Death Metal: A Voyage of (Re-)Discovery
That's a great review that's very much in line with my own feelings Sonny. Four stars from me too.
I am so glad I undertook this journey back to the early days of death metal as I have found I now have a much greater appreciation of it's allure. I have found some absolute gems and approaching it this way has been almost like experiencing the scene in real time. I have often felt a pang of jealousy of people who are hearing albums like Master of Puppets and Reign in Blood for the first time, remembering how much they blew me away when I first heard them myself, but now I have been lucky enough to have a similar experience with many of death metal's true classics and have been loving it. Anyway, a brilliant double-header today, starting with:
Brutality - Screams of Anguish (1993)
Brutality were unknown to me prior to listening to this (surprise, surprise), but are another product of the Nineties' Florida death metal scene that spawned so many DM classics and one listen to Screams of Anguish and it is obvious that it originated in Tampa. While it does possess the brutality of the classic Tampa sound, it also has a slight technical bent to it that, presumably, differentiated it from the Morbid Angels and Deicides of the time. It isn't excessively technical and Brutality are as capable of being wilfully bludgeoning as any other of Tampa's death metal denizens, but there is enough there to set it apart. The lead work in particular is something that caught my ear, with the howling solos being one of my favourite aspects of the album as their scalpel-like sharpness provides a perfect counterpoint to the blunt force trauma of the bludgeoning rhythm work. Vocalist Scott Reigel has a classic death metal style of ascerbic growling that sounds like it could strip paint and the rhythm section provides the perfect heavy-boned skeleton on which guitarists Don Gates and Jay Fernandez can hang their muscular riffs.
One point of contention for me was the two interludes, Sympathy and Spirit World, which I think sucked the velocity out of the album. During each of these breaks in the sonic battery I was champing at the bit for them to launch back into the attack and felt these acted like speed bumps on a racetrack, being superfluous and disruptive of the flow. I understand the inclusion and maybe the band wanted to give the listener a respite and a chance to regroup before setting about them once more, but without them in the tracklisting I think we would have had a perfect blistering and belligerent sub-forty minute album.
Anyway, minor tracklisting niggle aside, this is an album I enjoyed massively with it sitting somewhere between early Deicide and mid-era Death to my ears with those searing solos being the big take away for me. On the strength of this debut, I really can't believe that these guys aren't as big a name in the Florida scene as Death, Deicide or Morbid Angel.
4.5/5
Demilich - Nespithe (1993)
Demilich's sole release Nespithe is an album who's name I have seen dropped all over the place. However, it being tagged as technical death metal has always found me looking the other way and filing it under the heading "nothing to do with me". And now, after finally listening to it, I have got to say, "Fuckin' wow!!" I genuinely don't think I have ever heard an album so out there that I have actually enjoyed as much as this. With it's bizarre, seemingly nature-defying, technicalities and the inhuman sub-sonic growls that pass for vocals this is like the very personification of H.P. Lovecraft's stories of impossible realms and sanity-destroying astral horrors. I can see why Demilich never released another album as I cannot even conceive of how you would follow this up. In fact, it seems like three of the four members fell out of the metal scene altogether after Demilich split following it's release - and I understand why. This is the death metal equivalent of Lovecraft's legendary tome, The Necronomicon, a book so horrifying it causes any who read it to go completely insane.
All hyperbole aside, I don't possess the technical musical knowledge to even begin to explain what is going on here with Nespithe, other than to say that it is quite unlike anything I have ever heard in it's seemingly chaotic grooves and it needs to be heard to be believed. It seems on the surface to be exactly the sort of technical exercise I would normally hate, but for some reason it's constantly shifting sounds overlaid by that smothering inhuman growling just appeals to something inside me. I have seen any number of complaints about those vocals, but I think they are some of the most fascinating I have ever heard, the sheer depth of the croaking growl genuinely sounding like the proclamations of some extra-dimesional deity. The lyrics too are suitably eldritch and hint at multi-dimensional horrors whose only reason is to destroy the minds and souls of the human race, to which Antti Boman's voice gives perfect expression.
Where Nespithe scores high over most other technical death metal for me, is because it is so dripping with atmosphere and that is something I think is ignored by most technical DM bands, Nile perhaps being the only other technical outfit I know of who put any store in atmosphere... but Demilich take it to a whole new level that even leaves the Egypt-obsessed Nile floundering. The four band members are evidently supremely talented musicians to pull off such intricate instrumentation and that combined with such a singular, horror-invoking atmosphere gives this a real one-of-a-kind feel. One thing is absolutely certain, once you have heard it, this is not an album you are ever likely to forget. For me, this is a classic.
5/5, Hell yeah!!
I am so glad I undertook this journey back to the early days of death metal as I have found I now have a much greater appreciation of it's allure. I have found some absolute gems and approaching it this way has been almost like experiencing the scene in real time. I have often felt a pang of jealousy of people who are hearing albums like Master of Puppets and Reign in Blood for the first time, remembering how much they blew me away when I first heard them myself, but now I have been lucky enough to have a similar experience with many of death metal's true classics and have been loving it. Anyway, a brilliant double-header today, starting with:
Brutality - Screams of Anguish (1993)
Brutality were unknown to me prior to listening to this (surprise, surprise), but are another product of the Nineties' Florida death metal scene that spawned so many DM classics and one listen to Screams of Anguish and it is obvious that it originated in Tampa. While it does possess the brutality of the classic Tampa sound, it also has a slight technical bent to it that, presumably, differentiated it from the Morbid Angels and Deicides of the time. It isn't excessively technical and Brutality are as capable of being wilfully bludgeoning as any other of Tampa's death metal denizens, but there is enough there to set it apart. The lead work in particular is something that caught my ear, with the howling solos being one of my favourite aspects of the album as their scalpel-like sharpness provides a perfect counterpoint to the blunt force trauma of the bludgeoning rhythm work. Vocalist Scott Reigel has a classic death metal style of ascerbic growling that sounds like it could strip paint and the rhythm section provides the perfect heavy-boned skeleton on which guitarists Don Gates and Jay Fernandez can hang their muscular riffs.
One point of contention for me was the two interludes, Sympathy and Spirit World, which I think sucked the velocity out of the album. During each of these breaks in the sonic battery I was champing at the bit for them to launch back into the attack and felt these acted like speed bumps on a racetrack, being superfluous and disruptive of the flow. I understand the inclusion and maybe the band wanted to give the listener a respite and a chance to regroup before setting about them once more, but without them in the tracklisting I think we would have had a perfect blistering and belligerent sub-forty minute album.
Anyway, minor tracklisting niggle aside, this is an album I enjoyed massively with it sitting somewhere between early Deicide and mid-era Death to my ears with those searing solos being the big take away for me. On the strength of this debut, I really can't believe that these guys aren't as big a name in the Florida scene as Death, Deicide or Morbid Angel.
4.5/5
Demilich - Nespithe (1993)
Demilich's sole release Nespithe is an album who's name I have seen dropped all over the place. However, it being tagged as technical death metal has always found me looking the other way and filing it under the heading "nothing to do with me". And now, after finally listening to it, I have got to say, "Fuckin' wow!!" I genuinely don't think I have ever heard an album so out there that I have actually enjoyed as much as this. With it's bizarre, seemingly nature-defying, technicalities and the inhuman sub-sonic growls that pass for vocals this is like the very personification of H.P. Lovecraft's stories of impossible realms and sanity-destroying astral horrors. I can see why Demilich never released another album as I cannot even conceive of how you would follow this up. In fact, it seems like three of the four members fell out of the metal scene altogether after Demilich split following it's release - and I understand why. This is the death metal equivalent of Lovecraft's legendary tome, The Necronomicon, a book so horrifying it causes any who read it to go completely insane.
All hyperbole aside, I don't possess the technical musical knowledge to even begin to explain what is going on here with Nespithe, other than to say that it is quite unlike anything I have ever heard in it's seemingly chaotic grooves and it needs to be heard to be believed. It seems on the surface to be exactly the sort of technical exercise I would normally hate, but for some reason it's constantly shifting sounds overlaid by that smothering inhuman growling just appeals to something inside me. I have seen any number of complaints about those vocals, but I think they are some of the most fascinating I have ever heard, the sheer depth of the croaking growl genuinely sounding like the proclamations of some extra-dimesional deity. The lyrics too are suitably eldritch and hint at multi-dimensional horrors whose only reason is to destroy the minds and souls of the human race, to which Antti Boman's voice gives perfect expression.
Where Nespithe scores high over most other technical death metal for me, is because it is so dripping with atmosphere and that is something I think is ignored by most technical DM bands, Nile perhaps being the only other technical outfit I know of who put any store in atmosphere... but Demilich take it to a whole new level that even leaves the Egypt-obsessed Nile floundering. The four band members are evidently supremely talented musicians to pull off such intricate instrumentation and that combined with such a singular, horror-invoking atmosphere gives this a real one-of-a-kind feel. One thing is absolutely certain, once you have heard it, this is not an album you are ever likely to forget. For me, this is a classic.
5/5, Hell yeah!!
I am with you on the envy of folks listening to the classics for the first time and I have heard them about a hundred times over. Rare that I find an album nowadays that invokes the spirit of lost youth from some 30+ years ago but at least I had that feeling many times over for about 10 years straight.
Those Brutality & Demilich records are certainly high-quality examples of 1990's death metal that have brought me a lot of joy over the years. I'm not sure that I'd place either in the top tier of the genre but they're both gold members of the second tier.
As you probably know by now, I have lately been using this thread to document my tackling of The Horde's Death Metal the First Decade clan challenge, going through the list chronologically. I have now got to Gorguts' second album, The Erosion of Sanity. It seems, from what I have seen, that this is considered to be a transitional album for the band, so in the interest of due diligence I thought I would check out the albums released either side of it. Here's a few thoughts:
Gorguts - Considered Dead (1991)
The Canadians released their debut LP in 1991 and it seems obvious to me that they were heavily influenced by Chuck Schuldiner and Death, this sounding very much like the first couple of Death releases, Luc Lemay's vocals in particular seem very reminiscent of Chuck's style. It's not a bad album at all, it is what may disparagingly be called by some, a solid slab of early nineties' death metal that sounds very typical of the times. It doesn't sit within the upper tier for me, alongside Altars of Madness, Mental Funeral, Scream Bloody Gore or even Deicide's debut, but it is entertaining enough and I would definitely listen to it again.
Which brings me to:
Gorguts - Obscura (1998)
I am reluctant to go into it too deeply, but I guess it's cards on the table time. I have a "condition" whereby I become overwhelmed by excessive external sensory stimuli, particularly sounds, which means I am exceedingly uncomfortable in situations with a lot of disparate aural inputs such as crowds. This probably explains why I favour the more monolithic genres like doom, especially funeral doom, and drone and why more complex music like jazz or technical and avant-garde metal rub me up the wrong way. As a consequence of this, an album like Obscura is like a mild form of torture to my overtaxed brain. This sounds to me like a band where all the members are displaying their technical adroitness by all playing a different song at the same time and I'm sorry, but I just can't take it. This is the type of record where I have to genuinely say, "this is not for me". I can't apologise for it and I wish it was otherwise, so I too could revel in it's complexities, but it is what it is. I have only got thtrough it once by listening to no more than a couple of tracks at a time, I find it so genuinely uncomfortable to listen to.
I only bring this up to explain why I dislike this sort of complex, technical and dissonant stuff, it's not to be edgy or counter to the consensus, it is just problematic for me. I won't insult everyone's intelligence by rating it, as I can't listen to it objectively and subjectively it would have to be a 0.5/5 for me, but we all know that is just ridiculous. Thanks for listening - I really don't wish to sound like an asshole, so I hope you understand.
I'll post a review of The Erosion of Sanity when i have had a little bit longer with it.
Gorguts - Erosion of Sanity (1993)
Gorguts released their debut, the meat and potatoes death metal album Considered Dead, in 1991. Seven years later and about three hundred light years removed from the debut they released the much-lauded, technical, avant-garde death metal album Obscura, an album, my own struggles with which I have documented elsewhere. Despite my problems with Obscura, even I can hear that these sound like two completely different bands, yet somehow they travelled from one to the other, the journey they were taking, during a pitstop in 1993, producing The Erosion of Sanity.
I wouldn't say that The Erosion of Sanity sits midway between Considered Dead and Obscura, it still retains too many of the fundaments of death metal for that, but it does drop massive hints as to the direction of travel that Gorguts were taking as they developed their sound from, frankly, the Death copyists that were represented on the debut to the out-there boundary-pushers that they were to become. For me personally Erosion of Sanity hits a bit of a sweet spot between the solid, but unoriginal death metal of their earlier days and the indigestible technicalities of their infinitely more challenging and complex later work. This is an extremely tight-sounding album with the band hitting all their marks superbly. The riffs are tight and brutal-sounding and are supported by the rhythm section that pounds out dynamic and original-sounding patterns, with the bass sitting high enough in the mix to have a higher than usual impact upon the overall sound to great effect. Luc Lemay's harsh, throaty bark sounds vicious, yet the lyrics are still perfectly understandable, despite this invective-filled, spitting delivery. Where I feel that Erosion of Sanity scores over a lot of technical death metal in the same way that Death's Human does, is that the displays of technical prowess in both execution and songwriting don't interrupt the flow of the tracks and what we still have at the root of it all is a slab of heavy as hell and brutal death metal with killer riffs and exhilarating lead work.
There is far more going on here than was presented on Considered dead and the band's evolution in a mere couple of years was quite remarkable, but there were wholesale changes to Gorguts' lineup after Erosion of Sanity, with guitarist/vocalist Luc Lemay being the only member appearing on both Erosion and Obscura. I am guessing this meant that Lemay was the instigator of Gorguts' move in a more avant-garde direction and his judgement was that his fellow band members either weren't on board with that direction of travel or weren't technically gifted enough to pull off his vision of where he wanted the band to go. For me, however, this is an excellent example of technical death metal that still retains what makes death metal exciting without becoming too "cerebral" and losing me. Whilst Obscura and their later complex works seem to be what Gorguts are best known for, they aren't for me and I will stick with this and hold it up as an example of what I personally look for in tech-death circles.
4.5/5
I completely agree with your assessments of the first two Gorguts albums Sonny. I bought them both on CD upon release &, while "Considered Dead" was a solid enough (if a little generic) death metal record, it was "The Erosion of Sanity" that really took them to the elite level for me personally. For the record, I struggled significantly with "Obscura" on my first three attempts to understand its merits. It took me until my fourth to fully grasp it which was years after I first encountered it. It's admittedly the most extreme example of the dissonant death metal sound you'll find though.
Amorphis - Tales From the Thousand Lakes (1994)I am finally on a bit more familiar territory with an album I have known for quite a while. Tales From the Thousand Lakes is actually one of the first albums I got into when, after a hiatus of several years, I ventured back into metal in the late nineties and it was one of those I got a dodgy copy of using that new-fangled Napster thingy, so beloved by Lars Ulrich & co. Over the years, I had actually begun to doubt whether this was as good as I thought it was back then, or if it was failing to age well, but revisiting it now has re-ignited my love of it and confirmed that it has stood the test of time and still maintains it's reputation as a one-of-a-kind classic.
Tales... is the band's sophomore full-length, following 1992's The Karelian Isthmus and is a concept album based around the Finnish national epic poem known as The Kalevala. The first half of the nineties found most death metal bands pushing the boundaries of extremity, whether through increasing technicality, plumbing greater depths of cavernous doominess or just sheer bloody-minded brutality, becoming more and more extreme seemed to be the order of the day. Amorphis, however, pursued another route entirely, whereby the story was the key and the music to express it needed to be more accessible and expansive than mere technicality or brutality would allow. Tales From the Thousand Lakes is absolutely rooted in death metal, but it also has much more going on. The darkness of violence, blasphemy and evil which were the staples of death metal's ethos and aesthetic up to this point are entirely absent and TFtTL has a far lighter and airier feel that any death metal I have heard that was produced prior to this. It displays an epic nature that borrows from classic heavy metal and even Candlemass' style of epic doom metal with an expansive style that suits the material beautifully and breaks the mould for death metal, the songs incorporating a previously unknown level of melodicism into the genre. As a consequence every track has it's own atmosphere, yet they all flow together magically, to produce a coherent and consistent album that is accessible, aesthetically pleasing and incredibly memorable. Into a death metal-based foundation is woven folk metal and progressive elements with a variety of vocal styles from DM's usual deep growls to soaring cleans and a creative use of keyboards at key points without overdoing this side of things. This is a point that needs emphasising, I think, despite using potentially cheesy and overblown styles like folk and progressive metal, the album itself never descends to cartoonishness and is incredibly restrained and tasteful throughout it's runtime.
Undoubtedly Thousand Lakes was incredibly influential and I wouldn't be at all surprised if fellow Finns and symphonic metal flag-bearers Nightwish weren't heavily influenced by it, along with any number of more obvious melodic death metal outfits. This is assuredly a lightning-in-a-bottle, one-of-a-kind album that any number of bands (including Amorphis themselves) have attempted and failed to replicate anything like as successfully and it is a testament to original songwriting and strong storytelling emerging from the extreme metal scene of the 1990s. A classic of melodic and atmospheric extreme metal.
4.5/5
I revisited "Tales From The Thousand Lakes" only relatively recently & found that a lot of its lustre had faded for me personally. Perhaps it's just my general struggles with the melodic death metal subgenre more than anything else but I prefer some of Amorphis' later releases like "Elegy" & "Under The Red Cloud" these days. It's a 3.5 star rating from me.
At the Gates - Slaughter of the Soul (1995)
At the risk of becoming increasingly repetitive, At the Gates are yet another band I have encountered on my journey through death metal's beginnings, about whom I know very little, despite previously having seen their name all over the place. This time, though, after actually listening to them, I am not filled with the feeling that I have been missing out. It's not that this is terrible or anything like that, in fact it is extremely tight and aggressive. It's just that, to my untrained ears, it sounds like an awful lot of the metalcore that I have encountered whenever I have ventured into Revolution territory and as such it doesn't really float my boat that much. From what I gather, this was enormously influential and a pivotal release in the development of melodeath and the "Gothenburg Sound", neither of which I am much of a fan of, so it was always going to be a bit of a reach for me.
On the plus side, the riffs come thick and fast and, at times, are fairly memorable, even though the guitar sound is of the Entombed / Dismember, heavily distorted Swedish style of which I am not the world's biggest fan. The rhythm section of bassist Jonas Björler and drummer Adrian Erlandsson work really well together and sound like a very tight unit, providing a lot of muscle to back up the frantic riffing. I don't really go for the hardcore-derived vocal style of singer Tomas Lindberg, I much prefer my death metal with the gutteral growls of Reifert, Vincent and Chuck to this "shouty" style which very often rubs me up the wrong way wherever I encounter it and is probably the most offputting aspect of the album for me.
I can definitely hear how influential this album has been upon not only no end of melodeath wannabees, but also on the development of metalcore, the earliest practitioners of which must have been well acquainted with this. I would have to say that this is a very good example of a style of metal that I am not the biggest fan of and, a bit like my attitude towards Trivium's In Waves, it is an album I would probably only return to when I was in a mood for something different from my usual fare, acknowleding it as important in the development of metal and being enjoyable enough in it's own right, without it really resonating with me on a personal level.
3.5/5
Dark Tranquillity - The Gallery (1995)
I have been listening to this over the last couple of days in conjunction with At the Gates' Slaughter of the Soul. Both bands being instrumental in the development of what became known as "The Gothenburg Sound", the two albums were released a mere fortnight apart. I must admit that, of the two, I prefer this as there is just a bit more to interest me than with Slaughter of the Soul. A big plus for me is Mikael Stanne's vocals which I much prefer over Tomas Lindberg's. His singing style is still very aggressive, but sounds to me like it has more of a black metal flavour than a hardcore one. The riffs may be less memorable than At the Gates' best, but the guitars don't sound quite as swamped in distortion and as such pack a greater punch to my way of thinking.
The most striking thing about The Gallery, though, is the production which is a revelation. Each of the instruments can be heard distinctly and clearly, the biggest benefactor of this being bassist Martin Henriksson whose bass lines are perfectly audible and as a consequence it is easy to hear what a terrific job he does weaving his lines in with Anders Jivarp's pummelling drum patterns. It also allows us to easily distinguish between the lead work of the two guitarists and generally gives the whole album a crisper sound than is often the case with Swedish death metal. I also feel that The Gallery scores over Slaughter... in that it has more variety, with the inclusion of slower sections, acoustic parts and even female vocals to provide some contrast to the pulverising riffs. The Gallery also sees Dark Tranquility dabble a bit more with technicality than AtG, although I don't wish to overegg it, this certainly isn't tech-death, but the rhythms and leads sound more complex and technically specific than those on Slaughter of the Souls.
I don't wish to set this review up as a competition between the two albums, it has just come out like that as a consequence of my listening to them that way, comparisons between two pioneering albums of the same genre, released days apart becoming inevitable. Anyway, I'm giving it to The Gallery on a TKO. This is an album I am likely to return to again in the future for sure.
4/5
So now that I have (finally) completed the Death Metal the 1st Decade clan challenge, I think I will put this thread to bed now. I have thoroughly enjoyed this time travel back to the late 80s / early 90s via the early releases of death metal and have found some absolute corkers to keep me going for many a year. As a bit of a death metal skeptic going in, it just goes to show that you can teach an old dog new tricks! I have discovered plenty of new favourites and believe I now have a much better understanding of a genre I had merely scratched the surface of before. This is not the end of my death metal exploration, not by a long shot, but I don't need this thread to log it any more and so will bring it to a close now. Thanks for indulging me and for joining me for the ride...