Sammath Concert in Belgrade,Serbia

Sammath who have kept us on edge with the imminent release of their latest offering, will finally play a concert outside of their zone comfort as they are known not to venture too far from home for their concerts. If any Hessians find themselves in Serbia or are near enough to go see such a show, they should not miss this event on February the 9th. For more information, see the Facebook event link for those interested in what guarantees to be a delight as the band will play new segments of their album including “Ferocious Mortar Fire.”

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Massacra – Live in Sweden 1990

Prolific Death Metal Underground commenter Rainer Weikusat submitted a video of Massacra playing live in Sweden in 1990 in the comments of a recent article. Rainer pointed out the sound and video quality is not great but is tolerable enough to watch if you are familiar with Massacra’s material.

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Graveland Live In Poland On April 29, 2016


by Max Schoenbach

For metalheads who have listened to the studio output from Graveland over the past twenty-five years, experiencing a live version feels odd and uncanny, and definitely “new.” That the band will be struggling with unattainable heights it established for itself is obvious. When seen in Poland on April 29, 2016, other dimensions of the experience revealed themselves as well.

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A brief retrospective of Slayer

slayer-classic

Slayer blasted their way into the underground metal scene in 1983. Metal had just shifted; the genre of Black Sabbath got taken over by the Led Zeppelin fans, resulting in glam and arena rock, and was just being taken back by a DIY movement via speed metal. Inspired by that speed metal movement, Slayer took their music in a slightly different direction.

“Heavy metal and British punk, that’s what we are.” The four young men from Southern California shaped their music by instinct, applying the techniques of punk to the most intense moments of heavy metal. Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Motorhead, Angel Witch, GBH and Discharge. It all went into the blender and the result emerged more vicious than ever before.

Woodstock – Los Angeles, CA – March 28, 1983

The Keystone – Berkeley, CA – January 27, 1984

The Country Club – Reseda, CA – September 1, 1984

Heavy Sound Festival – Poperinge, Belgium – May 26, 1985

Dynamo Club – Eindhoven, Netherlands – May 28, 1985

The Ritz – New York City – June 12, 1986

Felt Forum – New York City – August 31, 1988

Clash of the Titans – Genk, Belgium September 22, 1990

Show No Mercy reflected more of a heavy metal bias, still hanging on to the grandeur of the 1970s. By Hell Awaits, Slayer forged their own style, inspired in part by the minimalism of the Haunting the Chapel EP. Even more, the band discovered a mythology in Satanic rebellion against a world where the term “good” meant obedient, oblivious and zombie-like in pursuit of individual pleasure at the expense of realism. They hated this world, and branded it with an inverted cross in rage at its existence. This outlook was healthier than the pleading resentment of the protest rock bands and less dead-end apathetic than what punk became. Metal had a new voice.

With the next album, Reign in Blood, Slayer pulled out all stops and most melody to create the ultimate hardcore album. The metal elements infused riff structure and song structure but its energy was pure hardcore punk, the raging album that The Exploited and Black Flag always had wanted to birth. In the 1980s, endorsing Satan and singing about the dark underbelly lurking beneath our happy commercial Utopia was in itself a life sentence of exclusion. Slayer wore it with pride and as people caught on to the new music, the most extreme band in underground metal headed toward the dead center of the genre.

In response, Slayer did what few bands have the guts to do: they backtracked from their nihilistic extreme and made a melodic album, but kept the melody constrained to a sense of dark atmosphere that would not be revisited until black metal exploded four years later. South of Heaven immersed the listener in pure mood and then manipulated it to create an unnerving experience of getting in touch with emotion by leaving behind all that is human. This was the peak of Slayer and represented the end of their emotional involvement with their own music, thus afterwards they pursued ideas that others had made popular and successful, hoping to make their own form of the alien.

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Blood – Live in Speyer

blood-germany-grindcore

To love grindcore is to love the genre “as you find it.” That is, it doesn’t make sense to go around wishing why there isn’t more progressive symphonic grindcore with world music influences. Grindcore is grindcore.

There’s plenty of room within that genre however. The only rules are brutal punk/metal fusion chromatic riffing and a certain spirit that keeps intensity high and doesn’t deviate into either holiday carols or life-affirming waiting room jazz.

Germany’s Blood have been a secret of the genre for years. Like other minimalist grindcore they specialize in the riff itself, a form of art that is closer to sculpture than music as they use rhythm and direction relative to previous notes to wrest expressive phrasal forms out of chromatic strikes.

Luckily, someone recently uploaded this amazing Blood concert (“show” for you hipsters) in Speyer, Germany. Check it out, and vomit blood!

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