The Metal Thread

[HellHammer]

Good, I need to see Morbid Angel again after the all the hiccups they had in last year's Deathfest, plus I wont have to worry about any chances of Kill a cop, kill a cop cop.

[Misatouki]

I can't believe I could forget LCtR's new album!

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FaP_UkOs7eE

 

[Nemesis Nosferatu]

[Voorhees_13]

There has to be people on here who like Swedish death metal. This is the topic for it. Anyway, my favorite Swedish death metal bands have to be Entombed, Amon Amarth, and Opeth.

[Fried]

That new Gorguts is out/leaked.

[Misatouki]

I also forgot about the latest albums from TesseracT and The Ocean, jeez.

[Fried]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-A0rd0T7sI

More or less pre-Entombed. Not the best sounding tape rip. Check out the "Nihilist 1987-1989" compilation CD for the best sounding rips.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_kEck6GM40

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ckWF1MsBpR8

(argh the sound on that Nirvana 2002 rehearsal still kills me)

 

Also check out the Swedish Death Metal book. A bit opinionated in places but a great read about the history of Swedish Death Metal.

http://www.bazillionpoints.com/shop/decibels-2008-book-of-the-year/

 

Saying that I agree with the above comment that this should really be in the Metal thread here.

 

[maskedmaniac]

Has someone ever actually died from listening to "death" metal?

[Creepia]

Has someone ever actually died from listening to "death" metal?

 

It's not called Death Metal because people die from it. The name was given by the band Death who innovated the genre.

[Creepia]

Just bought myself the entire Discography of Exodus. £45, not bad.

 

[Fried]

It's not called Death Metal because people die from it. The name was given by the band Death who innovated the genre.

 

 

Or by Possessed who recorded their first demo "Death Metal" in 1984.

 

Some say Mantas (pre-Death) was first with their "Death by Metal" demo released late 1984 although I personally believe Possessed was first.

[maskedmaniac]

 

Has someone ever actually died from listening to "death" metal?

 

It's not called Death Metal because people die from it. The name was given by the band Death who innovated the genre.

 

 

Didn't the guitarist for the band "Death" die of a brain tumor?

[AssaultDriver720]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WKHiS2HHxAA

 

Dew-Scented doing a Judge(N.Y.H.C.) cover.

[Creepia]

 

 

 

It's not called Death Metal because people die from it. The name was given by the band Death who innovated the genre.

 

Or by Possessed who recorded their first demo "Death Metal" in 1984.

 

Some say Mantas (pre-Death) was first with their "Death by Metal" demo released late 1984 although I personally believe Possessed was first.

There were bands before, but Death popularized it.

[unknownsold13r]

There has to be people on here who like Swedish death metal. This is the topic for it. Anyway, my favorite Swedish death metal bands have to be Entombed, Amon Amarth, and Opeth.

 

I'm pretty sure all of us do in some capacity. I like the Stockholm scene and the Gothenburg scene. I really got more into the latter though as I was raised more on Tampa death... and the Gothenburg sound added more musicallity and such. Melodeath has suffereed from a lot of derivative bands, but in the late 90's, early 2000's when that subgenre really caught fire, it was unstoppable.

 

 

 

It's not called Death Metal because people die from it. The name was given by the band Death who innovated the genre.

 

Or by Possessed who recorded their first demo "Death Metal" in 1984.

 

Some say Mantas (pre-Death) was first with their "Death by Metal" demo released late 1984 although I personally believe Possessed was first.

There were bands before, but Death popularized it.

 

 

Yes, you're both right.

 

Innovation and popularization are both pretty important to the creation of anything.

 

Being a wrasslin' forum, I'll use a wrestling analogy. The Undertaker did not invent the Tombstone piledriver. Plenty of wrestlers used variations of reverse piledrivers, like the Dynamite Kid, Tiger Mask and Don Muroco. I don't actually know who invented it first. I'm pretty sure some announcers used the word tombstone though before Mean Mark became the Undertaker and started using it though. Either way, the Undertaker is who made the move legendary. I see Death as being the band that made the phrase Death Metal legendary, even if they did not first use it.

 

Possessed does deserve the credit for coining the term. I'm nearly certain that they put out their demo in early 1984. Back when Schuldiner was Evil Chuck in Mantas, their demo Death by Metal came out (late like Fried said) on September 7th, 1984. Even though I'm a big Chuck fan, I had to look that up., I mean hell I was like 2 years old when that demo came out.

 

Possessed - Death Metal (no way is the original version on friggin youtube, but this is the version that made it on the tail end of their first real album, Seven Churches.

 

Mantas - Death by Metal (demo material)

 

Mantas - Evil Dead. This is the better known track from their demo work. I think this is off of the Death by Metal compilation album that came out just about a year ago.

[Fried]

 

 

It's not called Death Metal because people die from it. The name was given by the band Death who innovated the genre.

Or by Possessed who recorded their first demo "Death Metal" in 1984.

 

Some say Mantas (pre-Death) was first with their "Death by Metal" demo released late 1984 although I personally believe Possessed was first.

 

There were bands before, but Death popularized it.

 

Yes, you're both right.

 

Innovation and popularization are both pretty important to the creation of anything.

 

Being a wrasslin' forum, I'll use a wrestling analogy. The Undertaker did not invent the Tombstone piledriver. Plenty of wrestlers used variations of reverse piledrivers, like the Dynamite Kid, Tiger Mask and Don Muroco. I don't actually know who invented it first. I'm pretty sure some announcers used the word tombstone though before Mean Mark became the Undertaker and started using it though. Either way, the Undertaker is who made the move legendary. I see Death as being the band that made the phrase Death Metal legendary, even if they did not first use it.

Popularised or commercialised? Maybe this should be in the unpopular music thread but I don't think DM in its infancy should of been very popular at all. I think that the inital charm of DM was it's brutality, it's dark imagry, the underground, fanzines, tape trading etc. By it's very nature it shouldn't of been popular and the only way it could be popular was by a dilutation of the original idea.

Possessed does deserve the credit for coining the term. I'm nearly certain that they put out their demo in early 1984. Back when Schuldiner was Evil Chuck in Mantas, their demo Death by Metal came out (late like Fried said) on September 7th, 1984. Even though I'm a big Chuck fan, I had to look that up., I mean hell I was like 2 years old when that demo came out.

 

Possessed - Death Metal (no way is the original version on friggin youtube, but this is the version that made it on the tail end of their first real album, Seven Churches.

 

 

 

 

Mantas - Death by Metal (demo material)

 

 

 

 

Mantas - Evil Dead. This is the better known track from their demo work. I think this is off of the Death by Metal compilation album that came out just about a year ago.

 

 

 

 

The Possessed Death Metal demo is on youtube, it's a very important part of DM.

 

Also I had a flick through the Swedish Death Metal book this morning about the history of DM.

 

Hellhammer also participated in launching the term "death metal", as the members edited a metal fanzine called Death metal in 1983. This 'zine probably also inspired the German label Noise Records, which released a compilation album titled Death metal in 1984, featuring Hellhammer, along with the pretty undeadly bands Running Wild, Dark Avenger, and Helloween.

The term "death metal" was also used to describe the violent music of the incredible new Swedish band Bathory. Bathory's second album especially, The Return, in 1985 stepped beyond virtually everything else with its crude production, screaming vocals, and insane paces.

(Jeff) Becerra (Possessed) started using the term "death metal" to describe their music on a whim:

"I came up with that during an English class in high school. I figured speed metal and black metal were already taken, so what the *Censored*? so I said death metal, because that word wasn't associated with Venom or anybody else. I wasn't even about redefining it. We were playing this music and we were trying to be the heaviest thing on the face of the planet. We wanted just to piss people off and send everybody home. And that can't be, like, "flower metal"."

[unknownsold13r]

Popularised or commercialised? Maybe this should be in the unpopular music thread but I don't think DM in its infancy should of been very popular at all. I think that the inital charm of DM was it's brutality, it's dark imagry, the underground, fanzines, tape trading etc. By it's very nature it shouldn't of been popular and the only way it could be popular was by a dilutation of the original idea.

 

Perhaps both. I'll admit to that, but still that effect happened gradually over time. It's not like Chuck and friends made succedded in making death metal popular back in it's infancy in the mid 80's anyways. Death metal was barely even recognized by the mass media as a thing that existed at all until the very late 80's early 90's. I also don't think that things neccessarily gain initial popularity always and only by dilution of an original idea either. Surely they can, but doesn't mean it's always that way. This is not just limited to metal. In the case of metal though, some bands wanted to create something with even more of a harder edge than what had been done in the past, that's nothing new. People are going to flock to that for a variety of reasons. The more people flock to it, the bigger it gets.

 

Few if any of the rock/metal fans on this site are old enough to have been a grown adult back in those tape trading, fanzine days anyways. I'm not trying to speak for everyone, but I imagine that for most of us, that era of metal is nostalgia for something we didn't experience firsthand anyway. At 30, I'm probably one of the older heads around here who experienced the 80's as a kid at least... and no I wasn't listening to Death and Possessed when I was like 5 years old, I wasn't that cool. Still, I know that thrash was certainly commercialised by the mid 80's but death was not. But by the early 90's death metal had grown considerably, and Death was an integral part of that. Still when I was in HS around the turn of the millenium and was one of about 5 or 6 dudes in my school that listened to established, and if you want to say commercialized... be my guest DM bands like Death, Can Corpse, Obituary or Morbid Angel out of a graduating class of around 4-500 students, I wouldn't exactly call DM popular. And for the generation right before me that would have been in HS in the early to mid 90's, during the height of the death metal movement, you can maybe double or triple that number of random dudes per school that listened to death metal... unless we're talking Tampa Bay area. So still not really a commercially popular thing. More so than DIY material... but what isn't...

The Possessed Death Metal demo is on youtube, it's a very important part of DM.

 

Also I had a flick through the Swedish Death Metal book this morning about the history of DM.

 

Hellhammer also participated in launching the term "death metal", as the members edited a metal fanzine called Death metal in 1983. This 'zine probably also inspired the German label Noise Records, which released a compilation album titled Death metal in 1984, featuring Hellhammer, along with the pretty undeadly bands Running Wild, Dark Avenger, and Helloween.

The term "death metal" was also used to describe the violent music of the incredible new Swedish band Bathory. Bathory's second album especially, The Return, in 1985 stepped beyond virtually everything else with its crude production, screaming vocals, and insane paces.

(Jeff) Becerra (Possessed) started using the term "death metal" to describe their music on a whim:

"I came up with that during an English class in high school. I figured speed metal and black metal were already taken, so what the *Censored*? so I said death metal, because that word wasn't associated with Venom or anybody else. I wasn't even about redefining it. We were playing this music and we were trying to be the heaviest thing on the face of the planet. We wanted just to piss people off and send everybody home. And that can't be, like, "flower metal"."

 

 

Well good find on the original version. I didn't find it.

 

Some interesting quotes as well. I didn't know about the Hellhammer reference or compilation album. Ya learn something new everyday as that is news to me. Pretty cool when ya think about it, since their usage predates the others clocking in at 1983. The Bathory reference I didn't know either. That was a term used in a critic review of an album, so I don't imagine that a ton of people were exposed to said review to make that connection back then.

 

The last one though, with Becerra, I've heard that before, a couple different places, perhaps even discussed here at one point. I believe his story, I even said they deserve credit for really coining the term as a band. Still it's just his word, about what he came up with in English class back in the day.

 

The thing is... the word DEATH isn't nearly as obscure as many other terms for styles of metal (grind, drone, djent, etc...). It's not unreasonable to think that a variety of people who've never met one another came to use the same term death to describe similar music. Thrash, early black, and even some NWOBHM bands used plenty of dark themes and images of skulls and graveyards and grim reapers and stuff like that... which all became metal cliches before anyone started using the term death metal.

 

[HellHammer]

Speaking of HellHammer

 

Cool read, Tom G Warrior recently recovered his old letters to HR Giger for permission to use Satan I for To Mega Therion.

 

http://fischerisdead.blogspot.ch/2013/07/to-mega-therion-album-by-hellhammer.html?m=1

[Fried]

Perhaps both. I'll admit to that, but still that effect happened gradually over time. It's not like Chuck and friends made succedded in making death metal popular back in it's infancy in the mid 80's anyways. Death metal was barely even recognized by the mass media as a thing that existed at all until the very late 80's early 90's. I also don't think that things neccessarily gain initial popularity always and only by dilution of an original idea either. Surely they can, but doesn't mean it's always that way. This is not just limited to metal. In the case of metal though, some bands wanted to create something with even more of a harder edge than what had been done in the past, that's nothing new. People are going to flock to that for a variety of reasons. The more people flock to it, the bigger it gets.

I don't think it happened that gradually. In terms of Death maybe between Scream Bloody Gore in '87 and Human in '91. I don't think it's a coincidence that '91 saw the beginning of the BM movement as, among other things, a reaction about how the DM scene was changing. Just like DM was a reaction to the thrash metal scene.

 

Sure maybe things don't always gain initial popularity only because of a dilution of an original idea but I do think more often than not that's the way it goes. Elvis initally taking the blues and other African-American styles. The Beatles initally taking rockabilly/skiffle. Black Sabbath initally taking old blues rock. For me their inital stuff was either a pale imitation or a homogenised confused mess. However, as everyone knows, they all went onto bigger and better things. I don't see that with DM. The only good thing that came from DM watering down was BM. Eventually the same thing happened to BM. As it happened to punk and all the different fragmentations after it.

 

I see a lot of similarities between what I'm talking about with the commercialisation of DM and Grunge for example. That period after Nirvana got huge all the record labels sent all their scouts out to Seattle and signed anyone. Imagine what Tampa or Sweden must of been like in the very late 80's. I think record labels suck out all the life from any scene.

 

Few if any of the rock/metal fans on this site are old enough to have been a grown adult back in those tape trading, fanzine days anyways. I'm not trying to speak for everyone, but I imagine that for most of us, that era of metal is nostalgia for something we didn't experience firsthand anyway. At 30, I'm probably one of the older heads around here who experienced the 80's as a kid at least... and no I wasn't listening to Death and Possessed when I was like 5 years old, I wasn't that cool. Still, I know that thrash was certainly commercialised by the mid 80's but death was not. But by the early 90's death metal had grown considerably, and Death was an integral part of that. Still when I was in HS around the turn of the millenium and was one of about 5 or 6 dudes in my school that listened to established, and if you want to say commercialized... be my guest DM bands like Death, Can Corpse, Obituary or Morbid Angel out of a graduating class of around 4-500 students, I wouldn't exactly call DM popular. And for the generation right before me that would have been in HS in the early to mid 90's, during the height of the death metal movement, you can maybe double or triple that number of random dudes per school that listened to death metal... unless we're talking Tampa Bay area. So still not really a commercially popular thing. More so than DIY material... but what isn't...

I'm 35 and I remember doing a few tape trades probably around '98 to '00, after that it changed to mp3 trading which, while trying to compare waiting months for a pack from Mexico or Brazil or France or Norway or anywhere, to getting an instant gratifing hit sounds far removed it's still basically the same idea. I think it changed a lot after Audiogalaxy and Napster and more recently the blogs or torrents or whatever. I'm not even sure if there are dedicated tape traders around much nowadays although I do know that there are people who are still trading physical items.

 

I think it's unfair to compared Death, Obituary, Cannibal Corpse & Morbid Angel. CC I don't care for one bit. I liked the first three Obituary and I even remember buying Death's Human probably in early '92 or Xmas '91. But Morbid Angel were always a special band for me. It was probably late '91 or '92 for Blessed Are The Sick and was actively following them until about '94 after which I was more firmly in the BM camp. For me the change in Death is en par with Morbid Angel's Illud Divinum Insanus album. Well...probably a bit less heh...But saying that there were people who complained that Morbid Angel sold out between Altars and Blessed. Or Slayer sold out between Reign in Blood and South Of Heaven.

 

About the commercialisation thing...I don't really say it like it's a horrible thing. As you say in high school late 90's/early 00's you were listening to those bands but were you listening to Sound of Perseverance or Scream Bloody Gore? I totally admit that if it wasn't for picking up Human and only a bit later the compilation that had some of the earlier stuff I wouldn't of gone down the DM path. I wouldn't of eventually got to Deicide or later gone down a BM path.

 

DM could never be huge in a mainstream sort of way no matter how much they tried to change it. Maybe all the Nu- stuff, stuff I'm not familar with at all, was an attempt to make it even more accessible. The downtuned guitars at least.

 

Anyway mate, I've been piecing that together since this morning in between other jobs so sorry if it's disjointed or whatever.

Speaking of HellHammer

 

Cool read, Tom G Warrior recently recovered his old letters to HR Giger for permission to use Satan I for To Mega Therion.

 

http://fischerisdead.blogspot.ch/2013/07/to-mega-therion-album-by-hellhammer.html?m=1

That's awesome for the Giger finds.

 

Also enjoyed his sort post about Dead Can Dance and

On the old HH rehearsal bunker.

[unknownsold13r]

I don't think it happened that gradually. In terms of Death maybe between Scream Bloody Gore in '87 and Human in '91. I don't think it's a coincidence that '91 saw the beginning of the BM movement as, among other things, a reaction about how the DM scene was changing. Just like DM was a reaction to the thrash metal scene.

 

Sure maybe things don't always gain initial popularity only because of a dilution of an original idea but I do think more often than not that's the way it goes. Elvis initally taking the blues and other African-American styles. The Beatles initally taking rockabilly/skiffle. Black Sabbath initally taking old blues rock. For me their inital stuff was either a pale imitation or a homogenised confused mess. However, as everyone knows, they all went onto bigger and better things. I don't see that with DM. The only good thing that came from DM watering down was BM. Eventually the same thing happened to BM. As it happened to punk and all the different fragmentations after it.

 

I see a lot of similarities between what I'm talking about with the commercialisation of DM and Grunge for example. That period after Nirvana got huge all the record labels sent all their scouts out to Seattle and signed anyone. Imagine what Tampa or Sweden must of been like in the very late 80's. I think record labels suck out all the life from any scene.

 

 

Well record labels do the suck the life out of any scene, that much is agreed upon.

 

As far as the word gradually.... I guess everyone has their own perception of time, and it's just a matter of what you or I or anyone else percieves as a long or short period of time. From 1984 to 1991, I'd call that a long time in music years. A lot changes in music across the board in 8 years. And while not all change may be good, or considered good by all, change is neccessary. If death metal had stagnated and by '91 it was still just random guys making underground, Do it yourself style demo tapes, it probably would not even exist here in 2013 in any form. Instead we have many forms. Traditional death, tech death, brutal death, prog death, melodeath, symphonic death, blackened death, etc... I'm not telling anyone in here anything they don't already know. Just making a point that change can yield some great results. Are those forms of death metal that have a prefix attatched to them diluted? Yes... in a sense they all are, except the traditional form. I like the word "altered" more than "diluted" though as altered doesn't carry the same negative connotations. I see new styles and twists on old ones as a good thing overall, that's just my perspective though.

I'm 35 and I remember doing a few tape trades probably around '98 to '00, after that it changed to mp3 trading which, while trying to compare waiting months for a pack from Mexico or Brazil or France or Norway or anywhere, to getting an instant gratifing hit sounds far removed it's still basically the same idea. I think it changed a lot after Audiogalaxy and Napster and more recently the blogs or torrents or whatever. I'm not even sure if there are dedicated tape traders around much nowadays although I do know that there are people who are still trading physical items.

I think it's unfair to compared Death, Obituary, Cannibal Corpse & Morbid Angel. CC I don't care for one bit. I liked the first three Obituary and I even remember buying Death's Human probably in early '92 or Xmas '91. But Morbid Angel were always a special band for me. It was probably late '91 or '92 for Blessed Are The Sick and was actively following them until about '94 after which I was more firmly in the BM camp. For me the change in Death is en par with Morbid Angel's Illud Divinum Insanus album. Well...probably a bit less heh...But saying that there were people who complained that Morbid Angel sold out between Altars and Blessed. Or Slayer sold out between Reign in Blood and South Of Heaven.

 

About the commercialisation thing...I don't really say it like it's a horrible thing. As you say in high school late 90's/early 00's you were listening to those bands but were you listening to Sound of Perseverance or Scream Bloody Gore? I totally admit that if it wasn't for picking up Human and only a bit later the compilation that had some of the earlier stuff I wouldn't of gone down the DM path. I wouldn't of eventually got to Deicide or later gone down a BM path.

 

DM could never be huge in a mainstream sort of way no matter how much they tried to change it. Maybe all the Nu- stuff, stuff I'm not familar with at all, was an attempt to make it even more accessible. The downtuned guitars at least.

 

Anyway mate, I've been piecing that together since this morning in between other jobs so sorry if it's disjointed or whatever.

Speaking of HellHammer

 

Cool read, Tom G Warrior recently recovered his old letters to HR Giger for permission to use Satan I for To Mega Therion.

 

http://fischerisdead.blogspot.ch/2013/07/to-mega-therion-album-by-hellhammer.html?m=1

That's awesome for the Giger finds.

 

Also enjoyed his sort post about Dead Can Dance and

 

That's cool that you got in on the tape trading movement. A few years in age can make a pretty big difference, the earlier in life that gap is. Do you have any awesome, treasured tapes or other relics from back in the day that you still have?

 

And yeah mp3's, and the Napster thing changed everything. Before that I remember the mail order record deals to get CDs. Aw man, we all used to abuse those things so much. I doubt anyone still trades cassette tapes these days, just merch and memorabillia.

 

Moving on, I don't see how it's unfair to put Morbid Angel in with their fellow Tampa death bands, just because you may like them considerably more than their contemporaries. I mean I have a ton of respect for their early work too... but if I recall, they were the first from the Tampa scene to sign with a major label, when they released Covenant. In some people's eyes I'm sure that was more of a sellout move by joining a major label (one of those lables under the Warner Bros umbrella), then a change in direction from Alters to Sick was. Personally, I rarely care much whether people are claiming any band is selling out. I just don't get caught up in that sort of thing. I know plenty of people who do, and they aren't wrong for being discerning. But I often side with the musicians. It takes something really *censored*ed up, like Metallica's repeat offenses to get me up in arms about someone about selling out. I also think that the word sellout is overused a ton... if a band switches things up and gains critical acclaim, but very little commercial gain, I never understood why that gets called selling out, but we often see it. Opeth's heritage for example. Prog rock is even less popular in the US than death metal.

 

While not much of a musician myself (I dick around with the guitar and drums on occasion, but nothing major,) I come from a very musically inclined family. (This is sounding like deja vu, I think you and I had a convo similar to this once before ). How this shapes my perspective is that. A.) I tend to be understanding of a band trying new avenues. Because musicians get bored like anyone else. B.) I greatly appreciate high quality production values (a view that can split a room of modern metalheads in an instant). C.) I understand a good deal of music theory and really dig any band intending to improve their craft.

 

Was I listening to Scream Bloody Gore or Sound of Perseverance? Both!

The difference between SBG and Human may have been as radical as the difference between Morbid Angel as they were known and the Insanus album... but it wasn't as radikult Sorry, I had too. I think the difference is that... with IDI, Morbid added that Eurotrash industro-weirdness that nobody wanted and more importantly... was material that is beneath them. Where as the changes in Death's progession, involved exactly that, progression. Death became a much more accomplished band than anyone thought they had potential to be, with improved writing and song structure.

Still, that's just one crap album from MA... I'm not saying they de-evolved as a band on the whole or anything.

You're right about DM not being able to be huge in the mainstream... except for maybe some vague stylistic things borrowed by bands like Korn and such.

About BM being sort of a reaction to DM. I never got into that scene... it just wasn't even on my radar, and I've found that amongst the things that people my typically may not like BM for... it wasn't the harsh vocals or the blast beats. It wasn't even the lolworthy hatred for my personal faith... that I've put up with in plenty of other bands.... it was the low end production and that guitar dissonance sound. I realize some people really like both though. If nothing else, that cold, dissonant sound was something new for it's time.

 

Here is a hypothetical question... for anyone reading my ramblings. Since all current forms of extreme metal have been well established, and thus have been altered/diluted, what will the next "reaction" to this sound like? It's lets play Nastradamus time! It's really sort of like two questions:

1. If you could create the next sound/movement in metal, what would it be like?

2. If you could predict.......................................................................................?

[HellHammer]

Honestly I think the next movement in Metal is really what Ghost is doing, all avenue's of Extreme Metal have been exhausted imo. I think it's gonna come down to just how catchy, heavy, and good of set you can play. Ghost acting like it's 1976, and the Nwobhm era hadn't happen yet, and how good they have gone forward with that direction really has me thinking that we are going to see a resurgence in classic metal, more than any extreme acts. I think extreme metal will also become more clean.

 

Or somebody will just record an album with someone setting off a daisy cutter to an auto-tune factory...

[Fried]

I agree with that about Ghost and all other avenues being exhausted. I don't think people can get any faster than the fastest grind bands or any slower than the most slow doom bands or the drone bands.

 

I think that everything, not just metal, is cyclical. You can almost follow it through like a wave. NWOBHM -> Thrash -> DM -> BM. DM and BM became filled with bands wanting to break away from their base style; Enslaved's "Viking Metal", Immortal's (at least initially) "Holocaust Metal" which in turn makes people want to go back to "the way it was" so BM becomes more traditional before that gets exhausted and go back to DM. Like Behemoth's change between their early stuff and the more recent stuff or conversely like bands like Emperor came from Thou Shalt Suffer, Darkthrone's change between Soulside Journey and A Blaze. The same thing happened with thrash with all those party thrash bands which in turn lead to more traditional German style thrash.

 

What is refreshing with Ghost is that they really went back to other origins. It didn't really come from anywhere recent. Maybe more from a mid-70's rock thing like Roky Erickson or the like.

 

Well record labels do the suck the life out of any scene, that much is agreed upon.

 

As far as the word gradually.... I guess everyone has their own perception of time, and it's just a matter of what you or I or anyone else percieves as a long or short period of time. From 1984 to 1991, I'd call that a long time in music years. A lot changes in music across the board in 8 years. And while not all change may be good, or considered good by all, change is neccessary. If death metal had stagnated and by '91 it was still just random guys making underground, Do it yourself style demo tapes, it probably would not even exist here in 2013 in any form. Instead we have many forms. Traditional death, tech death, brutal death, prog death, melodeath, symphonic death, blackened death, etc... I'm not telling anyone in here anything they don't already know. Just making a point that change can yield some great results. Are those forms of death metal that have a prefix attatched to them diluted? Yes... in a sense they all are, except the traditional form. I like the word "altered" more than "diluted" though as altered doesn't carry the same negative connotations. I see new styles and twists on old ones as a good thing overall, that's just my perspective though.

I don't really agree with that if DM or BM was still DiY in it wouldn't exist in 2013 because I know that it does still exist. In the underground there are even labels, small underground labels, dedicated to just releasing tapes. There are threads on metal message boards dedicated to 'latest tape scores'. Even as the genre expanded there were always small pockets of bands that were still doing it for the underground. That is one of things tape trading taught me.

 

About the different styles, the altered or maybe even expanded styles, to go back to your tombstone piledriver analogy, how many times can someone change the traditional piledriver before you have to stop calling it a piledriver? See for me Traditional, tech, brutal are all hallmarks of DM. DM should be traditional, technical & brutal. Although I am a fan of some Prog, Prog DM never appealed to me. Maybe for me I can't join the dots between the two different genres. Maybe I just missed that boat.

 

That's cool that you got in on the tape trading movement. A few years in age can make a pretty big difference, the earlier in life that gap is. Do you have any awesome, treasured tapes or other relics from back in the day that you still have?

 

And yeah mp3's, and the Napster thing changed everything. Before that I remember the mail order record deals to get CDs. Aw man, we all used to abuse those things so much. I doubt anyone still trades cassette tapes these days, just merch and memorabillia.

 

Moving on, I don't see how it's unfair to put Morbid Angel in with their fellow Tampa death bands, just because you may like them considerably more than their contemporaries. I mean I have a ton of respect for their early work too... but if I recall, they were the first from the Tampa scene to sign with a major label, when they released Covenant. In some people's eyes I'm sure that was more of a sellout move by joining a major label (one of those lables under the Warner Bros umbrella), then a change in direction from Alters to Sick was. Personally, I rarely care much whether people are claiming any band is selling out. I just don't get caught up in that sort of thing. I know plenty of people who do, and they aren't wrong for being discerning. But I often side with the musicians. It takes something really *censored*ed up, like Metallica's repeat offenses to get me up in arms about someone about selling out. I also think that the word sellout is overused a ton... if a band switches things up and gains critical acclaim, but very little commercial gain, I never understood why that gets called selling out, but we often see it. Opeth's heritage for example. Prog rock is even less popular in the US than death metal.

 

While not much of a musician myself (I dick around with the guitar and drums on occasion, but nothing major,) I come from a very musically inclined family. (This is sounding like deja vu, I think you and I had a convo similar to this once before ). How this shapes my perspective is that. A.) I tend to be understanding of a band trying new avenues. Because musicians get bored like anyone else. B.) I greatly appreciate high quality production values (a view that can split a room of modern metalheads in an instant). C.) I understand a good deal of music theory and really dig any band intending to improve their craft.

 

Was I listening to Scream Bloody Gore or Sound of Perseverance? Both!

The difference between SBG and Human may have been as radical as the difference between Morbid Angel as they were known and the Insanus album... but it wasn't as radikult Sorry, I had too. I think the difference is that... with IDI, Morbid added that Eurotrash industro-weirdness that nobody wanted and more importantly... was material that is beneath them. Where as the changes in Death's progession, involved exactly that, progression. Death became a much more accomplished band than anyone thought they had potential to be, with improved writing and song structure.

Still, that's just one crap album from MA... I'm not saying they de-evolved as a band on the whole or anything.

You're right about DM not being able to be huge in the mainstream... except for maybe some vague stylistic things borrowed by bands like Korn and such.

About BM being sort of a reaction to DM. I never got into that scene... it just wasn't even on my radar, and I've found that amongst the things that people my typically may not like BM for... it wasn't the harsh vocals or the blast beats. It wasn't even the lolworthy hatred for my personal faith... that I've put up with in plenty of other bands.... it was the low end production and that guitar dissonance sound. I realize some people really like both though. If nothing else, that cold, dissonant sound was something new for it's time.

For me the tape trading thing was finding new bands. Going through a fanzine and reading a review and thinking it sounded cool and beginning the hunt to find someone who had it then trying to organise something. Or even going through thank you lists on cd's or lp's or interviews and just trying to get whatever I could. It was initially just for dub's but then after getting some dubs some things stood out over the others and I tried to find originals. I found a lot of bands that have been very influential for me this way. Samael (I traded with an infamous Norwegian for an original copy of the first Samael demo tape a bit later on), Master's Hammer (which opened up a lot of Czech bands), Lithuanian bands Anubi & Nahash, French DM like Mutilated or Abyssals. Polish bands like Graveland, Infernum, Mysteries. It's really endless.

 

The thing about Morbid Angel and Covenant, sure it was on a major label, but on the other hand it's for me their most brutal work. It's unrelenting. It doesn't sound overly polished. They didn't tone it down at all. For me it's more like Altars than Blessed. Still a horrible cover but I can forgive that. heh...

 

I'm on the other side of the fence with regards to production values, innovation and all that. It has it's place but for me not in metal. Or at least most of the metal that I like. The striving for innovation is what caused MA's IDI. Sure it might not be what the fans of MA wanted but for me that's the ultimate cause/effect of innovation. They'll just keep trying to merge different styles; rap/metal ala Anthrax/Public Enemy or Morbid Angel with IDI. There's no logical end to it. Bands will just keep on taking disparate styles and try to merge them together in the name of innovation. Sure, maybe there are times when it does work but for me using IDI as a reference point is proof enough that for me it's better to not even try because the end result can be quite catastrophic.

[Fried]

New Carcass has leaked!

[Deadwing]

^Already? Woah, one of my most anticipated albums in a long time.

 

Just got through the new Gorguts and it's really good. One of the best albums I've heard this year.

[Fried]

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qruklnnkBaI

 

 

!!

 

(Don't click the spoiler if you're waiting until the official release.)

 

That new Gorguts is growing on me a bit.