Sarcasm – Burial Dimensions (2015)

by Staff on February 9, 2016

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Article by Corey M

Burial Dimensions is a compilation of releases by Swedish death metal band Sarcasm, featuring six demos (released between 1992 and 1994) and a full-length album (also recorded in 1994, but first officially released in 2011). For most of this review, I’ll be talking mainly about the titular full-length album when I use “Burial Dimensions”, and not the compilation as a whole.

As for the compilation as a complete package – It has cool cover art and all the demos you could want, but they sounded redundant to me, though in full disclosure, I was unfamiliar with Sarcasm before getting this release, and didn’t know any of their demos before listening to this compilation. Fans will no doubt find more value in having this large collection of demos on two CDs, even though casual listeners may not spend much time listening to them. The full-length features the best songs with the best production quality, so I focused in listening to it the most.

Some listeners might be able to guess that Sarcasm are Swedish by the first riff, and most of the musical techniques they use had been well-developed by 1994, so this album is more about refining a craft than innovating. Except for a few incongruent flourishes, Burial Interludes is mostly sinewy, sometimes fluttery death metal, but melodically bears resemblance to some contemporary heavy metal-influenced black metal like Rotting Christ’s Thy Mighty Contract, with a lot of tense, enigmatic harmonies and an emphasis on keeping songs flowing smoothly throughout dynamic transitions between high- and low-intensity passages. However, due to the band’s admirable unwillingness to shift dynamics too quickly, some of the more low-tension parts in songs drag on for too long, dispelling the sinister insinuations of the more intense passages as we are lulled by comfortable but impotent consonance. These soft sections subvert the dark spirit that these songs aim to conjure, and are almost always too off-putting to ignore. Examples include a brief break for a female operatic vocal to take over a song which is otherwise made of imposing, sharp riffs, and some dull segments that showcase an unmotivated (and unmotivating) lead meandering over a melodramatic chord progression. These parts always sound insincere and drag the album down because other parts of the songs really rip into you.

The production of Burial Dimensions is raw (and the demos sound considerably worse), with some gnarly analog compression and heavy reverb on everything, giving the sensation of the sound being squished and distant. This isn’t necessarily bad and allows the guitars space to grind through high and low frequencies, giving the rhythm guitars a dangerous-sounding, shredded, spiky texture. In many riffs, a second guitar will pick out a higher-register harmony that stands separate from the rhythm guitars by having a distinct echoing tone. Usually following the rhythm fairly closely, the second guitar is also sometimes used for counterpoint melodies, and at times these are very effective at bringing out the full impact of the riffs, especially when the bass guitar splits from playing in unison with the rhythm guitars and all three guitar melodies hit you from different directions in three-part harmony. Sarcasm can create an impressively broad and rich sound with the three guitars being utilized this way, but during the worst parts of the songs, the counterpoint will be played in some such off-kilter way that doesn’t synchronize intuitively with the rhythm guitars and some strange harmonies emerge, negatively altering the flow of tension that is channeled so well during the more simply-structured passages.

Sarcasm sound amateur at worst, mainly due to the artificial melancholy that butts in and trips up a series of otherwise engaging riffs. Some of the better examples of riffs that really take you along for a ride begin the songs “Through Tears of Gold” and “Never After”, but frustratingly their momentum falters when one of the more flaccid, weepy progressions intrudes with clean guitars and soft synthesizer washes. “Pile of Bodies” and “Scattered Ashes” both begin with slow, chunky riffs that menace and lumber, but eventually either song gets bogged down in slowly-strummed reverb-drenched chords and leads too timid to venture far enough from the chords to inspire much sense of wonder or foreboding.

All considered, this album probably never achieved wide recognition because of the incongruent dynamics which can leave you with a sense of ambiguity about the whole experience. If you listen closely, you’ll hear lots of cool-sounding riffs scattered throughout, but they are offset by the sappiness that inevitably kicks in during any song’s development. In this way the amateur nature of the band works for and against them; when they get into energetic and fearsome riffing, the sensation is both threatening and mystical, but their inability to maintain tension while focusing more on the mystical than the threatening aspect means that each burst of strong riffs is undermined by a stretch of weak soloing or ostentatious gimmicks.

If you are a fan of Sarcasm, this release is right up your alley; you get some upgraded album art and a collection of demos in their original condition (not retouched or remastered, as far as I can tell). If you are not a fan but curious to see what Sarcasm are all about, I strongly recommend finding some of the music online or streaming it and giving it a close listen before making the decision to purchase. Personally, I don’t see any lasting replay value in Burial Dimensions; Sarcasm are just one of the many death metal bands that fell by the wayside during the ’90s heyday, and for good reason. If you are really itching to hear some death metal from the ’90s with lots of black metal-esque melody and heavy metal leads, compare this album to Necrophobic’s The Nocturnal Silence, which is a perfect example of how these influences (black, death, and heavy metal) can merge fluidly and efficiently. And Intestine Baalism beat these Swedes at their own game with 1997’s An Anatomy of the Beast, which does a better job than Burial Dimensions of combining raw and evil-sounding riffs with dramatically melancholic lead melodies.

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Obscura – Akroasis (2016)

by Gabe Kagan on February 8, 2016

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Akroasis stands proud as a representative of cracked out incoherent sugar high penguin of doom random technical “death” metal, and even has a cover that looks like various forms of congealed sugar melting together into a nutrition-free whole. It is truly the perfect product – a deceptively simplistic and potentially addictive recording with little in the way of more rewarding development. Obscura’s efforts on this album alternate between either random gibberish or surprisingly basic song constructions that don’t quite fit the apparent intent and would be shockingly obvious were they not surrounded by thousands of rapid fire notes like a swarm of flies around rotting meat.

One thing that makes reviewing Akroasis particularly easier is how the first track (“Sermon of the Seven Suns”) encapsulates so much of what Obscura is attempting to do. Much has been made of what this band takes from Death, particularly from their later traditional/death fusion works, but the most patronizing is the circular song structures. “Sermon of the Seven Suns” doesn’t have a lot of content, and after an intro arguably inspired by Cynic, it awkwardly rotates between its two major sections of rapidfire blasting and slow jazz fusion jams. The band uses some basic modulation techniques to disguise the repetition, particularly in the first section, but the overall structure does little more than hide the excessively basic structure. While the band’s apparent devotion to this on this track is vaguely admirable for how holistic it is (extending even to the lyrics), it doesn’t make for particularly compelling listening once the shock factor of Obscura’s instrumental proficiency wears off. At best, they’re slightly more creative than Chuck Schuldiner was with song structures – as an FYI, pretty much everything Death put out went main section -> bridge -> repetition of main section -> who needs a coda anyways?

The rest of Akroasis is more densely packed with content, but instead of employing the care and diligence required to shape these into anything coherent, it just falls into all of the typical metalcore traps, so it sounds less like an album and more like a checklist of errors. Besides what I’ve already mentioned in dissecting the first track, Obscura’s songwriting is full of aesthetic novelties (vocoders, non-metal instruments for no apparent reason) and they even incorporate a goofy breakdown in “The Monist” because apparently, metalcore musicians just can’t resist the temptation. Obscura would be a much better band if they could resist their vices, but were they to try and succeed, they would probably become completely unrecognizable to their fans. Why would they bother? The disorganized candy coated tech-death approach seems to be netting them enough fans.

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Dystopia revisited: The political trap

by Gabe Kagan on February 8, 2016

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Metal journalists are yet again falling into to the trap that of believing that the differences in their political opinions and those of the bands they cover are somehow a valid criterion for judging the overall merit of the music they’re listening to. It happens every day when a prospective metalhead first learns about Burzum, and it more recently has permeated how we interact with the horde of propaganda bands out there who never let a good song get in the way of a good slogan. Megadeth’s latest full-length (Dystopia) wasn’t quite that heavy handed as a mouthpiece for Dave Mustaine’s politics (and indeed, I found it to be a banal and sterile experience compared to the band’s more ambitious early work on its musical elements alone), but it expresses enough of an opinion through its lyrics that it stung a few dissenters.

Illustrating this neurosis today are two reviews of Megadeth’s latest that are more concerned with David Mustaine’s politics than his musical efforts. First, a writer for the AV Club had to stress that even though they enjoyed the music, they were also certain that “…there’s simply no room in our already fear-laden culture for any more xenophobia”. Another review hosted on Cisternyard Media is more critical of the music, but is otherwise similar in its condemnation. Interestingly, they explicitly mention a similar level of political fervor in Megadeth’s earlier works, which doesn’t exactly attract their vitriol, and therefore helps to illustrate the writers’ specific beef with their positions.

These reviewers’ criticisms read like a poorly written tutorial on how to be the perfect social justice warrior, railing against the injustices that are clearly inherent in Dystopia‘s lyrics that therefore requiring immediate shaming and censorship, and then making lasting friends with other like-minded people in the process. The other major problem with these reviews is that they discuss the actual sound and execution of the music in an exceedingly shallow manner at best, instead choosing to be seduced by Megadeth’s technical wizardry. Given that they’ve already rejected Dystopia for not being politically kosher, I’m not expecting them to attempt more advanced topics, such as “Does Dystopia‘s songwriting effectively complement the themes Dave Mustaine is trying to convey?”, but that is a venial sin at best, given that your average metal critic cares little for musical analysis. If they continue to pursue their political vendettas, though, the odds of them writing anything significant on these subjects is nil.

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Classical and Pop Metal – Part 2 (Inadequacy of Existing Definitions)

by Staff on February 6, 2016

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Article by David Rosales, 2nd installment of a 7 part series; read the first part here

Most people with no formal training regard pop as a subset of the many kinds of music genres they can possibly listen to that are not considered “classical”. This implies a delimited genre that is easy to listen to, particularly repetitive, and with a strong emphasis on catchy choruses that form the whole of the content. It’s considered superficial even by those who profess to love it, who do so in a tongue-in-cheek manner. It’s all about the fun, they say. Classical music actually has two definitions, but the popular take on it is that it’s boring and long-winded music written and performed by some old men and nerds at school.

Modern academia unofficially defines “popular music” simply as “everything that is not what we do”. Sadly, they impress upon this broader group the same restrictions that non-academics would on their particular “pop” genre. It is obvious to anyone who explores so-called popular music beyond The Beatles or Michael Jackson that this definition is more of a belligerent and dismissive gesture than a sincere attempt at distinguishing what is a much richer well of music. In short, it is an indirect way to claim the irrelevance of anything that is not academic music.

When confronted with this reality, either through accidental exposition (such as a music teacher dealing with the musical tastes of a classroom with varied musical backgrounds) or as a result of a casual debate, it is not uncommon to see academics jump through hoops to justify an out of hand prejudice or a forced humanist humility that will accept the most vulgar and banal musics as a valid expression of the soul. In either case, real discernment is sorely missing. Also, that the musical academic establishment hilariously wants to keep calling itself “classical tradition” when they have abandoned all but the most materialistic of the original precepts is a sign of their arbitrary and lazy attitude towards music that is not spoon-fed to them (oddly, a reflection of the same attitude of most mundane popular music listeners).

When we accept that music goes beyond mere forms, beyond parts and consists not only of the instruments, or the notes, or the intentions but is truly an entity completely apart born from these elements, we tacitly acknowledge that the terms used to describe genres most also go beyond the surface and take into account holistic considerations. For this, both current uses of the terms “popular” and “classical” music are not only unsuitable, but defined unevenly. While pop music is defined in very narrow and simplistic terms, classical music is considered this vast and unrestricted attitude that is only tied together “objectively” through the most superficial and politically-motivated arguments.

Those with a serious background in academic music would readily accept that correct distinctions have to lie at a metaphysical level, even though we must necessarily judge them through concrete notes and forms. It is here that the average person becomes bewildered, at a loss since he is no longer able to make universal egalitarian statements. The key to untangling this moral conundrum is to be truly scientific about the matter and take into account the context at several different levels, in which music develops. The distinction between the broad groups distinguished through our new “classical” and “pop” (to avoid using the noun) terms take on a much more abstract though still nebulous character.

That it is abstract does not mean that it cannot be decided or that concrete music analysis cannot be applied. It simply means that strong contextualization is a must, and that the fact that art can never be objective, because the whole of the human experience is itself necessarily subjective. This in no moment means that standards should be lowered, but that standards should be understood not at a superficial level of complexity, but in the interplay between intention and realization in proper context. For this, the concepts of natural and artificial, inner and outer, as well as transcendence need be discussed and understood.

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No God Only Pain – Roads to Serfdom (2015)

by Staff on February 4, 2016

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DMU proudly offers a stream of No God Only Pain – Roads to Serfdom. This band fuses Motorhead-styled roadhouse heavy metal with punk and underground metal to present its justifiably paranoid view of government and corporate control of our lives. Fueled by a long underground pedigree including black-doom metal band Dawning, No God Only Pain shows metal a way out from its current morass of thinkalike “underground” and hamster-safe mainstream metal.

No God Only Pain – Roads to Serfdom (2015) – “Cannon Fodder” (5:25)

No God Only Pain – Roads to Serfdom (2015) – “Lick the Claw” (1:50)

No God Only Pain – Roads to Serfdom (2015) – “Roads to Serfdom” (7:50)

No God Only Pain – Roads to Serfdom (2015) – “Servitudo Completum” (4:10)

No God Only Pain – Roads to Serfdom (2015) – “Who Forgives God?” (3:10)

Roads to Serfdom features the heavy metal distrust of society and its machinations taken to another level: seeing how moneyed interests are pushing the ordinary citizens into dependency on corporate jobs and government, while simultaneously manipulating public opinion to avoid awareness of the impending crash. Put into the form of raucous rock ‘n roll influenced heavy metal with a strong beat and instrumental chops, No God Only Pain serves as the perfect introduction to metal for new fans or those who want metal to get back to its roots.

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With stylized artwork by German artist Ketza, Roads to Serfdom shows the new wave of self-produced DIY metal music that is abandoning an increasingly conformist and boring scene. For those who appreciate Motorhead, Danzig and the punk-infused rhythms of the NWOBHM, No God Only Pain deliver a new option and a path away from the inevitable staleness in both civilization and heavy metal.

Here’s what Metro Silicon Valley had to say about No God Only Pain:

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Toyota to dissolve Scion brand

by Gabe Kagan on February 4, 2016

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Scion was rare amongst car brands for being explicitly youth focused, and furthermore for the Scion Audio Visual project, which released a great deal of metal music related content in its heyday, including a couple of freebie singles and promotional EPs. Sure, most of it was trash we at DMU would dismiss immediately, ranging from the products of Immolation (Providence) and Enslaved’s (The Sleeping Gods) decay to a digital single from Repentless, but if these releases meant that a youth would purchase a car from Scion/Toyota instead of one of their competitors, then the entire scheme was an effective loss leader.

Despite this, Scion recently announced on their official website that Toyota was going to end the Scion brand and transition its products back into the main Toyota lines. Dissecting the corporate marketspeak is difficult, but apparently mainline Toyota products are now doing better with young buyers than they were back in 2003, when the Scion brand was first created. At the moment, it’s unclear whether Toyota will keep Scion A/V going in any form, but I’d say its outlook is dim, since without the Scion brand, Scion A/V would have to work overtime to point its customers towards Toyota products without being criticized for corporate shillery. Rarely do these developments in the automotive industries significantly affect metal fans, but Toyota’s personnel, at the very least, claim they learned useful lessons from operating the Scion brand.

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How #MetalGate affects DMU and you too – Advertising

by Gabe Kagan on February 3, 2016

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Google has informed us that they threaten to remove advertising — how we pay our writers — from our site because of controversial content. Since Google is a monopoly on search engine technology and internet advertising, it can act much as a government would to censor content that it finds objectionable. Much like a government, that places control over what you can see, hear and read into the hands of a few bureaucrats with no concern for the needs of free speech.

Listen to the safe spaces rhetoric: “Google does not allow the monetization of content that may be sensitive, tragic, or hurtful.” This vague description makes makes abuse of violation reporting a trivial task, especially given that the sheer reach and volume of Google’s customers forces some degree of automation into the process. Given how metal is under attack by SJWs constantly through abuse reporting mechanisms this forces sites to censor themselves and keeps that censorship — unlike that by governments — entirely invisible.

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In the meantime, #metalgate has gone into full war mode with the disinviting of Phil Anselmo’s band Down from FortaRock festival in the Netherlands. This response to Anselmo’s allegedly ironic Nazi salute at a festival reveals a perfected form of censorship: by convincing businesses to censor your content or otherwise cut off its revenue stream for fear of potentially harmful content, SJWs can destroy content that does not agree with them and face zero recognition or accountability.

A metal festival is one thing; what about the collected knowledge of humanity which had entrusted to the internet? If Google drops advertising, and eventually starts redirecting “dangerous” searches to counter-propaganda, as the company starts to seize more power this type of censorship will only gain more power. It has its fans among the usual power brokers who want to put people in jail for merely visiting questionable websites. This means we have a monopolistic company that has the power of a government to prevent you from seeing whatever material it deems as bad, and instead of using a clear filter for this, Google will continue to use the nebulous “offensive” tag to remove information.

This denies the human nature of truth which is that truthful information goes through a long period of opposition and censorship before it is accepted:

All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident. — Arthur Schopenhauer, German philosopher (1788 – 1860)

Google possesses the perfect way of keeping truth caught in the “violently opposed” stage so it can never be accepted as self-evident. By being vague about what is “offensive,” and putting the burden on sites like us to figure out what they object to and remove it, they ensure broad content removal of controversial topics. Given that five large companies control the internet, your right to speech is governed entirely by their desire to provide a “safe” product. Government never needs to get its hands dirty nor the companies officially admit they have censored anything. In their view, they are merely providing a safer product. And somehow, government seeks OK with Google’s attempts to stay on top through underhanded deeds.

While we detest Pantera, and generally think ill of Anselmo and his many antics, and have personal reasons to detest neo-Nazism and all associated with, at DeathMetal.org we are aware of the history of censorship: it starts with ideas no one will defend, like Nazism and pedophilia, and then expands to include anything that those in power — including rich companies like Google and the other Big Five — find threatening. This is the censorship of the future: removing anything that makes people feel uncomfortable, which will quickly produce a circle-jerk that repeats the same accepted opinions to itself and fails to notice uncomfortable realities. In metal, we face uncomfortable realities head-on because they are still part of reality and throughout history, humanity has thrived where it accepts reality and failed where it denies it. Google, FortaRock, SJWs and other “safe spaces” types are leading us into failure as a species by making denial into a moral good, even if they do it “in our best interests” with the most benevolent of motives.

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Rotting Christ streaming the entirety of Rituals

by Gabe Kagan on February 3, 2016

Another album that I briefly wrote about a while back is approaching its official release date. Rituals by Rotting Christ will release on February 12th, 2016, and is still available to preorder from Season of Mist in the meantime. You know how a great deal of established and older bands stick to their stylistic guns, especially now that the crisis of the 1990s is but a dim memory? Rotting Christ is amongst them; they’ve continued their traditional-black-etc fusion ways as hinted at on their earliest albums and established, at the very latest, on Triarchy of the Lost Lovers. If this album fails to be of any value, you’ll at least have Thy Mighty Contract as a fallback.

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Classical and Pop Metal – Part 1 (Banishing of Preconceptions)

by Staff on February 2, 2016

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Article by David Rosales, 1st installment of a 7 part series
The terms pop and classical get thrown around pretty carelessly, with little regard as to what they actually mean as foreign meanings are imposed on them. It can be shown that most of these distinctions are quite arbitrary, even if they are meaningful indeed. What we should be asking ourselves is which of the definitions may provide a useful distinction that goes beyond the plain appearances or superficial glances at structure.

Music works at so many more levels than bare form (which is only the means and not the music itself) that the analysis typical of academia which focuses on either what I would call brute-force complexity or what they may deem “innovative” is problematic. Music history has proved that mere innovation, which more often than not is little more than momentary novelty, does not bring about long-standing results in itself. It may certainly result in long-standing popularity, but one may see that in these cases the “novelty” in question, as a concept, antecedes any natural reactions and feelings people may have to it.

A good example of this is The Rite of Spring, by Stravinsky. Its fans are usually music majors, more often than not, or amateur posers who are merely shocked by its reputation and how strange it sounds – how “different” it makes them feel. In each of the cases, the most immediate arguments for the greatness of this music will come in the form of cold musical analyses that point out its innovations in rhythm, or how “shocking” the character is. Basically, bombast and syncopated hip movements.

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The same is true of metal or any other genre. Innovations and novelty come and go, the former being absorbed into the background as useful processes to express the metaphysical concerns that the particular music has, while the latter makes an impression and is left behind. As we recognize this universal rule of human-made music, or art in general, we come to understand that we cannot base definitions strictly on whether or not innovation is taking place as this also tends to be confused with novelty. Only time — and long spans at that — can truly prove the difference.

Finally, the biggest preconception we must get rid off to properly start this discussion is that the terms we mentioned before are actually defined. There is no complete consensus regarding what “popular music” strictly consists of. Furthermore, the term “classical” seems to be used as meaning both a period in Western traditional music, and what is actually modern academic activity which appropriates the former for itself as if some kind of crowning ceremony had taken place in which Beethoven bestowed power upon Wagner, who in turn anointed the likes of Schönberg. Let’s get rid of all such popular (ha!) assertions and try to arrive at useful terms.

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Cirith Ungol reforming to play live shows

by Gabe Kagan on February 2, 2016

cirith ungol festival

The cult tradmetal band Cirith Ungol (not to be confused with the promising Dutch black metal band Cirith Gorgor) is stirring after decades of inactivity. The first sign of this was perhaps the original “Frost and Fire” festival they organized last year; now, they’re escalating their own participation by headlining the second one. In addition to Cirith Ungol, the festival will also feature many other traditional metal bands, as well as two other reunions that have yet to be announced. Cirith Ungol’s official forum claims that the extremely lengthy period in which tickets are on sale is a result of the original festival selling out despite two months’ availability. The resulting festival might be a interesting opportunity for anyone who lives in SoCal.

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