The Misnomer of “Melodic” Metal

carcass friends

“Melodic death metal” is meaningless. What is popularly called “melodic” death or black metal can be roughly divided into the three different types of music sketched out by Ludvig Boysen in his “The Three Types of Melodic Death Metal” article for Death Metal Underground. While Ludvig’s three categories are essentially correct, refining and broadening them allows formal classification of all “melodic” death and black metal. Note that Death Metal Underground’s extensive Heavy Metal FAQ covers the topic of genre in great depth but a brief rundown for the ignorant and lazy is in order.

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Sadistic Metal Reviews: Speed Metal Sodomy!

metallica-metal-up-your-ass

Beer metal exists on the weekends for bored western, white collar office workers wanting a safespace where they can shoot the shit with their flanneled friends and show off their tattoos three times a month. Self-aggrandizing social metal must be impaled on an iron spike.

 

opprobrium serpent temptation
Incubus (Opprobrium) – Serpent Temptation (1988, 2016)

Everything old is getting repressed, even horrible Jesus metal that doesn’t deserve it. Jesus wept when he saw Relapse repressed this “lost gem”. All of Jesus’s favorite eighties speed metal that he got wine drunk to with his apostles in Joseph’s garage was sodomized like an altar boy. His favorite riffs were simplified so drunk Brazilians who crucify themselves as they don’t understand Catholic theology could play them. Metallica, Sodom, Kreator, Bathory, Destruction, Slayer, and Sepultura all were held down, bent over, stripped, and had their riffs forcibly tossed into salads. Jesus couldn’t think of anyone else that wasn’t defiled by Incubus in his name. “Why do they always have to break before they start blasting like Sarcofago?” wondered Jesus, pondering Incubus’s instrumental inadequacy as he hung upon the cross. Jesus wished he had approved of abortion so these Brazilians with microcephaly would never have been born. The pain and horror to his eardrums were much worse than his shoulders screaming in pain. Why hadn’t he just listened to Cogumelo’s Warfare Noise compilations again? Incubus were two additional nails in his ears. Jesus would torture all the straight-edge hardcore kids and their youth pastors who wanted to channel their passionate slam dancing onto their penises for all eternity in the lake of fire. He would sear the flesh from their faces and force them to consume their fellow sinners. As the majestic pantocrator sitting on the throne of the former sky-father Jupiter Optimus Maximus, it was he who cursed Brazil with favelas, mosquitos, and raw sewage for Incubus’s cargo-cult copying.

 

Coma Of Souls
Kreator – Coma of Souls (1990)
Frank Blackfire was the only fumes keeping Kreator going by the nineties. Jumping shit from Sodom, his riffs and leads “enlightened” Kreator from their Extreme Aggression manifested as Teutonic speed metal to a toned-down, NWOBHM made “technical” approach. This emasculation reveals every song as a verse-chorus-verse riff salad composed of riffs that can sometimes be considered clever and catchy alone by themselves but together don’t come close to anything resembling coherency. Three tracks in and you’re fucking bored and wish that annoying Mille Petroza would go back to his pizza parlor and stick his head in the oven. This proto-Heartwork polished turd is the origin of melodeaf: Euro speed metal meets whiny, post-hardcore randomnessComa of Souls has as much Pleasure to Kill left in it as Bob Dole’s limp, Viagra-less penis.

 

Malokarpatan cover
Malokarpatan – Stridžie dni (2016)
There’s not a lot to do in Slovakia except drink beer and listen to Bathory. Malokarpatan get shitfaced on Golden Pheasant every day. You know the ten-thousand hour rule? These guys definitely listened to ten-thousand hours of eighties metal while drinking. Being a hard rock band at heart, they rape Batlord in every song , constantly breaking into something Kansas could have written. Malokarpatan probably couldn’t find a good singer so they went faux black metal with the folksy Slovak schtick to appeal to hiking hipsters. Those Mercyful Fate leads are there as Malokarpatan were supposed to be djing at the metal pub. Note that the album was recorded in the cellar keg storage room with the landlord’s fish tank. Malokarpatan even pestered the barmaid into doing female voices to ape Absu and Goatlord Darkthrone! Stridžie dni is pilsner metal complete with farmer’s tan cutoffs and aviator shades in black metal bar rituals.

 

Malokarpatan promo pic

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Carcass Announce 2016 North American Tour

Carcass doctors

Carcass have been touring almost-nonstop since reuniting and releasing their phoned-into-ProTools excuse to tour, Surgical SteelRight after supporting Slayer, they have announced yet another set of dates. Despite the mainstream metal openers, this “One Foot in the Grave 2016” might be worth worth checking for grindcore and death metal die hards as Carcass play material from all periods of their career when headlining.

Following a successful assault on our shores alongside label mates SLAYER and TESTAMENT, disinterred British metal icons CARCASS, will return to North America for a headlining tour this summer.! Joining them are southern metal heavy weights CROWBAR, horror thrashers GHOUL, and Los Angeles based metal act NIGHT DEMON.

“One Foot In The Grave 2016”
CARCASS, CROWBAR, GHOUL, NIGHT DEMON

07/16/16 Chicago, IL – Chicago Open Air Festival
07/17/16 Lawrence, KS – Granada Theater
07/19/16 Denver, CO – Bluebird Theatre
07/20/16 Salt Lake City, UT – The Complex
07/22/16 Sacramento, CA – Ace Of Spades
07/23/16 Santa Ana, CA – The Observatory
07/24/16 Los Angeles, CA – The Roxy Theater
07/25/16 Phoenix, AZ – Club Red
07/26/16 El Paso, TX – Tricky Falls
07/27/16 Albuquerque, NM – Sunshine Theater
07/29/16 Memphis, TN – New Daisy Theatre
07/30/16 Louisville, KY – Mercury Ballroom
07/31/16 Columbus, OH – Park Street Saloon
08/01/16 Baltimore, MD – Baltimore Sound Stage
08/02/16 Richmond, VA – Broadberry
08/03/16 Philadelphia, PA – Underground Arts
08/04/16 New York, NY – Gramercy Theatre
08/05/16 New Haven, CT – Toad’s Place
08/06/16 Montreal, QC – Heavy MTL Festival (Carcass only)

Keep in mind that Carcass are still entertaining when shitfaced:

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Sarpanitum – Blessed Be My Brothers…

Sarpanitum blessed be my brothers

Sarpanitum’s Blessed Be My Brothers was one of Death Metal Underground’s rejected albums for the Best of 2015. The album initially showed promise. The introductory track, “Komenos”, presents the audience with Sarpanitum’s combination of chromatic death metal riffs, melodic heavy metal leads, Unique Leader Records brutality, and Emperor-like use of a melotron to approximate medieval polyphony to anchor the concept album’s theme of the Crusades.

“By Virtuous Reclamation” surges forth with soaring, harmonized guitars calling for the conquest of the Holy Land continuing into an Immolation style rhythm riff. A break starts the counterpointed dissonant riffing in the Unique Leader style that variates logically enough for Pope Urban II to call for crusade against the heathen Saracens with a metalcore scream, providing a harbinger of the randomness to come. The band returns to the opening riff minus the accompanying lead. The lead’s eventual return signals the start of the Emperor melotron. A sudden slowdown for a cheesy emotional solo continues into the original riffs, climaxing into a polyphonic blend of every musical element and texture. The song barely avoids falling on its face on the way to to the finish line.

The second real song, “Truth” opens directly with Unique Leader riff salad. The Emperor worship is only to plant listeners in a Western European medieval mindset to distract them from the fact the tension built up by the dissonant riffing is never appropriately resolved. The emotional stadium rock solos are just as disconnected from the death metal as the Emperor aping. “Glorification Upon the Bones of the Sundered Dead” better glues the riffs together but still resorts to emotional, Slash-style solos to impart the triumph of the Siege of Jerusalem.

If Blessed Be My Brothers had ended there, it would have been a disparate but listenable concept album. Instead Sarpanitum use the second half to tell the Muslim side of the later Crusades through similarly flawed but less effective songs. This isn’t just a 180 degree change in perspective: the band added another of their heavy metal heroes to the blender. Ersatz Gorguts riffing plus even more masturbatory glam rock solos leads distract from the effective atmospheric and brutal elements. The songs turn even more so into senseless technical deaf metal with Emperor rendered down into pop hooks.

The drastic changes of viewpoint and influence betray the album’s semi-successful first half. The atmosphere of Western mysticality established using Emperor to approximate a polyphonic medieval choir is wrecked by the hippie drum circle interlude, “I Defy For I Am Free”. Blessed Be My Brothers is a postmodern, apologetic Frankenstein. Wikipedia “neutral point of view” metal for meek liberals is antithetical to Emperor’s classical triumph and heavy metal’s “Compassion is the vice of kings: stamp down the wretched and the weak,” virtus.

Listen at Willowtip Record’s Bandcamp

Better yet, just listen to In the Nightside Eclipse again instead.

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