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Death metal, or as I like to call it, BEST metal

Started by The Mollusk, August 05, 2021, 11:29:12 AM

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The Mollusk

Listening to death metal makes me really really happy. Sometimes I could be listening to fuckin Bon Iver or something and suddenly for no reason I'll think about the guy in the chicken costume who's in the mosh pits of every Dying Fetus music video and my brain will just snap into wanting to hear loads of death metal.

Gotta be my favourite metal subgenre. It's brutal without succumbing to the unyielding wall of fucking hell you get with grindcore, yet it's not as formulaic or unsatisfying as I find thrash metal to be. It has enough virtuosity in some of the more technical bands and it's more broad and conceptual, not to mention progressive. It allows for occasional forays into introspection, a fleeting ambient interlude or maybe even a breakdown with an acoustic solo but on the whole it is just brilliantly heavy music and it delivers time and time again.

This week I've been really enjoying:

Classics:
Death - Symbolic
Obituary - Slowly We Rot

Technical wizards:
Nile - Annihilation of the Wicked (a fucking masterpiece)
Dying Fetus - Wrong One to Fuck With
Cephalic Carnage - Misled by Certainty

Legacy/mainstays:
Deicide - The Stench of Redemption
Suffocation - self-titled

Fresh blood:
Creeping Death - Wretched Illusions
Blood Incantation - Hidden History of the Human Race
Venom Prison - Samsara

The biggest new discovery for me though has been Vital Remains - Icons of Evil. Seen a few people online saying it's overly long and all the songs should be halved in length but I dunno, personally for me this thing is just hit after hit. I really love the jazz influence on the tracks, where an opening riff will be brought back for a reprise at the end of the track which ties them up very nicely. It's almost a bit overwhelming just how unrelenting the songs can be but I find it more exhilarating than anything. Very very good album.

The Mollusk

God I really couldn't think of a better thread title than that eh, fucking hell

lankyguy95

Sorry, I can't even hear or read the phrase 'Death Metal' without thinking about the time Sara Cox tried to put it into Room 101 and they played a Bring Me The Horizon song as an example.

https://youtu.be/sMHMCUNVuMY

The Mollusk

It does have the unfortunate reputation of being wrongly attributed to any metal music which sounds heavier than Judas Priest. People just do not appreciate subgenre labelling!!!

iamcoop

Fucking love me some Death metal. Three jams I've played this week;

Death - Spiritual Healing
Nile - Black Seeds of Vengeance
Dissection - Storm of the light's bane (can we class this as death metal? Just about, I think although it's debatable)

Don't really know about any current stuff, I tend to stick to the classics but I'll definitely check out The Mollusk's recommendations.

To be honest I tend to gravitate more towards the thrashy-kinda-death stuff these days like Beneath the Remains by Sepultura and One Kill Wonder by The Haunted and all that type of jazz but I'm a sucker for some techy death metal any day of the week.


Swoz_MK

Other than Condemned, that one Cephalotripsy record and the aforementioned Dying Fetus I just can't be bothered with new DM any more. I tried that Blood Incantation record with the little alien fella on it that everyone told me I'd love and just thought it was dull.
25-odd years ago all I listened to was anything from Morrisound and whatever Gothenburg stuff my mate would get hold of. Now all I care about is cover art that could get you arrested and ridiculous slam parts half the speed of Devourment.

Magnum Valentino

Anyone looking places to start should go with The Bleeding by Cannibal Corpse and Suffocation's EP Despise the Sun. My two favourite examples of the genre and both nice and short with no shortage of ideas and no letup in momentum.

The latest Nile album without longtime vocalist Dallas Tolder Wade is really good as well.

Also a huge fan of Back from the Dead which doesn't seem to get mentioned as much by Obituary fans as it should.

Entombed. First four albums are a brilliant example of how death metal can evolve into something very interesting from the standard starting point.

Listen to Bolt Thrower!

Yes, I agree, this is the best metal genre and more or less my honest answer these days when new colleagues ask me what music I like. Just fucking say " death metal" and let them figure it out.

jobotic

Black Metal is the best metal you Justin Bieber wannabees

iamcoop

Quote from: jobotic on August 05, 2021, 01:23:17 PM
Black Metal is the best metal you Justin Bieber wannabees

When I'm in the right mood for it Black Metal is best.

The Mollusk

A lot of black metal is too samey for me or else the experimental stuff is too... I dunno, grandiose? I don't get on with bands like Blut Aus Nord at all. But when it hits right, it's fucking amazing. Two of my absolute fave metal bands I've discovered in recent years are Krallice (one dude from Orthrelm and one from Behold the Arctopus making stuff that is traditional in some respects but really challenging in others, they're fucking brilliant and not what you'd expect at all from those two people) and Oranssi Pazuzu (who I'd hesitantly describe as "psychedelic black metal", and whose most recent two albums are phenomenal).

iamcoop

Quote from: The Mollusk on August 05, 2021, 02:36:53 PM
Oranssi Pazuzu

Heard these mentioned a few times in metal threads so I'm gonna have to give them a spin.

Twit 2

Death - The Sound of Perseverance is a banger.

The Mollusk

Quote from: iamcoop on August 05, 2021, 02:40:13 PM
Heard these mentioned a few times in metal threads so I'm gonna have to give them a spin.

Lose your fuckin mind in this, the closing track from their most recent album. A total howling maelstrom, truly brilliant example of the extremes black metal is able to reach.

https://youtu.be/7_bknha_YMw

Old Thrashbarg

Quote from: lankyguy95 on August 05, 2021, 11:38:57 AM
Sorry, I can't even hear or read the phrase 'Death Metal' without thinking about the time Sara Cox tried to put it into Room 101 and they played a Bring Me The Horizon song as an example.

https://youtu.be/sMHMCUNVuMY

I do wonder if they actually played Cannibal Corpse, or some other death metal band a producer might have heard the name of, in the studio. And then someone decided that wasn't suitable for 8pm on BBC1, so they overdubbed that song, from a band that Cox has almost certainly played on the radio at some point given how ubiquitous BMTH were around that time.

Pink Gregory

I listen to Death and sort of wonder why anyone else bothers, but I then listen to Carcass and realise that I'm wrong.

Had a listen to Prowler in the Yard by Pig Destroyer off youtube on a drive the other day and was interrupted by an ad for Muller yoghurt

Poobum

Have a bigger hit rate with Black Metal than Death Metal. Like the sound of Oranssi Pazuzu, will be exploring more.

Does seem for me that the hammering rhythms, beats, and riffs either resonate with my brains and take me into the zone, or it's just noise that does nothing. Absolutely love Ildjarn - Nidhogg. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNUwqD9wzgg 

Dirty Boy

I think i'm more into the stuff that's laced with elements of  grind/sludge/ and/or hardcore punk than the classic Florida or whatever sound, ie; i'd rather listen to Napalm Death and Nasum than Deicide or Morbid Angel, good though some of that stuff is.

Going by the opening description i think Ulcerate's last album is the best technical death metal of recent years and one that narrowly escaped being on my best of last years list.

A couple of other recent ones i've quite enjoyed:
Necrot - Mortal
Faceless Burial - Speciation
Riffs for fucking miles.

This album The Great Destroyer by Gadget from 2016 is closer to grind, but i'll mention it because it fucking slaps.


Dirty Boy

Quote from: Swoz_MK on August 05, 2021, 01:06:41 PM
Now all I care about is cover art that could get you arrested
PISSGRAVE! (extremely NSFW obv)
(I haven't listened to it yet, but from the description and the cover i'm guessing they like Carcass)

Noodle Lizard

The last two Cannibal Corpse albums have been remarkably good for "more of the same". Their longevity and ubiquity is well-deserved. I've also rediscovered Nile and Necrophagist recently.

I haven't found many straight-up death metal bands formed after the 90s that I've cared much for. I'm sure they're out there, but it's a genre which only has so many places it can go before becoming either redundant or something else entirely.

That Room 101 clip is cringey, but it's almost definitely overdubbed as Old Thrashbarg speculated.

idunnosomename

i looked at the script and that's basically it. no real discussion of what death metal is. except very metal metal. god they even had the super-clean chorus bit in. not necessarily bad (i really know nothing about Bring Me the Horizon) but objectively not death metal.

something I've rediscovered recently is Vital Remains - Dechristianize. that's how to do melodeath. also been listening to a bit of Deeds of Flesh, who are in limbo since the death of their mastermind (and the guy behind Unique Leader Records) Erik Lindmark.

Rivers of Nihil put out a new single last week, quite excited about that. bit of electronic stuff in the mix, nice. Looking forward to new Obscura and First Fragment too on the tech-death side of things.

greenman

Afraid I'm going to stick to the stock opinion that its an embarrassing joke of a genre.

purlieu

Quote from: The Mollusk on August 05, 2021, 02:36:53 PM
Krallice... Oranssi Pazuzu
Two examples of why I go for black metal over death metal when it comes to extreme metal. Too many metals for once sentence.

Gorguts' album Obscura is a wonderful technical death metal record, the title track was a real eye opener for me in terms of "I thought I knew how weird music could get".

idunnosomename

I think Gorguts, despite their rubbish name, is a good band to check out if you don't get how genuinely avant-garde death metal can be.

the other interesting thing about the Obscura album is that it was mostly written in the latter part of 1993, but it didn't get put out till mid 1998 because it was so damned odd. Colored Sands and Pleiades' Dust, well, if you like King Crimson, you should at least appreciate these

Steven88

I like quite a bit of death metal but rarely listen to full albums I usually just have a playlist. I get a lot of my taste in death metal from my Dad, he's still into it now at nearly 60. I like a lot of the old school stuff such as Deicide, Morbid angel, Obituary, Cannibal Corpse as well as the more grindy stuff like Napalm Death, Brutal Truth and Carcass.

The Mollusk

Quote from: idunnosomename on August 05, 2021, 10:14:01 PM
Colored Sands

Checked this out today on the recommendation of a friend and was really impressed. It's super progressive and almost post-metal at times but then it cuts back through with fat waves of heavy dissonance. It's very exciting to discover music like this after all these years, you've never truly heard everything and something will always be waiting to blow open your perceived notions of what anything can be.

WhoMe

Would Deicide fall under Death metal? Most of their tracks revolve around satanism. Love some of the riffs they kick out anyway.

Magnum Valentino

Ah sure aren't genre labels just the tools of salesmen? Like the general sound of death metal, aye, Deicide has that.

There's chat about nu metal in the SOAD thread and that's the best example of why these sub-genre headings don't work. All those nu metal bands sounded completely different but if a label can tell you that System of a Down is nu metal, then they can try and sell you Korn and Limp Bizkit and Fear Factory and Sepultura and Slipknot if you believe they're all nu metal as well. But it's all make believe. Bands who don't sound like anything else were all lumped into that one genre.

Death metal is a bit more straight forward but it's still bollocks if you're prepared to discount bands based on their lyrical content/image/album covers/distortion pedal choice.

The Mollusk

When I rearranged my CD collection into genre order recently, a lot of the choices were no-brainers but one of the biggest head scratchers was how to group a lot of metal stuff. Eventually I made a section for "progressive/nu-metal" which contains Slipknot, Tool, SOAD, Deftones, Devin Townsend and that Mutation project Ginger Wildheart did. I think I did a good job there, I was proud of myself. Although now I'm wondering why I didn't chuck the Tool CDs in the bin when I had the big reshuffle.

purlieu

It's always the way with genres. They're obviously bollocks, but they're also very useful in broad terms, but then the more picky you get the more annoying them become again.

The Mollusk

On one hand (and this applies again to how I chose to restructure my CD collection), the genre categorising choices I made were based halfway in established labels and halfway in thinking "what would I personally like to find in this category if I had the urge to listen to it?"

But then on the other hand yesterday I felt myself getting really prickly on Facebook when a friend said his favourite death metal band was Children of Bodom. HAVE A WORD MATE