Hang on, what?

Yeah, seems like no one noticed. Or cared. Anyway, the Abysmal record isn't. It's great. The other one? Not my thing but it does the job.

Corrosion of Conformity - Deliverance

 

This review started out quite different to its current form. But it
read like something on Metal Archives or Angry Metal Guy so I had to
kill and reincarnate.

Take two...

It must have been the end of a southern-hemisphere, sub-tropical
winter in an insignificant rural town. I say "must have" because I
remember it being cool and comfortable as I lay on my bed, listening
to Deliverance. I know I was "comfortable" because I fell asleep and
had one of those precious dream sleeps influenced by music seeping in
without me being conscious.

Twenty years later, I am still listening.

I used to think I owned this album, however, truth be told,
Deliverance owns me. First on CD, later on cassette, mp3, CD again and
soon, in the trail of crackling energy of its just passed twentieth
anniversary of release... at long last... on deluxe vinyl reissue.

I have in quiet moments, fantasised about which albums crucial to the
development of my musical personality I would do a special vinyl
release for, should I ever win the lottery. Deliverance has been at
the top of that list.

More than almost any other album, I have puzzled over the lyrics,
unpicked the riffs, replayed the solos in my mind while riding through
dusty dusks. I simply can't wait to start doing it again.

Deliverance is available for pre-order at Prosthetic Records.

Skrew - Universal Immolation

When I was sixteen years old, I saw the video clip to "Picasso Trigger" on a video cassette recording of ABC TV's rage music video program. That song zietgeisted hard, three guitars, beefy electronically supported beats, strobing and distorted vocals.

  

I got to hear all of Dusted. several years later (don't laugh, Napster was just getting born) and never really recovered from my disappointment.Over the weekend, I got to hear Universal Immolation. Somewhere along the line (unlike the djentlemen from three years ago), Skrew picked up on the best bits of Meshuggah (hypnotic, tribal, repetition), started programming better beats and soundscapes and actually became good.

 

Universal Immolation won't blow your mind but it is a rather good representation of what industrial metal can and should be in the Twenty-first century.

Corrosion of Conformity - IX

Didn't see this one coming.

I sighed, I listened, I sighed. The first few tracks off COC's latest, IX left me rather unimpressed. Their previous album and first post-Pepper was rough around the edges, punky and jammy. On first listen, so was IX. But deeper into this new country, better jams, more obscene solos and in fact, new ideas were unearthed by me.

Minus one sigh.

Plus one, woah.

Some of these grooves cry out for a bit of Pepper manipulation, a melodic spit here and a harmonic polish there with actual vocals in place of Dean's scratch tracks would make this album a five star winner.

As it stands though IX is another Southern winner. What makes this sound fresher and better than the current naked emperor, Down? It is hungry and vital - as though it is seeking something, trying something. It's a rickety ride in a rickety ride but a hell of a lot more fun than it ought to be.

Just do it, align the stars, agents, managers and contracts. Dudes need to re-Pepper pronto.

Crowbar - Symmetry in Black

Me rub dem long time.

Kirk Windstein plus whoever have been doing Crowbar for a long time. Longer than I have been listening. That said, I'm pretty sure I know whose copies of Crowbar and Obedience Through Suffering I bought used at Music Bizarre in Lismore back in the day. Crowbar have grooved, lurched and bludgeoned over the years to great effect, subtly innovating with micro-turns toward more melody, more swing and better production.

Sonic Excess In Its Purist Form welcomed me back after a long break and made me cry with its crushing, melancholic despair. Lifesblood for the Downtrodden, steeped in melody and hinging on regret was gorgeous.

Kingdom of Sorrow (Windstein with Jamie Jasta from Hatebreed) came along, wrote a good few songs and recorded half a great second album. Crowbar followed up with the more upbeat (really?) Sever the Wicked hand which essentially sounded like Kingdom of Sorrow outtakes which sounded like punk-ed Crowbar outtakes in the first place.

So, Windstein leaves Down, Down release another patchy EP and... where is all this going, you might ask? Let me put it this way for y'all TD;DR ADHD-ers... Crowbar's Symmetry in Black mops the floor with Down's IV.ii. There are a few close calls with the past (elements of of "Planets Collide" on one track, rather familiar grooves here or there) but overall the song writing is tight and focused, the riffs are big, there are big ass guitar harmonies.

While this is all bad news for Down it bodes well for Corrosion of Conformity... Say what?

"So the questions always come up all the time [about whether I will do something with C.O.C. again]. We are getting closer to solving that. Everybody is talking. We've had offers from a lot of different promoters all over the place. It's just a matter of [finding the] time [to do it right], you know, and not doing it half-assed. It has to be real. I'm not gonna jump into it for a paycheck. We all talk and we wanna get together and start writing and see what happens."

Go here for more.

Yep, if Windstein can run away from the mediocre and hash out something awesome just think of what the always awesome Keenan can do with those always swingin' Raleigh lads.

Oh, and Symmetry in Black is an album. Not an EP. And it's excellent. Go listen.

Archspire - The Lucid Collective

God hates my wallet. One listen. That was all it took. Pre-order button hit so hard I have dead pixels on my monitor. It is not even a touch screen. Too easily excited, perhaps?

The Lucid Collective is tight, brutal, melodic and brimming with originality.

Gorod's A Perfect Absolution was my favourite tech death album of 2012. The Lucid Collective does the job this year.

Down IV.ii

Do not mistake my sentiment in the words that follow. As a country boy myself, I have always felt a resonance with the language, music and history of the South. But have you seen this video? The South will rise again, or so they say... well, that's if they can even get out of bed or through the door frame. These Southern gentlemen could do with a little more dietary balance I feel. Seriously, Pepper has to make at least one more album with Corrosion of Conformity before heart disease and cholesterol take him down.

Again, Down are one of my favourite bands. Nola has a permanent reserved seat in my top 10 of all time. Hedgerow while not as great had some great songs in the thick of all the weed smoke lysergic murk. Nevertheless, IV.ii is the new Down EP and frankly, it is a Down EP.  Lead track "Steeple" may lead you astray with its reprise of Over the Under's "Three Suns, One Star" but do not give up. There are some fantastically doomed riffs, bluesy, melodic phrases and some classic, evocative Anselmo-isms in the lyrics (fancy an attic window). I left this party full but a little unsatisfied, I wanted more. Not quantity but innovation. IV.ii is a great listen but I feel these gents need to hit the gym for both peak physical and musical health.

Whitechapel - Our Endless War

So a deathcore band on post-zeigeist? Actually, it makes sense in this case. Whitechapel have achieved something special on this album: they have exceeded their original genre designation and come out the other side as a metal band with a fine album. I will concede one potential stumbling block - the lyrics tend toward the adolescent "fuck the system" side of the spectrum but are otherwise somewhat poetic.

What makes Our Endless War stand out? Straight up American riffing with elements of Meshuggah (in the good way: stuttering, lurching riffs that are played rather than chopped up and remade as a production technique - swing them balls!), very tight song writing and riffs that keep moving and evolving throughout the course of a song. Well done, gents.

Cynic: Kindly Bent to Free Us.

I once read that Gorguts' From Wisdom to Hate should have been the album that came out between The Erosion of Sanity and Obscura. Obscura was such a giant stylistic leap from what had come before that it hardly made sense at the time. In the space of one album they went from a quite good nineties death metal band to something otherworldly, bizarre, a sanity challenging pathos monster. Perhaps they even needed the revisionism of From Wisdom to Hate in order to comprehend the magnitude of their transformation.

Last year, they followed up on Obscura with the amazing Colored Sands. They continued to fill in the (intentional stylistic) gaps at the same time as pushing into new conceptual and musicological territory.

But this is supposed to be a Cynic album review, right?

Kindly Bent to Free Us basically should have been Cynic's first album. It is not really metal in the strict sense. It is actually more of a collision between King Crimson, Rush, Yes, Air Supply (no, really) and... Cynic. Kindly is the pared down framework of the band doing what they have always done best: rhythmically aggressive, driving basslines capable of shifting into exquisite melodies and uniquely arranged harmonic support, drumming that sounds straight ahead yet full of subtle intricacies (should the listener choose to listen for them), the lushly orchestrated guitar and vocals of Masvidal and... technological courage and originality.

Aside from the excellent prog-in-under-four-and-a-half-minute compositions and performances, it is the integration of electronic elements from vocoders to washes, swoops and atmospheric flourishes which really makes this album stand out. And in my opinion is a direct extension of the technological aesthetic of Pestilence's unfairly maligned Spheres.

The approach taken seems to be less of augmentation and layering and more of combination, integration and hybridity. There are obvious moments of glorious synthesiser excess on this album yet it is the subtleties of regular guitar sounds and vocals processed to create specific tones unique to sections within individual songs. In other words, it never sounds like a gimmick.

Cynic's metal album proper, Focus, should have come out after this. Then followed up by the astounding Traced in Air. So get this album, take a trip, time travel to the essence of Cynic, to a safe space before they embraced and were unjustly wounded by metal.

Pestilence: Obsideo

Pestilence comes in three flavours. The Martin Van Drunen Years, The Progressive Phase and Twenty-First Century Revival. I am an unabashed fan of the piggy in the middle. Testimony of the Ancients is a great album but Spheres was the game changer for me. I have written about it elsewhere on this blog. Go read.

A few weeks before I got Obsideo, I was listening to Spheres in my car. It seems as though every time I listen to that album, I am able to unearth new layers of sonic complexity, subtler rhythmic shifts and splendid, original solos wrapped in the (flawed) technological innovation of the time. Spheres, quite simply is a science-fiction synthesiser soundtrack... played entirely on guitar.

As I listened through Spheres both ways to and from work it occurred to me that underneath the synth rich soundtrack to a sci-fi movie never made was some really simple, precise, well composed and executed straight ahead death metal. And I thought: I wonder what this would have sounded like without Roland's midi guitar synth?

Then Obsideo came out. A combination of Twenty-First Century Revival phase muscular production, the urgent savagery of The Martin Van Drunen Years and the melodic and compositional intelligence of The Progressive Phase. Basically a stripped back, stripped down masterpiece released just in time to be spun and forgotten or simply overlooked.

Do yourself, the band and death metal history a service. Listen to this baby.

Metallic Grostequerie: Sequel Interstitial (Between-quel?)

This article has been on the backburner for a while. It had several drafts and has been abandoned as many times. But thanks again to Metalsucks it is back. Well, a version of it anyway. Please note that I am referring to a news article that came out on June 25, 2013.
 
In my morning RSS feed reader scan (RIP google reader) I came across this week's NSFW version of Sh*t that comes out today (their asterisk, not mine). The NSFW portion of the posting was a single album artwork used just below the heading, Documentaries of Dementia by Necrotic Disgorgement. The album artwork features three naked, white zombie women in various states of mutilation. What makes this cover somewhat different to similar works is that it is photographic. Death metal art is frequently hand painted or more often than not these days digitally created. The controversy surrounding this image arises not from the article itself but from the comments that follow it, in particular an argument in the comments around the implied meanings of tortrure and gender relations.

The thread started by Igottawocket proclaimed:

Can metal, like, collectively agree to cool it with the album covers depicting tortured, naked women? Not really sure if it was ever "cool," but it most certainly isn't now. It kind of begs a lot of questions about what's going on in the heads of the band members, and, frankly, is kind of just fucked all around.

This is a sentiment to which I am mostly in agreement. The key word here is "mostly". As I have previously discussed grotesquerie in metal has a long tradition and is a complex discourse of aesthetics, shock tactics, subversiveness and misogyny. As a result it is difficult for me to condemn this particular (or most other similar) artwork out of hand. After all there are a range of contextual issues that the viewer may not be aware of that influence how the art is to be read. Did the women give consent to be protrayed in this way? Were they paid? Is there an attempt at subversiveness here? Is it an attempt to engage with the horror porn genre?

However, what we can say is that the artwork is clearly part of a broader metal aesthetic tradition in which violence is foregrounded and women are marginalised.

The thread continues with Hair Metal Police, Meh and Snobber McSnob providing fairly typical oppositional, adversarial replies:

So, according to your logic, anybody who directs a splatter film is a psychopath.
I personally don't see a difference between this and the flat-out misogyny of the lyrical content of bands that use picture of dogs eating kibble on their covers. In most cases it's VERY heavy satire.

There is a level of defensiveness in metal which is on one hand admirable, since it shows that metal heads have a passion for defending the genre but on the other hand it is somewhat worrying. When blanket statements incorporating socially accepted memes such including "freedom of expression" and "democracy", I start to worry. What these once subversive discourses do in the present is confine debate to the placard level:

"Naked, beaten women on record covers is bad!"

"Yeah well, opposing freedom of expression creates battered women".

Rinse and repeat all over the internet.

Interestingly, I would contrarily agree with Hair Metal Police's sarcasm in that I believe people who are enjoy creating violent artwork are psychopathic. However, where out opinions diverge is at the point where moral value is automatically accorded to the concept of psychopath. A psychopath need not be evil, nor is s/he required to actually enact/execute her psychopathic tendencies. Indeed as most people with some sort of secret desire, fetish or fantasy are aware, the consummation of the desire frequently results in its deflation, disappointment or even complete dissipation. It is the erotica in the mind, the exploration of taboo without risk to either one self or another party (consenting or in a worst case scenario, non-consenting).

Creating grotesque art can function in the same way especially with the consent of involved agents. It becomes a way for those with “psychopathic” non-vanilla, non-normal and potentially harmful tendencies to achieve a degree of satisfaction or consummation through the physical execution of their unique, personal eccentric world view without inflicting unnecessary, unjust, unethical and unwarranted harm on other, actual human beings.

The user known as Meh claims that it is very heavy satire. While I see a potential for satire even as a lifelong metal head I see very few identifiable clues as to the satirical function of this and many similar artwork in contemporary death metal. I would ask Meh; what exactly is the satire critiquing? 

Similarly there are a number of writers who express opinions along the line of: "Well it's all just make believe, it's not serious". Like this entry by Sion Wyn Jones:

It's just an album cover. It's ingrained in the Death Metal or BDM culture. It's the norm, to depict something horrible and disgusting. Especially if that's what the lyrics are based on as well. And for the artist, their just artist. There's nothing wrong with them, their not actually promoting killing Women or any other person. It's just fiction, something that fits the music style. Dammit OP, don't take this stuff so seriously.

This is actually a fairly common opinion among metal heads. It also happens to be a line of reasoning that is dense with complexity. What I take issue with is "engrained in [...] culture. This is simply conservatism by another name. If the purpose of the cover is to be shocking/provoking/subversive yet is done so in a way consistent with engrained values, how does it actually achieve this purpose? I also wonder about the sentiment relating to the lyrics no "promoting killing women or any other person." The fact is that this is exactly what the lyrics do refer to. Again a key problem as I see it is with the application of default moral positions.

Meanwhile there is Robstermb's reply to Jones:

The largest issue with it, to me, is not that it's sexist or disturbed... but because it's just so done and boring now. It's no longer shocking and it just seems immature and forced now. It's been a long time since Tomb of the Mutilated.

This is consistent with my own thinking. Death metal in particular had a zeitgeist in the post-80s context of thrash and early death metal. There was a legitimate fight against censorship and many groups at the time sought to push the limits of erotic and violent expression. As with most contemporary expressions of a genre it is exceedingly common to see a historical disjunct a kind of hyper aware "today" cannibalising its "yesterday" with barely enough time to consider last week let alone twenty or thirty years ago.

Ultimately my problems with grotesquery and sex in metal can be distilled thus:

1. Shock for its own sake is an extremely limited intellectual framework from which to work these days. As I said in the original article on this topic, true shock/subversiveness should unseat us deeply. It should ask more questions than it answers. It should be unsettling. In the past, grotesquerie in metal achieved this. It rarely does so in the present.

2. Metal offers a space for the exploration of the grotesque, the profane, the ugly and the immoral. However, not all expression within its boundaries is self-reflexive. The failure to connect with the intellectual, ethical and moral frameworks of the past significantly influences the extent to which metal art can be considered legitimately "shocking". Is it just that now we live in an age of perfect, decontextualised appropriation? Personally I believe this to be both true and not. After all, when we underestimate the intelligence of others we underestimate our own. Thoughtful, reflexive people are born out of the strangest events, through effort and sometimes mere coincidence. There is no single, unbroken line that connects present visual aesthetics with the past and furthermore it is the social, cultural perspective of the viewer which plays an important role in determining the context of an artistic work.

3. Metal is still mostly a man's world. The objectification of women within the genre has yet to be fully dealt with. Coupled with the demographic context of metal makers in the west it is highly unlikely that this will change any time soon. However, it is already changing and a number of bands continue to push against, traverse and ignore boundaries. It is interesting to ponder just how acceptable, grotesque or titillating images of men being tortured and raped would be to men, especially given the still prevalent taboo of homosexuality in a lot of metal circles.

Oh Judas! Stop hurting me. Bring me a Priest!

So, what is it?

Tough, tightly produced zeitgeist thrash not unlike that heard on Pantera's Cowboys From Hell?

A 90s update to the old school metal sound of Dio era Black Sabbath, just faster and with Maiden-esque dueling guitars?

Both of the above and an out of left field, all round metal classic?

Yeah.

A Tri(vium)p Ascending the Lane

I remember my return to metal. At the dawn of the torrent age, discrete P2P software was still the norm. Many of the big programs had central servers shut down, moved toward contemporary iTunes style interfaces or just faded out as torrents took over and google plus megaupload, mediafire and rapidshare filled the gap for instant gratification.

This was just around the time of the best-before date of "nu metal" as a mainstream offering of heavy metal. If you can recall, this was the dawn of the age of metalcore, a hardcore resurgence, post-metal (a term whose actual execution never lived up to its potential)  and emo/screamo. Hip-hop was being excoriated from the genre, baggy pants burned, sportswear retired and bands were dropped from labels.

In 2004 Roadrunner released Trivium's debut as a four-piece, Ascendancy. Ascendancy made its presence felt by going back: an extended acoustic guitar piano introduction, grand melodic movements and cool harmonised, dueling leads. The production was crisp, protagonists young and inspired and seemed to represent a simultaneous return to classic metal values and fronting the vanguard of the genre's new forward movement.

At the time, I thought it was great. Then I thought it was not. Then recently on a dark and cold mid-November late night car trip home from work, I finally "got it".

The problem with Trivium is that for whatever reason they never really clicked with a diverse metal audience. Perhaps it was their age, their looks or workingman-esque lack of overt charisma, maybe it was even certain questionable stylistic decisions made around the time  of the crusade. What can be said about Trivium though, is that they are good at what they do even if their latter day execution has yet to live up to the promise of their debut. The Crusade was middling. Shogun was stunning. In Waves had its moments and Vengeance Falls is similar to its predecessor.

Going back to Ascendancy after all these years (and why the hell doesn't it have a current vinyl print?) after all these years makes it possible to discover a few somewhat surprising things. It is a really solid, traditional thrash metal album. Sure, the lyrics are somewhat immature and heart on sleeve but have you ever read thrash or death metal lyrics. So while the subject matter combined with the melodies can move the listener toward cringe worthy emo territory on closer listen it sounds like Heafy is doing his best The Real Thing era Mike Patton. Soaring vocal melodies over weedling guitar and a giant rhythm section sounds great. Furthermore, even though the album came out during the metalcore flood it is actually far less formulaic and with an abundance of solos and old-school thrash arrangements and tension buildings... it's a rock solid classic metal album.

Ascendancy deserves a re-listen or a first listen if you were scared off the first time. Metal!

Zeitgeistin'

It has been too long. It is entirely logical to presume that the three and a half of you out there reading this blog have long since moved on. I have not forgotten you but neglect however ineptly executed, remains neglect. Consistent with my most recent post, I am going to flow with the zeitgeist and simply report on now.

Monster Magnet - "Mindless Ones"

I dropped in at Dopes to Infinity and subsequently dropped out of reality. The throwback, silver age, B-movie, comic book flavour sucked me in from the first flanging guitar drone. From out-there space dudes to sleazy garage rockers to post-overdose, re-deconstructed, tightly composed psyche-rock, it has been a long and enjoyable road. Good news is that we have yet to reach the end. Monster Magnet have made their new tune, "Mindless Ones" available for streaming. And what a lovely slice of cleverly dumb, non-literal rocking-out it is.

Sepultura – "The Age of the Atheist"

Say what you will about the band more than a decade after the big split. You might even correctly assert that while they have written a number of great songs in recent years, albums as a whole have lacked some x-factor required to make them into coherent, moving wholes. The upcoming single, from the new album produced by Ross Robinson, sounds exactly like post-Roots Sepultura.

Huge, meaty sound, reverberating bass, rumbling percussion, hard core via thrash, tuned way down. Then suddenly, in the second act, the groovy syncopated percussion kicks in, Greene gets melodic and suspended chords ring out atop the maelstrom and then you realize: “wait a minute, this sounds like a rough and ready, muscular take on Killing Joke”. Holy smoke! Then again, it should hardly come as a surprise, Sepultura have always had melodic mojo, check out their covers EP that came out with Roorback for proof.

Godflesh

First new recording in twelve years. Yeah,it’s a cover. But also, yeah, it sounds like Godflesh. I am not sure that I have ever had such satisfying wake up in the morning stream experience ever. Like the newly rebooted Carcass, Broadrick is smart enough and talented enough to create new and interesting music within the specified limits of a certain musical project. Turns out we should have a new LP in May, 2014. What is it with these ex-Napalm Death boys from Birmingham, who gave them such staying power?

Brothers from other mothers and Irish Twins

 The Black Dahlia Murder and Killswitch Engage have a lot in common. They have a keen sense of identity and possess deep knowledge of metal history. They love what they do and have a sense of humour. Strnad's thick glasses scream "real life, actual nerd" and Adam D.'s sideburns, receding hairline and tutus on stage have even caused the already fully furrowed foreheads of serious metal heads to furrow even further. Although their chosen genres are somewhat far apart both bands prove that a sense of humour and heavy fucking metal with heart need not be mutually exclusive. They also happen to both have new albums out as I write.



KSE's Disarm the Descent is a splendid, lean platter of post-metal-core explosion, metal... Once posterboys for all that was evil in modern (relatively) mainstream metal KSE have exceeded their image and sound. Heavy verses still give way to smooth melodic choruses but there is is an organic vibe to proceedings. The biggest breakthrough is solos - where once there would have been a breakdown now there are hell for leather solos tearing through the middle eights all over this album. Only problem is that they are often not long enough (for me). Suspending knowledge of 'core and simply opening your ears to this album yields an exquisite galloping, post-Iron Maiden, post-Swedish melodeath theme throughout.

Meanwhile, Everblack is nothing short of a masterpiece. When Cannibal Corpse decided to stop treading blood and properly embrace technicality from Kill onward, they proved to all up-and-comers and veterans alike that while strictly limited, death metal could be done better. They upped the anti and have dropped three slabs of pure, brutal, tech death without compromise over the last 5 years. With Everblack, TBDM have essentially reached the same point as Cannibal did on Kill. Featuring an astounding awareness of death metal conventions and history as well as the gall to experiment and traverse different genres (from the slime of Morbid Angel to the claustrophobia of Suffocation to the soaring heights of the Swedish glory days) Dahlia simply murder (the competition). The production is astounding, polished enough to hear everything that's going on but primal enough so that it sounds like a band playing rather than a Pro Tools' quantisation and sound replacement textbook exercise.

Jazz for Metal 3: Stanton Moore

Photo used from press kit found on Stanton Moore's home page.

The early days of hard rock, the sixties and seventies were an interesting, chaotic primordial sludge that only hinted at where the genres would go in the future. Loudness, bombast, distortion and excess were the defining characteristics of the nascent genre. Harmonically, still grounded by the blues yet rhythmically and melodically taking flight, electrified, white boy blues, hard rock and heavy metal were just starting to take shape. Guitarists along with singers stood at the forefront, Hendrix and Jimmy Page encouraged virtuosity, mad genius.

So what about the rhythm section?

Drummers and bassists still played like they were in jazz bands, only louder. Where bassists would later break out of their traditional role thanks to imminent funk, soul and fusion revolutions (James Jamerson, Bootsy Collins, Jaco Pastorius and Stanley Clarke), they were still boxed in by walking lines, poor amplification and hifi setups not yet capable of reproducing their representation (the excellent work of Jack Bruce notwithstanding)..

Drummers meanwhile would experience a remarkable simplification after birth. Listen to John Bonham, Mitch Mitchell and Bill Ward, in addition to playing hard they boogie, swing and play in what sounds at times like an undefined cyclone on top of, around and underneath the guitars. Time has seen a transformation in the concept of time, contemporary drummers, hemmed in by the urge to create "perfect" recordings have become far more linear, precise and deliberate. This is not inherently negative, after all even today, Fear Factory's Demanufacture still holds a powerful robotic, metronomic thrill and the crystal clear drum sounds on Behemoth's Evangelion are equally moving. Then there is Stanton Moore.

New Orleans native Stanton Moore better known for his hip hop groove and jazzy swing had a famous encounter with metal via Corrosion of Conformity's In the Arms of God. Do not be mistaken, Reed Mullin is more than a competent drummer, he has served the band well for two decades. Mullin is frequently inventive, groovy and knows how to hold the pocket. However, Moore in the same situation is a revelation on how things could be in metal if that is we want.

Moore's snare work alone is outstanding, he caresses, bashes and shakes that single drum in so many directions as to render obsolete the concept of ghost notes. Where many drummers wanting to fill would get tom happy-heavy, Moore summons up squalls of snare white noise. His hat and cymbal work is simple and unadorned yet unmistakably jazzy and where most drummers in the present tend toward double kick excess, Moore's work is an exercise in syncopated, push-pull restraint. When the guitars gallop forward Moore ducks, dips and bobs.  When he goes nuts it sounds like the drum kit is about to start falling over.

Moore is an exemplary rock, jazz, groove drummer and renowned for his ability to lay back and let others shine, yet when dropped into a hard rocking doom context he managed to recall a time, spirit and approach seldom seen today. I for one could stand to hear far mo(o)re jazzy drumming by jazz drummers in metal. Or at least more of Mr Moore in metal.

Death Metal and Horror

 Death metal and horror are closely related. In the past I have explored concepts such as the grotesque and extremity and their relationship to the genre. This time I want to unpack horror in death metal. Before proceeding, however, it is worthwhile to define, to clarify just what I mean by death metal and horror.

Death Metal

Death metal, simply defined, is one of the genre offshoots of heavy metal known as extreme metal. Extreme metal includes but is not limited to: black metal, grindcore, sludge and certain types of doom and ambient metal. There are many sub genres of death metal including old-school, Swedish, technical, melodic and brutal. Furthermore there are more distant, third generation relations such as deathcore which occupy a contested space within the genre (more on this below).

The defining musicological elements of death metal are: fast tempos, disorienting time changes, low tunings, chromaticism and what are known as guttural (low, grunted, shrieked, shouted) vocals. While these elements may be similarly found in other genres within metal what makes death metal distinct as a genre is its conceptual focus on violence, horror and the grotesque.

Death metal represents an extreme expression of the nihilism integral to punk and later thrash. When these genres failed to produce legitimate shock value, death metal went for the conceptual jugular. In a world of constant shocking visual news via first broadcast television and later the infinite repetition of the internet there is very little that disturbs the modern citizen for more than enough time it takes to change the channel. Death metal ramps up the abject to absurd levels taking horror to extremes. It creates a sonic and conceptual hurricane of the grotesque and invites the listener to take part.

In my opinion death metal has long ago exceeded its capacity to shock. Infinite repetition, duration, appropriation and imitation have lessened its impact. Furthermore, its innovators continue to age and either leave the “scene” or stay on, continuing to compose and perform with varying levels of success. However, newer groups, especially those within the subgenre known as technical death metal have found new ways of expanding on musical complexity by combining it with conceptual complexity.

Groups such as Obscura, Decrepit Birth and the Faceless take a speculative, science fiction based approach finding horror in the unknown infinity of space and physics. Gorguts famously plumbed the depths of the psyche, laying bare the total and utter despair of depression to a cacophony of dissonance and non-standard noise. Spawn of Possession encapsulate whole horror tropes within single compositions exploring themes such as occult apocalypse, maniacal murderers and child abuse.

To say that death metal is without nuance or subtlety belies the understandable ignorance of a novice listener. That said, the number of albums featuring covers and songs about violating, molesting and abusing women tend to outnumber the more intelligent articulations by a significant factor. The same can said though of hip hop and if we were to take a cheeky leap, the horror of most contemporary pop music and its insistence on status quo is as equally disturbing.

Horror

To me there are two primary definitions of horror: emotional and the genre as it exists within the creative arts. Better and more complete definitions exist all over the internet, so I will instead focus on a personal interpretation. Etymologically, the experience of horror is dread, veneration and religious awe. Over time it comes to be associated with fear generally as well as a bodily trembling. Horror is an emotion of which we have little to no control. It seizes and releases us on its whim. Horror even while sharing similar properties to shock is far more extreme in both intensity and duration. Shock requires exposition, demonstration. Horror meanwhile can be communicated through implication, indefinitely. Let me demonstrate via personal experience.

As a child I felt the constant horror of my father’s mental illness. While certain actions of his were shocking in the sense that they seemed instantaneous and irrational (tying his left hand behind his back because it was “evil”, torching his car, destroying all the furniture in the family home with one hand) it was the lingering threat of his illness that carried the most weight for me long after his institutionalization and so-called rehabilitation. For years I was afraid, to the point of dread and trembling that he would suddenly appear on a street corner or at the front door late at night for an encore. As a young adult I continued to feel this horror as it mutated into a general feeling of disease and low level fear whenever in public. It was not until many years later, living in Japan away from that whole context that I realized I had lived with his horror for such a long time.

Perhaps this experience was what drew me to horror as a genre in the first place, a sort of organic, internal homeopathic “treat like with like”. Horror had a resonance for me, it was one of the few modes of artistic expression where I saw myself accurately reflected. As I watched and read the accounts of others in horror, being horrified and horrifying I slowly started to build the emotional and psychological strategies required for decoupling the continued daily horror in my life.

But now, post-personal-horror, what keeps me affixed on the genre? Is it familiarity, nostalgia? As I have said elsewhere one of the key attributes of horror as a mode of artistic expression is that it is able to go to abject corporeal and moral extremity without apology. Total destruction, annihilation is permitted and to me this kind of active breaking down of concepts is a valuable intellectual and emotional exercise. In this way it is not unlike S&M, it is a consensual excursion into extremity and intensity not normally sanctioned in typical social contexts. We all feel intensely about certain things, for some people it is their preferences in whatever field they operate (friends, behaviours, foods, animals), some people achieve this intensity through courtship, sex and friendship as well as bullying, animosity and anger. Whatever the case, as I have written elsewhere, extremity and intensity are integral aspects of human existence and to me horror offers a productive space for the exploration of extremity from fear to liberation.

The connection

Death metal has long played with horror. Its obsession with nihilism and the abject means it shares many of the same tropes. Artwork frequently makes use of sexualized, dismembered corpses evoking both mass media representations of serial killers and the existing repertoire of horror. Lyrics read like movie scripts and are horrifyingly descriptive at times disgusting and offensive. Early death metal was especially successful in conveying a horror aesthetic due to the limited distribution of hard core horror and its relative lack of availability. Its locrian melodies, reverb and blast beats evoked horrors that we all knew of but had never experienced. Vocalists sounded like demons, beasts, people possessed.

However, over time access to legendary horror texts and the ability to create video and mass distribute it have significantly dulled the implied imaginary horror of death metal. Furthermore, infinite repetition and imitation have seen once original and terrifying ideas reduced to genre tropes readily available for re-assembly. One expression of this is the genre offshoot known as deathcore. Taking the low tunings and vocal techniques of death metal and utilizing typical horror imagery combined with the emotional intensity and musical simplicity of hardcore, deathcore willingly decontextualises and appropriates the aforementioned tropes. Marketed toward a younger audience the capacity of death metal to horrify is further disrupted.

By and large, death metal no longer has the same gut level capacity to horrify. But this is where the technical death metallers mentioned above begin to assert their authority and start exploring horror in more literary, intellectual ways, drawing on the traditions of horror as a rich and complex genre with a function greater than simply shock. Musically, however, is it possible for death metal to horrify anymore? I believe so. Possibility is found in the 2009-10 resurgence of old school death metal (sometimes known as “wind tunnel death metal”) in the vein of Teitanblood, Vulvark and Nocturnal Blood. These bands rearticulated the horror and terror of death metal’s earliest incarnation in a way that was more personally and psychologically risky and less fashionable combined with a less defined production aesthetic. The overabundance of reverb, buzzy guitars and rumbling drums make it sound like some sort of undead horror creature killing mercilessly in the next room. Then there is Portal.

Perhaps the greatest single encapsulation of horror and death metal aesthetics I have experienced is Portal’s Seepia. By taking production and compositional techniques to lateral extremes, this Australian death metal band is able to open a portal of horror. Rhythmic and melodic phrases twist and double back on themselves, emerge from and disappear into a sonic maelstrom. From beginning to end the whole experience is disorienting, bewildering and disturbing. And strangely, fascinating. There are few opportunities for us to consensually enter into horror-scapes without denouement, happy endings or plot twists. However, the unblinking relentlessness of Portal is quite different to that found in voyeuristic animal cruelty documentaries, snuff flicks and security camera footage. What makes Portal’s music such a perfect articulation of horror is that it relies on the imagination and interpretive capacity of the listener, there are few traditional hooks or melodic anchors for orientation.

Visually, conceptually and sonically death metal and horror have a tight interrelationship. I contend that the capacity for death metal as defined along traditional musicological-genre lines to horrify as significantly diminished as a result of the information explosion provided by the internet. However, I also argue that death metal has the full capacity to horrify in the original etymological sense of awe by combining musical complexity with speculative fiction style conceptual sophistication. This type of horror is about unraveling the artificial stasis of everyday perception and causes awe through unsettling preconceptions around identity and the physical universe. Finally, it is also my argument that death metal as practiced only by a minority such as Portal retains the capacity to be musicologically horrifying even as the genre as a whole becomes increasingly sanitized. Death metal has yet to give up the ghost and I am sure that even when it does it will likely fuck the ghost with a knife (or be fucked with a ghost knife).

Big Bottoms: A response

Photo by Peter Matis, Supplied by Jeroen Thesseling

Used with permission.

Last week Metal Sucks 'John Myungnotta's* inaugural Big Bottoms (interviews with metal bassists) regular feature was posted with Killswitch Engaged's Mike D'Antonio as the first interview subject. As a metal (head and) bassist myself I am always looking for flickers of resonance and recognition of metal's (quite often deservedly) unsung laborers. Starting with D'Antonio marks an interesting choice, Killswitch Engaged are not exactly renowned for their up front bass grooves. They are however a popular and polarising band and as suggested in the commentary beneath the original article, have the potential to bring a greater volume of traffic and therefore a greater potential future readership to the site. Nevertheless, D’Antonio’s perspective does require some unpacking.

While D'Antonio certainly appears to enjoy his craft, again as noted in the comments his attitude is (stereo)typical of a certain type of bassist: stay out of the way, don't practice, don't "muddy up the sound", be simple and don't practice. It is no wonder that with this attitude bassists tend to earn little respect as musicians in metal. However, let me be clear: bassists in most musical situation are wing (wo)men. Their sound frequency range, their chosen timbre does not always lend itself to prominence. Some of the best non-metal bassists do stay in the background, in the pocket, pushing and pulling the beat and swangin' that thang in a way that most (non-musicians and for that matter many musicians as well) are unable to cognitively apprehend.

One of the zeitgeist metal memes is the colonisation of the bass space by extended range (seven, eight etc stringed) guitars. Commentators frequently argue that the bass (guitar) is becoming irrelevant to an extent because a lot of the low end can now be provided by these new guitars which frequently have tunings that extend into the standard bass range (in fact, yours truly has an 8-string tuned to F# sailing up the Pacific to one day find home again). But just like bassists who use high gain distortion in their signal path these meme makers are missing the point.

Despite the common stereotypes the bass (guitar) is a complex instrument. Many guitarists display contempt for the bass, deriding it as “simple” for its mere four strings and decrying as unnecessary when it has six or more. But we hardly call the trumpet with its three buttons simple, the same again for the measly four strings of the violin and the cello. But what makes the bass guitar so complex. I would go so far as to argue that the electric bass is almost two instruments in one. As many a bassist knows (and usually doesn't let on) the low E and A strings have a completely different timbre to the high D and G strings. Many anonymous bass players rarely stray beyond the two lowest strings and almost never again above the fifth fret. And it that's what gets the job done in their context, more power to them. What I am moving toward here is a different approach to the bass, an approach taken by a significant few in which the bass guitar is conceptualised not merely as "an octave below the guitar" but as a guitar with a unique timbral range.

Jeroen Thesseling has demonstrated in both Obscura and Pestilence how a bass can seamlessly fit with, augment and enhance low tuned guitars while still being heard. His fretless tone blooms and slides underneath the guitars, moving between registers to fill space but also to provide it. Go and listen to Pestilence's Doctrine, even tuned to F# (yes, he is using a 7-string, extended low range fretless bass) his tone is audible and engaging. Steve Digiorgio does the same with Death and Sadus: he locks in with the drums with a sense of groove not normally possessed by linear thinking guitarists and knows exactly how and when to shine - even when the guitars are also at the forefront.

Then there is Roger Patterson from Atheist, where innovative, rhythmically complex thrash/death is composed on the bass guitar. The same applies for doomy heshers, Saviors. One would think that in bands such as Pantera, where the focus was all about stellar guitarist Dimebag Darrel, there is little chance for the bass to be noticed - but it is. The band and their production knew what they were doing and while Rex Brown is no Les Claypool, neither is he a slouch. Crank up Cowboys from Hell, you can even hear his bass back in the bad old days of smiley face EQ settings, over compression and over dubs. In short, even when guitars start to encroach on the bass frequency range (in actuality, they always did, such incursions aren’t always cognitively audible is all), recording smarts alone can be enough to bring out the bassist in a mix. With a solid understanding of timbre coupled with bassists willing to go the extra mile, who practice and get to write their own parts his/her role is safe from harm.

Meanwhile, groups such as Meshuggah and Gojira blend the bass into the overall guitar sound. In these situations the bass is not particularly distinct but it does contribute to the overall guitar sound of the album. It adds timbral depth and complexity.

Big Bottoms will hopefully engage many more bassists with different perspectives and willing to talk technique over equipment. The role of the bassist in metal needs a serious re-think by bassists and metal listeners equally.

*Presumably, like the rest of the Metal Sucks staff, a pseudonym.

5. The Sword - Apocryphon

I dig The Sword. I never really understood the cries of "sell-outs" and "posers" from their detractors. These Austin, Texas hombres dig the riff and play it for the world.

Ooh! I like this cover version, much better than the proper one.

Over the years the frequency of solos has increased and the mesh between vocals and guitar melodies has thickened.

I would go so far as to say in a currently Pepper Keenan-less Corrosion of Conformity world, The Sword are about the closest we get to fully formed songs with rad riffs, harmonised leads, boogie and slightly melancholic vocals through a Black Sabbath filter.

On Apocryphon, the lads pull out all stops including some thematic updates connecting them with the real world and some analog synth blasting them off of it.

6. Here they come, bury your head it is the A-Kyus

Why the appearance of lists under single entries? Kind of unfair to both the bands mentioned and the principle of a top ten, is it not? Nevertheless, in spite of my unashamed zurui-ness here is the list of A-kyu tech-death for 2012.

2012 will prove to be an excellent vintage for tech death. Great bands released amazing albums and continued to push metal in astounding new directions playing with timing and rhythm without engaging the djent manifesto and incorporating sophisticated, yet tempered, never-overly baroque approaches to melody and harmony. Decompressing after these albums takes time. Indeed, enjoying them takes considerable effort since they are so dense with ideas. But do not let difficulty turn you away.

Spawn of Possession bring it with Incurso. You know when people talk about Iron Maiden and duelling guitars? This is a whole album of that, set to death. From the lead lines to the bread and butter riffs, every single thing is analysed, harmonised and off the wall yet there is a forward moving coherence that keeps you anchored throughout the musical adventure.

Gorod's A Perfect Abosolution is in someway more straight ahead heavy in the Suffocation style brutal stakes but where Spawn of Possession bring highly complex rhythmical arrangements, Gorod allow more breathing room and dare to swing and groove. This is not Pantera "power groove" (though long time readers know I have no problem with that) in fact it is at points reminiscent of Atheist with a bossa feel. The soloing here also tends to be more classically metal-oriented making it and easier access point to the thech death novice.

Inhereted Repression by Tasmania's Psycroptic sounds like every other Psycroptic record: tight-ass guitars with tight-ass drums and every 16th and 32nd note used within a millisecond of its life. The difference this time around is that the band must have been drinking at the same bar as Meshuggah. Do not be fooled, there is nary a moment of djent here, just twin ten ton balls of swinging groovy steel. This is the Psycroptic album that grooves.

Though I am not sure they belong here, they are tech enough for me. Arkaik released Metamorphignition, a tech album which to my mind focuses on the "heavy" rather than the technical. This is a perfect distillation of classic death metal brutality updated to the twentieth century. It is smart and dumb at the same time, the band have a knack for being able to push into very heavy terrain. Technicality tends to be used as a punctuating device.

Autotheism, third album by post-Necrophagist inspired youngster(s) The Faceless is The Faceless gone 70s prog. Less rhythmically and harmonically extreme yet more conscious of song structure, melody and concept. Perhaps not what people were expecting, at times reminiscent of Devin Townsend, Mike Patton and Opeth.

Sophicide's Perdition of the Sublime dared to argue that we no longer need a Necrophagist album in the twentieth century. He might be right!