

Often bands give texture to rhythms by playing multiple levels of rhythm. For example, a guitar changing chords has a dominant rhythm in the beats on which the change occurs, but the chords themselves have a layer of rhythm in the speed with which they are strummed, or in death metal technique, at which their two most essential notes are varied through strumming or hammering. Even further, often the strumming itself has an independent texture which moves with the composition as a whole.

  • Slayer
    “Haunting the Chapel” invented the flying wrist technique of achieving hummingbird tremelo strumming.
  • Unleashed
    “Shadows in the Deep” featured slow masterpieces of micromotion and precision.
  • Morbid Angel
    After their monumental “Altars of Madness” which used this technique to create ambient melody and rhythm, Morbid Angel used it for prog-rock precision in the details of their epic “Blessed Are the Sick.”
  • Mayhem
    “De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas” features ambient strumming over Bathory-style rigid percussion matrix.
  • Rigor Mortis
    “Rigor Mortis” and more significantly “Freaks” built this technique into classical melody and structure.
  • Cadaver
    These Norwegians made rhythmic expectancy a part of their half-sliding, half-paused progressive metal.

Melody

Consonance

“Normal” melodies are used by older styles of heavy metal and sometimes by progressive bands integrating a jazz or rock influence. They are built around the scales used by these forms of music historically and in present essence, and as such are more easily recognized by listeners familiar with more mainstream music.

  • Atheist
    “Unquestionable Presence” built jazz harmony into a style of melodic progressive death metal.
  • Metallica
    “Kill ‘Em All” brought metal’s separate blues legacy into focus with new styles and heavy metal essence.
  • At the Gates
    “Slaughter of the Soul,” this band’s final work, made use of mainstreamification in the death metal sound.

Dissonance

Using dissonant alignment of notes in melodies produces a mournful yet technical sound, so many bands use this technique in both melodic and harmonic construction.

  • Voivod
    From “Dimension Hatross” onward Voivod have built songs around dissonant melodic tension.
  • Obliveon
    “From This Day Forward” established the ability of dissonance and atonality to build complex jazzlike compositions.
  • Immortal
    “Pure Holocaust” and “Blizzard Beasts” feature dissonant melody and use of inversion contra rhythm.

Atonality

Atonal arrangements of notes produce bizarre and perverse melodies, causing instigation of uprising in the mentality of the listener. The “not tonal” nature of this etymology comes from the lack of a fixed scale, or use of an cycling scale of arbitrary tones.

Most metal musicians use this style of composition in conjunction with chromatic scales, dynamically acquiring tone centers through counterpoint and experimenting with classical music theory in key-less anti-melodic architectures.

  • Morbid Angel
    “Altars of Madness” through “Covenant” used atonal solos to great effect over dissonant compositions.
  • Deicide
    “Legion” used atonal lead guitar to emphasize the nihilism of chromatic composition.

Layered

In the style of classical composers from years past augmented with an focus geared more toward an attention span “in the now,” metal bands often use modal layers to create songs.

These layers, each forming a portion of the main melody in the song which changes over time to narrate song development, create a resonant harmony which the composer can change to develop the complex matrix of emotions required to manipulate atmospheric mood.

This style easily succumbs to being only technique, but is useful for developing a language of melody in which harmony serves a subordinate role.

  • Burzum
    Simple in outcome but complex in how far it varies from predictable in conception, the music of Burzum unfolds longer narrative by manipulating environmental depth to melody.
  • Ildjarn
    Short deranged pieces create atmosphere through two or three melodies sequenced in different orders to form narrative, with layers of two-note modal complements influencing direction in mood.

Harmony

Classical

Classical harmonic formations stay within the same key and manipulate different registers of mode or tone. The chromatic scales and intricate arpeggio formations of death and black metal lay their ancestry here and develop into a more direct sense of musical motion.

  • Morbid Angel
    “Altars of Madness” evolved this technique into fast-picking and ambient relationship to beat, accentuating it with atonal lead guitars.
  • Deicide
    “Feasting the Beast” demonstrated this technique in an ambient but violent setting.
  • Burzum
    “Det Som Engang Var” built simple classical music out of power chord arpeggios.

Jazz

The freedom and complexity of jazz harmonics attracted many metal composers, who have worked in that area to create bizarre and startling freaks of brutality.

  • Atheist
    “Unquestionable Presence” built jazz harmony into a style of melodic progressive death metal.
  • Metallica
    “Kill ‘Em All” brought metal’s separate blues legacy into focus with new styles and heavy metal essence.
  • Demilich
    “Nespithe” built bizarre harmonies from rudimentary fusionesque randomness

Rock

Oftentimes rock-n-roll influences creep into metal bands and are easily identified by their influence on the dominant rhythms, and by the more mainstream tonal ideas of the pieces. Since rock is essentially blues filtered through the cowboy hobo country music eyepiece, these bands often bear a lot in common with jazz-influence acts.

  • Metallica
    “Kill ‘Em All” brought metal’s separate blues legacy into focus with new styles and heavy metal essence.

Structure

Cyclic

Most rock songs come of the verse-chorus tradition and consequently so does unstudied death and black metal, as well as most grindcore. The tedium of this technique is sometimes temporarily alleviated by adding another structure or riff pattern on top of the double elements of cycle but even this is transparent.

Narrative

When many riffs are joined to form a progression of ideas not as much concerned with creating a piece but a sequence of moods a narrative composition occurs; others call this “riff salad” or “grab-bag metal.”

Architected

Music created with massive conceptions in mind often builds entirely unconventional structures to serve the individualized needs of each song. At this level of composition, nothing is as fits the norm as each piece has an entirely custom use in unique and intricate compositions where details matter.

  • Emperor
    “In the Nightside Eclipse” featured drifting and meandering songs built around central melodies.
  • Burzum
    “Hvis Lyset Tar Oss” used bafflingly simple and distinctive riffs in layers to create epic compositions.
  • Morbid Angel
    “Altars of Madness” often sequenced seemingly jarring changes in the smoothness of compositional integration.
  • Metallica
    “Orion” from Master of Puppets introduced this technique to the metal community at large.

Vocals

Sung

Like rock and blues before it, people sing these. With melodic voices and enunciation of words. Though sometimes it seems bizarre now, most people like ALL of their entertainment to sound this way.

  • Helstar
    A mid-eighties hybrid of Slayer metal and Iron Maiden rock, their album Nosferatu used sung vocals to pragmatic effect.

Shouted

Hardcore punk brought us angry shouting for vocals and it re-appears from time to time in death and black metal but is limited by the clarity and monotone of vocal it produces through uniform emphasis.

Distorted, Guttural

The majority of modern metal works utilize this style, yet it arose from crossover music like grindcore after being inspired by the grand old growler of metal, Lemmy Kilmeister of Motorhead, whose membership in both heavy metal and punk communities affirms his historical importance.

Metal originally adopted the gravely cigarette-burnt and alcohol-eroded voice of punk rock’s more deested vocalists, favoring its obscurity and the difficulty of marketing such an indistinct image in the world of concrete images concealing nebulous actualities and negligible rewards.

By reducing timbre from absolute tone to gritty, naturalistic, distortion and shearing melody to textural variance only, this style de-emphasizes vocals while making their presence fit into the texture of the music, allowing more dynamic variation in composition.

  • Napalm Death
    “Scum” revealed extremes of this technique for their potential in disturbing the aesthetic sensibilities of listeners.
  • Possessed
    “Seven Churches” brought the voice forth in primal form.
  • The Exploited
    With a sequence of groundbreaking hardcore albums the Exploited let the voice get growlier each time.
  • Morbid Angel
    Death metal cofounders Morbid Angel implemented this technique to great effect on “Altars of Madness” and beyond.

Distorted, Rasp

A more fragile sound, more like a warning than the guttural vocals of death metal, this high pitched muffled shriek is distorted so that it sounds like warnings from the dead.

  • Emperor
    Used vocals to accentuate melody in majestic pieces of speedy production and demonic drive.
  • Darkthrone
    Fragments of melody in vocals harmonized with miminalist riffing to expand mood.
  • Antaeus
    The master of searing growls with both texture and punctuation in rhythm, MkM paces each piece with violence and depth.
  • Mütiilation
    Droning melodic vocals within distorted chaos frame the structural changes in this music.

Heavy Metal

NWOBHM

Taking over from Black Sabbath when too much Led Zeppelin clonage invaded the airwaves, NWOBHM bands used more punkish riffing with more precise, technological structures in phrasing. The imagination ran wild and fantasy/mideval concepts in lyrics developed here.

Doom Metal

As Sabbath was slow, the doom metal genre demanded slower and more dramatically manic depressive songwriting. These bands bridge power chords across glacial rhythm for atmospheric impact. Often accompanied by drugs, esp. marijuana.

Narrative

Probed right after NWOBHM made its appearance, narrative bands strung together collages of riff and transition to make unfolding retellings of experience. This style is eternal and re-emerges every generation.

Stadium

Viewed by many as the nadir of metal, stadium metal is influenced by post-progressive rock atmospheric bands who used instrumentalism and pure pop hook to make sentimental but explosive songs. In metal this translates to an epic ballad flavor to everything. Once again, an eternal style which recurs with each new cycle of metal.

Hardcore

Punk

Punk is simplified 1950s rock voiced in power chords and sequenced to a pulsing basic rhythm. Vocals and aesthetic emphasized dirt and unsteadiness, and disregard of musicality freed bands from the form and compositional dynamic of rock music. Often bouncy or humorous, punk music moves with a friendly but simple motion.

Oi

Anthemic workingclass punk with often abrasive sounds mixed with guitar work reminiscent of surf bands from the generation before, Oi came into its own as its own influence in the next generation of hardcore.

Melodic

Building tension through emphasis on melodic notes within otherwise rigid progressions, a subset of the hardcore community made music with constant unchanging percussion and fluidly shifting riffs.

Grinding

The earliest hardcore to secede from normalcy became truly a handful of power chords grinding against one another in conflicted progressions and interrupted rhythm. This music is essentially similar to grindcore after the first generation.

Speed Metal

Percussive

The major innovation of speed metal was the muffled, explosive strumming of power chords to produce a sound of impact and resurrect the power of rhythm guitar in rock music.

Trance

Bands like Prong produced the first hypnotic rhythm “mellow” metal which while violent in methods of creation produced an atmosphere of calm and allowed emotional aspects of the art within to emerge.

Epic

Some bands aspired to the fantasy- and progressive-inspired works of NWOBHM and toward that aim produced neoclassical and often lengthy works. The most commonly known example of this is Metallica’s “Orion.”

Progressive

From the 1970s progressive bands metalheads began making larger structures and wider gains in technique in the rendering of intricate but impact-oriented music. While power chord riffing remains predominant, many progressive metal bands moved beyond the accepted “progressive” sound and created theoretically literate avantgarde works.

“Thrash Metal”

Misnamed speed/death metal hybrid bands were called “thrash metal” because of their violent and self-conflicted music, aggressive attitudes and thrash-based ideological assertions. The origin of the term “thrash metal” is European big corporate media magazines trying to sell speed metal as something more extreme than what it was.

“Power Metal”

A style that emerged as the speed metal genre was dying, power metal is speed metal riffing played either in an epic heavy metal or tuffguy pseudo-death metal style.

Thrash

Thrash, punk

One branch of thrash reveals more of its punk influence, and in bands like MDC or COC expressed itself with loosely hardcore songs played quickly with a metal influence in phrasing, but in punk song structures and major keys.

Thrash, metal

The other half of the thrash tree demonstrates a more metallic approach and is a proto-death-metal hybrid subgenre, found most clearly in the early works of Cryptic Slaughter and the later works of DRI.

Grindcore

Rigid

Open intervals and precise furiously fast structures distinguish this variant. Bands like Repulsion and Terrorizer defined this style.

Disassociative

The schizophrenic out of time rhythms and blurry, organic, lavaging rush of this style produced disorientation and loss of individual characteristics in the rising phenomena of chaos.

Crustcore, melodic

Loosely derived from Discharge, this genre worked melodic hardcore into a blurring ripple of speed and fury that unleashed itself in short bursts of anger.

Crustcore, rhythm

In the style of the mighty Assück, these bands created pounding furious rhythms from even intervals of the fretboard, roaring forth in some complexity but mostly disassociative, violent, random, disorienting music.

Death Metal

Phrasal

From the pure origins of death metal, the faster styles took after bands like Slayer, early Sepultura and Massacra in making architectures of intricate rhythm and melodic construction.

Percussive

Derived from the slamming, explosive street-level speed metal of Exodus or Exhorder, percussive death metal evolved from the New York Death Metal and Tampa Death Metal sounds to become a generic style of impact-oriented, explosive muffled strum death metal.

“Hate” is mastery of this style.

New York Death Metal (NYDM)

Explosively percussive and equal parts speed metal and angst-ridden New York Hardcore (NYHC), this music flew from the depths with guttural vocals, edgy rhythm riffing and essaylike song structures. In two styles, one of which is more percussive than its longer phrased variant.

Florida Death Metal

Some of the most “heavy metal” of the death metal movement, the Florida bands mated bold rhythm to the pulsing rhythm of early percussive death metal and created the most defiant, monstrously simple and direct metal of the era.

Swedish Death Metal

The first major evolution of theory occurred within the Swedish Death Metal movement, where Sunlight Studios/Thomas Skogsberg(tm) fuzztone production and longer phrases contributed to a melodicity fully evolving with At the Gates.

Progressive

Continuing the progressive tradition in metal, the progressive death bands adhered to a style which was part rock with jazz and classical influences, and part the wily fingered “technical” death metal of a previous generation.

Jazz/death metal hybrid.

Later albums: jazz/metal.

Harmonically rich, offtime rhythms.

Became highly technical.

Innovators/technicalists.

Technicalists and romantic artists.

Used violin and lead diminishing melody guitar work.

  • Deathgrind

A stylistic hybrid, deathgrind is death metal using the simpler song structures and rhythmic expectancy riffing of grindgore. So far, nothing of stature has emerged from this style.

“Death Thrash”

This term is marketing slang for retro bands making faster speed metal music using death metal picking technique and vocals.

Göthenburg metal

From Göthenberg, Sweden, came a series of bands emulating At the Gates by making technical, jazz-and-rock influenced death metal. This only became a problem after “Slaughter of the Soul,” when At the Gates sent out the word to become commercial rock music hidden within death metal stylings.

Pre-At the Gates.

Template for this style.

Black metal that is heavy metal derived from this death metal style.

Doom metal

The moribund, self-pitying and sentimental style of doom metal has emerged in both heavy metal and death metal genres, where it is essentially the same music played with an emphasis on slow chord changes and resonant, recursive resolutions.

Black Metal

Deconstructivist

Chaotic and nihilistic blasts of short information in three-note riffs founded this style, which through reduction of assumed musicality focused on the information of its communication.

Melodic

Early experiments in structuralism allowed melody to serve as a fundamental principle and therefore emphasized use of the melodic sound in riff construction and chord voicing.

Melodic, heavy metal

Some relapsed to a former style and made melodic stadium metal of NWOBHM era with black metal vocals and technique.

Blasting

For the few who sought more extremity a style of grinding metal with nihilistic clipped emanations of information in abrupt explosions of riff was created, with variants moving closer to grindcore or pure unleashed melodicity.

Epic

Descended from the devotees of Bathory “Blood, Fire, Death,” this genre works folk song nationalism and epic narrative of multi-generational movements on the level of a people, creating symbolic black metal with lengthy melodies.

Trance/Ritual

Minimalism taken to the furthest extreme hybridized with metal produced an electronic music influenced genre which favored unchanging simple beats (similar to Discharge) under shifting melodic context- and lexically-sensitive phrase evolution.

“Transylvanian Hunger” is the best of this style.

Ultra-minimalist.

“Pure Holocaust” is a related idea.

  • Drone

Focuses on matching rhythm to expectation of a tone and then wearing it out, like the tedium of living in a dying society, anticipating radical change.

Ambient

Technopop/IDM

The music of Kraftwerk and its descendants, this is long melody evolving over a complex beat structure, often without human vocals.

EBM/Industrial

Emphatic and pulsating dance music that was a fundamental influence on developing techno and industrial genres, EBM sounds like what Nine Inch Nails would be if executed by Godflesh or Beherit.

Ritual

Influenced by throwbacks to mideval and music from before recorded history, ritual ambient uses simple melodic patterns in evolution and a primal sense of rhythm to emphasize its constructs.

Neoclassical

Somewhat of a summary of the genre as a whole excluding most popular music influences from EBM, neoclassical ambient/industrial uses technological instrumentation and song structure to emphasize classical influences in melodic construction.

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