You know you live in an era of shitheads when people start conversations by saying “To be honest,” implying they are normally not honest.
27 CommentsTags: Black Metal, depressive suicidal black metal, dsbm, eugenics, retards
Introduction to Power Metal, Part III: 1980s US Power Metal
A salute goes out to Misters Imladris and Kaelrok for sharing recommendations and insights related to the subject at hand.
After having recounted and commented on the birth and evolution of the first wave of European power metal in part II, the time has come for this author to travel across the Atlantic and take a closer look at the contemporaneous development of power metal in North America, commonly referred to as United States Power Metal (USPM).
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Tags: fates warning, Introduction to Power Metal, manowar, USPM
Analysis Of Amorphis – “Karelia/The Gathering”
Amorphis are known for their terrible modern output that consists of ridiculous pop cliches and monotonous chugging. While their latest offering has furthered the pretension of this band and their Opeth like attempts of appealing to pseudo intellectuals through whatever the mainstream considers to be “deep,” it is hard to fathom that this band once produced some of the greatest Finnish Death metal to ever grace our ears. Through restrained, simplistic melodies that were all very tightly knit and some basic understanding of chord theory, Amorphis carved a grandiose album that would see them climb to the top of a fledgling movement.
The album opener “Karelia” – an acoustic piece recorded with two 12-string guitars – announced the intentions of conjuring grand battlefields where heroes would emerge amidst the chaos. The first guitar repeats a basic melody in the natural minor scale as the second guitar follows with the appropriate combination of diatonic minor and major thirds. As the melody continues without variation the diatonic chords move up a few semitones up the scale creeping towards battle as the chords quickly return to their original position until distorted guitars announce the battle.
3 CommentsTags: amorphis, analysis article, death metal, Finnish Death Metal, music theory
Metal Works: AR-15 Build
A proper Hessian knows his metal music intimately. He understands the moving parts and how they fit together to form a functioning whole. Just as a Hessian understands his music, he will also understand his weapons. What better way to understand our weapons than to build one ourselves? AKs are rather easy to build, but require some more expensive specialized equipment. ARs are also quite easy to build, and because of their ingenious modular design, one can either build a complete AR or one can build half an AR for use with already extant other halves. Because building an AR lower is somewhat more complicated and requires some more expensive equipment, today we will focus on building your own AR upper. You will see from the crappy pictures, taken with my old flip phone, that one needs no specialized facilities to do any of this – I did it in my spare bedroom in about 45 minutes. Recommended listening while building: Immortal’s “Battles in the North.”
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Tags: AK, AR-15, Assault Rifle, custom build, guns, immortal, masculinity, weapons
Endless War : The Similarities Between Metal and Wrestling
Wrestling is the oldest sport in existence. One can find it in any culture on earth, Egyptian hieroglyphs depict various techniques, Islam recognizes it as one of the main sports for preparation in combat and European knights trained extensively as a lot of armored fights quickly become tests of who could pin who to be able to deal a finishing blow with a dagger through the gaps in the plate armor. Throughout the years wrestling has proven to be the best art for all forms of combat as every region in the world has at least one form of indigenous wrestling.
Tags: domination, History, masculinity, power, sports, testosterone, wrestling
Paramaecium – Exhumed of the Earth (1993)
In addition to its notoriously contradictive definitional nature, doom metal remains something of an enigma in terms of its enduring popularity. Whether or not one chooses to view it as a distinctive subgenre, style or even technique, doom metal must bear one of the most in-proportionate quotas within metal music when it comes to quantity over quality. If attempting to depict doom metal from the perspective of enduring releases, the list of canonical works would become surprisingly short. It seems plausible that part of the explanation to this sad state is embedded in the very characteristics of the style. Doom bands have generally prioritized development of exceptionally powerful tools for conveying sonic heaviness at the expense of other aspects of the music. It might even be so that the techniques in themselves has forced artists into a particular way of writing music. Either way, there appears to be a widespread discrepancy between the means of expression and what is actually being expressed in doom metal; which in turn provides clues as to what makes for a genuinely satisfying doom-offering. With the above discussion in mind, today’s written offering presents the Australian death/doom act Paramaecium – one of few bands bearing the doom-tag that has managed to write compositions to match the sonic gravitas associated with said style.
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Tags: 1993, candlemass, death metal, deathdoom, Deus Vult, doom, Doom Metal, Exhumed of the Earth, Paramaecium, progressive, Samel, thematic continuity
The Imperial Reign of Emperor
The most technically and musically gifted band of the Norwegian black metal scene, the legendary Emperor are also the most well known outside of the documentary-level engagement that plagues most who know of Burzum and Mayhem. Formed in the small rural town of Telemark Norway as a side project to a soon-forgotten death metal band, the group overcame the imprisonment of 75% of it’s lineup to deliver the most grandiose album of early 90s black metal. Though Emperor’s career was far from perfect, it made a profound impact on the young genre and ultimately proved it’s limitless developmental possibility.
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Tags: Anthems to Welkin at Dusk, band catalog, Black Metal, discography, emperor, ihsahn, in the nightside eclipse, IX Equilibrium, progressive metal, Prometheus: The Discipline of Fire and Demise, samoth, Thorns
Gorguts – Pleiades’ Dust (2016)
Gorguts is a band that for a majority of its career has resembled an act that is at war with itself artistically. After a serviceable debut comprised of purely death metal notions and peaking with its most dense and progressive release in The Erosion of Sanity, the band chose to scale back its arrangements while imbuing its approach with a discordance that may have laterally trespassed its prior unsullied metal constructs but at the same time gave Gorguts an identity all their own. With regards to their contemporaries, you cannot currently say a band “sounds like Gorguts” without indirectly focusing on the sound created on Obscura, and the band’s own knowledge of that most likely has controlled their writing ever since — to the detriment of their overall intents in each record from then on…
23 CommentsTags: death metal, gorguts, Progressive Death Metal, Technical Death Metal
A Discussion on The Metal FAQ: Section 1.1
The Death Metal Underground FAQ is an ancient yet valuable and reliable document full of information to help the less initiated grasp some of the simpler aspects of metal. It is also a wonderful attempt to actually explain the Hessian ideals, culture and music. The music section is particularly small and contains a fairly large amount of information and therefore it is time to open it up and go into the details of the points mentioned and what needs to be changed, for it is only through constant analysis of past work can we build upon them and progress.
14 CommentsTags: faq, Heavy Metal, metal, music theory
Morbid Angel – Kingdoms Disdained (2017)
There are twelve notes. There are twenty-six letters. We can form them into combinations/patterns. The ones that stay with us are the ones that communicate. This takes us above the level of riff (metal), harmony (jazz/rock), and into the realm of melody, which uses phrase and harmony as means of strengthening the expression of a melody, or a unique combination which resembles the psychological sensation of a certain experience.
21 CommentsTags: cash grab, death 'n' roll, death metal, Heavy Metal, inside-out, morbid angel, outside-in, review, Steve Tucker, trey azagthoth
