Darkthrone- Dark Thrones and Black Flags

Here's a band that GETS IT. Killer riffs, memorable and distinct songs, nothing superfluous or "experimental," totally unique, full of personality and humor, steeped in metal history, and just a kick ass rock record. Darkthrone has made a career of making things look easy, even to the point of pretending to be far less talented musicians than they really are. That continues here, as this record is to all appearances a throwaway.

The days of Blaze in the Northern Sky, Under a Funeral Moon, and Transilvanian Hunger are long over-- this was signaled by the deeply retro stylings of Panzerfaust, and its incredible theatrical irony. One may read this back into the more "serious" albums as one likes. Panzerfaust is a triumph, but it is only with Hate Them that Darkthrone got back on its feet (after three decent but irrelevant albums)--and each subsequent record has been more of a murky, ramshackle, half-serious punk album. 

The deadly boring "cult" current black metal fans-- and by the way guys, give it up, it's SO over-- having given way to shitty indie rock fans-- and by the way guys, give it up, you are unquestionably late for anything interesting in black metal-- these demographics will never understand the new direction of Darkthrone, because this album has zero in common with "black metal" and only strives to entertain and throw a bunch of neat parts at you. None of the depressive bedroom emo (Xasthur) which passes for black metal these days. 

What I love most about this record is... the great riffs. But what I love second most is the feeling of "fun" that they must have had, and succeed in communicating through music--the last thing one expects from this genre in 2009. And so it easily ranks with the great albums by Venom or Bathory: thus miraculously reinventing and reinvigorating black metal by avoiding all the calcified trappings of its current sorry state.

Score: 4.5/5 stars (**** 1/2)

Best songs: "The Winds they call the Dungeon Shaker," "Oath Minus," "Hanging out in Haiger"

Origin- Antithesis

Origin's third album of "brutal technical death metal" is a completely repellant, back-to-the-audience version of death metal. This record makes Deicide seem warm and cuddly. Everything from the sci-fi aesthetics, to the pretentious album title + song titles + lyrics, can be seen as a subtraction from death metal of its most "human" elements: juvenile, offensive Satanism (a "humanistic" philosophy) and/or gore (humanity reduced to gooey anatomy). 

Origin seem like they've never heard of PEOPLE. This extends to you, the record-purchaser. The only conception of a listener to be found here is a weak human set of ears to be demolished by the brutal technical etc. of these musicians.

On the other hand, destroy, pummel, annihilate, barrage, level, obliterate--they do this quite well. I don't know if this is the heaviest, most brutal music I've ever heard, but it certainly is an unrelenting and shockingly aggressive siege on sensitive ears. It is also worth praising the band for their robot-like aesthetic: this certainly spares us many of the aesthetic trends which pervade modern death metal, and is at the same time a "serious" take on the genre which I can get behind.

There is one surprising/weird thing about this album: as "technical" and riff-salad as it can be, a lot of times you find yourself thinking, "Gosh, they've been playing this riff for a *while* now..." Which should not happen in any music, but it shouldn't even be possible in this genre. I mean, do Cryptopsy ever even play the same riff twice?

In summary, this band has a couple other albums. Normally, if I'm crazy about something new, I go out and buy everything else a band has released. But this is still the only Origin album I have. It's gotten a lot of plays chez moi, but music this brain-meltingly aggressive should "add up" to something else. Origin is just good enough to avoid becoming background noise, which puts them ahead of the rest of the pack, but still behind more interesting bands. Worth checking out.

Score: 3 stars/5 (***)

Best songs: "Antithesis," "Aftermath," "The Beyond Within"

Worst "Deathcore" Band Names

If you aren't familiar with the term "deathcore," you haven't been reading metal-archives.com. This is the catch-all phrase for every post-emo "haircut" band who have graduated from "melodic" At the Gates- cloning to a "brutal" combination of the most boring qualities of death metal (cannibal corpse) with the breakdowns and attitude of metalcore (itself a nauseating byproduct of hardcore). Anyways, it is 99% likely that anyone who has recommended "this really great new band... i've been into death metal a lot lately" has been recommending some variation on either emo-grind (Daughters) or hipster tech-metal (Orthrelm) OR finally, deathcore (The Red Chord, reviewed on pitchfork, but obviously see below this entire post for more names).

Anyways, to me this music is obviously "music to annoy your parents" and to get shitty tattoos to, but I am thankful for this genre for its wonderful band names. Only the best selection below

A King's Worthy Mustache
All the Heathers Are Dying
And Their Eyes Were Bloodshot
Annotations of an Autopsy
As This Body, I Exist
Burying Ann Hewitt
Giddy Up Gangsta
Hang the Wench
Her Demise, My Rise
I Don't Want to Die in Texas
I Wrestled a Bear Once
Job for a Cowboy
Kids Will Be Skeletons
My Virgin Eyes
No Penguins in Alaska (logo has to be seen to be believed!)
School Girl Knife Fight
Sever the Head of Potemkin
She is a Liar
Surcease Angels
The Boy Will Drown
The Hacksaw Circumcision (Well done, guys)
The New Tony Bennett
The Texas Chainsaw Mascara
They Found Her in Pieces
To Envy the Horrid

Let me just say, NONE of this attitude existed when I was 18. There was "ironic metal," to be sure, but there was no "ironic death metal," and while I'm glad to see that metal is no longer just the domain of longhairs, I can't say that I understand kids today.

Favorite Death Metal song of the moment

Immolation "Nailed to Gold" off their second album

Especially the chorus riff, but especially the guitar solo.

Upcoming Posts

Gorguts- Considered Dead

Pestilence- Testimony of the Ancients

Incantation- Onward to Golgotha

Necrophagist- Epitaph

Origin- Antithesis

stay tuned in!

Suffocation- Despise the Sun

As good as Suffocation is, their entire sound is so close to being just a trick of production, that it's hard to think of their discography as other than a string of predictably great, monolithic works, with every deviation an "unwise" one. Unpredictable on the micro level, Suffocation is highly predictable on the macro level. Stick to what you know!

Even today Suffocation, playing basically in the same style as when they first started, seem impossibly futuristic and brutal--almost "high-tech" or bionic in their approach to blasting super-heavy death metal. Despise the Sun is their 1998 CD EP, after which the band went on hiatus until 2004's Souls To Deny, which picked up in exactly the same place. 

Ok, so the entire point of this blog is to distinguish between similar-sounding releases, and to find what is essential about Suffocation *aside from* their distinctive sound. Meaning, anyone can tell you what this band is all about after 45 seconds... and so that reaction is hardly worth writing. 

The great virtue of this band is the organicity of their countless part-changes. Whereas many bands pride themselves on the dizzying start-stop technicality of their riff salad songwriting, Suffocation go one better: they make the complicated arrangements seem natural rather than affected.

Despise the Sun presents a very stripped-down version of Suffocation: two songs under three minutes, no song longer than four minutes (whereas many of the songs on Pierced From Within are over five minutes, and *none* shorter than four). The songs are therefore easier to follow, and they have cut down on guitar solos. What a lot of people probably don't know about death metal is how boring and part-filled it can be. By "part" I mean "one part after another"--the feeling of, "when will this end?" Despise the Sun has absolutely zero of this--it's completely engaging for the whole 16 minutes. The band never tries to bring any "attitude" or "concept" to the proceedings, which is a great relief in 2009, when every band has to be into Egyptian or Babylonian or Gaelic mythologies... yawn. Suffocation just want to rock here, and by keeping it lean and unpretentious, they produce what in sports broadcasting is called 'a clinic'--they make it look easy, and everyone else looks like chumps. 

What makes death metal shitty is inevitably the following things:

• ambient tracks
• emo lyrics
• imagery moved to the forefront
• mixing of sub-genres ("blackened death," "deathrash," "deathcore," "deathgrind")
• Cannibal Corpse syndrome: lyrical shock value a crutch
• using the same musical devices too often
• slow

Suffocation avoid every trap here, and it's a brief and enjoyable triumph. Start elsewhere with this band, but...y'know... cherish this one.

Score: 4/5 stars (****)

Best songs: Bloodchurn, Catatonia

 

Necrophagist- Onset of Putrefaction

I'm glad that I am first hearing this album when I am 25 years old. This is the most outrageously "technical" death metal I've heard, and of course it is almost laughable in the number of changes, squeals, odd rhythms, and sheer quantity of PARTS in a given song--it is quite a stretch to include this in the same genre as Scream Bloody Gore, Horrified, Reek of Putrefaction, etc. Almost all of the early death metal classics are very simple, whereas this *very* late iteration is a one-person blender, with no possibility for toe-tapping, and likely to be derided as "masturbatory" by everyone who is not an aspiring youtube guitar hero himself. 

But let me pose the question otherwise: let's not come down on the "technicality" issue just yet; rather, is this record enjoyable to listen to? does it grow on you? It's best not to approach music with genre-blinders on ("Oh, it's too 'technical' for me.") 

First off, this is ridiculous fun--if Cannibal Corpse was too repetitive for any but the most attention-starved 14 year old, this is all the enjoyable shock and kitsch of Cannibal Corpse, dressed up as real music--and what music! Every riff is embellished, every stop/start part operates in stereo, nothing is played the same twice. It's impossible to follow, of course, but unlike Cannibal Corpse it is never boring. 

Secondly, by taking death metal to this "extreme," somehow the music has lost all the raw aggression, heaviness, intensity, et al, of extreme metal--vocals and tempos aside, this could almost be new age ambient sounds... in a manner of speaking. For die-hard old school fans, this will be a major drawback, but it is what it is. This music's not hard. After a few listens, there is nothing "sick" or "crazy" about it.

Thirdly, it's completely addictive. I've listened to this record 4 times today already--whether one can burn out on it or not, we'll see, but it's full of neat parts and a lot of it is really standout. 

Any discourse about "needless wankery," "music for robots," "no soul," "not catchy," "too technical," "actually not that hard to play"--really fall by the wayside when you approach this album the right way. It's fun and quite addictive. Strangely this band has found a kind of popularity by playing this absurd style, and who's to say that I am not missing some authentic core, but if a band is "pandering" by writing three million cool little parts, that is the particular kind of condescension that doesn't bother me.

Score: 4/5 stars (****)

Best songs: "Mutilate the Stillborn," "Fermented Offal Discharge"