Serbian black metal band Zloslut will unleash its second album U Transu Sa Nepoznatim Siluetama in spring 2015 on Dark Chants Productions. To prepare audiences for the new work, Zloslut have released a sample track “Ukleta” (below).
We first reviewed ZloslutZloslutni Horizont – Donosilac Prokletstva, Ocaja I Smrti, which combines black and death metal styles into a unique voice expressing an idea and atmosphere specific to this band, back in February. Since that time, the band has composed and recorded the new full album which will be released on CD and LP early next year.
Zloslut composer Utvara answered our questions for a brief profile as follows describing the new direction this band is taking and how it affects their distinctive sound.
How is the second album different from the first?
It is a completely new album, unlike the first album which was still quite linked to the older material.
First of all, we have made a step forward when it comes to production. It is not crystal clear, but it is not raw either, so expect something in between. The album is around 40 minutes in duration and comprised of 8 all-new tracks, with less instrumental composition than we had on Zloslutni Horizont – Donosilac Prokletstva, Ocaja I Smrti. This time you can expect something new in our music in the form of sampled chants and clean vocals here and there. But it is still Zloslut, primitive, ominous, dark in my own way.
Where did you record it, with whom as engineer and who on mixing deck, and how long did it take?
The album writing started a little bit before the recording of the first (well, this precisely concerns only one track), but the recording phase was a question of only a few days. But all in all, it took me two months for getting everything ready from music to design.
It was produced, engineered, mastered and mixed by Nemanja Krneta (a.k.a. Zlorog), I worked with him already back in 2012 for the EP Pustoš i prevare izgubljenih duša. This guy knows what I want, so that’s why I contacted him. And I’m very happy about how everything turned out, from the recording to the final phases of the whole album.
The recording itself occured in Belgrade, Serbia, at various studios.
What are the topics of these song-titles? I don’t think “Google translate” will work on these.
“U transu sa nepoznatim siluetama” means “In trance with the unkown silhouettes”.
The tracklist is (with translations in parentheses):
Odjeci Ezoteričnih Misli (Echoes of Esoteric Thoughts)
Kletva Ožalošćenog (Curse of the Grieved)
Crni Um (Black Mind)
Transcendentalni Ples Ludila (Transcendental Dance of Madness)
Ukleta (The Haunted One)
Budućnost Smrću Blista (The Future Shines of Death)
Istinska Odanost (True Devotion)
Poslednji San (Last Dream)
The lyrics are quit poetic, if I can say that despite not considering myself a poet. All lyrics deal with occultism, death, delusion of life and mankind.
Including former Asphyx drummer Bob Bagchus and original Asphyx guitarist Eric Daniels, Soulburn — known to many as the “off-brand” version of Asphyx during personnel shakeups — returns with a 2014 album entitled The Suffocating Darkness to be released via Century Media on November 17th in Europe and November 18th in North America.
As Asphyx continues its drive in parallel with Hail of Bullets to make a modernized form of its pounding abrasive death metal, those who are less committed to playing as a professional band have shifted to Soulburn where they can keep normal lives and still produce music. For Asphyx fans, this move provides two benefits, namely the more commercial version of Asphyx dominating the airwaves while the more underground version can more flexibly explore its style.
Bagchus and Daniels add Twan van Geel (Flesh Made Sin, Legion of the Damned) as vocalist/bassist and Remco Kreft (Grand Supreme Blood Court, Nailgun Massacre, Xenomorph) as a second guitarist. The album was recorded with Harry Wijering (Harrow Productions), mixed and mastered by Dan Swanö (Unisound Recordings) with artwork from Timo Ketola and Roberto Toderico.
“Bringing Soulburn back to life was a natural thing to do since the inspiration was huge, more than ever before. Playing the old songs as well as the new incantations is a blessing. The riffs and thus the songs kept coming and coming and we knew we were on the right track. The new deal with our longtime label Century Media Records was the next logical step,” said Bagchus.
SOULBURN line-up:
Twan van Geel – vocals/bass
Remco Kreft – guitar
Eric Daniels – guitar
Bob Bagchus – drums
First observation from the newest At the Gates track is encouraging. This is clearly better than the sing-song candy-pop that blighted Slaughter of the Soul and ventures tentatively into the land of darker melodies and stark contrasts that defines the death metal approach to mood.
Approximating the descending chord progressions from Terminal Spirit Disease, “At War With Reality” reveals At the Gates applying the more popular aspects of their sound as a means of intensifying older-style tremolo riffs. The solo comes straight from modern death metal and incorporates many elements of older heavy metal and hard rock, and the song builds itself out of a strict verse-chorus loop with overlays and internal melodies via lead rhythm guitar. As such, “At War With Reality” does not return to the good old days, but mixes the later days of the formative period of this band with newer styles and produces a song with more depth and power than the singalong material of Slaughter of the Soul.
As far as those hoping for the complex arrangements and internal melodic dialogue of the first At the Gates album, “At War With Reality” does not go that far. It is however only one track from the album, albeit the title track, so the rest remains an unknown quantity. But this shows the band moving closer to a form of music which has greater intensity, and in the process tempering the lite jazz and post-hardcore/emo influences of recent death metal hybrids, and so takes a positive step for At the Gates and death metal as a whole.
Greek black metal founders Varathron return with a new album that takes the band in a modernized melodic metal direction but does so without losing the unique balance of heavy metal hooks and dark atmosphere that defined the debut, His Majesty at the Swamp.
Untrodden Corridors of Hades, which will see release via Agonia Records on November 21 in Europe and December 9 for the rest of the world, veers away from the old school doom metal sound of the debut but picks up with a version of the melodic metal of Walpurgisnacht but in a modernized style. This new style adopts the frenetic pace and compressed song structure of contemporary metal, but within that style, the ear for melodic composition and atmosphere of the original band makes itself audible.
With a cover by famed metal artist Mark Riddick, Untrodden Corridors of Hades was recorded, mixed and engineered by Kostas Kalampokas at Infinite Loop Music Studio in Greece and mastered by Tom Kvålsvoll at Strype Audio in Norway. The new album resembles 2009 release Stygian Forces of Scorn but with new energy and louder sound, as the embedded sample below reveals.
Tracklist:
Kabalistic Invocation of Solomon
Realm of Obscure
Arcane Conjuring
Leprocious Lord
The Bright Trapezium
Death Chant
Delve Into the Past
Line-up:
Stefan Necroabyssious – vocals
Achilleas C – guitars
Sotiris – guitars
Stratos – bass
Haris – drums
What are Sadistic Metal Reviews? When Hessians decide they are sick of every random person tagging along for the glory of metal while making the same dreck that big media pushes on us through the pop industry. Make art, make it violent and aggressive, be truthful… or go home as we enjoy your delicious tears.
Siftercide – Siftercide
Some time ago there was much ruckus in the press because people were using the word “retarded” as a synonym for “extremely stupid.” This died down when people realized that retarded people are actually extremely stupid, generally in the 60-70 IQ range which is typical for Congress but very low for normal people. Siftercide is retarded. The basic idea was to make deathgrind at fast grindcore pace and throw in a few dissonant chords to try to hide the fact that these riffs are boring, these songs are predictable, and this music will generate a headache not because it’s extreme but because it is like listening to a jet engine. Really, screw this. It’s not worth your time or mine.
Ormgard – Ormblot
Underground metal typically occurs at three speeds: the tempo set by the percussion, the pace of changing chords, and the iteration of tremolo strum. Ormgard makes black metal which frequently slows down the first two with the latter at full pace, creating the kind of atmospheric black metal that distinguished early Behemoth or Ungod. Much of this picks up the straight fast pace of classic black metal with relatively straightforward chord progressions that emphasize melody. Keyboards and howling possum in pain vocals accompany it; the album is sandwiched between two imaginative instrumentals that evoke the feeling of the ancient era. In mood, this album most resembles a less-Gothic version of the first Gehenna work, but picks up the energy like early Ancient to create a sense of conflict and desperation. While this breaks no new ground stylistically, that never struck most metal fans as important. Comparisons to Abigor will be hard to dodge, especially the Orkblut era, and while they are apt aesthetically, Ormgard spreads out further than Abigor for an approach more like that of the original black metal bands exploding from Norway in the early 1990s. Ormblot channels its power into a faithful exploration of this genre and while not strikingly interesting, holds the attention by being non-random and carefully manipulating mood to dark effect.
Nocturnal Graves – From the Bloodline of Cain
The term metalheads generally use for bands such as this is “straightahead.” Straight out of the 1980s but with black metal vocals, it is high-speed basic riffs and catchy but binary songs. If you did not get enough of Aura Noir, or have an urge to re-live Slaughter Lord in simpler form, this may appeal, but the fundamental lack of musical motion or depth makes this a hard sell for the experienced metalhead. While the aesthetics have changed somewhat, this style of really basic riffing and exuberant simple songwriting has not evolved in 30 years. Its attempts to become more high-intensity end up being repetitive and it flows by and is forgotten when silence returns.
Goatwhore – Constricting Rage of the Merciless
If you are not fully paying attention, this album might sound like a good thing. Its style is pure Angelcorpse mated with 1970s heavy metal and some Southern Rock; its approach is to pack in extra riffs to interrupt a verse-chorus loop that focuses on the vocal rhythm of the chorus. No flaws in musicianship, vocals are vicious, but the songs do not really go anywhere. Or maybe a better way to say this is that these songs sound like academic exercises, laboratory experiments or designs on paper: they relate well to their parts but the whole is nothing larger than the linear sum of the parts. The result is much frenetic pounding and guitar raging, hooks grasping at your ears, and then a sense of disappointment as songs drill toward an end that means nothing more than the start. As the album goes on, more of the 1970s hard rock and metal riffs come out to fill space but the result remains uncompelling. This band is more competent than any others in this style but the style itself lacks any grasp on matters of importance and seems to be the metal equivalent of late-night TV. The Hod album we reviewed recently is a better take on this style.
Colombian Necktie – Twilight Upon Us
Before Kurt Cobain shot himself in a heroin-induced haze, he was fond of saying that metal was out of ideas during the most fertile time in metal history since its inception. If he were around today, however, he would find metalheads buying him beers for saying that metal has run up the flag saying that it is out of ideas. Sludge, not really a hybrid of metal, happens when you mix stoner doom with slow hardcore and probably dates its innovation to the first three Eyehategod albums and slow Integrity songs. Colombian Necktie mix up the dirge-like rage-infused passages of those bands with ordinary Southern-fried rock played uptempo to keep your attention. Nothing stands out as horrible but the whole lacks any compulsion for a listener interested in content. You might as well listen to Huey Lewis and the News if you slow it down and run it through a distortion pedal, because in its core that is what Colombian Necktie and all bands in the sludge style seem to be heading for. If you read it cynically, it is another take on grunge music, which is basically hardcore bands making rocking music and trying to cloak it in metal aesthetics. If you look at any piece of these albums, it is hard to find fault, but if you listen to the whole, you will fall asleep standing up. Most reviewers get their albums free and hear them once and then give it a thumbs up so that the reviewers get promoted along the line by labels who love their spunky and wacky reviews. But if you look at music as a fan, anything you can only listen to one time and do not immediately want to hear again is off the menu, as it should be for Twilight Upon Us and its ilk.
Derided mostly by casual noticers of their cover art, Cannibal Corpse created a public face for death metal by becoming the most popular death metal band in history. Outselling the rest of the genre, they have kept on tour and pushing out albums for two and a half decades and now have unleashed their thirteenth album. Veteran music journalist and metal writer Joel McIver caught up with the band and wrote a history and explanation of Cannibal Corpse.
Intelligently, McIver opted not to try to make a narrative of his own. Instead he took a Glorious Times approach and let the band speak for itself for the most part, then knitting the disparate statements together into single narratives. The first two thirds of the book consists of statements from the band members which come across as unedited although their length suggests they were assembled from multiple interviews. The last third of the book contains a history of the band as a whole told through excerpts from interviews with the band, managers and other members of the underground community. The entire book is interspersed with song lyrics with brief explanations from the band. As a result, this book becomes easily readable and very personal, avoiding the pitfalls of trying to become overly formal or over-analytical with a band that does not want to be taken overly seriously.
In our twenties, we weren’t thinking too seriously about this stuff. Chris wrote the lyrics and we gave him free rein to be as offensive and disturbing as he thought necessary. Nowadays we probably think a little more about the subject matter of our songs, and the end result can be lyrics that are still horrifying but less overtly offensive. I think that sometimes a more subtle approach can be more effective for horror fiction anyway—‘subtle’ being a very relative term in our case, maybe the difference between a hatchet to the genitals and a hatchet to the head. But that’s what our band is doing really: putting horror fiction to music. We don’t back what the characters in our songs are doing: they’re just evil characters who are appropriate for stories like these. – Alex Webster (121-122)
If the book has a theme, it can be found in the normalcy of Cannibal Corpse. The band member biographies detail their early interest in heavy metal, then in musicianship, and their desire to be part of the new movement of harder and heavier music coming out after Metallica and later, after the first nascent death metal. They mention the classics of proto-underground metal like Sodom and Slayer, but focus on not the extremity of lyrics but the music itself. These men wanted to make music that did what their musical heroes did, but took it to a new level of intensity. They also wanted to have a sense of humor about it. And, going back to their earliest influences, they found idols who had also made it big on a commercial level: the 1970s hard rock and heavy metal acts that shocked the uptight citizenry but delighted mischievous and alienated kids everywhere. The comedic lyrics of torture, sadism, butchery, gore and mass killing arise not from a fascination with the dark and morbid, but a joy in disturbing social pretense that has more in common with Kiss or Judas Priest on the big stage, gyrating away as church ladies gasped.
When assembling the narrative of the band, McIver stacked statements from band members in such a way to tell the narrative through its strongest voices, inserting summaries of major events so that the least specific material is told from a third-person perspective. This gives more space to the band to speak about their own intentions and analysis, which enables this book to move along at a fast pace and never wind down into the kind of rambling anecdotes that blighted rock journalism in the 1970s and 1980s. As a result, it is both a short book and complete in its recounting of the Cannibal Corpse story. Through skillful editing, McIver avoids having the history drag or become tangential, and with the voices of the band members he brings up every essential topic in short, readable fashion. We also hear from band members and crucial actors like label boss Brian Slagel whose voices are not normally heard in the telling of this history.
In my downtime, I shoot guns. I’ve been interested in them since I was a kid. It’s the other thing I’m interested in apart from guitars, and it’s a great way to let off aggression. I go to ranges and shoot targets. Playing loud music is another good way to release stress. I like to go to the gym and work out, and I like to go out and drink and have fun with my buddies. Luckily, I’ve always been able to go anywhere and make friends. I live day by day. I would never have guessed that I’d still be doing this after all this time… — Pat O’Brien (46)
In the history of metal, Cannibal Corpse: Bible of Butchery will be remembered as a book that started a debate instead of ended one. Most analysis of Cannibal Corpse so far has focused on the reactions of others and has been unable to get around the disturbing imagery and lyrics. By mixing lyrics with histories, and looking at the motivation of band members for personal and artistic goals instead of reading the band as an advocate of what is described in its lyrics, Cannibal Corpse: Bible of Butchery reveals the commonality of Cannibal Corpse with heavy metal bands since the dawning of the genre. Instead of serving as a kind of unpaid advocate for serial killers everywhere, this band acted as a continuation of the heavy metal tradition of upsetting parents and delighting kids. By getting past the elephant in the outsider viewpoint room, McIver shows us Cannibal Corpse as they are, and lets their story tell itself and reveal the undiscovered history behind what for most people is the public face of death metal.
What are Sadistic Metal Reviews? You are mortal; your time is short. Listen to the best and death to the rest! We recognize that music quality is an objective measurement, where “taste” is more subjective. Taste however is easily fooled and leads you and the genre to a place of mediocrity. Thus we select the better options and mercilessly destroy the weak… if you are a false, do not entry!
Abysmal Lord – Storms of Unholy Black Metal
Borrowing some ideas from the flowing columnar death metal fad/trend of last year, Abysmal Lord attacks this phenomenon from the opposite end, mimicking black metal like Demoncy, Beherit and Blasphemy but giving the music less of a “messy” aesthetic and more of a structured, hard-hitting death metal approach. Perhaps some would call this “blackened death,” but we all know what a waffle that phrase represents. Unlike most of the clone bands, Abysmal Lord merits a second listen for tight compositions and a strong understanding of how to fit together these riffs. Alas as the saying goes there will be nothing new here to shock you, but really what is new? Little: we find music that expresses an emotion and then go with that. In this case, Abysmal Lord creates a sensation like being part of a malevolent fog attacking a city of oblivious burghers with intent to rip out their souls and force them to face the emptiness of the lives they lead. While many riffs cite from earlier bands, the overall feeling of these songs stands on its own, although the band will want to renovate ancient sounds in order to move forward with its own progress.
Aratron – The Recovery
Aratron creates efficient death metal in the intersection of styles between Centurian and Aura Noir, with lots of high-energy rollover rhythms pervading the riffing. The songs come together tightly and each riff fits in to the simple song structure and makes it more powerful. Like many bands of this type it stays within high-speed and mid-paced tempi and performs most of its motion with guitars over relatively passive drums. Riff forms will strike no one as stunningly new but belonging to this band in a form of its own when heard together. Unfortunately the band possesses a great weakness in the vocals which use chihuahua-style rhythms and sometimes, assemble themselves around the simplest pattern derivable from the song and repeat it slowly without variation in timbre or tone. That subverts some of the subtlety of this work which aims to be full-ahead-go and yet avoid falling into the pitfalls of that style. Periodic melodic breaks are reminiscent of Black Sabbath and show the capacity of this band for building more complex songs even when at heart they favor full-energy riff-chorus loops with a few extra riffs to reinvigorate their momentum. Many of the chord progressions used sound like these guys really like early Mayhem.
Atara/Miserable Failure – Hang Them
Two grindcore bands comprise this split, Atara who are groovier and Miserable Failure who are more manic. Listening to these, the casual metalhead will recall that grindcore fizzled like a damp fuze in the 1980s not only because all the bands upsold into Led Zeppelin hybrids but because the genre itself is so limited. We get it: short songs, screaming, noise, havoc. But when does the cliché wear thin? When do we realize that we are making a parody of what elders said about our music for three generations? That riffcraft and songwriting take a back seat to novelty? Napalm Death was “cute” on Scum and From Enslavement to Obliteration but they bailed out after that. Carcass moved on after Reek of Putrefaction, and even the mighty Repulsion left it at one album. Within a narrow scope, there is only so much to say, and so grindcore like the previous minimalist experiment in punk rock abolished itself. Atara manages solid songs with a bit of groove between the extravagant flourishes but songs are extremely similar; Miserable Failure sounds like more constant screaming with repetitive droning riffs going on in the background. In one of the great paradoxes of humanity, both are probably at the tops of their genre, and yet that is not enough for a second listen.
Integrity – Systems Overload
Bands like Neurosis and Integrity inspired the “sludge” revolution in metal by playing post-hardcore slowly and for atmosphere, but what attracted the industry was that as these bands gained experience they began sounding more like regular rock music. This allowed the simple calculus of all record labels: new thing / same old thing = new thing we control. This Integrity album shows the band pulling back from the punk and into the punk rock while keeping the aesthetic — the numerator of the fraction above — of hardcore, but adding in the raw structure (the denominator) of basic rock songs. You will recognize many of the patterns on this album from hard rock and classic rock albums, although to their credit Integrity have thoughtfully modified them and extended them, mixing the single items up across songs so that nothing sounds exactly like something else. In this, Systems Overload is one of the most professional albums to come out of punk; they worked hard on making every bit of this fit within the product range the audience expected but with a new aesthetic so it could be branded and a differentiated product. In that area this album is admirable, and it makes for easy and pleasant listening other than the strained and soar throat vocals, but otherwise it strikes me as music for the inexperienced that would be fun for a season and then discarded.
Nihilistinen Barbaarisuus – Väinämöinen
This two-song EP evokes the golden days of Bathory with a long and hypnotic track followed by an acoustic instrumental, but owes more to the Norwegian wave such as Burzum and Gorgoroth. Much as with the latter, it composes in the melodic minor scale, and borrows much of its sense of pacing and trancelike riffing from second-album Burzum. This creates a sense of being suspended in time while watching for action to occur within a scene, and the use of flowing tremolo suspends reality much as it did with Gorgoroth and Graveland, another background influence — by the sound of things — on this band. The first track expands to six minutes on a few short themes and develops internal counter-melodies to give them depth (a less-overused version of the technique in Borknagar), which avoids the lazy wandering of bands like Drudkh or Inquisition, and instead creates a deepening sense of mood. The second track uses acoustic instruments and creates a folkish aura for the first, developing similar themes as if shadowing darkness with light. Much like other faithful retro-continuation projects such as Woodtemple, this music maintains integrity and avoids the pitfalls of contemporary music. It may not be the most exciting owing to an internal balance that is not as savagely unbound as Burzum, for example, and to its arrival twenty years after these techniques hammered audiences for the first time. However, unlike almost all from the genre today, Väinämöinen understands how to make beauty in the darkest despair of the human soul, and from that find not a contrarian impulse toward “good” but a desire to resolutely wage war on all that is inferior and thus, raise the darkness to a higher level of clarity that approximates beauty.
The Summer 2014 edition of 2600 magazine includes an article by Brett Stevens about the intersection between the heavy metal underground and the hacker underground.
“Crossover: Where Metal and Hacking Met and Mixed” concerns the early years of PC hacking when hackers used the BBS underground and other facilities, some borrowed, to communicate about the nascent underground metal scene. It includes interviews with the leading hackers of that era who listened to heavy metal, including Cult of the Dead Cow and Erik Bloodaxe.
The article follows up on an earlier article published at Perfect Sound Forever, a long-running music e-zine, entitled “Hacker Metal.” That article introduced the concept of hacking and how hackers used BBS culture to stay informed about heavy metal and work around low media coverage.
Although a small portion of the metal community, the crossover between hackers and metalheads provides a fertile ground for the outlook that seeks to defy pointless rules and pay attention to the mechanics of power instead. 2600, named for the signal that allowed hackers to dial out on a line to which they were connected, provides a nexus for the hacker community who may now discover its inner Hessian.
Who am I to criticize wide and frequent use of technology? It has brought great benefits and much landfill, as well as seeming to fill our time with activities that are both “work” and “fun” at the same moment. It has made life easier, and made the list of stuff to do longer. I suppose it is a mixed bag.
In general, I am fond of MP3s. “Try before buy” provides a great principle for buying music that in theory would lead to the rejection of the usual stuff and embrace of the distinctive and elevated. This would (again, in theory) give consumers better music and give small bands a chance against big industry bands.
In practice, people simply become overwhelmed with the sheer amount of stuff, which spams their brains, and thus they download a ton and a half of metal and listen to all of it once, which leads to the conclusion that it is all about the same in value. In turn, that causes them to stop worrying about quality and to download anything above “barely acceptable” and put it on their playlist. This favors the big industry, which can use its advertising power to overwhelm those spammed brains and so people go back to the 1980s condition of buying whatever is advertised and ex post facto finding a way to like it.
So, maybe MP3s are not the savior of the music industry. And a relatively recent Abigor interview raises another point: MP3s ruin our appreciation of the album as a whole as if it were a communication from a band to its audience. Instead, we are awash in easily queued and listened music, which by reducing our effort in hearing it reduces our ability to perceive it.
[E]verything should be viewed as one piece of art, not just the sound that’s coming out of a studio in whatsoever form, be it vinyl, CD, a file (originating “from the connection in the wall”, that’s the horizon teenagers have these days.
They don’t care and they’re not as informed as we were – when we liked certain albums back then we knew the lyrics, could draw the logo and knew every dot on the cover or who was in the thanx list. Today it’s about a track in the MP3 playlist only, albums matter less and less). An MP3 player can’t capture, it simply isn’t, such a piece of art. People tear individual tracks out of the album context to an MP3 playlist and the music looses it’s meaning and also it’s value.
How much is such an MP3 worth? Nothing. And therefore people lose respect of the artist’s work as well. They forget that this soundfile actually has a history full of sweat and blood, and quiet some people put in a lot of money before the first cent comes back from sales, all this seems like a long lost echo when I hear people talk about their MP3s. People that talk about their record collection have a different access.
All of this reminds me of the “bad old days” before the internet and underground alike when people heard new stuff on the radio and listened to that without even thinking there might be an option. The same four companies owned every radio station in the major cities, and the same six labels owned everything played by those radio stations. Not much has changed, except that what is driving people to that same old stuff is the vast amount of musical spam coming out in MP3 format designed for people who cannot tell the difference between plausible and mediocre music.
What are Sadistic Metal Reviews? People engage in the pretense that they are gods who can determine what is true because they want it to be true, instead of what is obvious. They deny reality to make themselves seem important like the pointless egotists they are. Instead, we put the metal before our personal needs and pick the best. Those who cannot handle this, leave the hall!
Morbid Slaughter – Wicca
Comprising two tracks of punkish early black metal tinged with the energy of a Motorhead or Impaled Nazarene, Morbid Slaughter aim to make music within the 1980s style of catchy simple music that also calls to mind Necrosanct and Slaughter Lord. Songs invoke melody for choruses and guide themselves with necrotic gasped vocals that sound like invective of an evil overlord conveying his legions to covert and merciless deeds. Songs fit the format of most proto-death bands in that there is verse, chorus and then a transitional or conclusive detour which returns to the immensely catchy chorus. This band will find its toughest competition is itself, and when they do a full-length will find themselves challenged by the need for songs to be distinct enough from each other to develop a personality to the album and each song. Clearly this band knows the early works of the years before death metal and black metal finalized themselves and can exploit that riff lexicon to great effect, albeit simplified by the punkish forward drive to simplicity.
Ramhorn – Lykophobos
With one foot firmly in past and present, Ramhorn attempts to integrate 1980s sounds like those of Kreator and Metallica with modern metal styled vocals, but manages to retain the sentimentality and passion of the earlier form and use it to constrain the otherwise more linear tendencies of current metal. Like Kreator, this band is chorus-heavy with emphasis on interlocking vocal rhythms to propel the sound forward, and borrowing from a wide riff lexicon it mixes a punkish sound with melodic speed metal riffing to contrast its more rigidly rhythmic hooks that underscore choruses. Vocals tend toward the black metal shriek with more clarity of enunciation and while certain riffs embrace a more modern sense of rhythm molded around the vocals, a strong old school influence mediates them. Much of the album centers around mid-paced tempi to accommodate this sound but varies riff form enough that the similarity contributes to the overall emotional atmosphere of the music. The old school parts, ranging from Iron Maiden through death metal at its peak, resonate well with this approach but the black metal-ish vocals seem out of place. On the whole, this album puts forth a solid if not dramatically exciting effort that has more integrity and consequent actual musical enjoyment than most of its contemporaries.
Hod – Book of the Worm
The Texas horde return with another assault of high-intensity multi-genre metal. On its surface, this band resembles Angelcorpse hybridized with Watain using some of the riff tendencies of the newer post-Nile/Behemoth charging death metal and blackened death metal bands. Underneath this however a wide variety of riffs simmer, quoting from and expanding upon speed metal, heavy metal, punk and early proto-black metal bands. The constant charging blast, reminiscent of Fallen Christ, allows the guitars to change riffs regularly in the rotational style that Behemoth perfected. Where Hod has really improved is in the vocals which take the whispered spoken style to a new extreme, borrowing the internal rhythmic variation of modern metal styles and giving it a more sinister air. The vocals guide the song and riffs change to accent those words with atmosphere. If anything, this band could benefit from both more variation and less; it would be great to see some of these death metal riffs explore different riff forms than the 4-5 the band has nailed, and it would help focus the music for it to pick a genre and grow more specifically in that direction, even expanding it as these musicians do with contemporary forms. While internal riff complementary behavior could be better, the randomness that plagues most local bands has not visited Hod. Of note also are the early-Deicide-ish chaotic but rhythmically varied leads which add depth to the songs.
Obscure Oracle – Roots of Existence
Obscure Oracle homebrews metal that combines liberally from many influences but keeps a focus on a NWOBHM/progressive metal hybrid enriched with late speed metal and some death metal technique. The band faces a challenge in trying to wrap these influences into a compositional voice that is consistent enough to communicate. Vocals chase the death metal style rasp with higher and lower register versions accompanying one another. Lead guitars explore not only diverse styles of music but the harmonization that NWOBHM made famous, which in addition to numerous classic riff archetypes places this band firmly within that zone. In addition, the band borrows and expands upon tropes from speed metal, notably Testament and Metallica. Much of Roots of Existence verges more toward melodic metal that avoids the Scandinavian style and instead uses complex song structures and the rhythms of 1970s progressive bands to flesh out the parts of guitar melody, but transitions between passages with death metal-styled tremolo riffing. The band could work on integrating its different styles more smoothly into a voice so that oil-on-water separation does not occur, and with some of its detours into progressive and blues territory might make sure that it avoids all known templates, including progressive ones. On the whole this album shows the creativity and idiosyncratic combination of styles that fueled the early years of death metal, but packed into a power metal infused style that keeps the band both current and coherent with the traditional spirit of metal.
Blood Urn – Unchain the Abhorrent
Creating within the old school death metal that favors vast internal contrast, Blood Urn craft songs which culminate in musical vistas composed of riffs leading up to decisive moments of conflict and differentiation. Riffs use extensive chromatic fills but not exclusively so as wrappers for rock rhythm as most of the nu-death post-Nile bands, and songs achieve enough internal variety to suggest purpose. The high degree of internal balance results in collections of riffs that are picked for their place in the song, not a song made of the riffs, for the most part, with an internal process of equalization bringing highly disparate riffs together. Vocals take on the older style of deep chanting independent of the rhythms of drums or guitar that gives an arch feel to the material. The sense of otherworldly power and removal from the mundane is borne out by the higher density of this demo than most contemporary metal albums because although the newer material has more detail, it also has less internal communication, and thus the detail appears as on the surface only, like a form of adornment and not structure. Like other newer old school bands such as Herpes, Blood Urn focuses on atmosphere, in this case enhanced by its competent and somewhat more rock-star guitar than older school bands tried. If these adventurers are able to keep up the underground spirit of distrust for all things that pacify and satiate the thundering herd, the solid groundwork of this demo could blossom into a potent style.
