Death Metal Underground Weekly Update November 11-28

Death Metal Underground

Thanksgiving Newsletter 11/25-11/28

Because Metal Is Art


Profile: Robert Plante, author of Demolition - The Encyclopedia of 1980s Metal Demos

Demolition – The Encyclopedia of 1980s Metal Demos will present an encyclopedic listing of the metal demos of the 1980s in handy book form as written by author Robert Plante. It will also review them. Most importantly, however, this is the first attempt to systematically chronicle the birth of not just a genre, but the underground itself through demos. This is part of of a literary explosion on heavy metal topics and specifically, underground metal.

http://www.deathmetal.org/news/profile-robert-plante-author-of-demolition-the-encyclopedia-of-1980s-metal-demos/


The "women in metal" debate is resolved


It’s a perpetual favorite of late-night bull sessions and internet forums alike: what do we think of women in metal? Growing up with Jo Bench blasting out basslines in Bolt Thrower, the ladies in Derketa/Mythic making grinding doom, and knowing dozens of women heading zines, labels, and so on, it never occurred to us old schoolers.

http://www.deathmetal.org/news/the-women-in-metal-debate-is-resolved/


Khimmat - Vos-X


Drawing influences from bands like Arkhon Infaustus, Khimaat contrive an assortment of unsettling atonal passages. The harsh production insinuates the cacophonous demeanor displayed in Vos-X and showcases a mélange of discordant textures. With anguish residing at the forefront, Khimaat move forward into parallels of torment and manage to unnerve the listener as the demo EP unfolds. Unsettling as much as it is gritty, the execution of Vos-X is a good effort for a first attempt.

http://www.deathmetal.org/news/khimaat-vos-x/


Interview with album cover artist Francesco Gameli


Art direction for preparing album aesthetics is important for delivering a visual representation for the music that it banners. Francesco Gemelli has been providing visual artistry for numerous bands and other clients. With utmost professionalism displayed in his works, Francesco is expanding his work as art director for record labels and freelance endeavors. He’s amassed quite a hefty resume of album covers and logos.

http://www.deathmetal.org/news/interview-with-album-cover-artist-francesco-gemelli/


Academic library stockpiles metal for future study


Dr. David Hunter is a music librarian at the University of Texas in Austin. As part of his work curating the Historical Music Recordings collection, Dr. Hunter stockpiles heavy metal for future academics to study.

http://www.deathmetal.org/news/academic-library-stockpiles-metal-for-future-study/


Sadistic Metal Reviews 11-27-13


What are Sadistic Metal Reviews? We write about the artistic and musical side of metal, not how many teenyboppers or bloated old guys think it’s “fresh.” In the holiday spirit, we call metal’s turkeys what they are. Expect delicious outrage and denial, with the (occasional) quality release.

http://www.deathmetal.org/news/sadistic-metal-reviews-11-27-13/





Five albums I'm thankful for

For those of you who don't have the (dis)pleasure of living in the United States, today is the national holiday where Americans gorge themselves on slaughtered turkey and mashed potatoes before spending hours watching grown men fight over a ball.

I know, you're missing out.

However, regardless of what may be occurring elsewhere; now is as good at time as any to reflect on the albums that made metal great. Here at the DMU we strive to recognize within metal, albums that reach toward something higher (art), and are therefore eternal.


Celtic Frost - To Mega Therion

Protagonist Tom Warrior writes in his book about the band that the importance of projecting image coherent with music was where Celtic Frost differed from other bands of the time, and that vision is present here in distinctive songs which more than operating by hook work by visual architectures having significance in rumbling epics of fundamental conflict. Vocals chant a cadenced encouragement to roaring sound and drums shadow development through guitar phrasing as bass fills points of tonal variation, forming together a lower registers resonance which through its thrashing of undulating riffs projects a hazy dreamlike vision into the subconscious metaphorology of majestically raw and human motions in music.

http://www.deathmetal.org/bands/celtic_frost/celtic_frost-to_mega_therion/


Slayer - South of Heaven

The most darkly imposing of the Slayer albums, South of Heaven achieves a demonic sound through a breakdown of music to pure patterning, in which harmony serves a dark spirit rising only occasionally from the ripping chromatic riffs and chaotic solos that surge from one end of the spectrum to the other conducted by ingenious reinvention of inertia. The musical style lingers toward the more abstract end of the speed metal and death metal movements, with fast riffing that presages the work of Morbid Angel and Massacra balanced by intricate lead riffing in which grand visual aspects to a rhythmic sequence of notes are established.

http://www.deathmetal.org/bands/slayer/slayer-south_of_heaven/


Incantation - Onward to Golgotha

Grasping isolation through an enduring musicality which encodes the experiences leading to the decisions that make complacency inaccessible, and thus guarantee alienation, this album is like a Paradise Lost for underground metal, putting together the most base techniques of metalcraft with the highest abstractions of thematic abstraction paired to a biological sense of self-identification.

http://www.deathmetal.org/bands/incantation/incantation-onward_to_golgotha/


Demilich - Nespithe

This album is highly recommended - underground metal shooting off in another direction, but in safe hands. It's punk in that these players are not entirely technically obsessed and play sometimes a shade unsteadily, but progressive in that they reach beyond any metal structures known to humanity to create a language: a highly abstracted and intellectual, atmospheric type of death metal that works out its fractal by making sure every anticlimax is a peak view into the next dimension of its context.

http://www.deathmetal.org/bands/demilich/demilich-nespithe/


Ildjarn - Forest Poetry

In the style of older Bathory black metal is reformed as a droning, techno-basic attack of riffs changing rhythm and structure over a fixed, energetic, repetitive beat. Without the trance-inducing effects of Burzum the insidious nature of black metal's nihilism is less inductive than confrontational in an album of fast blasting material in which the major beat never varies. Relentless violence becomes beauty in the evidence of melody emerging behind the chaotic and droning battery, which reveals the core of an evil understanding: the structure within the aesthetic.

http://www.deathmetal.org/bands/ildjarn/ildjarn-forest_poetry/


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