Most people compare this music to Motorhead, but in my mind, it resembles a fusion between Black Flag and folk music like the old Bob Seeger tracks that limousine liberals pretended to like along with their Harry Belafonte and Leonard Bernstein LPs. A strong punk energy and rhythm pervades the music while a vocal-driven melodic sense guides each song to a quasi-ironic, bittersweet but triumphant conclusion.
5 CommentsTags: folk, lilou & john, metal, pop, punk
These dudes are from New Zealand. Cross A Perfect Circle with Vader, Fear Factory, and Immolation and you get Ulcerate. Taking a listen to this band, I want to thank your country for Dead Alive, but cannot help but think this album begins with an instant headache. I love the mid range DM vocals, and feel that they are really strong. The guitar comes across as missing something. At the 3:37 mark the guitar starts coming through with some darker, catchier moments. I cannot help but think the drums are a bit over-processed, and are being a bit overplayed. The snare sounds cool, but the double kicks are a bit distracting. To its credit, these songs are unpredictable. However, they could use more of a hook. There is a bit of a 90s industrial thing hidden in there, along with a little bit of Immolation off-balanced riffs. You have to listen real hard to hear it, but it sounds like bass distortion with a pick on the low end, adding some gnarleyness.
11 CommentsTags: A Perfect Cricle, death metal, fear factory, immolation, modern death metal, ulcerate, vader
There won’t be a challenging listen anytime soon from millennial metal bands. The best we can hope for is something engaging, because given how neutered the general public is today, most things, “underground” or not, will be geared with mass appeal in mind. When we as seasoned listeners encounter a new metal band we approach their newest release with the hope that they at least have some framework of metal history at hand to draw from in order to at least give their inherently gimped effort a palette of direction that resembles metal. But with that mass appeal looming in the back of the creator’s mind, that history may be utilized as a checklist for social acclaim to adorn empty musical gestures instead of a well to draw inspiration to guide a commanding voice. Those type of Frankenmetal releases are easily dismissed as a series of “Ta-da!” moments wrapped around a rancid kernel, but by blunting the confrontational elements of disjunct pieces you can somewhat pull the wool over the listener’s eyes as if you are more steadfast in your artistic message than you actually are.
8 CommentsTags: 2018, metal, post-metal, review, riff salad, The Grand Annihilation, Tombs
Control Denied was formed in the mid-1990s by late Death-frontman Chuck Schuldiner to cater to his desire to explore more traditional metal stylings. Schuldiner, however, was still bound to Death’s contract with Nuclear Blast and thus agreed to record one more album under the Death-moniker before concentrating fully on his new band and musical direction. As a result, songs originally intended for Control Denied were shoe-horned into a death metal context on The Sound of Perseverance (1998) which partly explains the lackluster, two-faced nature of the last and arguably worst Death-album. With contractual entanglements finally sorted out, Control Denied’s debut The Fragile Art of Existence saw the light of day in 1999.
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Tags: Control Denied, death, death metal, fates warning, Heavy Metal, iced earth, jag panzer, Nevermore, power metal, progressive metal, Speed Metal, steel prophet, Vicious Rumors
Guttural vocals are the only true vocal innovation in metal as other singing styles are derived from other genres. The growed vocal technique is a combination of multiple frequencies and is harmonically too rich to be treated in the same way as more tonal styles. Since they are different to all that came before them they must be analyzed differently. And as metal continues to be penetrated by the mainstream it is important to understand what should be expected from a vocalist and what each one brings to the table since as humans we are inclined to judge vocals first.
In the spirit of understanding the wide variety that the technique has to offer, take a look at some of the more interesting and/or well known vocalists that death metal has given us throughout the years:
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Tags: Alexander Krull, Atrocity, craig pillard, cryptopsy, Dead, death growl, death metal, death metal vocals, Deicide, disma, Glen Benton, gutterals, incantation, jeff becerra, Killjoy, Mike DiSalvo, morbid, necrophagia, Phil Bozeman, possessed, vocals, whitechapel
I have no way of knowing if anyone will read this letter. It joins the others which have been hidden in the knot-hole of the ancient tree on top of the mountain that locals simply call “the big one,” to which I make a daily pilgrimage. My life has become oriented around what I can only describe as a portal to the future.
2 Comments
Dennis Emmental hated being late because it revealed to everyone how little he wanted to be there. Slipping past the creaky back door, he took his place in the line at OptiFood. Orders came from the digital kiosk at the drive-thru and Dennis had twenty-four seconds to assemble the ingredients for the OptiMeal:
He and his cohorts were dumping ingredients in the short, stout, beaker-shaped commemorative plastic buckets used to serve the twenty-four ounce meals. The store was open twenty-four hours a day, and had a thirty-eight percent turnover rate at a six month interval. The owners were unconcerned; they had reached the point where it took a million bucks just to think about suing them, and everyone knew that most of their employees were retards and flakes and so just laughed off their complaints.
17 CommentsTags: cheese, evil, fiction, god, immortality, Satan, sodomy
Every year we are treated to an endless amount of ridiculous lists. It seems that any individual with the ability to express their opinions is obligated to share their Top 10 or top 20 metal releases that more often than not echo the same three websites. The bands that enter such lists tend to come in two varieties: veterans rehashing the same ideas in a more streamlined fashion and those who trick their audience via the use of gimmicks and presenting a familiar product with slightly different aesthetics as the next big thing. In these last two years, speed metal has conquered the number 1 spot of most of these lists. Last year Vektor’s Terminal Redux ruled the metal lists by far with it’s melody derived from Voivod and the phrasings from Destruction’s Eternal Devastation all held together in long sloppily composed epics… ultimately resulting in an above average album but a strong move for the funderground. This year, Texans Power Trip succeed in winning the “funderground 2017 award” with their second album Nightmare Logic. The Speed metal revival movement has finally found its idols to guide it’s path of remaining in the past and offering the most faithful reproduction of late 80s speed/thrash.
34 CommentsTags: 2017, funderground, Hardcore, hipsters, power trip, Thrash
As I predicted a few weeks ago with 100% accuracy all charges of rape, kidnapping, and sexual assault have been dropped against the four members of Decapitated. The collateral damage done to the band is going to remain however as this news (published on a Saturday when little mind is paid to the news cycle) will surely receive significantly less buzz than the breaking story of their arrest, or the subsequent leftist metal media narrative that a guilty plea should be expected based on a ridiculous interview with some dingbat attorney who had absolutely no access to any of the evidence. This will therefore result in many of the fans who have disowned them to continue believing them to be heartless rapists. The band can expect extradition back to Poland soon, having very harshly learned a tough but important lesson. This story is an important lesson to metal concertgoers and even more so to young metal musicians who will be touring or playing shows soon. Let’s briefly examine how this story was treated by the liberal MSMM (mainstream metal media) and its fans, take a deeper look at the takeaways that can be learned from this unfortunate experience, and conclude with an open letter to the members of Decapitated I once shared a bottle of vodka with some years ago…
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Tags: crime, death metal, deathcore, decapitated, liberals, metal, metalgate, MetalSucks, metoo, progressive liberals, rape, sjws
Review by Nicholas Vahdias
An Italian 3 piece from the legendary city of Rome, Demonomancy released their first demo in 2010 and have since released an album and another demo. Poisoned Atonement marks their decade as a band although few are aware of their existence. They claim to champion the freedom of a sick soul held back by the shackles of the human body but ultimately deliver medicore war metal with cringeworthty aesthetics.
