Death Metal: A Voyage of (Re-)Discovery
It is hard to reconcile mid- to late-nineties and beyond Sepultura with the band that produced their first few releases. I know you can't expect bands to keep playing the same old stuff, but later Sepultura just doesn't compete with the albums from Morbid Visions to Chaos A.D. in my opinion (and I suspect a lot of other people's too).
Great discussion guys. Sadly you've already got way ahead of me, so I'll briefly play catch-up. Note that I didn't write reviews for a lot of these early death metal albums, so I'll be relying on my aging memory.
Like Daniel, I do believe Possessed's Seven Churches is the first officially released death metal album. For that reason alone it certainly deserves respect, and thankfully it delivers too. The influence on Morbid Angel is so critical to the development of the genre, but I think the influence that Slayer had on extreme metal in general is even more so. All this said, Seven Churches has never fully connected with me the way that I would like it to. It's a very good album, but not an elite one. Satan's Curse is the highlight track for me. ****
When I set off on my own death metal origin exploration a few years back, I was super excited to hear Messiah. They'd always been on my radar, but for some reason it wasn't until I was in my forties that I gave them a go. In the end the experience was a bit underwhelming, with the obvious enthusiasm tarnished by amateurish performances and vocals, not to mention those damn awful (embarrassing) spoken word intros. The debut is certainly better than it's follow-up (IMO), but I might have been generous with my score. ***
While Possessed's debut definitely contains death metal, the Beyond the Gates follow-up leans more into thrash. While it doesn't hit quite as hard, and I'm not sure any track can be considered to be a classic, there's still much to enjoy. Just a solid, if somewhat forgettable effort. ***1/2
Sepultura were a HUGE band for me, but I've always struggled with the production on their debut. It doesn't help that my original journey to it started with Arise and worked backwards to it. Looking at my scores now, I'm probably being a bit harsh on it (it does have Troops of Doom), but I'll stick to my original score for now. ***
Onwards to Scream Bloody Gore!
Poison - Into the Abyss (1987)
Poison were a German extreme thrash outfit that never had any official releases except for a single track on a Roadrunner sampler before splitting in '87. This is the last of their demos and consists of four tracks spanning thirty-three minutes with a really good sound quality for a 1980's underground demo. It is hard to ascribe any particular genre to Into the Abyss... other than to say that this is a definition of extreme metal in the late eighties. Combining elements of Slayer-inspired thrash with Possessed/Death death metal and Bathory/Sodom/Celtic Frost first wave black metal, coupled with a Lovecraftian horror aesthetic, these guys produce half an hour of extreme metal nirvana. That is the great thing about this time in the history of metal - there wasn't any hard and fast guidelines yet so some bands just went balls-out to produce the most extreme shit they could manage. The playing itself is quite accomplished and proper respect needs to be shown to drummer Alex Gilliar (aka Witchhammer) who gives a good account of himself with some outstanding skinswork as he batters the shit out of anything that moves. The riffs are great and vocalist Armin Weber (aka Virgin Slaughter) has an evil-sounding blackened snarl. This may ultimately have been more of an influence on black metal than death metal going forward, but I just couldn't ignore such a cool recording for this thread. This is a much respected and well-regarded demo for damn good reason. Surprisingly, considering the reverence for Poison and Into the Abyss... in particular amongst devotees of extreme metal, only one of the four members (guitarist Uli Hildenbrand) continued any career in metal beyond the lifespan of Poison. If you have any interest in the development of extreme metal then you really need to hear this seminal demo.
4.5/5
Poison - Into the Abyss (1987)
Poison were a German extreme thrash outfit that never had any official releases except for a single track on a Roadrunner sampler before splitting in '87. This is the last of their demos and consists of four tracks spanning thirty-three minutes with a really good sound quality for a 1980's underground demo. It is hard to ascribe any particular genre to Into the Abyss... other than to say that this is a definition of extreme metal in the late eighties. Combining elements of Slayer-inspired thrash with Possessed/Death death metal and Bathory/Sodom/Celtic Frost first wave black metal, coupled with a Lovecraftian horror aesthetic, these guys produce half an hour of extreme metal nirvana. That is the great thing about this time in the history of metal - there wasn't any hard and fast guidelines yet so some bands just went balls-out to produce the most extreme shit they could manage. The playing itself is quite accomplished and proper respect needs to be shown to drummer Alex Gilliar (aka Witchhammer) who gives a good account of himself with some outstanding skinswork as he batters the shit out of anything that moves. The riffs are great and vocalist Armin Weber (aka Virgin Slaughter) has an evil-sounding blackened snarl. This may ultimately have been more of an influence on black metal than death metal going forward, but I just couldn't ignore such a cool recording for this thread. This is a much respected and well-regarded demo for damn good reason. Surprisingly, considering the reverence for Poison and Into the Abyss... in particular amongst devotees of extreme metal, only one of the four members (guitarist Uli Hildenbrand) continued any career in metal beyond the lifespan of Poison. If you have any interest in the development of extreme metal then you really need to hear this seminal demo.
4.5/5
Another one from my tape trading past. I remember my cassette having Poison's "Sons Of Evil" demo on the A side with "Into the Abyss" on the B side. I didn't like "Sons Of Evil" much from memory but recall thinking that "Into The Abyss" was really strong & giving it repeat listens for a few weeks afterwards. I don't think I've given it a revisit since the 90's though so my memory is a bit hazy.
Fucking hell, I really hated those guys. The glam "metal" (about as metal as Elvis) scene produced some shit, but these guys were the shittiest. I may have to abandon this thread now that there's a picture of them tossers in it!
Just so we are clear, this is the REAL Poison:
Necrophagia - Season of the Dead (1987)
It seems as if Necrophagia's debut album was actually released a few months before Death's Scream Bloody Gore, so it is surprising that it isn't mentioned much in the "what was the first death metal album" discussion. Maybe that's because it isn't anything like as good or consistent as Death's debut or possibly because Necrophagia didn't go on to be as influential as Death. Whatever the reason, it is certainly not a record or band I knew anything about prior to listening to it now, 35 years after it's release. In truth, despite it certainly having death metal credentials, at least more so than Seven Churches, I found it a bit patchy and inconsistent. There are still a degree of Slayerisms present and it often sounds similar to Sodom, but there is also more than that here and a greater dive into extremity that results in some undeniably death metal-sounding riffs. Of course, what we tend to forget is that death metal was not yet a thing as such and the process was an evolution as much as revolution. It's not a bad record at all, but personally I think it pales beside Seven Churches, Scream Bloody Gore and the early Sepultura stuff I've been listening to and is merely second-tier material.
3.5/5
Death - Scream Bloody Gore (1987)
So at last we arrive at Death's debut full-length, but first off let me say I have been a massive jerk. Now hear me out before you try to argue with me on this! I have always been a bit dismissive of Death and failed to see the reverence in which they are held. The reason, I now realise, is that I have always taken them out of context, something I actually get quite chippy about with younger metal heads when they do it. Now listening to this after Possessed's Seven Churches and their own demos, I can at last hear it for what it really is, which is a groundbreaking bridge between the more brutal thrash metal and true death metal. No, I don't feel that this is yet death metal fully-formed, as it still has too many thrash riffs and the drumming is still not quite there yet, but it has definitely advanced things on in extremity from Possessed's debut. Scream Bloody Gore takes riffs from the most aggressive thrash metal and brutalise them, turning them into something more primal and dark even than those cranked out by the likes of Slayer and Possessed. Chuck Schuldiner's vocals still don't really have that guttural quality that the best death metal singers possess, but they are still pretty evil sounding for 1987. The drums and bass are moving towards the more cavernous sound that would epitomise the death metal of the early nineties and the vocals have that distant quality that plays into this aesthetic.
This isn't cerebral metal, not by any means, this is visceral and dangerous music with extremely violent lyrics that would most definitely have upset Tipper Gore and the PRMC back in '87 (which has got to have been a good thing). This was blue collar metal for those who wanted to work out some aggression after a day of putting up with shit at their place of work and needed to put on a disc and bang their fucking head until it went away. And that is something I can really get behind. This was for people like me from shitty industrial towns who saw bands like Motley Crue and Ratt and thought "This isn't fucking L.A., these guys have nothing to do with me". In truth, if I had heard this when it was released (which I didn't, it was many years later when our paths crossed) then I would most definitely have lapped this shit up - something that out-brutalised Reign in Blood, fuck, sign me up! The tracks here are insanely brutal-sounding for 1987 and still manage to provide an adrenaline rush all these years later, such is their quality. So, on reflection, I must wholeheartedly apologise for my previous attitude towards Death and in particular their debut. I was probably guilty of misplaced expectations and was listening for what I wanted to hear, not what the band had presented, which is an album that pushed metal further than any other at that point and sowed the seeds for a whole new genre of metal brutality which would still be going strong these 35 years later.
4.5/5
I only checked out Necrophagia's effort a couple of years back, and was also pretty surprised to hear just how much death metal it contains. I think you're right that it's nothing hugely special, but I found it to be a solid listen, and certainly underestimated when it comes to the development of the genre. Your score feels bang on to me. ***1/2
As for Scream Bloody Gore, well it also took me a long time to appreciate it. My Death journey began with Human, which is still a top 5 death metal album for me today, so working my way back to this obviously more primitive debut was tough going when I was 15 years old. Just like you, it was placing it in it's proper context that proved the difference, and I now very much enjoy what it has to offer. And how can any early death metal fan not dig Zombie Ritual?! ****
Necrophagia - Season of the Dead (1987)
It seems as if Necrophagia's debut album was actually released a few months before Death's Scream Bloody Gore, so it is surprising that it isn't mentioned much in the "what was the first death metal album" discussion. Maybe that's because it isn't anything like as good or consistent as Death's debut or possibly because Necrophagia didn't go on to be as influential as Death. Whatever the reason, it is certainly not a record or band I knew anything about prior to listening to it now, 35 years after it's release. In truth, despite it certainly having death metal credentials, at least more so than Seven Churches, I found it a bit patchy and inconsistent. There are still a degree of Slayerisms present and it often sounds similar to Sodom, but there is also more than that here and a greater dive into extremity that results in some undeniably death metal-sounding riffs. Of course, what we tend to forget is that death metal was not yet a thing as such and the process was an evolution as much as revolution. It's not a bad record at all, but personally I think it pales beside Seven Churches, Scream Bloody Gore and the early Sepultura stuff I've been listening to and is merely second-tier material.
3.5/5
This was my review of "Season Of The Dead":
For those that think Death's "Scream Bloody Gore" album was the first true death metal album (for the record, it was Possessed's "Seven Churches" from 1985), think again because the debut full-length from Ohio's Necrophagia entitled "Season Of The Dead" beat them to the punch by a good three months & came armed with the gory horror movie themes & palm-muted tremolo-picked riffage that would go on to become a trademark of the genre.
Killjoy's vocals might not be as deep & monster-like as modern death grunters go for but they certainly sit within death metal guidelines in my opinion & are similar to those of Mike Browning (Morbid Angel/Nocturnus) & Henry Veggian (Revenant). Unfortunately they do represent the most annoying part of the album though as some of the good work that's done by the instrumentalists is undone by some unusually random phrasing that seems almost improvised at times. In fact, it often sounds like he's growling away over a completely different song but the moments when he's on the money are some of the album's highlights (see "Ancient Slumber).
As with most early death metal, we still get our fair share of thrashy Slayer worship here at times but this is generally offset by a grisly death metal atmosphere which is occasionally enhanced by the use of horror movie cinematics. It's interesting that Necrophagia aren't averse to slowing things down a bit for the odd doomy passage with the darkness turned up to ten & it's easy to see where a band like Autopsy might have picked up on that concept. I can't say that I'm a fan of the bizarre experimental sections that pop up on a couple of tracks such as the twisted circus-style parts of opening track "Forbidden Pleasure" which is presumably supposed to tie in with the zombie flick themes. It sounds particularly random to me.
The production doesn't do the album any favours & it would have been good to hear how this would have sounded with a little more emphasis being placed on the rhythm guitars. There's a lot of bass in the mix & it highlights a pretty decent performance from Bill James. Larry Madison's guitar solos have a serious similarity to the style that Morbid Angel's Trey Azagthoth was pushing at the time & it's an interesting question as to who influenced who here given that Necrophagia had been around for a good four years by this stage. I've never heard Necrophagia's demo tapes so I can't say for sure but I suspect that Trey is safe in this respect.
There are some strange cut-&-paste style drop-ins scattered across the tracklisting where it's very clear that two disparate recordings have been pasted together in a haphazard manner & it can sound a little jarring at times but overall I still find "Season Of The Dead" to be an enjoyable listen all these years later. It's an important (if inessential) part of the death metal story.
For fans of: Revenant, early Morbid Angel/Autopsy.
3.5/5
Death - Scream Bloody Gore (1987)
So at last we arrive at Death's debut full-length, but first off let me say I have been a massive jerk. Now hear me out before you try to argue with me on this! I have always been a bit dismissive of Death and failed to see the reverence in which they are held. The reason, I now realise, is that I have always taken them out of context, something I actually get quite chippy about with younger metal heads when they do it. Now listening to this after Possessed's Seven Churches and their own demos, I can at last hear it for what it really is, which is a groundbreaking bridge between the more brutal thrash metal and true death metal. No, I don't feel that this is yet death metal fully-formed, as it still has too many thrash riffs and the drumming is still not quite there yet, but it has definitely advanced things on in extremity from Possessed's debut. Scream Bloody Gore takes riffs from the most aggressive thrash metal and brutalise them, turning them into something more primal and dark even than those cranked out by the likes of Slayer and Possessed. Chuck Schuldiner's vocals still don't really have that guttural quality that the best death metal singers possess, but they are still pretty evil sounding for 1987. The drums and bass are moving towards the more cavernous sound that would epitomise the death metal of the early nineties and the vocals have that distant quality that plays into this aesthetic.
This isn't cerebral metal, not by any means, this is visceral and dangerous music with extremely violent lyrics that would most definitely have upset Tipper Gore and the PRMC back in '87 (which has got to have been a good thing). This was blue collar metal for those who wanted to work out some aggression after a day of putting up with shit at their place of work and needed to put on a disc and bang their fucking head until it went away. And that is something I can really get behind. This was for people like me from shitty industrial towns who saw bands like Motley Crue and Ratt and thought "This isn't fucking L.A., these guys have nothing to do with me". In truth, if I had heard this when it was released (which I didn't, it was many years later when our paths crossed) then I would most definitely have lapped this shit up - something that out-brutalised Reign in Blood, fuck, sign me up! The tracks here are insanely brutal-sounding for 1987 and still manage to provide an adrenaline rush all these years later, such is their quality. So, on reflection, I must wholeheartedly apologise for my previous attitude towards Death and in particular their debut. I was probably guilty of misplaced expectations and was listening for what I wanted to hear, not what the band had presented, which is an album that pushed metal further than any other at that point and sowed the seeds for a whole new genre of metal brutality which would still be going strong these 35 years later.
4.5/5
This was my review of "Scream Bloody Gore":
No matter what sort of death metal fan you talk to it’s rare to find one that doesn’t love at least one of the various ever-changing incarnations of Death. Everyone has their preferences which generally correspond closely with age, taste & exposure. That’s what makes Death such a classic death metal band. Perhaps the most important of all. My first encounter with Death was as a 13 year old. I was newly into the more underground end of thrash metal & had started religiously tuning in to some late-night metal radio programs. Death’s second album “Leprosy” had just been released & had taken the underground metal scene by storm so it didn’t take long for me to jump onboard with this new death metal sound. It was more extreme than anything I’d ever heard before & it intrigued me. It felt like I was a part of some exclusive club that my parents & the vast majority of my friends couldn’t understand. It wasn’t long until I became a part of the underground tape trading scene & I quickly picked up a dubbed copy of “Scream Bloody Gore”.
As a death metal album “Scream Bloody Gore” may not compare favourably when sitting alongside some of the classics of the genre but there are few albums that have had a greater influence. What makes “Scream Bloody Gore” unique is that Death managed to present a new, refined & fully realized genre on their first attempt; taking the earlier Possessed model & shaving off the edges that would still have people questioning the death metal credentials of an album like "Seven Churches". If you listen to "Scream Bloody Gore" today it is undeniably death metal even by today’s standards. Most other albums that were influential in the creation of new genres could only provide elements that were then combined with others to create the finished product. It was an amazing achievement really & that shouldn’t be underestimated.
The overall consistency of “Scream Bloody Gore” is very good for a debut album too. In fact I think that the primitive “Torn To Pieces” is probably the only track that I think is a little weaker. The rest of the songs are of a generally high quality with “Baptized In Blood”, “Infernal Death” & “Zombie Ritual” (possibly the first death metal song I ever learned to play on guitar) being my personal favourites. The raw production really suits the music. In fact I think it adds to the dark atmosphere. There are plenty of classic palm-muted tremolo-picked death metal riffs on offer but early Death unquestionably still included a hefty dose of the more extreme thrash metal that was around at the time. You can easily hear the influence of bands like Slayer & Possessed here but that element faded as Chuck’s death metal style became more defined over the next couple of albums. Chuck’s guitar solos may have lacked sophistication at this stage but they made up for it in pure energy with blazing high-speed fretboard workouts the order of the day here. The lack of a full-time bass player led to Chuck assuming the bass guitar duties as well; a role that he performs very effectively in fact. The bass is easily heard throughout & it grumbles along nicely.
Much was made of Chuck’s vocal approach. It was amongst the first true death metal performances on a major metal release. Personally I’ve always felt that guys like Jeff Becerra (Possessed) & Mille Petrozza (Kreator) were heavily influential in the push for more extreme vocal sounds. In fact you could probably throw in Quorthon (Bathory) too but there was something undeniably different about the new growlier style that Chuck Schuldiner was pushing & when you combined the deathly lyrical content it all just seemed so bad ass to a young teenager like myself. By late 1989 I’d discovered the likes of Carcass & Morbid Angel & the flood gates were well & truly opened wide.
“Scream Bloody Gore” is far from the pinnacle of death metal but it’s very hard to deny that it has a lot of endearing qualities. Chuck always understood how to walk the fine line between brutality & memorability & there’s a distinct catchiness to most of this material. “Leprosy” improved on this idea & further defined the genre a year later but the youthful exuberance & infectious energy of the debut deserves all of the respect it has garnered in the underground metal scene over the years.
4/5
As for Scream Bloody Gore, well it also took me a long time to appreciate it. My Death journey began with Human, which is still a top 5 death metal album for me today, so working my way back to this obviously more primitive debut was tough going when I was 15 years old. Just like you, it was placing it in it's proper context that proved the difference, and I now very much enjoy what it has to offer. And how can any early death metal fan not dig Zombie Ritual?! ****
I actually don't think context has ever had much of an impact on my opinions on music to be honest. I've never allowed historical importance to play any sort of role in my ratings either. They've always been based purely on how much I enjoy the music coming out of the speakers which has never been impacted by an appreciation of the influence a release may have been responsible for or what was going on in the scene around it. In fact, I don't think I've ever rated a pre-1989 death metal releases higher than a 4/5 because I just think that my enjoyment levels can go another couple of steps up from anything I've heard in that respect. Thrash metal may not have been as extreme as early death metal but it was still more sophisticated & was often more intense too so thrash was still where my heart lay until the 1989 Morbid Angel & Carcass classics saw me permanently defecting to the dark side.
P.S. As far as extremity goes, it's worth noting that Bathory's "Under the Sign Of The Black Mark" was released two weeks prior to "Scream Bloody Gore".
I know I'm going to fuck up explaining myself here but I'll give it a go. When I talk about putting music in it's proper context I don't really mean historically in the usual respect, but rather from a personal perspective. It is just a fact that certain albums stick with us because of a time and place or the circumstances of our coming across them. I have personal favourites from the mid-eighties like Death Angel's The Ultra-Violence or Sabbat's History of a Time to Come or even earlier albums like Witchfynde's Give 'Em Hell that I am fully aware aren't perfect or maybe even top tier, but the circumstances and timing of my discovery of them chimed with me in a way other, better albums may not have - like Justice for All which at the time I was a little disappointed in and so have never allowed to become a personal god-tier release, Rust in Peace being another one. These are both generally acknowledged by most metalheads as being better than those others I have mentioned, but they aren't to me.
So what I mean by putting an older release into perspective is coming at it with fresh ears and taking it for what it is, not what I may or may not have previously perceived it to be. I guess others are able to approach music with less personal bias than myself, but I often have to make a conscious effort to strip away personal expectations and prejudices. So with Scream Bloody Gore I was lazily listening for an album that wasn't there when, in fact, what actually was there was right up my street, I just hadn't noticed it. I know I've probably made myself sound like a fucking idiot, but that is just how it is with me. For all sorts of reasons, music appreciation and critiquing isn't something I am naturally able to fall into easily, I sometimes have to work quite hard at it and may not often be that successful, but I do love it so I'll keep going.
I know what you're saying Daniel, but to be clear, when I talk about "listening in context", I don't mean that we should all be generous when rating early releases due to their importance. As you know, I can't make myself enjoy Hellhammer (or even the earliest Bathory), and you won't find me giving horribly produced demos high scores just because they were the first of their kind. I'm talking about the fact that I spent the better part of a year working my way through the first 6 or 7 years of death metal releases almost exclusively, and as a result of hearing an album like Scream Bloody Gore when compared to what else was out there at the time (in it's original context), I actually got much more enjoyment out of it than I had previously. It's not just that I appreciated it more, or that I understood it's relevance / importance more, it's that listening to it in context caused something to click. What wasn't grabbing me all that much previously suddenly did. I genuinely like it a lot now, and I do think my own death metal discovery year played a strong role in that.
I just checked, and have only given three pre-1990 death metal releases over 4 stars, being Leprosy, Altars of Madness and Consuming Impulse, the latter of which I'd given 3.5 prior to listening to it in context.
Haha... I find it amusing that Sonny and I both defended ourselves against Daniel's (valid) discussion point, yet provided very different reasons. It just shows how personal listening to music is, and we all come at things from different angles.
I do understand what you mean Sonny when you talk about not hearing what's there sometimes. I often listen to an album around three times and then feel like I'm ready to rate it. I give it one more listen just to be sure, and then find that I like it a lot more than I thought I did. Suddenly things click, and I find myself a bit confused about what my rating should be, and have to give it yet another listen. So yeah, I think I'm with you, in that I don't think judging music comes completely naturally for me (I honestly think it does for Daniel). I have to work at it pretty hard before I'm confident sometimes.
Thanks for explaining gents. I have a much better understanding of where you're both coming from now.
I wonder, Ben, if the fact that neither you nor I are musicians, whereas Daniel is, colours how we assess the music we listen to. My attatchment to the music I hear is emotionally-based rather than technically and, as we all know, emotions are volatile and can change, sometimes quite abruptly, so it could be that someone like myself hears music differently than someone like Daniel who has a deeper understanding of what he is hearing on a more objective level, whereas my own experience is entirely subjective as I have no deeper understanding of what I am listening to. I imagine it a bit like an engineer looking at a technical drawing and being able to envision what is depicted, whereas to me it is just a mess of indecipherable lines. Just a thought.
I know this is probably overthinking things but I think it is endlessly fascinating how the exact same piece of art, be it literature, painting or music is viewed and appreciated completely differently by different people.
I think my musical background does have an impact to some extent Sonny. It can be a blessing & a curse as I sometimes struggle with releases that others love simply because of a technical weakness that most people don't even notice but I can also see value in a piece that others fail to based on my understanding of it's structural complexities too so it balances itself out a bit. In saying that, this sort of affliction doesn't haunt all musicians & isn't limited to them either. In fact, Ben continues to surprise me with his ability to pick up some of the technical nuances that most non-musicians (& some musicians) fail to pick up. I wonder if it's simply that he's been exposed to my opinionated ways for so many years, if he was just born with it & or if he's trained himself through decades of detailed reviewing. My guess would be a mixture of options one & three.
If I'm being honest though, I firmly believe that the reason I find it easier to form a position on music than some people is because of my background as a DJ in the 2000's. With such a huge wealth of music available to me I was forced to develop my opinion on a track in a single listen or less. Ever see DJs placing the needle down on a record & then skipping through the track at internals? That's very much what you do when you need to pick ten tracks out of a hundred in a record store or are looking for something specific to match another key track. The best DJs have got that process down to a fine art so that they can spend much more time learning the intricacies of each track & practicing different options for mixing in & out of it rather than endlessly hunting for new material. I think it's trained my brain to look for certain feelings or qualities in music & quickly attach an appropriate value to them based on my physical response. I guess the ability to maintain "active listening" helps a lot too. I definitely get a lot worse at it as I get tired so I don't tend to rate releases at night for that reason.
That's a very interesting explanantion Daniel. I don't personally know any DJs (although I do have a friend who is a brilliant graffiti artist!) so I wasn't aware that is what they do. It must certainly help in forming an opinion if you have trained your mind to pick up on things so quickly.
Tne "active listening" thing is a good point too. This is partly what I mean about having to "work" at listening to music because, for various reasons, I find it hard sometimes to concentrate. The first couple of listens I tend not to even try and just sort of let it wash over me to get a handle on it and how it chimes with me emotionally. A further listen or two are then when I try to form an opinion of the music and then I will try to put it into words, usually while listening to it again at the same time.
Of course if I don't much care for it after a listen or two then I won't bother delving further. This is sometimes where I will later pick up again on releases I have previously dismissed and reassess them more favourably.
Holocausto - Campo de extermínio (1987)
An album that is as infamous for it's imagery as it is for it's music, these Brazilians were probably just trying to find a new way to be shocking (instead of the already overdone satanic/occult imagery used by countless others) rather than harbouring any fascistic tendencies. Hailing from Belo Horizonte, home of Sepultura and many other Brazilian extreme metal outfits, vocalist Rodrigo Magalhães and drummer Armandinho Sampaio were in previously featured thrashers Mutilator.
It must be said that despite Holocausto's attempts at extreme metal, they are nothing like as accomplished as a band like Sepultura were at this stage - a fast-paced track like Facção revolucionária armada for example really shows the band struggling, both drums and guitar having trouble keeping up and playing in time and ultimately coming across as a bit of a mess to be honest. The bass seems to be mixed to the fore and is actually louder than the guitars on some tracks (III Reich for example). To be fair, the band are much more effective with the less blisteringly-paced material. I don't know if this was a particularly influential release at the time of issue, but I wouldn't place any particular importance on it historically other than for the ill-advised aesthetic and within the Brazilian thrash scene of the late eighties.
3.5/5
Autopsy - 1987 Demo EP (1987)
The first demo from one of my favourite death metal practitioners, California's Autopsy. It was released in December of '87 and is made up of four tracks with a runtime of 13 minutes. The tracklisting is: 1. Human Genocide 2. Embalmed 3. Stillborn 4. Mauled to Death, the middle two of which would appear later on their Severed Survival debut. In common with many of these early DM demos there is still a certain amount of thrash metal riffing present within the sound as the band explore the realms of extremity and move towards what would ultimately be defined as death metal and more explicitly the doomy, cavernous-sounding style that they would make their own during the early nineties. That said, they are well progressed down that path to death metal heaven and this is one of the most brutal and filthy-sounding of these early demos it has been my fortune to encounter. The sound is very good indeed for an eighties death metal demo and there are no massive issues with the recording quality. Musically the band are quite tight for a group of guys who had been together for a relatively short amount of time. The downtuned guitars are obviously a major distinctive feature of Autopsy's aesthetic and they do sound deeper and more seismic than most of their peers. Ex-Death skinsman Chris Reifert's drumming is pretty lethal too and I would suggest he has improved considerably from the performance on Scream Bloody Gore to the one he turns in here. His vocals are still a work in progress as he hadn't at this point perfected the guttural growl of Autopsy's later official releases. My favourite track has got to be the occasionally slower-paced closer Mauled to Death which is as unforgivingly brutal a track as you could hope to have heard in 1987 and, for me, is a whole new level of brilliant. I would hold this up as close to Morbid's December Moon EP as one of the best ever metal demos.
4.5/5
Morbid - December Moon Demo EP (1987)
Morbid were a death/thrash/black metal band from Sweden who never had an official release before splitting in 1988, a couple of it's members going on to form Entombed (guitarist Ulf Cederlund and drummer Lars-Göran Petrov who was vocalist for Entombed). This demo is (in)famous for featuring legendary Mayhem vocalist Dead and features four tracks with a runtime of 17 minutes. I have loved this from the very first time I heard it, so much so that I managed to get a copy of the Reaper Records 2000 version a couple of years ago that set me back about £30. It's death metal is very thrashy in execution and, mainly because of Dead's contribution, has quite a black metal sound, at least vocally. The production is very good for a demo, there is a hefty bottom end to it that contributes to the deathliness of the riffs and the playing itself is very good indeed with the band sounding like an inordinately tight outfit for a bunch of guys who had only been together a couple of years and had never put out a studio album. The songs are brilliant and easily rival the early stuff from the German thrashers on whom a lot of their material seems to be based. Similarly to the Poison demo this is probably more important to the black metal historian than the death metal antiquarian but either way it is a fantastic snapshot of a band who I wish could have produced more because if they were this good on a demo then we can only guess how fucking great they could have been had they put out a proper album or two.
5/5
OK, so that takes me up to the end of 1987. I am going to take a break from this thread for a few days while I check out some other stuff I've been wanting to listen to and queue up the next batch of releases for perusal here. We're on to 1988 next and things are starting to get serious!
That's a very interesting explanantion Daniel. I don't personally know any DJs (although I do have a friend who is a brilliant graffiti artist!) so I wasn't aware that is what they do. It must certainly help in forming an opinion if you have trained your mind to pick up on things so quickly.
Tne "active listening" thing is a good point too. This is partly what I mean about having to "work" at listening to music because, for various reasons, I find it hard sometimes to concentrate. The first couple of listens I tend not to even try and just sort of let it wash over me to get a handle on it and how it chimes with me emotionally. A further listen or two are then when I try to form an opinion of the music and then I will try to put it into words, usually while listening to it again at the same time.
Of course if I don't much care for it after a listen or two then I won't bother delving further. This is sometimes where I will later pick up again on releases I have previously dismissed and reassess them more favourably.
Coming late to this debate I know but essentially I am in the Sonny and Ben camp here. Rare that any release grabs me the first time and as I get older it gets harder for me to formulate opinions after sometimes even three listens. Learned to take a step back now and realise that an album takes as many listens as it takes for me to really get a grasp of it. Yes, I can still dismiss utter drivel after a few tracks but at the same time I can revisit albums I previously dismissed and find them much more palatable. A lot of album ratings are influenced by mood and I do find that if I am in a stinker of a mood or really down then this is not the time to review something as my attitude towards it is tainted no matter how many times I have listened to it in a more calm or positive mindset already.
As for the debate around what started death metal I think we have already drawn various conclusions in the thread and I lean more towards Scream Bloody Gore than I do Seven Churches. Reading Choosing Death: The Improbable History of Death Metal & Grindcore at the moment and I am still in the early grindcore section of the book but one quote that made me think was from original Napalm Death vocalist Nik Bullen. When asked why he quit the band he said "I got a bit bored with it...because at that point as people were in the audience just shouting 'Faster, faster!' I was thinking, ' Well, if everybody just wants us to play faster and faster, it is a bit like a novelty act, and they're not really understanding on some level why we wanted to play fast in the first place, which was just to mirror their kinds of emotions and to bludgeon, really.'"
My point here is that in the early years a lot of shite got released and just because something sounded more extreme than thrash or punk at the time then it did not make it death metal by proxy. Although not glacial in pace the establishment of death metal came after both Seven Churches and Scream Bloody Gore and both albums are very important to the history of the genre. Now I will probably never be able to pinpoint when it became death metal for me. Some days I think Altars of Madness others Slowly We Rot but I think the point is that no album selection is wrong or right as music for me is very personal and I believe that it is for everyone. I will never experience an album again like when I first took in Slowly We Rot back in my teenage years. The environment, the events leading up to that purchase, the journey home with it, the circumstances of how I couldn't listen to it at home and had to go to my grandparents house are all part of that first listen. At the time I had no idea what any other death metal album sounded like and at that point in time, for a precious few days (maybe even weeks) that album was death metal, the be all and end all to me because I had no other reference point and the internet was not a thing for me. I have since gone on to discover Colored Sands, Stare Into Death and Be Still, Pierced From Within, Onward to Golgotha, Close To A World Below and countless other great death metal releases - none of which I will ever enjoy like I did Obituary's debut. So whilst immensely important for residents of a site like this, where death metal truly began is a debate that is to some degree futile as my moment happened and nothing I will find now will change that or rival it. It will give me timeline and the all important context though and it is interesting to view Sonny's journey and here other members experiences.
I definitely listened to the Holocausto release, but remember very little about it. That probably says a lot about how I actually felt about it. I do know that I gave it three stars, so I guess it wasn't terrible. ***
As you say, Vinny, the debate around what was the first death metal release is kind of a moot point as fans will all view it differently, but I have made allusion to it throughout the thread as it seems like such a good point for stimulating discussion. I personally don't really care because whether a release is extreme thrash or early death metal, if it sounds great, it sounds great whatever and I enjoy both styles anyway. The main reason for this exercise is that there is an awful lot of modern (i.e. post-2000) death metal that I don't "get" and so I wondered if I retraced the path through death metal history if it would ultimately give me some deeper insight and understanding of more modern DM (plus I would hopefully get to discover some previously unheard gems).
Also, I am hoping along the way that I might complete a Horde clan challenge that may see me accepted into the mead halls of The Horde to sup with the Champions of Death Metal!
I think most of us (certainly us pre-internet metalheads anyway) have similar experience with albums like you had with Slowly We Rot. I've not had to hide my stuff from my parents personally, but back in the day I did have to buy The Sex Pistol's Never Mind The Bollocks for my younger sister and keep it with my albums and pretend it was mine (my dad was more protective of the girls than he was us lads)! But as I have said earlier in the thread, there are albums that just mean more to me for different reasons, some are very dependent on time and place and the people they remind me of, so that the attachment to them transcends the mere music on the disc or in the grooves of the LP. These are the albums I find it hardest to review because some of the feelings I have towards them are so intangible and are difficult to put into words. Sadly I also think that is another of the experiences the internet has robbed us of - there just isn't the same attachment to an album being streamed or downloaded as there was if you had made the effort to go into town, hand over hard-earned cash and buy an LP then sit poring over the sleeve on the bus on the way home, dying to throw it onto the stereo and blast the shit out of it. As music has become more accessible it has also become far more disposable as a result I feel.
Sorry, just a stupid old codger waxing nostalgic again!