For the past week or so, all I've been listening to is metal, mostly death metal. I was driving my poor girlfriend nuts playing this stuff day in and day out. She left on Thursday to run another workshop with the Western Wind at Smith College, so I'm left to my own devices for the next 8 days. I'm hoping to get the metal itch out of my system by the time she gets back.
Anyway, I thought this would be a good place to talk about the bands I've been listening to and the impact (or lack thereof) they've had on me.
Arsis: Insanely fast melodic death metal duo from Virginia. Very intense music but worth checking out. The oddest thing is that it's all done by two guys: a drummer and a multi-instrumentalist/vocalist. I assume they would have to hire people in order to play live, but the album is quite a feat. The only problem is the intensity really never lets up so it tends to fatigue your ears, but hey, this IS death metal we're talking about here.
Carcass: One of the classic death metal bands, this English group set new standards for melodic death metal. Their debut album, like a lot of early death metal, is totally unlistenable due to the abysmal production. Their reputation is mainly staked on two albums: Necroticism: Descanting the Insalubrious; and Heartwork. The former is the last and best Carcass album to feature those ridiculously erudite and pun-ridden lyrics about dismembering corpses, making musical instruments out of the dead, etc. All rather tongue-in-cheek and consciously ironic, especially considering the band were all vegetarians! Heartwork, on the other hand, is a more personal statement and considered one of the first melodic death metal albums.
Cynic: Progressive metal from the late 80s. Features those ridiculous sounding synthesizer vocals you might remember hearing on old Kraftwerk albums. Except on Kraftwerk they sounded cool and German, and here they just sound silly and out of place. People praise this band, which broke up after making one album, but I don't think they live up to their legend.
Daath: I really don't understand the hype behind this band. Supposedly the head of Roadrunner Records heard their demos and was so blown away he signed them, the first death metal band he's signed in 10 years or something like that. Well, I listened to an advance copy of their Roadrunner debut, The Hinderers, and I don't get it. Apart from a couple of tracks with some techno beats there doesn't seem to be anything new or innovative here. In fact I have to say it's downright boring. Plus I hate their vocalist, who sounds more like he's clearing his throat than trying to actually growl.
Death: God bless Chuck Schuldiner, RIP! For those who don't know, Chuck was the mastermind behind Death, which never really had a stable line-up but also never made a bad album. One of the originators of the genre who never was satisfied with staying within its boundaries. Each release seemed to build upon the last one and the musicianship and songwriting kept improving up to the very end. Unfortunately cancer robbed us of any further work from Chuck, but his legacy certainly will live on. I most highly recommend the last 3 Death albums: Individual Thought Patterns, Symbolic, and The Sound of Perseverance.
Hypocrisy: Peter Tatgren deserves credit for thinking of combining death metal with Pink Floyd, certainly not something that would've occurred to me. His band Hypocrisy has so many albums it's hard to keep track of them all. For me the best of the bunch is the self-titled album, although Abducted is pretty good too. Unless you absolutely love pure death metal to the core, skip Penetralia and Osculum Obscenum, which came out before Tatgren took over on vocals and started experimenting with his songwriting.
In Flames: Apparently a very popular and influential band. This is perplexing because the songwriting is so incredibly repetitive. Just about every song is based on the exact same chord progression. I'm not usually a stickler about this sort of thing, but come on! I can't justify listening to an entire album multiple times if at least 80% of the songs are harmonically identical.
Lamb of God: I love these guys. Through four albums (five if you count the one released under their old name, Burn the Priest), they have maintained the right amount of heaviness, catchiness and originality. I highly recommend them to any fan of metal, although I doubt that would be necessary given their popularity right now.
Mastodon: I fell in love with these guys right from the get-go. A ridiculously talented metalcore-influenced band from Georgia, Mastodon is a favorite of both critics and metal fans, and for good reason: with energy and talent to spare, they rip into imaginative, hook-laden songs about such potentially nerdy topics as Moby Dick and put them across with such utter heaviness and conviction that any idea of laughing at these guys for being pretentious immediately exits your mind, never to return.
Meshuggah: This legendary quartet from Sweden resembles a team of long-haired mathematicians more than a metal band. Their intensity and precision is completely beyond belief. The release of Chaosphere, now almost 10 years old, set new standards for technical metal that have yet to be surpassed, let alone even reached, by others. They have left thousands of their fans, many of whom are musicians themselves, perplexed as to how some of their music is even humanly possible to perform. The relentless assault of their songs combined with the cold, inhuman, anti-melodic sound they have honed to perfection mean that Meshuggah is definitely not for everyone. But for those brave enough to accept their challenge, the experience can be highly worthwhile.
Obituary - Slower and more groove-based than most "traditional" death bands, they've been around since nearly the beginning of the genre so they do demand a certain measure of respect. John Tardy's vocals, while clearly death metal, are also totally unique and instantly recognizable. In fact, Obituary as a whole is one of the most easily recognizable bands in a genre that is overstuffed with bands who tend to sound disappointingly similar.
An Obituary riff can be recognized usually within about 2-3 seconds. Steadfastly avoiding implying a tonal center, the typical riff will sound "seasick," alternating between moving up and down the scale. It will also have a marked tendency to go up a major (or minor) third and then down (or up) a half-step. There will also be fifths (both natural and flatted). Leaps of intervals wider than a fifth are fairly rare. Rhythmically, the quarter and half note (crotchet and minim) are used much more than in most death metal riffs. There are slow sections consisting almost entirely of crotchets and minims in some songs. A typical pattern is four sixteenth notes (semiquavers) followed by a quarter note. Sometimes this is augmented to four quavers followed by a minim. Naturally, this basic pattern is varied and plenty of Obituary riffs are not of this rhythmic type. There are the more genre-typical double-time riffs consisting entirely (or almost entirely) of palm-muted 32nd notes, but these are used more for contrast and relief than to beat the listener over the head.
If all this sounds obscure and technical, the end results are quite direct, uncomplicated without being monotonous (for the most part) and so uniquely theirs that in my opinion they should have a patent on this formula!
The classic Obituary albums are considered to be Cause of Death and The End Complete, although I would place World Demise right alongside these two. Their debut album, Slowly We Rot, is worth a listen too although the production is fairly bad and the guitars are much too muffled.
Opeth: Ok, these guys are good. Really good. Basically Opeth are a melodic death/prog metal band with the ability to write satisfying 10-15 minute songs while somehow managing to sound as unpretentious as possible. They even made an entire album with no metal riffing whatsoever -- and a damn fine album it is -- just to prove that their use of the genre wasn't a crutch but a deliberate choice. If you're a prog-metal fan, think of Opeth as everything Dream Theater reached for but could never grasp -- in a word: tasteful.
Quo Vadis - These guys are from Canada and are extremely talented. They deserve to be a lot more well-known. The songs mostly fit into "melodic death metal," which means growly vocals and fast riffs within a framework of mostly traditional harmonic progressions. As opposed to traditional death metal which is much more atonal. There are some progressive elements such as the use of odd meters and some orchestral instruments here and there.
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